I would like to share with you some of the highlights and nuggets of wisdom that came about when I did a five part video series for my coaching clients. It was called, can you believe this, How to Lose Weight. I know. I came up with that clever title all by myself.
What I wanted to do was create five short videos about things that my clients would be able to easily consume without feeling overwhelmed. I think each video was 10 or 11 minutes long. We’re going to release a video every week. Each shows a different angle about weight loss. They all kind of come back down to food. I’m going to share some of the nuggets from that.
I know you’ve heard me say this many times before but one of the things that I think is really important for your own weight loss journey is that you do have to know exactly what you want when it comes to weight loss. Why you want it, but even before the why you want it, what exactly is it that you want? Like if we’re at the weight loss restaurant and we are going to order weight loss, we’re putting in our special order for exactly what we want. Take that and put it on paper. What is it? The waiter is holding a notepad and a pencil, except this time you’re holding the notepad and pencil.
Put it all on paper.
- Is this a number on a scale?
- Is this a size of clothing?
- Is this a kind of clothing?
- Is this a feeling in your body?
- Is this a feeling when you see yourself in the mirror?
- Is this a certain aesthetic?
- What do your legs, your arms, your abs look like?
- Is this better health?
- Is this more mobility?
- Is this lowered blood pressure?
Be as specific just like you’re doing a special order in a restaurant.
You’re ordering up your specific permanent lifetime weight loss. What does it look like? You could have anything you want, but you have to be very specific. You have to paint the picture. Do that for yourself. That is going to be the biggest game changer if you want to get into action on your weight loss.
That’s where I would start. I would make that crystal clear vision so that when the waiter goes back to the chef, you get what you ordered. You don’t get half the order. You get exactly what you want.
We do that so that we’re constantly thinking, I know where I’m going. I know what next step to take. I’m taking it day by day. I’m moving closer to that vision of exactly what I want. Over time, I’m going to get each of those things. Maybe not all on the same day or the same week or the same month, but I’m going to be able to move closer to that.
That’s important because there are going to be times when we are tired or bored or angry or stressed out and rather than grab a bag of Cheetos, I’m going to be thinking about what I want in the long term. I don’t want just this ambiguous weight loss. I need to lose weight. I should lose weight. all that stuff. No, I have a vision and a picture of exactly what I want. It’s going to be so important because at the end of the day when it comes to weight loss, you need to listen.
Here’s the truth.
No one, not even me, is coming to save you. The only person who can save you, is you.
We’re going to put you back in the driver’s seat. You’re the architect. You’re the artist. You’re creating exactly what you want. I know there is a voice that’s answering this saying but but but but but yeah, I want that. I want all that. That sounds really good, but I’m just not that motivated. I’m not motivated. I can’t find my motivation. I can’t get started. All of that.
I want you to understand that’s normal.
It’s natural to feel a lot of days that you’re not motivated. I want to tell you don’t wait to be motivated. You don’t have to be motivated. Just like you’re not motivated to brush your teeth every day, but I’m assuming you do.
- You might not be motivated to go to work.
- You might not be motivated to talk to your boss.
- You might not be motivated to drop your kids off at school.
- Or make the school lunch.
- Or take the dog to the vet.
We do a lot of things because we want the end result. We don’t want Child Services to come to our house. We don’t want to get fired from our jobs. We don’t want all of our teeth to fall out. We do a lot of things that we’re not really that motivated to do. We know that if we just do what we have to do, even if it’s the bare minimum, even if I brush my teeth for 10 seconds, it’s better than not brushing my teeth at all.
Stop waiting for motivation.
Waiting for motivation is kind of like waiting for love. I’m just going to sit here and hope for it. I’m going to hope it comes. It’s going to ring the doorbell. It’s going to show up in a brown UPS truck.
