09:00:58 Hello. What do you do when you slip up? We're going to talk about getting back on track without guilt.
09:01:05 So i have for years had this cycle that I from the time I started trying to lose weight before even I would do everything hardcore. Let's do 100%, get it all done. I'm going to lose weight. Everything's going to be perfect. I'm going to do the things.
09:01:24 Because I would want to prove that I could do it right so that I could get it done faster.
09:01:28 And then a bad day would happen. Next thing you know, I personally am the kind that I would be like, we've got to alternate between sweet and salt. And it probably would go until either the bucket of ice cream or the bag of chips was completely done or I made myself sick.
09:01:46 That is pretty much what happened. And then I would feel terrible. I would feel miserable from all that I ate. And I would feel miserable because I felt so guilty that I hadn't done it perfect.
09:01:56 Like it was like a it was a proof it was proof that I did not actually want to lose weight, that I wasn't serious enough about it, or I wasn't committed enough.
09:02:09 I wasn't motivated enough. This is normal. Life happens.
09:02:14 So every time I would think that I was not good enough, I wasn't being okay with it, it would get me to feel more demotivated in trying again.
09:02:26 I help a lot of women and they have, they're human. They have slip ups. They have things that happen that it's not a one straight line track all the way to their goal.
09:02:38 And how you deal with that is going to predict the longevity of the weight loss happening and maintaining that weight loss.
09:02:49 You're normal. Let me tell you in case you didn't hear me in the back, you are normal. You are human.
09:02:54 Humans make mistakes. Everyone experiences it so It's not about being perfect. It's about how we respond. So what do you do when you slip up?
09:03:04 Let's talk about that. Let's get back on track. That's the key part, the getting back on track.
09:03:11 So the truth about setbacks The slip up feels bigger than it actually is. So my one night of devouring the ice cream. And let's just tell you, it's the mint chocolate chip.
09:03:25 It's the best. And it has to be some kind of salt. So I love Fritos. I love Let's see, I probably should have said trigger warning before I started telling you all this. I also used to love Cool Ranch Doritos. They were the best.
09:03:41 I love the real thick type of kettle chips or the Lay's ripples, those were the best. So something really sweet and creamy and something crunchy and salty. The best.
09:03:53 And so I'll still have that now, but I totally eat it differently.
09:03:58 And occasionally I also have slip ups too. So the real problem isn't the slip up. It's that guilt and shame spiral that follows.
09:04:07 So it feels so much bigger than it actually is because we make it into a big deal with that guilt shame spiral.
09:04:17 And we are afraid we're not going to hit our goal. So then we feel bad because we made a mistake.
09:04:21 And then we go back and forth with this whole spiral. I feel guilty that I didn't do it right. I feel embarrassed that I couldn't do it right. And we just keep self-talking, the segment I can't get my words out today, guys. We keep self-talking that guilt shame and that negativity makes it so much harder to bounce back.
09:04:46 So I want to talk to you about a quick little technique that I used quite often.
09:04:52 And so the first one, the faster we can stop the shame spiral, we can agree that that means that the faster we're going to get back on track, right?
09:05:02 So. Whether it's at the end of the bag of chips or whether it's after a few bites like Whatever it is, just stop.
09:05:11 Stop and recognize that nothing is too late. You haven't gone too far.
09:05:17 Anytime you stop, if you left one cookie in the bag or one chip in the bag or One bite of ice cream cream that you left at the bottom.
09:05:26 Count that as a success. Catch yourself and just stop.
09:05:30 Don't let that one choice turn into an entire off the rails day.
09:05:36 Or weak. My mentor used to say, why throw the whole day away when you still have some of it to save?
09:05:43 And so that told me that anything I did was going to be successful after that. I get to choose the next thing.
09:05:52 And so I would take a big breath, right? Yeah, I did not do what I wanted to do. Just acknowledge it. Don't judge it. Just acknowledge it.
