UNF*CK YOUR WEIGHT LOSS

What’s Got To Do With Your Weight Loss?

by Bonnie Lefrak | Mar 15, 2024

What’s Love Got to do with it?

I actually went to my iTunes library to listen to the Tina Turner song. I mean, I’ve been listening to that song for 20 plus years, however long it’s been out, I think we all have an idea that what’s love got to do with it? Nothing. Love has nothing to do with it. It really is more about the attraction someone would have to someone and justifying if I wanted to move forward with a physical relationship. I don’t need to be in love.

Then part of the lyrics are this idea that love is a second hand emotion. I don’t know if you’ve ever looked up or gone down the Google rabbit hole on what does that mean? I’ve been listening to the song for so long. It’s from the 80s. It’s more than 20 years old.

What is a second hand emotion?

I think the conclusion I have come to is that we actually choose to love or to decide to love something or not. It’s not intrinsic necessarily, in who we are. It’s not a primary emotion. We don’t actually have to ever experience love in order to stay alive. I have a couple things for you here.

Love has nothing to do with your weight loss.

It’s really about self love versus your love of food. So let me ask you;

What is your relationship with food?
Do you consider yourself to be a person who loves food?
Would you answer I love food or I love eating?
Do you have a love/hate relationship with food?
Do you hate thinking about food all the time?

Many times we get to this place, especially trying to lose weight being on a million different diets. It’s this nonstop soundtrack of;

Can I eat this?
Should I eat this?
Is it time to eat?
Am I hungry?
Am I not hungry?
How much can I have?
How many calories is that?
Did I go over in my carbs?

Oh well, screw it. I’ll start again tomorrow. On and on and on, about food, about eating, how much I can eat, I over ate like it’s nonstop. That gets in our way quite a bit.

I’m going to tell you a little bit about a client interaction I had. I think I previously mentioned a client and I used a pseudonym Amy. She didn’t know exactly who she was. This was a real turning point. I think it really made her realize that as much as she was worried about embarking on weight loss, she did want weight loss more than she wanted the food that she loved.

I’ll give this example. We just started talking about what had been in the way of our weight loss. Like if you are looking to lose weight and you’ve tried to lose weight, can we identify what is not working? Or what are you noticing that you’re struggling with? And she described something that I think is super common for all of us. No matter what time of day, this is happening for you, we usually have a fairly routine schedule. Most of my clients, it’s when they come home. So whether that’s in the middle of the day or at night right before making dinner and we start eating as we’re making dinner, or you’re just eating from dinner onward. Constantly opening the cabinets, having another snack, sitting on the couch and eating more. We usually find that it’s pretty much the same thing.

She was describing that, every single day, she likes to sit in front of the TV and eat her cinnamon toast. She likes to do that. That’s enjoyable to her. I agree it is enjoyable to sit in front of the TV. But I did ask her, I said okay, which do you love more? Do you love eating cinnamon toast in front of the TV more than you love fitting into your shorts? Because that was something that she brought up that she wanted, her goal was to fit into her shorts. Which do you love more? Put in that context. She wanted to fit into her shorts.

I think it’s totally normal to love food.

I’m never judging whatever food it is that you love. If you’ve listened to this podcast, I talk repeatedly about peanut M&M’s. I know there’s other junk foods I probably love. It is a very emotional tie for a lot of us. It’s totally normal, as human beings, that we have that love affair with food.

We have emotional ties to food. It starts very early. It starts when you’re in utero. Essentially, you’re being fed, nourished by your mother, by somebody who is carrying you in their womb. Then you are born and you are given either breastfed or bottle fed. Again, you’re being fed and then you graduate to other foods, different tastes and textures. It’s celebrated. Eating food is part of a milestone. Gaining weight is part of the process. That’s what they look for, babies to hit those certain benchmarks that you have to get bigger. Everybody loves a chubby baby.

Everybody wants to feed the baby, feed the little kid. Then we get into bringing the cupcakes to the birthday party. Then we get into noticing how our lives revolve around food. The birthday parties we remember, the Christmas, the Thanksgiving, the vacations, getting special foods for celebrations. Celebrating all of our successes with food. Our parents rewarding us with food. You know, finish your dinner and you’ll get dessert, don’t finish your dinner and you won’t get dessert. Keep acting up and you’ll go to bed without any food.

There is a lot tied up into this love affair we have with food. I mean even look at Valentine’s Day. It might go either way. You might have a real sort of affection for chocolates, cakes, cookies, little candies, flowers and everything that goes with it. Or you might be completely turned off. You might think if you don’t love all that stuff, that there’s something wrong with you, and there’s not. It is totally normal.

Our brains.

Our little supercomputers, have been keeping track of all of the ways that we are tied into food and the emotions that we connect with food. When I go back to what’s love got to do with it? It really is more about the memory that we have the emotional tie that we feel. It’s more about our loving a time of year, our loving that person who made the cookies, and all of this.

Our choices that we make, over and over, when we choose to eat the chocolate, or eat the cookies, or go out to dinner to celebrate, we’re just making choices. Love is always a choice. If you’re a married woman, you know that staying married is a choice. You’re always having to choose it over and over again. That romantic love, that lust, the physical attraction part is probably gone. I don’t want to speak for all women and say you’re not interested in your husband in that way. But our friendships, our friend circle, who we decide to hang out with, it’s all always about our choices.

