I want to talk to you a little bit about transformation and the scale. I had a Facebook post a couple of weeks ago, saying that, hey, this is an unpopular fact but just making the scale go down is not a transformation.
It was interesting to see the different comments that came through and what that meant for different people. Anything you post on social media, people are going to have thoughts about it. People have their own take on it.
What I meant by that post was that you can make the scale go down in so many different ways. In fact, the scale does fluctuate every day. It can go up and down within the same hour. When we’re trying to lose weight, and we’re making it all about the scale, this is where I think things can go wrong.
Weight loss statistics prove that 97% of all people, not necessarily all women but all people, will go on to regain the lost weight within three years. Those are pretty tough statistics.
I have some thoughts about this that I think are going to be very helpful to you. Ultimately, you’ll decide. Let me know what you think. If we’re not already friends, you’re not already following me on Facebook, please do and let me know what you think about this. Come to my free group Food, Fitness, Fat Loss for Real Life and let me know.
When we play the scale game, making the scale go down, we’re usually doing it from the identity of the struggling, frustrated, desperate dieter. Someone who’s unhappy with her weight and that identity has probably been with us for a long time.
I remember in the fall I was going for a walk and running through my to-do list. My brain was just doing that mental list of I gotta do this, I gotta do that. Then on Saturday is this event, so I need to lose weight. It was so interesting that my brains been thinking about weight loss for so long that it still comes up.
For many of us weight loss is tied to making the scale go down. That’s it.
That’s how we know we’ve done it.
- We’re successful,
- We’ve arrived,
- We won the game,
- All of the sacrifice was worth it.
- All of the willpower,
- The struggle,
- The restriction,
- The deprivation,
I finally made the scale go down.
If, along the way, we don’t become the successful, confident badass then we are still the struggling, fearful, doubtful, afraid dieter. Chances are we’re going to be stuck, always hovering over the scale, freaking out over every fluctuation.
If we do work on our identity;
- Who we are,
- Who you have to be,
- What you believe about yourself,
- About your weight,
- About weight loss,
- About food,
- About your body.
That’s the stuff that really has to shift in order to keep weight off permanently.
I have worked with 1000’s of women over the last 25-30 years.
Literally 1000’s. I see a lot of patterns. Most women who were successful with weight loss, have been successful in the past. It kind of makes sense, right? If I’ve had success before, I can identify with that. That’s part of my identity.
If I struggle with weight loss;
- I can never keep weight off.
- Every pound is hard.
- I hate feeling so deprived and restricted.
- I can’t have any carbs and lose weight.
- I think about pizza and I get fat.
That’s the identity.
You can already see that makes sense. If I have that, not just thoughts running around my head, but I have a true belief that’s who I am and not what my situation is. Chances are, that’s going to make you feel pretty shitty.
We are unlikely to make decisions about;
- What to eat,
- How to work out,
- When to go to bed,
- How to take supplements,
- How to take care of yourself,
- How to talk nicely to yourself,
When those are the beliefs we carry with us.
In Self Made we talk about actual weight loss and fat loss for our clients. That’s what we do. That’s the result. But there is something else there, which is the mental weight.
The mental weight of;
- Wanting to lose weight
- Trying to lose weight
- A lifetime of weight loss,
- Hating ourselves
- Feeling like nothing’s going to work,
- Nothing’s ever worked.
- I’m not able to do this,
- I’m not worthy of this.
It really does come down to that identity.
So what can you do?
Inside Self Made I call it the Five F Formula.
Obviously in any program that is about weight loss, we’re going to talk about Food. You can’t not talk about food. It’s very personalized so that we can really dial in where you are with food.
- Are you somebody who doesn’t know what to eat at all?
- Are you somebody who has specific preferences or food allergies.
Same thing with Fitness. We’re going to talk about fitness. Food and fitness are broad categories, they can mean many different things to different people.
The other F’s are;
- Feelings,
- F*cking Hormones,
- Future Self.
Those are the three that are the game changers. Any diet, any program, any coach, they’re going to talk about food and fitness. You could go on Google right now and find lots of food and lots of fitness. Whether that’s recipes or macros, all the things. It’s the other three things that are going to change your life.
Future self is the best version of me. That’s me somewhere in the year 2040. That’s me way far down the line after I’ve lost the weight.
For many of us, that’s what we’re holding out for. We think when I lose weight;
- Then I’ll be a different person.
- The scale goes down.
- I’ll be transformed.
- I’ll be happier.
- I’ll be more successful.
- I will like myself and people will like me.
