You have probably heard me talk about the Five Days Fat Loss Fix, which was a free event in the Facebook group. You might have partaken it or you might not have, that is totally okay. We had five videos and a guide that went along with the program. I have to tell you, I’ve done many masterclasses, many episodes of the podcast, live videos, all the things. I think this was the best one yet. All of the videos are about 20 minutes, which is miraculous for me because I am passionate about helping women. I’m passionate about all of the things that I could tell you, or I could help you with. I just could talk on and on, but I didn’t. 

We decided ahead of time that we would not keep the videos up indefinitely. We’re going to package them up and give them to another group of ours. I’m telling you about this because I wanted to talk about one of the topics that came up. We talked about food, fitness, fat loss, f*cking hormones, and of course feelings. 

Monday starts with food and you have so many more eyeballs on that video and more people engaged. I get it. It’s all about the food. Then by Friday it obviously dwindles. Feelings just means we’re talking more about mindset.

When I think about helping women with their weight loss. I look at it through the lens of, is this a metabolic problem? Or is this a mindset problem? And where do the two intersect? I have never met any woman who only has a metabolic problem, because if she’s a woman, she has a human brain. I’ve never met anybody who just purely has a mindset problem and nothing else could be improved upon metabolically. So there’s always going to be some overlap. 

My advice is always take what is useful and leave what is not. Find something that you can take action on, you don’t have to do it all. One of the things that I thought would be useful for today is talking about fat loss. 

When I initially launched Self Made, three and a half years ago, it was called the Fat Loss Fix because I love alliteration and the letter F. I thought it was a catchy name until I really thought about it. I don’t want to give the impression that I’m trying to fix something of yours that’s broken, or that you need to be fixed because you’re broken. Or the idea that fat loss is a fix, just push this button, take this pill, this one step, this two step thing, 10 days, and it’s all solved for you. There is no fix, it is really just figuring out what is going to work for you long term. 

As much as I loved Fat Loss Fix, I also didn’t see that people would want to wear it on a shirt. I didn’t think that the Fat Loss Fix felt empowering but you can let me know what you think about it. I loved it as a title for a five day event. That’s what we’re really talking about, looking at all of the different angles and aspects, the pillars of fat loss. You can’t really talk about permanent fat loss without addressing food, and obviously fitness. That can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. 

Today I want to talk to you about the problems around fat loss. So for example, if you’re not losing body fat, here’s probably why. It may not be all of these, but I bet there is something here for you. So ready, let’s go. 

1) Misinformation.

I think there’s a ton of misinformation out there in the world, on Google, on tiktok, everywhere you go. Everybody has an opinion. Everybody’s opinion goes like this. Fact, number one, fact number two. Our opinions all of a sudden become facts. So there is a ton of information and there’s not one size fits all when it comes to body fat. There’s a difference between a 25 year old woman and a 50 year old woman. There’s a difference between a 30 year old man and a 50 year old woman. So with that said, it’s okay to take in information. 

2) Consumption and implementation.

One of the biggest problems is that we do a lot of consumption of this information and a lot less implementing. In fact, the more we consume, the less we implement. We might have some dialogue going on in our heads about needing to know more. 

• I need to think about it.
• I need to research it right.
• I need to ask around.
• I need to sit on it. 
• I can’t make a decision right now. 

However, I’m still going to click through all the posts and the videos. I’m going to consume more content. 

Really, at the end of the day, you can’t lose body fat unless you’re willing to take some steps. You don’t have to do them all, but you have to move forward. Sometimes when we are consuming information we’re like, it can’t be this easy. There has to be more. What are you leaving out? We’re almost trying to investigate. What is this person not telling me it cannot be just walk, sleep, eat protein, drink water. It can’t be that simple. But maybe it is. 

3) The scale.

The reason why you might not be losing the body fat that you want and keeping it off is that you are riding the scale like a horse. You’re riding it and you’re using it as your only feedback. You’re focused solely on the scale. That’s not the only data point that you could use for figuring out if this is working. If this is not working, what do I need to change? 

4) Making way too many adjustments. 

I have had so many clients who will get on the scale and it goes up. Then they decide, I’m not going to eat lunch or I’m not going to eat the rest of the day. They go to extremes because our brains are designed to be very all or nothing. Same thing. 

I know this to be true of myself. When I would see the scale go down or maybe down further than I had expected, I would have a little talk with myself. I would think, I have wiggle room, I can have extra food. It’s like ping pong. Just going back and forth and back and forth with the scale, and the scale is going to go up and down. It absolutely is. 

