UNF*CK YOUR WEIGHT LOSS

Weight Loss Shortcuts Part 2

by Bonnie Lefrak | May 7, 2024

Many of my clients fall into two camps. Camp number one is the emotional eating, the temptation eating, habit eating, stress eating, f*cking eating, just eating or eating when they’re not hungry. For whatever reason, entertainment, because that’s what they do, other people are doing it. Someone offers you food and you always say yes, you can’t say no. It looks so good. All that stuff.

There is another segment, which you don’t necessarily have to be in your 40s and 50s to experience. I was probably in my late 30s when this started to happen for me. It sounds crazy to call it this but it’s like a weight loss resistance. Something’s happened to you metabolically. In my case, it was from over dieting. I was doing a lot of hardcore dieting because I was getting on stage. I had a very restrictive diet. I had a lot of cardio going on, a lot of strength training, a lot of supplements on board. I was going to the extremes. Not enough sleep and way too much stress. It was the perfect storm.

I could not lose weight at one point, even just staying on a diet and not doing any emotional eating. There are people for whatever reason, I think a lot of it is stress, that our bodies start to kind of break down. We may not realize that our digestion is not very good. We don’t get quality sleep. We literally have brain fog all the time or are falling asleep. A lot of it is that there’s something stressful that has happened. It could be over dieting over working out. It could be some type of traumatic experience. Something is going on. You might even just have a food sensitivity or a food allergy. There’s usually more than one thing that has triggered this.

When I have clients who do have some weight loss resistance I tend to drill down and find that it is related somehow to digestion which was kicked off by some kind of stress. It could be environmental stress. It could just be that you weren’t aware your body is having an autoimmune response. That’s because your body doesn’t necessarily understand, I’m just eating egg whites all the time or I’m eating a certain way.

I don’t want to go too far down the rabbit hole about weight loss resistance but a lot of women in their 40s and 50s have the perfect storm of a lot of dieting, not great digestion, a lot of stress. Life is stressful and then to have changing hormones, going through perimenopause and menopause. Dealing with all of the stress and the frustration of the scale not going down, your clothes not fitting, or everybody pissing you off. We’re eating and drinking. It is just the perfect storm.

My clients are generally not beginners saying, tell me how to lose weight. What do I do? I have no idea. I just landed on this planet from Mars and I have no idea what a protein is, or what a carbohydrate is, or what a fat is. I don’t know how to work out all that stuff. That’s generally not my client.

My client is usually someone like me, probably 39 to 59+, who is stalled out on their weight loss or is losing and gaining the same amount of weight. Isn’t really busting through or making that progress and lives a fast paced stressful life. You’re doing it all, you’re balancing it all. You work, you have a family, you have a house to take care of. It’s just living life.

Now let’s talk about Weight Loss Shortcuts, Part Two.

When I listened to my last podcast, I realized I did throw in some breadcrumbs. I never try purposely to be elusive, nondescript, or to have a lot of open loops where I kind of say, Hey, I’m gonna show you how I can help you and then I never tell you how. I tend to not do that. I tend just to pull back the curtains and be like, okay, look, do this. Don’t do that. Try this or try that. Get into action.

I know you have thoughts and feelings. I get it. Welcome to being human, I’m sorry. You do have thoughts and feelings. We will work on those. You have to work on those because you can lose weight and not work on those, but then you will gain the weight back. We need to get into action, sometimes breadcrumbs are not enough for you to get into action.

You know the shortcuts are eating protein, drinking water, going the fuck to bed, going for a walk. We know all that stuff. Let’s go a little bit deeper with some real things you can start working on.

1) Have real conversations and communicate with the people in your life.

That’s my least favorite thing. I am a bad communicator. I am. If you live with people, whether it’s a spouse, kids, your parents, roommate, you’re going to have to talk to people in your house. Be like, hey, this is what I need help with. I think that’s a big part of why women, especially women in their 40s and 50s or any woman who has kids or a spouse and it’s working more than one job or you have your own business, you do a lot. I get it. Sometimes you feel like it’s just easier to do it all rather than ask for help. No one does it right.

