Today we’re talking about your weight loss goals. Sometimes I don’t want to talk about weight loss, and I bet you kind of feel the same. Which probably explains why we might do a little scrolling on social media. Sometimes our brains need a break from weight loss. I think that’s totally normal. It helps to take a break from thinking about weight loss, your goals, what the scale says, recipes, food prep, and your whole list of to do’s. It helps you refocus and recenter 100%. I’m not saying endless binging of videos or tiktok or whatever. That’s probably not that helpful. But a little break here and there. Very helpful. 

We are talking about your weight loss goals. I’m never really sick of it. We’re talking about your weight loss goals for a number of reasons. This is all about helping you lose weight for the last time. This is the last day of January. January of 2024 is gone. Bye bye. We’ll never have it again. That can be mixed feelings. On one hand, you could be super excited and be like, Yeah, I don’t like January. It’s like it goes on and on and on and on. 

It feels very much like a letdown, especially after the holidays. There is that pressure to be like, okay, New year, new me. I’m not going to eat and drink and do all the things I did in December or last year or the last 10 years or whatever. Then we get halfway into January and we’re like, when is the new me going to kick in?

If any of this is ringing true, welcome to having a human brain. You might also be excited just to turn the page and have a new month. I love a new month. I don’t care if it starts on a Monday, bonus if it does. Obviously, February does not start on a Monday, but fun fact about February 2024. We have 29 days, that is an extra day in February to hit our weight loss goals. 

I’m going to break down your weight loss goals into three sections. We’re going to start at the very beginning, and I talked about this endlessly, but you still need to listen. 

Defining your goals. 

1) Why do you want to lose weight?

This is why I think weight loss gets tiring. It gets boring. It’s just;

• I need to lose weight. 
• I have to lose weight. 
• I should lose weight. 
• When am I going to lose weight? 
• Why haven’t I lost weight? I
• If I eat this, will I lose weight? 
• If I eat this, will I not lose weight?
• Is this going to help me lose weight? 

It’s just relentless.

That non stop chatter actually doesn’t move the needle. It just does not. It moves it backwards. It has us doing nothing. It’s a stall. It’s procrastination. 

You might think okay, yeah, I know exactly what I want. But do you really? Have you ever put it on paper? If you’re new here, I will talk about this probably every week, write things down even if you don’t want to. Even if you write it messy on a piece of scrap paper, throw it away. Write it a with fancy glitter pen in a beautiful leather bound journal. Doesn’t really matter how you do it. I think getting some of this stuff, all the chatter, out of your head and onto paper will help you actually go in a direction. 

If you want to achieve your weight loss. We need to know where we’re going. So what are your goals? Specifically? Get as granular as you can. 

• Is it a weight? 
• Is it a body fat percentage? 
• Is it a clothing size? 
• Is it a look?
• Is it a feeling? 
• What are you wearing? 
• What are you not wearing? 
• How would your life change with these goals?

Think about it. 

What are these goals? The reason I think this is important is that the scale is often the tool. I lost 20 pounds, it said, so on the scale. Except the scale is always going to fluctuate. We don’t want to be trapped in the, 

• I am happy because the scale has the number I want. 
• I’m slipping.
• I’m falling back. 
• Something’s happening. 
• It’s not working.
• I’m gonna gain it all back. 

We can’t be stuck in that sort of ping pong, we want to have a lot of different ways to know when we’ve achieved it. The only way to know if you’ve achieved it is to actually know what you want to achieve. 

You can’t just say I want to win the Super Bowl and yet you’ve never signed up to play football. It just doesn’t add up and our brains kind of know this. I think we have to call ourselves out on our own BS. 

• What are your goals specifically? 
• Why is this? Are these your goals? 
• Why is it important to you? 
• What if you don’t achieve it? 
• What if you do achieve it? 

I think it’s worth noting why it’s important to you. This really helps us cut through the fluff. Because I want to be healthy, because I want to live forever, because I want to play with my grandkids, blah, blah, blah, blah. 

I’ll give you a little story. I have a client, I will call her Amy. She is very fun and coachable. She does the work, she shows up to calls. She’s in my DMs a lot, which is great. As a client. I mean, I love when clients are like, Hey, I thought of this or this happened. I stuck to my plan today. Like that’s cool. I will talk all day long to my clients. I think it’s helpful. 