09:06:05 I, whatever. I didn't eat on plan. I overate. I had the ice cream and the chips, whatever it was, just I did it. Yep, I did it Remember, it's about normalizing our humanness, not normalizing that this is how we eat and it's okay and that's
09:06:22 Going to be like normal and we should do it all the time. No, it's normal that we do that sometimes because we're human. It's normal that we did that because of whatever.
09:06:34 That's the next thing. The self-talk, let's reframe it. Instead of saying, I blew it, I suck. I'm never going to be able to do it.
09:06:41 Yep, that happened. It happened. Now what?
09:06:45 And so the next step step two is the next step to find the why like why did it happen? We're going to process it. So this technique is called pause, process, and pivot. So the second step, process.
09:06:56 You can imagine what that means. Process what happened. So the first step we just stopped.
09:07:02 We stopped and said we did it. We acknowledged it. We just… We just recognize it happened. And the faster we can get, and it's a skill, it's a muscle that we build, the faster we can get to stop.
09:07:13 The stronger it is to have this happen without it being such a big deal.
09:07:17 So step two, process it. What led to that slip up?
09:07:21 Was it stress, exhaustion? Was it emotions, lack of planning?
09:07:26 What was it? Everybody has a bad day. I have… been super into it with my spouse and been upset and then wanted to just drown myself in a bowl of something.
09:07:38 I have had a very intense workday where I had to use a lot of brain power And I'm tired. I'm exhausted. Maybe it's just kind of this low level hum of stress that just keeps going and going and going.
09:07:53 Many times we take care of everybody else. The end of the day is the only time we take care of us and we don't know other techniques yet.
09:08:01 And so whatever it is, maybe you just didn't plan. We were like, time got away from me and I didn't even lay anything out in the refrigerator to cook for dinner or I didn't make a plan to pick something up at the at the drive-thru because I wasn't thinking about it.
09:08:17 Was it that we were judging whether it was good enough or not? I had time to pick something up at the at the drive-thru, but I didn't because I was judging it. I was judging it that I shouldn't. And so then I didn't do anything and the whole thing was a lack of planning.
09:08:35 Topped with judging. So how to reflect without shaming yourself. That's going to be key here.
09:08:42 So as you're thinking through it, we can't shame ourselves. This is only for understanding. We just want clarity. If we're not even clear.
09:08:54 Then we can't change anything. I noticed a lot of times when I meet with my clients, they do a couple of different things. They want to tell me everything they did wrong.
09:09:04 Or they want to minimize what they did wrong and then just jump into the next thing they did right.
09:09:09 And there's a happy medium. There is absolutely no room for judgment and shame, that guilt spiral.
09:09:16 But if we're not looking at what we did do and why it happened, there's not going to be that longevity in having it fixed.
09:09:25 So just reflect. What do I think happened? Why did it happen? What was I really needing in that moment? As I work with people for emotional overeating.
09:09:37 Most of the time your body is sending you to food. And I like to think of it as an alert.
09:09:43 It's kind of a kind of a You know, and you're driving your car and you have the dash light come on, it's the dash light.
09:09:50 Something is needing your attention. And so what did you really need in that moment? Did you need to just go to bed? Did you need a hug? Did you, whatever. My husband is going to love that I'm sharing this with you today, but I texted him this morning and I was like, I really just need to like snuggle on the couch and hold your hand tonight if you're open for that.
09:10:09 And I'm putting in my request in the morning while I know I'm fresh and like that sounds like the perfect way to end the day. I have a late night of working, so I don't even get off work till six.
09:10:20 I've been tired lately. We've had a home project, been having some disagreements on the home project. And I would just love that connection. I would love that touch.
09:10:29 I'm deciding ahead of time what I would need. But if I hadn't done that, it would have been really normal habit to at the end of the day, already be stressed, already be exhausted.
09:10:41 Not feeling as connected lately just completely overwhelmed and then to turn to food. That's a practice behavior that I've done for years.
09:10:50 Of course, that would be easy to go back to. So what was I really needing in that moment? If you've done something, you've had a slip up, what did you really need in that moment?