What happens is, I’m running around the house, I’m telling my kids to put away their clothes. I’m yelling, now we’re having a fight. Nobody’s doing anything. I’m getting tired, resentful, and that’s actually not helping my weight loss because now I’m stressed out. I’m probably going to want to go find those peanut M&Ms. By the way, there’s nothing wrong with peanut M&Ms, but they really don’t taste that good when you’re angry. I’d rather eat them when you’ve planned for them. Maybe you’re going to the movies. You want to enjoy them.

Having real conversations and communication with the people in your house, or the people on the job, the people in your life is very important. Some of that is also setting boundaries and recognizing when you are doing things like people pleasing. You’re literally shoving down your own thoughts and feelings, you’re swallowing your own words. You’re just saying yes to things that you don’t want to say yes to. You’re not advocating for yourself. It’s very easy for this to happen. I think if you want to lose weight and keep it off, you need to take a hard look at what is actually going on in your life. We’re always going to have kids sports, a business trip, a work event, somebody’s graduation, etc. Maybe you don’t want to go, don’t go.

If you really want to drill down on how to lose weight, part of it is the real conversations and communication with yourself and with others. What you need the other people to do or not do to help you. Does that help you? You let me know about that one? That’s kind of a hard one, I put it first because it’s kind of the pink elephant in the room.

Part of weight loss is we do all the things. I’m gonna do all the things, but I’m never going to address the root cause. I can diet, meal prep, buy fancy containers, cook my protein, do all the things, but I’m never getting to the root cause of what the f*ck is driving me absolutely bananas. Why am I losing my mind?
Why isn’t anybody helping me?
Why do I have to go to these places?
Why do I have to say yes?
Why am I saying yes?
Why am I eating foods or drinking alcohol when I do not want to?
Why aren’t I doing what I want to?

I think it’s just worth pointing out that the rest of the things on my list are easier. That one is hard. It’s really hard. It’s really hard to have a real conversation with yourself. Super hard to have a conversation with your spouse without them getting defensive or feeling picked on. I get it. It’s almost like you just want to send a text message. Hello, spouse on another floor of the house. Here’s what I need you to do. I get it. Ask my family.

2) What about getting a food prep service?

At the very least a grocery store drop off? There’s so many different services. So many grocery stores offer this but we’re looking at shortcuts. What is a shortcut? It is condensing time. How do I get the most bang for my buck? For my time?

If I had a meal prep service, there’s so many different ones. There’s people who will come to your house and actually cook in your kitchen. There’s people who will have a service where they drop off fresh food. There’s a business that will have frozen meals, cook to order that you can figure out exactly what you want. There’s so many of them in my programs. I’m always adding to that list, I do market research all the time.

I think it’s great even if you do a meal prep type of service for a week or two or one week out of the month. Not because they’re exorbitant, I don’t think they are. I think they actually save you so much time and money that they’re well worth it. Think about it.

I’ve talked about this before in podcasts, when you have to go to the grocery store, like okay,

I have to;

get in my car,
drive to the store,
find a parking spot,
walk into the store,
walk all around the store,
check out,
bring the bags into my car,
drive home,
unload the car,
bring all the bags into the house, usually by myself,
put all the things away.

That doesn’t really include food prep.

If I was gonna go right to food prep, I am;

washing and drying all of the produce,
chopping it,
cooking proteins,
assembling,
putting things in the refrigerator,
putting everything else away,
cleaning up,
cleaning pots and pans,
cleaning the whole kitchen.

It’s a lot of time.

If you don’t like food prep, stop kidding yourself. You don’t have to like it. You might just prep a couple things. You might actually have a couple of hard boiled eggs, Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, protein powder or liquid egg whites on hand. Just have a couple things so that in a pinch, I can go cook something, but it doesn’t really require any prep. I would just make your life so easy.

What’s the real conversation? What is the obstacle for you with eating food? How would you solve it? A lot of weight loss shortcuts can be hard. If you had to give me, a friend, your sister, or someone you at work advice. Hey, you know, I don’t have a lot of time. You know, how could I make sure I always had lunch? How could I make sure when I go home at the end of the day my food is pretty much already prepped? How do I do that? So you could do other things.

You could stop at some of these grocery stores that do have already pre made salads or sandwiches or a salad bar. You can go to the local pizza place or Panera or Chipotle and buy a salad. I buy two or three because I don’t have any food right now. Then I eat one that I just ordered. I’m probably going to need something for later or tomorrow or what have you. I’m always thinking of at least one meal ahead. And you know what? It’s worth it.