One thing that happened with Amy last week is that she had a huge revelation. She had her aha moment. She said, Hey, I just realized that some of my goals might be more about vanity and that I actually do want to look a certain way. She even said something about wanting to enter a weightlifting contest or something. Now I don’t know if that meant like competing on stage in a bikini or getting more into powerlifting. I’m not really sure what it all meant. And I’m not sure she really knew what it all meant.

She had a lightbulb moment that was like, I think I want to lose weight because I want to look a certain way, is that bad???? I want to tell you, it’s normal. It’s normal that you have goals to look a certain way and I actually encourage that. I think it’s normal, honest. Allowed. It’s fantastic. It’s fabulous. Why not? Who else is going to want that for you? I think pushing the limits of what you can achieve or how you want to look and we already kind of do some of this stuff for ourselves. 

We buy makeup, we buy haircare products, we buy Louis Vuitton bags, although I have not bought a Louis Vuitton bag but I have a Coach bag. You can look around your area, makeup, skincare, haircare, shoes,  and clothes. You could probably find things that you’re purchasing to make you feel better, prettier, sexy, more glamorous, more attractive. You’re creating a certain look for yourself. I think that’s great. 

The next step is maybe realizing that you would want to lose body fat, preserve, and regain muscle mass. You want to look a certain way, you want to rock a certain pair of jeans or thigh high boots, or you just want to feel good in anything you wear, or you want to look good naked. I’m pretty sure that most men, probably women too, find you attractive and do not care, but we care. 

Ultimately, our weight loss is for us. For me to look better naked. It’s for me. It’s because I want to look a certain way. Honestly, I don’t think my husband would care. In fact, we’ve been together for a long time. I’ve been lots of different weights and he’s never said anything about it. I think most men, and maybe women, but most men are just like, yeah, if you want to be with me naked, I’m cool. I don’t care if you gain two pounds, or if you gained 20 pounds, or 120 pounds. You could correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure I’m right. I’ve been around long enough to know. 

2) Why are these goals important to you? 

After you’ve defined your goals, and you get really clear on why they’re important to you, and even ask yourself, if you don’t achieve those goals, then what? Or if you do achieve those goals, then what? I think it’ll be interesting to see what comes up. This is one that I think is a little bit harder to answer because it will require you to go to the place of how will I feel if I do achieve those goals? How will I feel? Because there’s feelings involved. You need to know exactly why it’s important to you. 

What is the gap between where you are now and where you want to go? Is there really a gap? What don’t you already know? 

When women come into my free Facebook group Food, Fitness, Fat Loss for Women Over 40, we do try to connect. My staff and I always try to connect with women who come into the group to find out hey, what are you more interested in? What do you need, nutrition? Do you need mindset? Time management? Where are you at? What is the gap here? 

It’s very interesting, where people will say all of it. My question is usually, is that really true? Do you really have an info gap? Do you not know something? Or is that just a belief that you have that you don’t know enough? Belief gaps that you just don’t know enough? I need to know more. I need to know the right way. I’m probably doing it wrong. There must be more. There must be something I’m missing. 

In truth, there could be. I mean, weight loss has a lot of different components. There could be something that you’re overlooking. By and large, there’s a lot of info already on Google on the internet, in my podcast, in my free Facebook group, but I’m only one person, I’m only one source. 

• Is it a belief gap? 
• Is it an action gap? 
• Are you collecting a lot of information? 
• Are you starting to do some of this inner work but not actually taking action on it?
• Where do I start? There’s so many steps I have so far to go, 
• What small action could you take? 

I’m always thinking about bridging the gap. I created Self Made to bridge the gap between the typical diet and somebody who wants to lose weight and keep it off. The gap is that no one is really teaching anything more than changing what you eat and doing more exercise. What about the other things that creep up? 

• Stress eating, 
• Emotional eating, 
• Mindless eating, 
• Habit eating, 
• Overeating, 
• Binge eating, 
• Being too restrictive,
• All of that.

Nobody’s really addressing that. 

Think about, where is the gap? Is that really true that there is a gap? What is keeping you from taking action? That’s kind of the number one point, defining your goals if we’re talking about weight loss goals. It’s the end of January, and whether or not you are working all month on your weight loss goals, or you’re just getting started, I think it’s perfectly fine. You’re going to restart, I look at a fresh month, a fresh week, as a time to assess. 

Tracking your progress.

1) How will you track your progress?

If we’re talking about your weight loss goals, there’s a lot of different ways that we can track that, because there’s a lot of different approaches to weight loss. There’s not one size fits all. What you do to start, your weight loss may not be what you do forever. 