There’s a million reasons for the scale to fluctuate. You could have been sick or had lousy sleep. If you were working out and you were strength training your muscles being sore, you could be holding water from that. The DOMs, the delayed onset muscle soreness. You could have just gotten off a flight. Typically, when my clients fly, like on vacation back and forth, they’re seeing weight fluctuate three to five pounds if they get on the scale right away. You might have had a high carb dinner or a lot of salt. There’s a million reasons the scale is going to fluctuate. 

It is okay to use a scale, to document it and to assess. But to make all of your decisions, including decisions about how you will feel for the day, based on the scale is going to hold you back. I have never met a person who is a scale hawk, who’s winning the fat loss game and still having a life and not feeling miserable and obsessed all the time. 

Making too many adjustments doesn’t even go for the food, which I think is a problem. Because then you don’t know what’s really working. If I weigh myself every day, or several times a day, and I’m constantly adjusting the food, I don’t know what’s working. I don’t know what the problem is. Same thing with workouts. I get it, I have a human brain too. When I say we, I include myself in there, you and I both have this special human brain that is not really good with patients, or delayed gratification and we think;

• More is better, 
• Changes are better. 
• I need a new thing, 
• I need another workout,
• I need a new exercise, 
• I have to watch a different video. 

What’s happening is that we’re getting these little dopamine hits. I need the new workout, the new gym, the new whatever. It’s got to all be new. I gotta keep making all these adjustments. 

The reality is you will get further in your workout program if you can keep the same strength training program, provided that it’s reasonable. You can obviously increase the amount of weight you lift, you could add more reps, you could add more sets. When I make adjustments to somebody’s workout. I’m not changing all the things. I know sometimes they’ll end up changing on their own. They’re in a gym, maybe the leg presses are taken and they do the leg press at the end, they’ve already changed the workout because they changed the exercise order. It is normal for you to think I have to change this, I have to change that in order to move forward. But when we make too many adjustments, it’s really hard to assess what’s working and not working. 

5) Impatience. 

I want to tell you, being impatient is okay. You can be impatient. There’s nothing wrong with that. However, if you are acting on your impatience, that’s when we tend to go kind of off the reservation. 

• We lose steam. 
• We quit. 
• We try to look for shortcuts. 
• We slash too many calories. 
• We do too much cardio. 
• We start looking at fat burners. 

We do all the things in order to shortcut our way to some destination. 

You’ve probably heard me say it before we don’t arrive on weight loss Island and just stay there. We’re all in a rush to get there only to realize I have to keep swimming. It’s like Nemo, “just keep swimming.” You don’t just arrive and stay there. 

I get it. I’d like to lose 20 pounds yesterday. Who wouldn’t? If you can be impatient yet, do not act on it, it will be okay. Impatience probably is very motivating. It means that you care, you’re driven, you do want these goals, but don’t let it take you off course. 

6) All or nothing thinking.

Our brains are really adept at all or nothing thinking because they have to be very efficient. 

They can’t necessarily spend time on all of this assessing what are the ways that this could work? And it doesn’t have to be perfect. It’s either good, or it’s bad. It’s either hard, or it’s easy. I’m good, I’m bad, I’m fat, I’m skinny, right? It’s all or nothing thinking. 

For all the women I’ve ever coached, I think all or nothing thinking is what gets people in the end. We quit, we give up, we think it’s not working, this will never work. Then we go on our merry way, we either quit the workout, or we try to get a different workout. We just keep going around in circles. It’s totally normal for your brain to want to offer you an answer. It’s either this, or it’s that. Once we’re aware that our brain is always going to default, then we get to parent that part of our brain. 

It’s okay to feel like;

• It’s not working.
• Nothing’s working. 
• None of it’s working.
• It’s never going to work. 
• I’ll fail. 
• Why bother? 

That’s normal, it also protects you. 

Just like self sabotage, it is very self protective. It also feeds into this idea where our brain wants to avoid pain, the pain of failure. It’s all normal. If you can get ahead of your all or nothing thinking, you’ll get to your fat loss goals. It may not be overnight, but you will get there. 

7) Get coaching.

Speaking of all or nothing thinking, one of the things that is very helpful is to get coaching. I think people ultimately get coaches, because left to our own devices we can get to a place where; 

• Nothing’s working, 
• This won’t work, 
• I can’t do it, 
• I don’t know enough, 
• I’ll never get there, 
• It’s too hard,
• It’s too overwhelming. 

All those things. We’re not necessarily taking the time, or we don’t even know to evaluate or to assess and how to do that. 

Inside Self Made, we do weekly check-ins. It doesn’t have to be that you’re sending a novel, but I’m always encouraging clients to evaluate what did go well, what is going well, what is working, and put your brain on task to find the answer. Direct your brain to find the things that are going well, then what didn’t go well, or what isn’t going well. And then what are we going to do differently? What are we working on next? What can we do instead? 