09:11:02 What was the alert trying to tell you to get your attention for?
09:11:06 That's the only way we can do self-care is when we start listening to what we actually need, not what we think we're supposed to have.
09:11:13 All right, step three, pivot. This is where we get to move forward. And just like I said, in step one, the faster you can stop the slip up, the less likely it's going to be like a whole week or a whole day.
09:11:28 The also great thing, the pivot is so important. What can you do immediately?
09:11:35 What action can you take to get yourself back on track?
09:11:38 Maybe as soon as you have a slip up, you say, I immediately am going to stop, figure out what happened and my As I'm figuring out what happened, I'm going to get a glass of water and drink the water because
09:11:50 Our brain says water is good for us. It is the next best available thing in this moment. So maybe I overate, maybe I ate off plan and it wasn't what I exactly wanted.
09:12:02 Maybe I skipped my workout. I'm going to drink water. It's at least something that I'm doing well for myself. Our brain likes to feel like we have succeeded. We loved gold stars growing up. We loved kudos and You did a good job, pat on the back.
09:12:17 When we drink water. Immediately after a slip up we think I'm doing something good for myself. And then everything else feels like it was a slip up, but I'm still doing good things. So how quickly can we get back on track? What can we do? And build in some habits that it doesn't have to be the
09:12:37 Shame cycle. So we're trying to develop a new habit cycle instead of jumping right into the shame the shame and guilt. And so drink some water. Maybe you prep your next meal or you go for a walk.
09:12:49 And it's like, I had a mistake. I'm just going to go perk. It's not a punishment.
09:12:54 It's the next best thing. And so that was something I did as I was learning how to lose weight.
09:13:00 If I made a mistake and oh golly, I made a bunch. I know that my clients love hearing about my mistakes. It normalizes humanizes me so that they see that they're okay too. And so I share plenty of my mistakes. And so that's what you do. You just hit reset.
09:13:17 It's your next best decision. And so sometimes for me, it was a thought. And a lot of times it was.
09:13:25 All right. The plan, the new plan. And I would just create a new plan right there on the fly.
09:13:30 And it wasn't so that I would deprive myself of anything. It was just that my brain was calm that it had a plan. It knew exactly what the next thing was going to happen and it could predict it because I decided it right then. So it knew.
09:13:44 I didn't have to try to make up for the mistake. And so with a clear head, I could say my next best decision is that I am just going to eat when I get hungry again.
09:13:55 Sometimes I would say I want to eat exactly what I planned when I get hungry again.
09:14:01 I'm just going to make sure I wait for hunger. I'm not going to eat just because it's on the clock. It's the time to eat.
09:14:08 Or sometimes I would decide my next best decision is to eat something lighter Or maybe I had something specific, but what I just ate already feeling terrible in my body. And I know that interaction is not great. I just make the next best decision for myself, whatever that looks like.
09:14:24 I avoid that all or nothing trap. Of progress And so like Progress is not just about doing it all right. It's about consistency, not about perfection.
09:14:37 And so by making that next best choice, I have thought about what I need. I have thought about what works for me. I have given myself just the next step. I don't need to sit and wallow in it. I am not getting myself any further ahead by being critical
09:14:55 I do not respond well. And nobody really does. We all say we do, but we don't.
09:15:01 So I don't respond well to criticism. I feel very guilty. I feel very lacking, not enough, very unmotivated, demotivated, whichever the right word is.
09:15:11 I respond well to what I am doing. I respond well to a plan. I respond well to those types of things. And so I'm not looking for perfection anymore. I'm just looking for what's the next thing. And so When I drink that water, especially after some kind of a slip up, I know I'm doing great things for myself. I've got this.
09:15:32 I am human. I made a mistake. It's all good so What we're doing with this three-step process where we pause figure out what happened, stop at the action immediately, right? Process, find the why. Why did it happen? What can we do about it?
09:15:48 And then pivot, get right back on track as fast as we can, building those new habits.