I get it, we live in an online world. I probably could find some online love. I could probably find some online motivation. Do whatever it takes to override this idea that you have to be motivated and we have to take some grandiose steps. It has to be monumental. Trumpets will play and confetti will fall. We’ll just have a ticker tape parade with all my motivation. It could be slow. You could cry and still take action. We just want to get into action.
Now that I got that out of the way, hopefully you’re a little bit fired up. Or you’re rolling your eyes. Either way, I’m good with it. I’m down with it. I have a few nuggets from this five part video series. I wanted to kind of boil down what I think would be most helpful to you, because maybe you’re not my client…..yet.
1) Total Calories Matter
Since most of the five videos are hinged on different angles to look at food, something to really consider, total calories matter. All calories do matter. It’s calories at the end of the day. I’m not saying it’s calories in, calories out, and all calories are the same. There’s definitely some nuances there.
Overall, our weight loss will be predicated on some type of deficit, total calorie deficit. We have to actually eat less than our body needs to stay at the weight it is right now.
I like to think about weight loss as just being a calorie deficit, a slight calorie deficit. Not radical, not large, huge, immense. I don’t need to cut 50% of my calories in order to lose weight. I actually still want to be able to eat as much as I possibly can and lose weight. Not eat as little as I can and lose weight. It’s a calorie deficit versus this idea of a diet.
I don’t have a problem with diet, but I know diet is a dirty word. Sometimes our brains just go bananas thinking about bananas. Our brains go crazy thinking diets equal deprivation or restriction and that’s a problem. It’s not, it’s just creating a calorie deficit.
There is a lot of nuance when it comes to calories. I’m not going to go deep into that right now. I think you already understand if I was going to eat 1500 calories of gummy bears, it’s going to be way different than eating 1500 calories of chicken and broccoli. Way different on so many different levels. My blood sugar is gonna go bananas on 1500 calories of gummy bears, and we’ll leave it at that.
So if I’m thinking about creating a deficit. I don’t want to make a huge deficit. I don’t need to make a huge deficit.
2) Mindless Snacking vs Physical Hunger
One of the ways that you can create a deficit and lose weight right now is to really pay attention to the times you eat that you’re not physically hungry.
- Do you do a lot of mindless snacking?
- Mindless grabbing of food?
- Handfuls of food bites, licks, tastes throughout the day?
That in and of itself is a huge game changer.
For the most part, at this point in my life, I eat three times a day. Maybe if I did more working out for me. I do some type of cardio every single day. I go for a walk. I’ll use my rebounder and strength training two or three times a week. That’s not hugely rigorous, but it’s working for me right now. Maybe if I was doing a whole lot more, I might be a whole lot more hungry. But three meals works for me.
Decide ahead of time how many meals you actually have to have and make sure your meals actually are enough food. You have a good base of protein. You have a good base of
vegetables. You have some unprocessed carbohydrates and then whatever gummy bears you throw in there.Make sure that your actual meals are enough so that you aren’t hungry between meals or just thinking about food all day long.
Dropping some of the snacking is a huge way that a lot of us create that deficit. Snacks could be 200, 300, maybe 500 calories a day. That could be things that you eat while you’re cooking dinner. That could be what you eat on the couch after dinner. Cutting that back is a huge shift.
Other ways that I would create a deficit if I was looking to make it simple. I wouldn’t free pour any oils. I would definitely not free pour salad dressings. I would use them sparingly. You know, oils are going to add 100, 200, 300 calories depending on how much you use.
I would definitely look at higher calorie foods in general. Can I cut back on some of the cheese that I use? Are there different cheeses, right? Goat cheese or feta cheese, sometimes you could find that they’re going to be lower in calories or provide a much richer flavor than using a lot of cheddar or Gouda or something like that, if you’re a cheese person. I know a lot of people are cheese people. Keto has been very popular.
Other things like nuts, and nut butters add a lot of extra calories. They’re very easy to overeat. They’re sweet, they’re salty, they’re crunchy. They’re delicious. You might want to reconsider how much you use nuts on the day to day.