This is just a very fair and balanced way to see that two things can be true at once. To see both sides of the same coin, that nothing is absolute. That way every single week without the shotgun approach of I’m going to try a whole new workout or now I’m going to run an extra 10 miles. I’m going to throw everything at my weight loss. I can get a little bit more awareness around it. 

8) No clear goals. 

When was the last time you actually wrote down your goals? Any goals? All of them around your weight loss or your fat loss? 

• If it’s a size you want to wear,
• A sport you’d like to try, 
• A hobby you want to reconnect with,
• Career goals, 
• Relationship goals, 
• Vacation goals, 

Have you actually written out your goals? 

Are you even clear as to what you want? If you are not, you’re not alone. So many women are not really that clear because we have 60,000 some odd thoughts going around and around in our head. Most of them are kind of the same thought: 

• You should lose weight, 
• You need to lose weight, 
• You have to lose weight. 
• When you’re going to lose weight. 
• We can’t lose weight, 
• We have to wait to lose weight. 

It’s all kind of the same stuff so we assume that we know what it is we want, we want to lose weight. 

Okay, tell me more about the weight loss you want. 

• What does that really mean? 
• Is that in pounds? 
• Are we just looking at body composition? 
• What do you look like in the mirror? 
• Getting more muscle definition? 
• Being in a certain size? 

All the things. 

Write it all down because it’s not real when it’s just swirling around in your head. And that’s why you’re probably not achieving what you could achieve. It’s just one big tangle of 60,000 thoughts. A lot of them are pretty negative. Speaking for myself personally, you should lose weight, you should weigh less, you shouldn’t be struggling with your weight, you shouldn’t need help. The voice in our head. It’s almost like it’s a different person. 

Sometimes we don’t write down our goals because we’re afraid that we will fail. We are afraid that we won’t achieve them. If I write it down, then I’ll see it, then what? If you don’t write it down, then what? Maybe it’s a lose/lose. Why not put it on paper and just see what’s there? Don’t be afraid. What’s the worst that can happen? If you don’t like it, rip it up, start again. You can always change your goals. You can change the dates. You can make it a moving target. It doesn’t have to be done by tomorrow. 

I think if you start putting it in writing, it gets moved up the to do list, it becomes a priority. Most of us have to do lists that are like 8000 pages long. Under the dry cleaner, got to take the cat to the vet, get a carpet cleaner, I got 8 million things to do. If your goals aren’t written down there below the cat and the carpet cleaner, for sure. 

9) What is your why?

Here’s the thing. Do you want to lose weight? Why do you want to lose weight? It’s kind of like, can’t you see? Well, no. It doesn’t matter what I see.

What is it that you really want? Why do you want it? We have goals, great. Why are they important to you? Part of the training I did inside the free group really explained this idea of finding your why. I think a lot of us only go surface level with a why. This idea of what the Why is should make you cry. So find something. 

I want to do it for my kids. Of course we do. I want to do everything for my kids. I’m going to work hard for my kids, I’m going to be the best mom I can for my kids. But why? Why is that important? When you come up with the answer, why? Ask yourself again? Why? 

I gave an example. If you said well, I want to lose weight because I’d like to fit into all the clothes I have in my closet. Okay, why is it important for you to fit into all of the clothes in your closet? Ah, okay. Why? Why is that? Well, because I’m sick and tired of having four different sizes in my closet. Okay? Why is that important to you? Or why is that a problem to have so many different sizes in your closet? Well, I just feel so defeated. I spent so much time trying to get dressed in the morning, nothing actually fits, nothing looks good and a lot of clothes that I have to wear I don’t even like. 

You keep asking yourself, and why is that a problem? Why is that? Why is it important for you to have clothes that you like in your closet or to have clothes that fit or to have clothes that you don’t have to spend 20 minutes every single morning trying to find something that fits? 

10) Optimizing your metabolism.

The reason why a lot of women will struggle to get to their fat loss goals is that we’re not optimizing our metabolism. Like I said at the beginning, when I really think about fat loss, it isn’t just about eat less and move more. It’s not just about the food. It’s not just about the workout. It’s not always about the metabolism. But there is some metabolic function. 

If you think about it, fat loss is a hormonal event. You have to actually have your hormones in some type of balance or alignment for them to actually tap into body fat stores and release body fat. If your hormones are all jacked, that is not happening. You’re not going to tap into your body fat when your stress is high and your cortisol is all over the place. That’s not your body’s priority. Your body’s priority is to run from danger. You’re in fight or flight. Your body is going, oh can barely even digest food at that point. 

When I think about optimizing or in this case, not optimizing your metabolism, here are some things that come to mind. You don’t have to have all of these things onboard, but I would start somewhere. 