For example, I’ve always had clients who are interested in or they previously did track macros. Macros are one way that you could collect data. Do I think macros are what I would do forever? No, I just don’t think it’s sustainable. To be perfectly honest, 95% of women I speak with and I look at their My Fitness Pal or chronometer or whatever they’re using to track, it’s just not accurate. That’s the downside of macro tracking, it really does require a high level of detail. 

It can be really helpful. Two weeks, four weeks, maybe six max. If you’re willing to weigh and measure and probably eat a lot of the same things. Then, if you want to experiment with having some of those joy foods and seeing how they break down macro nutrient wise. If you’re not sure what macronutrients are, don’t worry, this is not science speak, I promise you. 

Macro tracking is really just a more sophisticated way of tracking overall calories, you’re just breaking them down into the components of either protein, carbohydrates, or fat. Although there are other things in our food, most of our foods. Some foods are pretty much strictly all carbohydrates or all fats are all protein. Some foods, of course, are combinations. Then you know nachos or ice cream will have a little bit of everything, although not as much protein as I would like. 

You can decide how you would like to track. Even if it’s just for the month of February, for example, just to get some data. I talk to a lot of women who say; 

• I eat healthy, 
• I eat clean, 
• We eat really well,
• We eat all organic, 
• We make all of our own food, 
• We do all of this great food prep, 
• I know how to eat, 
• I know all about nutrition. 

Okay, fair enough. But are you eating more than your body requires? Are you not eating enough? Are you just wildly inconsistent? 

If you are somebody who wants to track macros, or you do it now, I would just take 30 days or 29 in the case of February, and be diligent. If you don’t want to do the whole month, do two weeks. I think for a lot of my clients in Self Made take a stab at macros, and I’m fine with it. It’s just not something that I think is a sustainable, long term scenario. What happens is, then we become, of course, obsessed with macros. 

• Does this fit my macros? 
• Do I need a macro tracker all the time? 
• What if I can’t find my phone? 
• What if my phone dies? 
• What if I lose all access to my tracking apps? 
• What if I don’t have a skill? 
• What if I don’t have a way to weigh my food? 
• What if I have to go on vacation? 
• What if I have an emergency? 
• What if I forgot my lunch? 

Do you really want to sit down and track macros for the rest of your life? 

Sometimes people like it and think that it works, but they’re not actually tracking, they’re guessing and that’s okay. Chances are, you’re then using the tool against yourself. It isn’t really helping you. The same thing could be true of tracking calories, or just tracking protein grams, I am fine with all of that. After a while what happens with macro tracking or calorie tracking or protein tracking is you get really good at it. 

You probably know by the end of the day, okay, I had this for breakfast, this for lunch, this for dinner. I can pretty much ballpark how much protein I had. I had about 30 to 35 grams of protein in all three of those meals or I had 50 grams in one meal and 40 grams in the other and 25 and you’ll get good at it. It’s not a terrible thing to do, especially if it is a gap for you. If you never had any idea how much protein you’re getting. Most women who do not track protein or have never really thought about it, under-eaten protein. They underestimate how much protein they would need. So it’s not bad to do it. It’s just a decision. 

2) What are you going to track? 

You don’t have to track everything. The shotgun approach really does not work. I would pick maybe two or three different ways that you will track your weight loss goals. Other things you could do? Obviously the scale, that’s usually the big one that most people who use the scale. I don’t want to say all, but most women who use the scale, again, it’s like using a tool against yourself. It’s riding the highs and lows of oh my god, I gained weight again this week. Well, is that really true? 

The scale is gonna go up and down for a million reasons. All we can do is just look for trends. Were you sick last week? Did you get your period last week, for those of you who still get that? You could have a lot of different reasons for the scale to go up and down. You can use a scale. 

I like to look at any measure of tracking that I’m going to use, and I try to do it in a neutral way, otherwise it’s not tracking its judging. Sometimes it’s okay to have a thought or a feeling that doesn’t feel good or is negative. That’s why having multiple ways to track will really help if you’re going to use the scale. Could you also use a tape measure if you’re going to use the scale? Could you also use your camera and capture a photo, if you’re going to use a scale? Can you also use some type of clothing? That pair of jeans that’s a little too tight, or that doesn’t go up over your hips?  

Are there other ways that you could actually track so that you’re working on your weight loss goals? You could also just give yourself a habit tracker. Like a little tally mark for the days that you do;

• Plan for the day and stick to your plan,
• Eat the three meals with protein,
• Hit that protein goal, 
• Hit your exercise target. 