When I talk about creating a deficit, I don’t make it huge sweeping changes. These are all very subtle changes that you can make and still eat the things that you like. Nothing radical there. You might even consider, if you haven’t in a while, just reading some labels. I was buying a jar of tomato sauce and I noticed one of the brands put out a Keto tomato sauce. I’m like keto tomato sauce. They have four different varieties of their pasta sauce. I just noticed that they range from 35 calories to 100 calories per serving. Guess which one I bought, the 35 calories.
3) Supplements
I think we’re all hopeful that there’s supplements that can help us lose weight. I do think having just a basis of health does make a difference. I do think food is the first thing I would work on. If I’m looking at supplements. I’m not gonna go super fancy. I mean, I am going to go super high quality. I want the best quality of supplements I can have.
I’m going to really cover my basics.
- I want a multivitamin.
- I want the vitamin d3, and I want to make sure I get that tested at least once a year, maybe twice a year.
- I would take magnesium.
- I would take fish oil.
- and probiotics.
Those are the five basic supplements.
There are other things I would take. I take something for inflammation. I take something for joint health. Something that helps me with blood sugar is a supplement called Berberine. I don’t want this to be prescriptive.
There’s a lot of great podcasts where you can get a little bit deeper into supplements or if you come into my free Facebook group Food, Fitness, and Fat Loss for Real Life, I talk about supplements there as well. Basics for supplements. Basics for everyday life.
Things like;
- Sleep,
- Water,
- Getting in steps,
- Focusing on only eating when you’re hungry,
Those are my basics.
You will never fail when you take action on the basics. I know our brains get many steps ahead of us and try to make weight loss more complicated or think it has to be harder or think I have to make it unpleasant but really just focusing on the basics always works.
4) Take more action, consume less info.
This does not include my podcast. Take more action, consume less info.
It’s very easy for us to;
- Be waiting for motivation.
- waiting for the right time.
- Think I need to know more.
- I need to learn more.
- I need to think about it some more.
- I need to gather more information.
- I need to check more publications.
- I need to do all of this other consuming.
- I’m just consuming on social media.
- I’m going down the rabbit holes on Instagram and on Facebook and on LinkedIn.
- I’m reading this.
- I’m reading that.
- Then I found this book.
It happens in my coaching group all the time. We all kind of laugh about it because we do it all the time too.
As a coach, I’ve become much better and more cognizant about, okay,we’re not going to add more info. I don’t think any of us need more info. We do need more support. We need help with accountability. We need help with refining what we’re doing. That’s the beauty of coaching.
Adding more information and more books and more studies just helps us stay stuck. It’s the I need to lose weight but now I’m just going to go on Instagram and look at 600 other people’s accounts on how they lost weight. If you like scrolling Instagram, or Facebook or LinkedIn, I do too.
I love reading. I love podcasts. I love audiobooks. I love all the things. What I do is I make a specific time for it. I will time block, hey, you know what, for the next 30 minutes, you want to scroll around, go right ahead, but then we gotta go back and we got to do these other things. We got to take action on the other things in life.
5) Thoughts and feelings.
This is where we get into that mindset kind of stuff that weight loss will bring up. You’re gonna bump up into your stuff. Your stuff is generally thoughts and feelings. I think this is typically why people self sabotage and why a lot of people, once they lose weight, will regain it. It’s the stuff trying to process, the stuff that comes up.
It is a lot easier for us just to go back to dieting rather than;
- I might have to think some new thoughts.
- I might have to confront myself.
- I might be wrong.
- I might be right.
It is very easy to get caught up in all of that and make it a problem.
I’m just going to put it out there. If you’re human, and you are and you have a human brain, there are going to be some uncomfortable feelings that come up. It’s just part of it. Not every day in the life of your weight loss is going to be fun and easy and glorious. Sometimes it’s going to suck. Sometimes you’re going to be mad. Sometimes you’re going to be frustrated. I think it’s okay. It just doesn’t have to be that deep. It really doesn’t.