It’s very interesting how loving food feels like a fact, and that it is something we cannot overcome because it is just part of our story. I’m not saying it’s false, but it is a way that we have created meaning and memory in our own lives.

Here’s the good news, even though our brain is super primitive, it’s super quick to put all of this together. To pull in the sights, the sounds, the smells, the time of year, all of the delicious flavors. Whether that’s eating Mexican food on your Mexican vacation, or that’s having exotic drinks. It doesn’t matter if it is Valentine’s Day, or it is your birthday, or it’s every single day at 3pm when you walk in the door and you get to sit down on the couch and eat, scroll your phone. It’s just your brain has automated so much to make your life easier. We then create all of the narratives about how much we love it. Of course, who wouldn’t? Brains are driven towards reward.

Here’s the good news.

You have a part of your brain called the prefrontal cortex, it really is the thinking part of our brain. That part that can plan, that can think more logically. That is the teacher or the parent, or the mentor or the coach, the person who asked the questions, who can really dig in a little bit, not just take things at face value and not do everything automated.

When we look at our relationship with food, and we look at loving food, yes, you can include the foods that you love. You also have to be able to have a boundary with it. You have to be able to eat when you’re hungry and then stop when you’ve had enough. You have to be able to choose yourself over food. You have to be able to choose the goals you have. You have to be able to make decisions that your future self will thank you for.

It’s interesting. My kids really liked their teacher, which is great.Kindergarten through fourth grade has been wonderful with the teachers that they’ve had. This teacher was trying to convince them that if they get a head start on your homework, you’ll be thankful. The way she stated it was something to the effect of, “make your Friday self happy now” or something like that. Do this for your Friday self and they did. My kids were like I’m doing this for my Friday self. So when I wake up on Friday, my work is already done.

That is the same thing we do when we make choices and we’re very deliberate. We’re making the choice for loving the thing that we want more. That is probably to fit into our clothes, to feel comfortable, confident, to have the good health, to feel more fit, to have more muscle, to have less fat, whatever it is. Those goals that you want, you can achieve those. You can still have the foods that you like. This isn’t about never having the food you love, making those really hard choices to take everything away all at once and never have them again.

It is about making a plan. Doing the plan that will serve your future self and the boundaries. Just like we have boundaries for our spouses, for our parents, for our kids, neighbors, teachers, strangers. We have boundaries, where it’s like, I’m cool with this but not that. This is my standard. When somebody steps over the line, then now I know, that’s not going to work.

For me, boundaries are to serve us. It’s not about keeping things away or rules for other people or restrictions or 9000 arbitrary food rules. You could try that. That’s probably why most diets feel like arbitrary food rules. A boundary is just like, hey, I said I was going to have two drinks tonight and when I’m offered that third drink, I’m going to say no, thank you. If someone were to push and be like, come on, come on, come on, you want to drink. Then I will have to leave the party or leave the room or just say, hey, I was really clear that I’m not drinking anymore.

A boundary is just knowing what standard you have set for yourself, and especially around food. If we don’t get sort of ahead of this then we’ll always feel like, I just love food too much. That’s my problem is that I love food too much. It makes sense. It seems right. It seems like, okay, yeah, food is delicious. We need to eat food and I’ll only be able to use the willpower, only be able to use discipline, I’ll only be able to use a diet. It brings us right back to that all or nothing mentality. I either love the food, or I will have to not have it. There is that someplace in the middle.

It really is just about figuring out your true physical hunger. What is true physical hunger? Love has nothing to do with it, But it has everything to do with weight loss, because ultimately it is about loving yourself more than you love the cinnamon toast in front of the TV.

All right, my friends. I think I covered what I wanted to cover. I have a lot on my list. Things about negative self-talk, and silencing the critic. I think all of those kind factor in, especially when we think about Valentine’s Day, loving ourselves, and self love. For today, for the week, for the month, for the rest of the year……always pick yourself.

………………………

The Real Weight Loss Challenge is back and we are starting Monday, February 26. We will be together for a whole two weeks. The private Facebook group will stay open till the end of March, so you will have plenty of time to listen to all of the live trainings. I realized a lot of my favorite podcast family are in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa. That is so cool. By the way, you are in other countries and so our regular schedule might not align.

No matter who you are, where you are, if you work overnights and you’re sleeping during the day, you will be able to get all of the live training. Plus we have a great workbook and we’re gonna go through everything. Literally pulling back the curtain on everything I teach my clients in Self Made about how to lose weight sustainably without a lot of restrictions without, locking yourself in the house for the rest of your life, so that you can actually eat the foods you love.

Something to take note of, there is a promo code if you’re acting fast. If it’s after February 20, I’m sorry, you’ll have to pay full price. No matter what you pay, either the discounted price or the full price. Whatever you pay for the Real Weight Loss Challenge, if you decide to work with me and Self Made you can apply the full payment to Self Made. You’d be getting the Real Weight Loss Challenge for free either way. The promo code to save $50 by February 20 is Feb50.

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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