We think the before and after picture is the transformation.
I know I’m a transformation coach. I have a lot of before and afters. I have a lot of testimonials but a true transformation is not just you know, hey look, I lost 20 pounds on the scale, smaller jeans, or don’t I look so much better in this photo.
Those are all good. I am not saying they aren’t. I love my clients taking pictures, posting them, and doing the side by sides. I think it’s hugely powerful. But I want to tell you, you can still lose weight and lose a size and be in a bikini. You could. You could be all that but if you don’t really change the way you think, it’s not going to work.
If you still think,
- This is so hard.
- I have to give up so much.
- This is so much work.
- I can’t have anything to eat.
- I’ll always be on a diet.
- Everybody else gets to eat things
- I wish I was normal.
This is so much work and suffering. We haven’t changed. There’s no transformation there. You can see why so many people gain the weight back.
There are a lot of things that happen with weight loss.
- People notice you,
- People make comments,
- People ask people,
- Some might like you more
- Some might like you less,
- You might like you more,
- You might like you less.
Lots of things go on when we lose weight.
What are my new beliefs about;
- My body,
- My weight loss,
- My weight,
- The scale,
- Food?
You don’t just get to decide today, I’m never going to think those old thoughts again.
We start to see old thinking, and we can create new thinking. However, your old thinking is never going to go away if we don’t have the awareness to realize that we have to change not just the number on the scale or the size of our jeans. We have to change how we think we are.
We have to intentionally decide who we are.
- How does my future self think?
- What does she believe?
- How does she show up?
- How does she walk through the room?
- What does she like to do?
We’re not necessarily manifesting her. Although if you like those words, manifesting and aligning and all of that stuff, fine. I’m really trying to be much more practical.
If we’ve been coming at our weight loss as the struggling dieter. Let’s figure out what she’s all about.
- What has she been thinking?
- What are her beliefs?
- How does she feel?
- What are the things she does?
- What are the things she doesn’t do?
Let’s get it on paper and really see.
If I’m going to fully transform, not just on the scale, but to lose weight and keep it off. I’m gonna have to upgrade my thinking.
Your thinking is more important than the number on the scale.
I am somebody who’s lost weight. I don’t own a scale. I assume my weight. I have smaller clothes. I have a smaller body. I can see it in the mirror. I trust my own eyes. I trust myself at this point. I’ve had a lot of different moments. Where I had to scratch my head about my identity, the big aha moments.
I want to share one in particular. I’m sure several times on the podcast but it wasn’t until the last couple of weeks that I understood it in a bigger way. I want to say it was about 2017 or 2018. I can very distinctly remember, I’m in my bedroom. I go into the bathroom. I look in the mirror and I had the feeling of disappointment. I didn’t like what I saw in the mirror. I had a lot of thoughts like, oh my god, I have to go on a diet. I have to go on another diet. I can’t believe that I’m going to have to do this again.
When I really think back and reflect on this, it’s interesting. How much I felt like the victim. It was very boohoo, poor me. This is a problem. What is happening? I can’t believe that I’m here. Then I remember sitting down on an ottoman and thinking, I’m always going to be on a diet. I’m a professional dieter. When I die on my gravestone they’re going to write, she was a great dieter.
I literally had that as my identity. I didn’t recognize what was happening. What I recognized at the time was;
How did I get here?
How did I let this happen?
What has happened?
Why am I here? Again?
I can’t even believe this.
Why did I allow myself to slip?
I was having this sort of identity crisis. It was almost an out of body existential crisis in my bedroom by myself. I’ve thought a lot about that moment in time.
Here I am. I’m feeling sorry for myself. I’ve already killed myself. I’ve already gone to the graveyard. I have a headstone that says I’m a professional Dieter. That’s it. That’s my whole life summed up in a nutshell. I mean, it’s funny to think about, but it feels pretty crappy like that.
At the end of the day, that is all I have, that’s all I did with my life. I thought about food.
I thought about:
- What I could eat,
- What I couldn’t eat,
- What I wanted to eat,
- Why it wasn’t fair,
That is my life.
Here’s the deal. No matter what you’re going to do the things. You know how to lose weight.
You’re going to;
- Go back to what you know.
- Pay attention.
- Eat like this.
- Be more intentional.
- Make this a priority.
That’s all it is.