Weight loss coaching isn’t therapy. If you need therapy, you definitely should get it. There are so many different ways that you can find that support if you are struggling with something that is a little deeper. For the majority of us who are here for weight loss and feel confused or stuck or like your weight loss is f*cked, and we need to unf*ck it.
Listen, it doesn’t have to be that deep. Don’t play that game with yourself, where as soon as you think, Oh no, I’ve discovered something about myself and it’s terrifying. I’m ashamed. I’m embarrassed. I feel all of the feelings. Don’t run away, I promise you, it will come, it will go, and it will come again, and it will go again. Okay.
6) It is mindset.
It is very common that women will come and say, you know what, it is mindset. You got me. I get it. It’s mindset. They also think, I know what to eat and all these things. I’m not gonna get too far into the weeds. Sometimes we think we know what to eat. Maybe we didn’t know what to eat five years ago, or 10 years ago, maybe that’s not the case.
If we do know what’s mindset, I just want to tell you, you might find yourself still resistant to looking at your own beliefs. That’s just normal.
The way weight loss coaching works, it doesn’t have to be hard. I don’t pry away and take away everything you know and love about yourself and about other people. It’s not about making all of these sweeping changes. It is just about awareness and being curious. Being kind and compassionate and not judgmental.
I think that what happens sometimes is that we feel really embarrassed or ashamed or worried that maybe what we’re doing is wrong or we’re not right or there’s something wrong with us. I assure you that there’s not.
Something that I think will be helpful in your weight loss journey is if we can view it as a beautiful opportunity to reparent ourselves. As a beautiful opportunity to love ourselves.
Do you remember this question when you were younger? Of course you do. Everybody would ask you, you know, what do you want to be when you grow up? I look at this weight loss journey, especially at this time in my life and working with women who are 35 to 59+, it is such a great opportunity to say, not what do you want to be when you grow up, but really, who do you want to be? We come right back to creating that really exciting crystal clear vision of exactly what you mean and exactly what you want.
When you think about weight loss, when you think I need to lose weight, or I want to lose weight, or I’m hoping to lose weight.
- What does that look like?
- What does she look like?
- What does she do?
- How does she show up?
- What does she think?
- What are her values?
- How does she carry herself?
That is exactly what we’re creating and the only way to get there is to take action.
I sincerely invite you to take a step forward, to choose action, and work with me inside of Self Made. May is a very exciting month for us in Self Made. We have opened the doors. It’s the middle of May right now and it’s never too late to get started.
I have created Self Made to be a program where you lose weight any time of year. It’s not a deprivation diet or restriction diet. It’s not a fad diet. It’s not even a diet at all. It’s learning how to have that flexible structure so that you can enjoy your summer, you can enjoy your holidays, you can enjoy your birthday, a vacation, an anniversary. You can still have a shitty day, a sick day, you can have all the things go wrong, you can have all the things go right, you can celebrate, you can do your life and still lose weight.
NOTES IN ANCHOR
Do you know exactly what you want when it comes to weight loss? If you don’t…you need to. You need to write it down. Get really clear about it. Be specific. In this weight loss journey, you are the only person that can save you. You are in the driver’s seat. You are the architect. You have to figure out what weight loss looks like for you. You also have to get motivated. You can’t wait for motivation to hit. You get motivated by taking action right now. I recently made a 5-part video series for my coaching clients called “How to Lose Weight.” These videos are about 10 minutes long and were made to be easy to consume without being overwhelming. Each shows a different angle about weight loss, but they all kind of come back down to food.
I want to share with you a few of the nuggets from these videos. I believe that they will help you to become more clear about your journey, hop into the driver’s seat, and be motivated. Let’s get to it in episode 49 of the Unf*ck Your Weight Loss Podcast 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.
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