Food prep services, meal prep services, grocery drop off, how can you make your mealtime just so easy? I know one of the things that comes up a lot is this idea of well, my family wants something else. Okay. It’s really not that hard to boil pasta and to cook up some meatballs. It really isn’t. Or a burger, or a hotdog or mac and cheese.

Here’s the deal. What if you wanted to eat all of those things? Is that even a problem? Maybe it’s not. Maybe I think the problem is that we think the only way to lose weight is I need to eat chicken and salad. And my family doesn’t like chicken and salad or they want macaroni. So I have to have macaroni but I love macaroni and then I overeat macaroni. We have to figure that sh*t out.

You don’t have to do it alone. How about this for a shortcut in your life, getting a house cleaning service? Whether it’s once a week, every other week, once a month. Having someone help you write, having somebody come in and help because I get it. I can yell at my family all day long. It’s just not worth it. It’s stressful. They don’t do what I want them to do. I can only take care of so much. If I want to shortcut my weight loss, I need to find time. I want to go for a walk. I want to strength train. I need to sleep. I don’t want to be running around the house at 9pm cleaning up everybody’s shit. So you know what, some kind of house cleaning service helps.

3) Prioritize your non-negotiables in writing.

This is one of those things that sounds kind of stupid, like putting in my calendar that I’m going to go work out. Yeah, look at your calendar. Whether it’s a paper calendar, an old school planner, on your phone, whatever app you’re using. I think writing things down is actually very powerful rather than putting things in an app that I can just scroll by and ignore, but you do you boo.

I think if you’re gonna go to the gym three days a week, let’s plan it. When are you gonna go? Put it in writing, at an exact time. Don’t say, I’m gonna go to the gym tomorrow. Maybe you take a 5:30am class at the same place, same time, great. Some of you are hitting the gym, or you have a flexible schedule or a variable schedule, you do business travel, you have meetings at certain times, you don’t necessarily have the workout every Tuesday, Thursday, Friday at 9am already. But regardless, I still put it in writing and make it a habit.

Then you start to get into this routine where, of course you’re going to work out. Of course, you’re not going to schedule a dentist appointment for then. Of course, you’re not going to take the cat to the vet, unless it’s an emergency. You’re going to put in the calendar. You’re strength training, you’re walking. If you did have to pick up groceries or meals or whatever, all the things that you have to do that are a priority to you, you put them in your calendar. Whatever non-negotiables you have. Things you want to track. If you’re going to track water, you’re going to track steps or whatever.

It sounds like sometimes, we’re looking for a magic button for an idea of a weight loss shortcut. The reality is, the shortcut is doing this kind of trivial work because it’s a way to set the foundation for you to rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. I don’t have to put in my planner to brush my teeth. Maybe I should sometimes brush them more frequently. I could brush them more than once a day, I suppose. But I know how to do that. And I do that. That’s the same idea until we become a woman who works out regularly. A woman who goes for a walk, a woman who takes her supplements, a woman who puts herself first, we have to actually put it in writing.

4) Lift Heavy.

I know there’s someone out there right now listening who’s like, oh, I try that, I build muscle so easily. You don’t build muscle that easily. I know you don’t, I know you think you do. You don’t build muscle faster than anyone else, unless you’re taking a lot of steroids. You just are not.

What’s happening? Probably a lot of things. We haven’t adjusted our eating habits. Maybe we have other stresses going on. Maybe things that we haven’t really addressed. Then we try to add more workouts, more strength training. All I’m suggesting is that when you workout, you lift heavier. You don’t have to go beast mode all the time. We’re not like lifting 1000 pounds over our head, grunting and groaning and wearing a weight belt, unless you want to.

If you’re lifting the same weights over and over and over, you’re not going to burn body fat, you’re not going to build muscle, you’re not going to change the shape of your body. This is a weight loss stall for you. That is not a shortcut. You want to challenge your body, maybe not every workout. You’re not going to keep increasing, increasing, increasing. It will be impossible. But you want to lift heavier.

5) Ditch dumb cardio.