If you’re using any type of wearable tech, your Apple iWatch, or your aura ring, or Garmin or Fitbit or they have all kinds of things now. There’s so much cool wearable tech that you could be using, those are ways to track. Some of you are wearing glucose monitors. There are a lot of different tracking mechanisms. I would pick a couple. You could also use a calendar, your notebook, your journal. You could track your sleep, your energy, your digestion, I love keeping a food journal. Not using macro tracking anymore, although I have and it was very helpful to me. 

3) Using a food journal

I can write in the journal. I can give notes about how I’m feeling. Did I have energy? Was the workout sucky? I have a lot of those notes. It helps because then I have data and I can have trends. It’s very hard to keep going with your weight loss goals without the data. Your brain is going to offer you, this isn’t working. This is too hard. You don’t know what you’re doing. You need a different diet, all of that stuff. 

If you have some ways to track it, you’re going to be able to say okay, for this month, I did work out, I did strength training three times a week and I walked every other day. I drank the water. I did the things. I think it’s really important because those are wins for you.

Tips to achieve your goals.

1) Don’t share your goals.

I was reading an article the other day. It basically said, do not share your weight loss goals with your spouse. That was really the gist of the article. It was a short article. I thought it was so interesting because I never thought to articulate that before because I would never share my weight loss goals with my husband. I don’t even know why I would. Why would he care? For what reason? 

I understand why some women would share their goals. Part of it is because we share everything. Maybe we both want to get in shape or lose weight. Maybe if I have a partner, we could do it together. I think that’s right. It’s kind of natural and normal to think, I will recruit my family. They’ll be on my side. They will help me. We’ll all eat the same thing. We can all do meal prep. Most of the time, it doesn’t work out that way. 

From my perspective, I don’t share these goals. I think part of it is we end up making our goals, someone else’s problem. We make other people responsible for our goals. Well, they brought in ice cream. They know better. They know I can’t have that. Everybody’s a picky eater. They didn’t want to eat my turkey burgers. They keep sabotaging me. We fall into that. Or they’re watching what I’m eating. They’re questioning what I’m eating. Now I can’t eat anything. It actually works against you. 

I’m not trying to tell you to be secretive, to keep your mouth shut and never tell anybody what you’re trying to do. I think ultimately, that’s why women seek out groups. I mean, shameless plug for my program Self Made. They seek out the places to go, where they will get support. Where they will have other women who don’t necessarily live in their house, but are having similar challenges. That way we can work on our goals. We can eat what we want. We can not eat what we don’t want. We don’t have to worry about what our spouse, our husband, our brother, our partner, our roommate, our mother, our father, our cousin, our kids, anybody else in the house is doing or not doing at all, it doesn’t need to be a discussion. 

If you want to share, that’s great. Don’t expect that other people care, or that other people need to keep you accountable. Or that they’ll understand exactly how you feel or how it’s important to you. You can try to share all that. I’m sure some relationships, that’s part of the conversation. Here’s my goals, here’s why it’s important to me, but don’t expect your significant other to care as much as you do. It doesn’t mean that they don’t support you or they don’t love you or they don’t want to be supportive. It’s just not their goal. I think it’s okay. 

If you’ve ever tried to lose weight with your male significant other, those f*ckers lose weight really fast. Men lose weight faster than women. It’s just hormones. They have more muscle mass,because they’re men. They have more testosterone, because there are men. Even little changes, like if they stopped drinking beer for one week. They’ll lose like 10 pounds. Or they change just one or two things. They’re still eating cookies at night, and they still lose weight. I always talked to women who are very mad or discouraged about that. It’s okay. They’ll do their thing, you do your thing. Don’t feel like you have to share the goal so that they’re going to help you achieve them. 

I’m curious how that lands for you. I think it’s a really interesting topic. 

2) Be willing to assess. 

Daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and I don’t mean like, oh, I need hours and hours of assessment. I think it’s just maybe by the end of the day. Or when you wake up in the morning you can assess the day before. Just kind of take a look; 

• How did my day go? 
• Did I have time to eat? 
• Did I make time to eat? 
• Did I have enough protein? 
• Did I get water? 
• What would you do differently? 
• Did I need to go to bed earlier? 
• What got in my way? 
• Did I have too much coffee? 

I think just assessing the way you do in your own job. 

What went well? How did this go today? Let’s repeat the things that go well. Let’s look at the things that didn’t go well. Then let’s make a plan. It doesn’t have to take you more than a couple of minutes. Some people write on a Sunday or whatever day you have off at the end of the week. If you have an extra 20 minutes then you can get more into the shopping list, meal planning, setting new goals, tracking your weight and all that stuff. That’s fine.  I would be willing to assess that way. 

