Welcome back.
I am Kara Hackleman. I'm concierge weight loss.
I'm a life coach, weight loss coach, and I help women lose weight for the last time without a ton of restriction. So.
We are officially entering the burr months, even though it's supposed to be like feeling like 107 outside right today or this weekend. But September, October, November, December, those burr months, right? And I want to do something a little different.
With these next few, so because this is an interesting time of year when it comes to weight loss anyway, summer is ending and schedules are changing, kids are back in school, so vacations might be winding down, and before we know it, we're going to be moving into the holidays.
Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, you know, parties, travel, family gatherings, food everywhere. So traditionally, this is where weight loss starts to get a little weird for people. September feels like a good time to get back on track. It really does. And then October, we get busy and.
things are starting to ramp up with those colder weather months, and November has Thanksgiving, December has Christmas, and suddenly, we're saying, I'll just… I'll just start again in January. I don't want to do that this year. I don't want you to do that.
I don't want these next 4 months to be about trying to hold everything together until the holidays are over. I want to use the BRRRR months.
To talk about what sustainable weight loss.
actually looks like when you're living life, when you're living your life. Okay, so because you don't need weight loss skills that, you know, that only work when you're home or when your schedule is normal, because I don't know about you, but mine hasn't looked normal for a long time. So this is my new normal.
or like when you don't have groceries in the refrigerator, nothing stressful ever happening, and nobody invites you anywhere. That is not what we're trying to build our skills around. We want to be able to lose weight anytime. So you need skills that can come with you. And that's.
what we're going to talk about starting with today, okay? I want to talk about something that came up recently in a coaching conversation. Taking a vacation from your habits.
And I don't just mean an actual vacation where you go somewhere. I hear versions of this lots of different ways all the time. I was on vacation, so I really just wasn't thinking about it, or it was the weekend, so I just.
I wanted to enjoy the weekend. I wasn't thinking about it. Maybe we went out to eat. That's when I hear often, or we had people over. It was a holiday. It was some event, right? There's always some event. I just wanted to enjoy myself because you can't have.
Weight loss and enjoy yourself apparently usually what they're describing to me is something outside of their normal routine and there's almost this invisible switch that gets flipped at home in my normal routine.
I'm trying to do the things I'm planning. I'm paying attention to my my hunger. I'm stopping and checking in with enough so I'm not overeating. I drink water. I think about what I want to eat and how much of it. And I'm not afraid of missing out on anything.
And then, I'm on vacation, or it's Saturday, right? I'm sitting in a restaurant, and now I don't want to think about any of it. I just want to be free.
So what does not thinking about it give you? That was the question I asked in this recent coaching conversation. What does not thinking about it give you? And maybe your answer would be freedom. That makes sense to me. But then I want to.
Ask another question. Does being intentional, just a little bit more intentional, does that actually take away your freedom?
Because I think we sometimes have two very extreme pictures of what this looks like. I'm either being good and thinking about everything, clicking right along. I'm almost always doing all the things, or I'm being bad and I'm eating all the things and almost feeling like.
a little devilish about it like, Ha! Ha! I'm on vacation. I'm going to eat whatever I want.
There's almost this feeling of like, do you hear it? Of like getting away with something. And listen, I understand why that feels fun, especially if you spent years dieting. That's restrictive.
Because dieting taught us a lot of, um… or a lot of us, it taught that thinking about our food meant restricting our food. I'm… I'm thinking about what I'm eating. I'm probably trying to eat less. I'm probably, you know, trying to be good. I'm… I'm trying to say no to something that probably I even.
want. Um, I'm trying to follow the rules. So, of course, not thinking about it, it feels lighter, it feels easier, it feels like freedom.
But here's what I want you to start considering. What if thinking about it isn't the problem? What if the pressure, all that pressure that you've attached to it.
is the problem. Because think about what actually happens.
When I ask you to pause before you eat something.
I'm not saying don't eat it. I'm not saying you shouldn't ever want that again, and I'm definitely not saying that's too many calories.
I'm not saying if you eat this, you've messed it all up. I'm just asking you to consider. Just consider.
Do I want this?
How much of it do I want? Am I even hungry?
And what would feel good in my body?
Um, then maybe consider, could I have a little less? Would I rather have it later? Is there maybe a different combination that would feel better?
What choice best fits this moment? And then, then you decide. That's the part you forget. It's not a rule that you just have to do. It's you get to decide. So that's not taking your freedom away. That's using it. Freedom also means.
Being spontaneous. There's another piece of freedom that I hear from my clients all the time. They want spontaneity. They they don't want to have to decide everything in the morning. Exactly what the evening has to look like. Because what if someone says, hey, let's go get ice cream?
What if your husband asks if you want to go out for Mexican? Or what if your dinner plans change? You get a great offer. What if the restaurant, what if you get to the restaurant and something sounds so good and you weren't planning to order that?