I wish to God, I had back the time I spent waking up at five in the morning to go to the gym before work. Maybe I woke up before five. I got there at five o’clock when they opened, so that I could go get on an Arc Trainer for 45 minutes to an hour, every morning for years. And PS it did me no good.

All it did was create more stress in my life and in my body. Waking up, driving in the dark, trying to get to the gym, doing some repetitive motion. It was not helpful. I am sorry. I get it if every now and then you want to try the Arc Trainer, a rower, a stepper, Jacob’s Ladder, an elliptical. You want to try all the different things and mix it up every now and then, great.

A lot of that cardio is a waste of time. It’s just adding stress to your body. Don’t get me started on running. I know a lot of you will be like Oh, unsubscribe. It’s okay. I’m just feeling very much that I want to be completely honest with you. Walk.

6) Simplify.

Where can you simplify?
Do you have to simplify things in your house?
Is there a lot of clutter?
Is your closet a mess?
Do you need to simplify?
Do you have 3000 different supplements that you don’t take?
Where can you simplify?
Where can you constrain?

Maybe you want to just focus on one thing. Focus on the food or strength training, don’t try to do all of the things.

Simplifying might be two different things. Also my simple and your simple are two different things. It just depends on where you’re starting from me. How I would simplify is I just don’t even get into recipes. I don’t get into the weeds. I don’t go on to Pinterest, I don’t research more things. I don’t buy more courses and videos and books and diets and all of that stuff. I just keep it really simple.

I practice telling myself that you know exactly what to do. You know how to lose weight. It isn’t about over restricting and over exercising. It is about doing the basic, simple things consistently over and over and reminding yourself that you know what to do.

If you have not listened to Part One, it just says its Weight Loss Shortcut. I talk a lot just about things that are out there in the marketplace, and how sometimes we think that it’s a shortcut. If I got bariatric surgery, if I took one of those GLP1 like the semaglutide or Ozempic or Waygovy or if I took one of those drugs. If I got liposuction, if I get a tummy tuck, if I do all of these things, I will lose weight. I will shortcut my weight loss.

I’ve worked with 1000s of different women and a lot of them have had different bariatric surgeries or cosmetic procedures. And certainly I’ve talked to many people who’ve tried some of these GLP1 drugs. There’s no shortcut, you still have to manage your mind, you still have to navigate the world, you still have to deal with your family, you still have to pay your taxes, you still have to do all the things. I’m sorry, but it’s true. Maybe some of those things can help you. I’m not against them.

I talk a lot about not just weight loss, not about how to do dieting differently, but I want you to lose the weight and keep it off. And not obsess about it, not worry about it, not have this long list of foods you can’t have. To really find that true freedom. I think it is a lot about having a real honest conversation.

Sometimes we’re just unaware of the things that we believe. We think it’s normal to freak out about the scale or that we have to weigh a certain number in order to have a certain worth. We sometimes just have to challenge these things for ourselves. That’s what I do when I work with clients and Self Made.

That is all for me. Thanks for being here. I appreciate you.

I am coming up to my 100th episode. If you like love heart, this podcast and it’s giving you any kind of joy or pleasure or results, I would appreciate your five star review.

One more thing, if you haven’t already seen the masterclass I’ve done this month, this is April 2024. I did a masterclass inside my membership, the Society, it’s called Lose 10 Pounds. It’s a little controversial because I teach flexible eating. Then I’m like dudes, here’s a plan if you want to lose weight. Let’s follow this and make that the bridge to start working on getting that momentum, getting your confidence back, eliminating a lot of processed food, getting to be more mindful and creating some new habits. The lose 10 pounds plan.

I already went live with it. It is now in the member resources in the Society. No matter who you are, where you are, what time of year this is, you can join my membership program called the Society and get all that.

I do want to tell you something else. I’m changing the price on it. Obviously if you’re already in the society, I’m not raising your rate so to speak. But as of May 1, 2020 the Society rate is going up. It will be $97 a month. I still think it’s an undercharge. You get a brand new masterclass plus loads of self paced assets I’ve already put in there. Value bombs, I’ll call them. I coach in there, and I’m in there quite a bit, probably more than I should be. But I love my Facebook communities, all of them. This society has a private Facebook group page. All right. I think I’m done. I hope you have a fabulous week. I would love to hear from you and hear what you’re taking action on. Alright my friends make it a good one.

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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