Do you lift weights? I get it, you might be working out at home, you have only a couple of weights. Do you need to get heavier weights? Do you need to do more reps or more sets? Strength training is the ticket. Ladies, if you’re in your 40s and 50s, it is not too late to start lifting. If you’re younger than that, do yourself a favor and get into a regular routine. 

Often because of all or nothing thinking, our little human brains think, I have to do it every day, or I have to do it five days a week and workout has to be an hour and that is simply not true. Start where you’re at. If you’re not working out at all, it’s twice a week, and it’s 10 or 15 minutes, and then you build from there. If you can do it twice a week, can you do three? Can you bring that up to 20 minutes.

Walking. Absolutely walking, get out and walk. If you want to improve your hormone status, walking is very good because it balances your blood sugar, it helps you de-stress.

Sleep. If there is one hammer that hits all the nails it sleep, I probably talk about sleep in every single podcast. If you’re not sleeping, then we want to figure out why. Then what are we going to do about it? We can complain about it and we could want better sleep but there are probably solutions. This is usually supplements to start with. You don’t have to be running to your doctor, you don’t need a prescription for sleeping pills in order to sleep better. 

Gut health. When we talk about hormones in general, one of the things that’s easy to overlook is gut health. It’s very hard to have hormone balance without gut health. So getting your gut in line might be as simple or complicated as listening to your body when you eat certain foods, adding in probiotics or fermented foods, and limiting processed food. Processed foods like chips and Oreos, those types of foods break down very easily and bad bacteria love to eat. Good bacteria likes things like broccoli and apples. 

Protein and fiber. Having enough protein on board. If I’m looking at a minimum amount of protein for a woman, it’s usually about 75 grams for the day. Fiber, probably 20 to 25 grams a day would be a minimum I would look at. I would look at making sure the basis of most of what you’re eating is actually real food. I’m not saying you can’t enjoy your pretzels, you can’t enjoy your Cheetos, you can’t enjoy the foods you like, but make sure that you still have the protein and the fiber. Then make room for the things that you actually enjoy. 

Crash dieting. If you want to screw up your metabolism. If you want to have a not optimized metabolism, definitely crash diet. Go on super low calorie diets. In fact, the longer you do them, the worse it gets. You will not only burn up your muscle, you’re going to tell your body and your hormones to slow things down. We’re under duress, we’re in a famine, please do not burn more body fat. 

Our bodies want to hold body fat, especially during times of stress. So when we go on these really crazy low calorie diets, or we do them on and off and on and off, or we just are simply losing the same 20 to 30 pounds twice a year or three times a year. Our bodies are not going to have the best metabolic rate. I’m not saying your metabolism is broken, and that we need to fix it but we can ensure a better metabolism by just paying attention to those things. 

If you’re thinking, I have a lot to do, pick one thing to work on. Don’t overwhelm yourself with all of the things. 

Self Made Scholarship

I decided for December we would be all holly jolly and give out some scholarships to my coaching program, Self Made. It is a program for women 39 to 59. Plus, it is geared towards women who want to lose weight and keep it off. Women who’ve done all the diets, who have gained and lost the same weight. Whether it’s the last 5 to 10 pounds that you keep playing with, or 50 plus pounds, there is no limit other than you are somebody who is willing to change. 

It’s hard to change, especially when you have done so many diets; the whole 30 and paleo and all of the things. You’re like, well, that worked for me. And that worked for me. And I just want to go back to that. But obviously it didn’t work if you gain the weight back. 

Rather than go on and on about what is Self Made, what is not Self Made, I have a whole website and of course my free Facebook group Food, Fitness, Fat Loss for Women over 40 on Facebook has a lot of details about Self Made. You can also hit me up in my private messenger on Facebook. 

Here’s what you need to know, if you are a woman 39 to 59 plus, and you are interested in permanent weight loss. And you would like to do it without following a super strict meal plan that is unsustainable, you would like to do it without giving up all of your favorite foods, and learn how to plan in anything and everything that you really enjoy, then it might be time to take a look at this program. With the scholarships, we do have a form. The form will be in the show notes. You’ll want to apply by the 20th. You have a whole week to think about it and fill it out. The form isn’t super long. We don’t ask for DNA and photos or anything like that. 

Why do you want to lose weight? 

Why do you want the scholarship?

I’m imagining the scholarship is going to go to somebody who is not, at this point, able to financially afford something for themselves. That doesn’t mean I won’t take into consideration your story. If you would like to nominate someone, you certainly can use that same form. I’m not sure how many scholarships will actually give out. 2, 3, 4, 5?. It just depends on how many we get in. 

Last I checked, I’d gotten 27 applicants. That was a couple days ago. So hey, you have nothing to lose but when something 97 days of working together on you, why not? Why not you? 

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 u****k 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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