If you’ve been around, you know that I really preach. We’re going to drink our water, we’re going to get our asses to bed. We’re going to wait till we’re hungry and stop before we’re full, and we’re just going to write down every single day what we want to eat for the day ahead of time. So our jackass brain isn’t the one making the decisions all day long, but there is a fifth part of the basics, which is when you do all of those things, you are going to be making mistakes. You are going to be figuring out what works and what doesn’t work. You’re going to be identifying what you’re really good at and you’re going to be identifying the things that you may have never had to do before to lose weight. Like wait till you’re hungry, which a lot of us, if we’ve ate by the clock all of our lives, that’s going to be a new skill.
If you’ve always ate with calories and been able to, I’ll just eat a measly amount for breakfast starve all day, and then blow it out the water so that I can eat beyond what I need at a meal. Stopping at enough is going to feel foreign and be difficult. And then I think the biggest one for a lot of you is when you’ve been in the diet trauma industry, you have not been taught how to eat the things you truly enjoy and plan them and have them without needing it to be for an emotional reason or all the other things. So I want you to think about there is an extra basic, and that is I have to learn how to practice patience because I’ve been on diets where their goal is to really restrict you, really make a big splash in hopes that if you’ll lose weight real fast, then you’ll be motivated to keep going. That sounds amazing in theory and a lot of you have been trained to believe that that’s a good thing, that the quick weight loss provided the motivation to keep going. The only thing that provided the feeling of motivation was a thought you had about losing the weight. I must be doing it right.
Although you might be doing things that every single step it took to lose that fast little bit of weight, you were telling yourself things like, see, I can’t have the foods I love. I’m going to have to really not eat anything I like in order to be able to lose my weight. I’ll just figure it all out after I lose my weight. That does not mean that you did it the right way, a sustainable way. It just means that you did some stuff, you lost weight really fast and if you were motivated to keep going, it didn’t mean you were motivated to keep doing great things for yourself. It just meant you had a thought. So when I’m teaching you, I don’t think that the process is necessarily slower
Because a lot of you was like, I’m just going to have to learn how to do it slow. That is a shitty thought. None of you are sitting around thinking that that feels amazing. If I had to guess the majority of you, it’s a thought that doesn’t feel good, and yet you think it’s really useful. I think it’s more about what I’m doing this time is I’m really learning how to track progress, make sustainable progress, get results, figure out what’s working, figure out what’s not, and use my brain to be motivated, to use my mind to feel good about myself, to not, I’m breaking the chains of relying on the scale and relying on external factors in order for me to feel good. That’s why it’s going to take some patience because at first your brain is not going to want to think that any of this is great.
It’s going to be like, yeah, but did you see Shirley? She lost five pounds this week and you didn’t know what Shirley’s going to lose in six weeks? So this is one of the things I want to tell you guys. When you are sitting around and you are looking at everybody else’s progress, somebody might lose four or five pounds in one week. In six weeks from now, they may lose zero pounds. You don’t know what their trend’s going to be, but what I can tell all of you is that typical progress is going to be a half a pound to two pounds lost per week for every single fucking one of you. And in order for that to be the average, that also means that every single fucking one of you will have weeks where you’ll gain a little bit, even if you did a lot of amazing things, you’ll maintain some weeks because your body is stabilizing.
You’ll have average losses some weeks because your body’s just trucking along. In some weeks you may even have a big ass fat dump because it’s just ready. It’s just your consistency’s paying off. But over time, no one’s going to beat the system unless you’re doing asshole tactics. So what I want to talk about is there is a lot of us, sometimes we use our progress either for or against ourselves, and I want to make sure that when you are looking at your progress, that you’re using it for yourself, that you’re not turning it around and using it against yourself. So when you are looking at your week and you’re weighing in, that cannot and should not be the only indicator of success for the week. It’s like, this is what I lost or gained or maintained. This is how many plans I made. This is how many meals this week. I followed my plan. This is how many meals this week that I didn’t. And I think for some
Of you who are having a hard time sticking to your plans, here’s what I would do. I would start parceling the data out so that your brain can see more progress points rather than it just, y’all have a tendency, and I think it’s called the gap effect, humans, brains like to think in all or nothings or black and white or one or the other. A brain likes to only really compare two things. I’m either doing really well or I’m a shit show. I’m either fat or I’m thin, I’m on track or I’m off track. It never really likes to have, here’s five different stages I could be in and let me pick the one that’s most appropriate. The brain doesn’t naturally want to go that way. It wants to be very like it’s this or that kind of thinking. And so for us, it’s really important to realize we have to give it more information.
So if you’re having a hard time following your plan, I would suggest you break it out into here are all the meals I had this week that were on my plan. So let’s say you had 42 in a week, or let’s say if you had seven times three, seven days times three meals a day, let’s say 21, right? So you have 21 eating opportunities that you planned through the week. How many of them were on plan? How many of them were not on plan of the ones that weren’t on plan? Was it your breakfast, lunch, or dinner? That is how you can start really pinpointing, alright, here are the things I want to focus on. And then you can also see, you might actually eat on plan a lot more often than you think you do. So you don’t have to just be like, it’s either I was unplanned today or off.