09:15:53 To keep us getting back on track instead of quitting. So many people have this whole habit dieting, doing really like all out. And then as soon as something happens, they feel terrible and they stop because of the fear of mistakes.
09:16:10 Happening again and again and again, or they feel like they're a failure, so they want to get away from that.
09:16:17 Feeling of discomfort, that feeling of fear, the feeling of failure. And that is so big and imposing to us that we are thinking that we are just terrible. It's never going to happen.
09:16:29 So as we do this three-step process, it builds resilience for fewer setbacks in the future. It gets us to stop immediately. We're not as worried about it.
09:16:39 When we're not judging if I stopped after I'm done and I just don't let it continue into a full day of slip ups or a week of slips or whether I leave one chip in the bag or I stop at half the bag or I stop at a handful or one chip
09:16:54 Each one of those is building that resilience to be able to bounce back. This is creating a bounce back plan in advance. That's what this is.
09:17:06 I loved being a gritty person. I think that I get quite a bit done. I have confidence.
09:17:14 To face fear and do it anyway. And yet, sometimes when it's really super connected to me, I feel like I'm a failure and I used to want to quit all the time.
09:17:25 And so when I can build that bounce back, that resilience.
09:17:30 That is so much more important than being able to strong arm through something.
09:17:36 I would strong arm through it and do it anyway, but I would do it thinking I was terrible and a failure and I was a mistake, not just that I was making some mistakes.
09:17:47 And so that kind of thinking about yourself, that self-thought, it catches up with you if you're not watching it. And so it did. It caught up with me last year. I ended up hiring a coach to specifically help me get back some confidence.
09:18:03 And it was all the thoughts I was thinking about myself when I would make mistakes.
09:18:08 So this is all stuff I've practiced and known from the time I've started losing weight this way. And so I want to make sure you hear me so that you can have the experience from me instead of having to make so much of this on your own.
09:18:24 The faster we bounce back, we're definitely wanting to be a resilient person more so than just a gritty person. The gritty person gets it done, but they drag along all of that discomfort with them. Resilience is like, yeah, it happened. And then we bounce back. It reminds me of those punching bags that were like, I think they were always like a clown, some goofy clown and you blew them up when you were a kid. And then if you hit it, it like had a weight in the bottom and it bounced back at
09:18:51 Right back up smiling. And so that's what I want to be now. I want to be resilient. I want to know that if I make a mistake, I'm like, yeah, it happened. And then we just keep going.
09:19:00 How would you talk to a kid, right? You wouldn't be, and maybe you do. And if so, you definitely need to listen to this again and figure out how to talk to people.
09:19:09 You don't criticize them and judge them and blame them and shame them and make them feel just two inches tall. But that's exactly what we did to ourselves for so long with our weight loss.
09:19:20 What we want to do instead, we want to bounce back up and smile and be like, all right, what's next? And that that let's get it done kind of attitude. Let's keep going forward. Let's just be resilient and keep bouncing back.
09:19:34 So common triggers and making small adjustments. That's what we want to look at. So do you have triggers? I know that if I am not getting along with my husband, I want to shut down and I want to go see my chair and eat.
09:19:48 I want to watch TV. I want to stay up later than him so that I can like nurse my wounds in private when he's asleep and eat all the food.
09:19:58 If I'm really exhausted and tired, if I am really into a TV show and I don't want to hit the power button and turn it off, I know that it starts to trigger some different types of decision making that I wouldn't normally want.
09:20:16 So make small adjustments you know uh have your TV to automatically shut off. Tell yourself it's okay just to go to bed. Give yourself a nice mug of hot tea or an electric blanket so that you feel comforted in a different way. Small little adjustments.
09:20:33 All right, we're going to shift our focus from the short-term slip-ups to that long-term habits. So you heard me say.
09:20:40 That the short-term slip-up we had made a mistake, whatever it was. Instead of just keep making little mistakes that keep building on each other.
09:20:50 We are looking at that long-term habit. So how can we get back to it?
09:20:55 Most of the time forever. That's what I keep telling people. We are creating habits that we are willing to do most of the time forever. And I say most of the time because We're human. We make mistakes. We have slip-ups.