If you want to achieve your weight loss goals This is you taking 100% ownership. This is you being accountable. This is you being responsible. This is you tracking the business of you. You’re the CEO of you, and you can run your weight loss or weight loss goals just like you would your financial goals, your career goals. Just like if you’re a teacher, you would track little Johnny’s reading progress or math progress by just going where are we at? What problems did you get? What problems did you not get? Where do we need to work? More on multiplication? Perfect. That’s all it is. 

It helps us take out a lot of the, I don’t want to say take out the feelings, because I’m big into understanding that there are feelings involved here. If we can just be a little bit more objective, more neutral, rather than saying, Oh, my God, I failed. I suck. This didn’t work. It’s never going to work. I should just quit. Instead, can we just approach it in a more 30,000 foot view way? Get awareness around it. Run it like a project. 

Run it like it’s a kitchen remodel. What did we get done yesterday? We took the cabinets off. Perfect. What is going to happen tomorrow? It’s just like that. It makes it actually easier, maybe a little bit more fun. You’re moving towards the goal. You’re not always in reaction to Oh, my gosh, that scale went up. Or, Oh, these pants still don’t fit. Or, I didn’t have enough protein for lunch. Okay, what do we want to do to get more protein in for dinner? Or what would we do differently tomorrow? Exactly like, you would approach any other project.

This is the long game. This is not, I’m just going to eat well, for six months, and then I’ll be all set. We have to find a way to achieve our goals, whether we’re actively trying to lose weight, or we’re going to hang out in maintenance, or we’re working on building up some more strength or trying some new hobbies. We’re gonna go ice skating or do some new things. We’re always working towards becoming a woman who loses weight and keeps it off. It doesn’t have to happen all in six months, and it might not. 

Your ideal weight, your ideal body composition, is also about your ideal health and wellness. That is the long game. It’s okay that you want to look a certain way and wear certain clothes. But it’s bigger than just that. This is something that gives you quality of life. Okay. 

3) Don’t change a million things all at once. 

Just like the tracking, we do have to have a little bit of constraint. Here’s why constraint is hard. When we constrain, meaning we don’t do all the things, we don’t give into the instant gratification of

• Trying all the things,
• Doing all the things,
• Getting all the supplements,
• Doing all the workouts,
• Getting the new protein powder,
• Getting the new sneakers,
• Getting the new water bottle,

all the stuff. 

We also don’t get the dopamine hits that we would get from doing all the things. That’s why our energy and our excitement is very high when we start a new weight loss regime. We get all excited, we’re doing all the things, it’s almost too much. It takes discipline to constrain, to just keep going, to follow a very simple plan, to not bring in more layers of complexity. In some ways, maybe it’s good for you. I don’t need to do all the things. You only need to do a couple things and you just need to do them consistently. 

4) Don’t quit on yourself. 

Ultimately, these are your weight loss goals. These are for you. It doesn’t mean you have to do them perfectly. It doesn’t mean that every day is a banner day. We’re always learning. This could be fun. The process of figuring out exactly who you want to be, in the body you want to be in. It’s exciting to think about all the possibilities that are out there but you can’t get there if you quit or even just the micro quitting. 

Micro quitting. 

• I stopped going to the gym, 
• I stopped counting my steps, 
• I stopped caring about eating after dinner 
• I did whatever I wanted, 
• I stopped making bedtime my priority. 

Then eventually, six months a year goes by and we wonder how we gained 10 pounds. 

It doesn’t have to be perfect for you to be successful. 

5) Hire a coach.

Maybe it’s not me, but maybe it is. Ultimately, you will save time, energy and money. Making an investment, even if it’s not me, in hiring someone who’s already done this. Someone to pave the way, someone to remind you who you are, and where you’re going. I don’t hold people accountable in a way like, I’m going to drag you to the finish line. I don’t think that’s fine. But I am going to ride along all the way. I’m going to take the ride with you. I’d love to.

If you’re considering doing something together like Self Made, I would do it. If you are curious at all, you could book yourself a free call. The worst case scenario is that you walk away with a lot of laughs and you walk away with a little bit of a strategy. Something that you can start working on because that’s what I do is I try to give high value. 

With that, my friends, I’m super excited for February 2024. I hope you are too. I hope you found something that you can take action on today. Just a little bit of action every single day will get you closer to your goals. All right, my friends. Make it a good one. Take care.

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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