We break it down that way in the planner, but for some of you, breaking it down one step further would be really useful for you so that you can use your progress for yourself versus against yourself. You can do the same thing with enough. You can do the same thing with waiting for hunger for all of it. So you guys can get a little bit more granular with tracking and what it does is it helps you kind of say maybe there’s more progress happening than what I think there is because my brain wants to say, unless I’m doing everything, Corrine says, I must not be making progress unless the scale loses this many pounds. Must not be making progress. Our brain typically wants to tell us what progress really looks like. So for a lot of you, what I want you to do is I want you to figure out in your journals what do I think progress is? What is your habit brain’s working definition of progress? And really take a look at it and be like, is this useful? Is it useful for it to be very all or nothing, very black and white? Is it useful to think that this is the only way that I can give myself any kind of credit? I have to be doing all
These things? Or if I was going to redefine what progress is, I would be looking at these things. I would be noticing this stuff. I would tell myself these things more often. And I think that that is one of the ways that we really start feeling more patient. We start building more consistency. We see where we’re already consistent and then we build off of that. So dig in every week and find what went right for the week, what did you do well and then build upon that. It’s like, all right, I’m doing these things well. So here’s some things. If I wanted to level up, I’ll level up one thing from this great stack of shit I’m already doing. I will resist the need to tell myself I don’t get to feel good about myself because I didn’t do things perfect or that I didn’t lose enough weight this week.
And then we build, and then what we do is we go to digging into the data of, alright, and what is the thing right now that would be the easiest for me to improve? I can put some focus here. I can make some of those 1% level ups this week and see here where I can move the needle on doing it a little bit better, a little bit more consistently. And then the main thing is to talk nice to yourself through the process of doing that. Really celebrate yourself. Tell yourself, I am so glad that you are redefining how you lose weight. This may be the first time you’ve ever done this in your life. I want you to really talk to yourself. I deserve to be proud of myself. I deserve to feel good about the changes I’m making. I deserve to let go of the version of me that’s hard on me.
That’s always berating me for my weight, for my body, for my choices. I can let all of that go and start telling myself, I bet we can learn new things. I bet we can make this easier on ourselves. I bet this is possible. I promise all of you, there is no harm in using that kind of thinking. Anytime your brain wants to offer up, you can’t do it and stuff. There’s no downside to it. The only thing that will happen is you possibly will feel a little better or the same. It’s like the main thing I want you to do is to quit believing everything that you think. Even if you feel the same. I at least want you to start opening the door that everything you think is just not true. So one of the things when it comes to the patience with the process, like feeling very patient, building on that consistency is when you focus on enjoying the process, how you can make it easy, how
You can make this a place where you find successes, where every week you’re looking for your wins and then you’re looking for an improvement point. You just aren’t impatient for the end anymore. I know this is true because when I was losing weight, because I didn’t do things perfectly, I didn’t lose weight every week. I had big plateaus all the way through it, but it was the first time I lost weight where I literally don’t remember ever truly thinking about how long it was going to take. I don’t remember thinking a lot about, I just wish this was over. I never wished it was over and it was only because I had decided I was going to fall in love with the process and when I fell in love with the process, I was falling in love with myself. At the same time, when you are falling in love, you’re not sitting there going, I just wish that the good part’s over.
I want you to think about this. If you’ve ever been in love with someone and you’re like boom, you meet them and stuff, you’re not just sitting there going like, well, I hope the end of this relationship comes fast. No, we’re sitting there thinking about enjoying the moments, envisioning a bright future for ourselves and stuff. When you’re enjoying the process and you’re focusing on figuring out how to like it include lots of things you love, how to be open to things you don’t wish for the end, you have no reason to get away from it. So if you need to get to your weight loss goal to feel relieved or better, guess what? You need to be asking? Why? What are the things that I’m telling myself and saying about the process that make it where I think the end is better than right now?
Let’s say you’re all going to lose 50 pounds and you’re all going to have in one year. We’re all going to lose 50 pounds. Some of you will spend the year wishing it was over, dreading every meal, sitting around thinking about all the things. You can’t have wondering when you’re going to, is this it for me? Whatever your thoughts are, and some of you will figure out how to the process, we’ll talk to yourselves and this isn’t so bad. You’ll do the same things. It’s just some of your perspectives will make the year a grind and some of your perspectives will make it feel like it’s a gift to you. Who do you think gets there and stays there? Everybody gets there, but all the people that made it a grind who hated the process can’t stay there because if all they did was worry about the end dread their meals and stuff, the moment they get the thing they wanted most they will not want. There will be no incentive to keep doing things that you don’t like
Doing. Things that you’ve told yourself you don’t like. You will be sitting there worrying if you can keep the weight off versus the other person who enjoyed the process by the way that they thought. Once they get there, they’re left with a mindset that allows to enjoy the maintenance process too. They built the skill of adjusting how to think, how to think about their new lifestyle and stuff. The other person just feels like they just got a second job when they reach their maintenance. Here’s another thought that y’all have all the time. Slow progress guys, that is a thought. It is not a fact. So slow thoughts. Put your brain to work on all of your errors and your hardships. Please do not talk about your process and your progress is slow. It’s a number. I lost X amount of pounds this week. I maintained, I gained.
That’s it. It’s not slow, it’s not fast, it’s not bad, it’s not good. It just is. So do not sit there and think that you’re half pound is an only, my average. I actually calculated it was 1.38 pounds per week by the time I finished 1.38. It’s a good thing I didn’t get all he hauled up on the weeks that I lost half a pound or the weeks that I lost zero because I would’ve shit all over the weeks that I was going to lose 1.38. We cannot do that stuff to ourselves. Guys, if you don’t lose weight one week, look at your data and figure out what you can do. And if there’s nothing you can do, say like, no, legit, I’m really doing the basics and stuff. See if you got a level up in you. And if not, then just say, maybe it’s my hormones, who knows. I’ll give it one more week. If not, then I’ll level up. You’ll always have options, but don’t give yourself the option of beating yourself up. That should be the option that gets taken off the table. I.