You haven’t become somebody else. You haven’t lost yourself. You haven’t failed here. This is just for a moment in time, you forgot who you are. That is true, I forgot who I was. In that moment. I was busy feeling sorry for myself. I had a lot of thoughts and feelings about what I looked like, didn’t look like, or I should look like. Sometimes you look in the mirror, and you like what you see. Sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you let your brain run wild. Y
our brain is always going to find the things, that’s what brains do. Brains are the finders of sh*t. Brains should actually clean up dog doo in my backyard. That’s what they’re good at is looking for shit.
No matter how long your struggle may or may not have been with weight loss;
- It’s recent,
- It’s only the last couple years as you found that you’ve gotten a little bit older,
- You’ve gotten closer to menopause,
- You had an injury,
- Coming out of this sort of three year COVID haze
- Maybe it has been decades, like myself.
I received an email from Sean Whalen, he’s an inspirational speaker. I guess I am on the mailing list. He’s a business. He’s an entrepreneur. He has a brand called Lions Not Sheep. I get a lot of emails. Sometimes I read them, sometimes I don’t. The title was, Remember Who You Are. I was like, that’s weird because I’m remembering who I am and I’m trying to help others remember who they are. It was a really nice email about him growing up. I want to say with his mother or grandmother who really encouraged him.
No matter what your story has been, or you feel like your story is around who you are based on your weight or your body or your size.
You’re made for much more.
You are. You’re very accomplished. Look around at all you have. Look at all you have done.
If you;
- Have a house,
- Have kids,
- Have that sales award that you won,
- You got flowers from a friend.
- You have beautiful artwork on the walls,
- You have your favorite leather couch that you bought with your money,
- New sneakers for walking
Look around for anything. Celebrate every little thing about who you are, and how you got to this point. It’s easy for us to really focus on what is wrong with us. We want to flip that into what is right about us.
Remember who we are, and that whatever story we have about our;
- Weight,
- Weight loss,
- The scale
- Our body,
- Our size,
Is not permanent. It’s not a fact. It is obviously a set of beliefs we’ve been carrying.
I want you to know that you can change that. Does it happen instantaneously? Overnight? No, that’s obviously why people also get coaches. People need that help to truly transform. It’s not a number on the scale. It’s not. It’s really much more of a mindset.
When you move into that mindset, that new identity, weight loss becomes inevitable.
It may not be fast, but it is inevitable because it becomes who you are. You’re a woman who loses weight and keeps it off. It’s not a lot of drama. It’s not a lot of boohoo. Not every day is magical, but every day you’re taking actions from the beliefs that you know how to lose weight.
That you are a woman who loses weight.
That you’re worth the work.
That you’re worth prioritizing.
Because you were made for more.
You need to remember who you are.
NOTES IN ANCHOR
Would you like to know the reason why most people gain back the weight they lose? Weight loss statistics prove that 97% of all people, not necessarily all women, but all people, will go on to regain the lost weight within three years. Those are pretty tough statistics. The question is why? Why do we gain it back? We have obviously had some success in losing weight. We know it can be done. The reason is, we didn’t change our mindset. We made the scale go down, but we didn’t become the successful, confident badass. Instead, we are still the struggling, fearful, doubtful, afraid dieter. Without that change in our identity, we are most likely going to continue to struggle with weight loss. The way you think is so much more important than the number on the scale. It is the key to success. If we want to become women who lose weight, and keep it off, then we have to remember who we are. Let’s jump right into doing just that on episode 42 of Unf*ck Your Weight Loss, now!
ABOUT THE HOST
Bonnie Lefrak is a Life & Body Transformation Expert and Founder of Self Made, a program designed to help you tackle the physical aspects of health and weight loss as well as the beliefs and thoughts that drive our habits and behaviors. It is her goal to help women create certainty in their own lives, their own results, and their own abilities.
Weight loss is not about the one “right” diet – it is about MUCH more than that. Weight loss is not about the one “right” workout. Weight loss is not about being positive and putting a big smile on. Weight loss is about FEELINGS. All of them. Not trying to bury them or hide from them but knowing and allowing the full human experience.
Weight loss is not about grinding hustling and will powering your way to some end line. Transformation (when done well) is done from the inside out.
By addressing both the physical and mental aspects of dieting and weight loss, she has coached thousands of women ages 30-55+ from all over and helped them ditch the mindsets that are holding them back, achieve permanent weight loss, and get the bangin’ body of their dreams.
Bonnie is an expert at Demystifying weight loss. She helps you unf*ck your diet brain.
She is on a mission to help women love themselves, to find PEACE in the process of losing weight, taking care of themselves, and leveraging the power they do have to become who and want they want right now.
Connect with Bonnie:
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Email- bonnie@bonnielefrak.com