09:21:08 And we want to enjoy life. And so if most of the time I'm eating a certain way or most of the time I don't overeat.
09:21:17 But then, you know, sometimes I just really want that dessert and I've already had my meal and I just know it's going to overeat but it's a worth it for me. So most of the time forever, I have the habits of
09:21:30 Not overeating and eating for foods that really feel good in my body and things like that.
09:21:35 But sometimes I have a slip up. Sometimes I'm human and I just want it and it's a worth it kind of thing.
09:21:41 So self-compassion. Self-compassion is how you treat yourself with kindness. It actually leads to better results. If you can be compassionate with others.
09:21:52 Start there and figure out why it's okay for you to have that compassion with other people.
09:21:58 It's almost always going to be because it's always because it's okay for them to make mistakes. It's okay. It doesn't define them. Start taking some of that on for you. I was very compassionate with other people, not so much with myself in the beginning.
09:22:13 And so I practiced that thought a lot about what would I say to this person. And so sometimes it was, what would I say to my best friend? What would I say to a family member, what would I say to a small child?
09:22:26 If this was the exact situation they were in. And that was where I was able to tap into that compassionate self.
09:22:35 Because if it was just for me, it was harder. I hadn't practiced being compassionate to myself. I had practiced being blaming and judgmental and shaming to myself. And I would try to exit that discomfort as fast as possible.
09:22:51 And so I want to exit discomfort, but I don't want to do it to where I fail and have to like quit because I'm so miserable with how I'm treating myself.
09:23:01 So compassion is, it's understanding, it's acceptance of our normal and human behaviors so All righty. I have shared so many examples today. I am imagining that at some point you have made it a slip up too. And we all behave differently. Sometimes we lash out at other people and we're really lashing out at ourselves.
09:23:25 To whatever it is that you do. Remember, you're normal. This is just us trying to come up with some new behavior, some new habits for that long term. And these are all great examples, however you want to try them.
09:23:38 So the next time a slip up happens, use that pause process and pivot framework And see how that goes for you. See if you can stop it faster. See if you can get back on track faster. And the faster that happens, it really, even if you haven't figured out how to not shame yourself yet, the faster you stop and the faster you get back on track, it eliminates the amount of time you have to shame yourself.
09:24:04 And so even if you just start with that. Quickness of it without understanding how to process it. I help people process it. That's what I do.
09:24:14 We talk about your emotions and your thoughts and your behaviors and all the things that you do. And then why did you do them? What was your body really needing what is the habit that you have formed when this situation happens or that one? And then what can we do?
09:24:30 How can we prevent it? How can we take better care of ourselves in the moment when it happens again?
09:24:35 I love coaching people. I love helping them. It's like we're just building this very compassionate self, this life for ourself that is all about taking care of us and others and really loving and enjoying life.
09:24:50 And weight loss and all of those emotions all tie together. It absolutely does.
09:24:57 All right. I want you to remember one slip up does not define your journey.
09:25:01 It is amazing how many slip ups I've had, and yet I've lost over 60 pounds. It did not define my journey, but man, did I learn so much with every one of those as I quit worrying about preventing slip-ups as often, I was able to minimize them and I learned so much from each and every one of them. So I wasn't afraid of them anymore. It didn't make me a bad person.
09:25:26 It didn't make me a failure. It was just a slip up a mistake.
09:25:30 Okay, share this episode if you have a friend who needs a reminder that progress isn't about perfection. You know, we all have that friend who wants to make everything perfect and do it the right way.
09:25:42 I've been told myself, if it's worth doing, it's worth doing well but That doesn't necessarily mean that it has to be perfect, right?
09:25:50 Stay tuned at the end. It'll tell you how to take the free course. There's a five-day free course that I've made for you so that you can kind of start your journey too. I would love it. And then I have a webinar coming up next month.
09:26:02 So if you want to hear more about that, you can go to the website. It's all over that. And I will see you next time. Bye.