What if what if someone brings something to work, or you have an opportunity that comes up that you just weren't expecting. You want to be able to say yes.
You want to be able to change your mind. You want to be active in your life, not have to exclude yourself from it.
you want to be able to live your life without feeling like the version of you who made the plan earlier gets to dictate what you're allowed to do now. Like, that… that sounds like a buzzkill person, right? They…
This morning me said no, so I have to do no.
And and I want you to be able to have that life, too. I don't want weight loss to take spontaneity out of your life. The problem isn't the spontaneity. The problem, though, is we tend to think that there are only 2 options. I either follow the decision I made earlier when I was.
you know, planning on being good, or I forget it all completely. I forget the plan, I forget the weight loss, I forget everything, and I do whatever I want.
But those aren't your only choices.
A plan, it's not a contract.
You didn't make a legally binding agreement with Tuesday night you when you wrote down your food for Tuesday morning. The purpose of planning isn't to take future choices away from you. It's it's to help you practice making intentional ones.
So if something changes, you are allowed to reconsider.
Maybe you plan to eat dinner at home, and now somebody asks you to go out. Okay, great. We now have new information. Now you get to make another decision. What do I want? What do I need? How hungry am I? Hear all these same questions again, you know, and we're still going out.
What's important to me tonight? Could I have less? Could I change something? Could I have it a different day? Or do I want exactly this, exactly tonight? Because that's the better choice that fits.
this moment. You still get to decide. And notice how different that is from, well, screw it, we're going out.
One is a decision and the other is a complete abandoning of the decision-making process. There's a big difference between changing your mind intentionally and turning it all off and walking away from your awareness.
I want you to become so confident, okay, so confident in your ability to make choices that your plan doesn't have to protect you from spontaneity.
You can change the plan. You can say yes. You can say no. You can say yes, but less. You can say not tonight, but absolutely tomorrow. And you can decide this experience is way more valuable to you than the decision that you made this morning.
None of those choices automatically mean that you failed.
That's freedom with trust, with self-trust. So sometimes, you know, freedom feels like not having to decide, and I think there's another reason we sometimes want to stop thinking about all of this.
Because considering means deciding.
And if I want to make it, if I make a decision, I might make the wrong one. Maybe I decide I'm going to stop it enough and then I don't. Or maybe I plan something and don't follow the plan. Maybe I tell myself I'll have two and then I actually eat four or five or six, right?
I don't wait for hunger at breakfast, or maybe I do, but I don't at dinner. So now, instead of just enjoying myself, I've created another opportunity to fail more and more opportunities to fail. That's what we're seeing. So it's easier to say I'm not thinking about any of it today. Turn it all off.
Because if I don't try, I can't fail, and I can't fail at fun either, so I don't want to have, I don't, I don't, I don't have to sit at the restaurant wondering whether I should order the french fries.
I don't have to pause during dessert and wonder whether I've had enough. I don't have to think about whether I actually want another drink. I can just eat. And that's what we do, right? But here's the problem.
If the only way you can feel free around food is by turning off that intention, that awareness, that's not really the kind of freedom we're trying to build.
I want you to have freedom and awareness. I want you to be able to, you know, eat the french fries and know that you chose them, and it's okay.
I want you to be able to order dessert and enjoy the hell out of that dessert, okay? Because I'm telling you, that's what I had to do. I had to have dessert, or I was going to abandon it all.
And I also want you to be able to notice halfway through that you've, you know, I've had enough.
And I'm okay. I'm done. I had enough of it for now.
Not because you're being good, but because you know how you want to feel. You're still learning this, and this is where I want to give you some room. If this feels hard right now, that doesn't mean you're doing it wrong. You might just be new at it. A lot of women I coach have spent years being told exactly what to do to lose weight.
Eat this, don't eat this right or that, and count this, track that.
Stay under this number or exercise this many times and then I come along and say okay what do you think well crap.
Now you have to learn how to make a decision. We all like to just be told what to do until we have to do it.
So you have to learn how to listen to your hunger and some enoughness, like what that feels like, and you have to get it wrong sometimes. You have to learn which foods feel good in your body. You have to learn when something is worth it, and only you can decide that.
You have to learn how much is worth it. You get to. You get. You hear me switching now? You get to learn how to pause without turning the pause into another diet rule. Of course you're not automatically going to feel confident at that. You're learning a new skill.
and skills feel bigger when they're new. Think about how many things you do every day now without giving them much thought that were once incredibly difficult to learn. You learned to walk, you learned, you know, to use the toilet and to brush your teeth. You learned to drive. There was times.
When you had to think about every little part of those things, now you just do them. And I especially love thinking about this brushing your teeth when we're talking about these habits, because.
Most of us brush our teeth probably every single day, maybe sometimes even twice a day.
But you've probably missed a night or a day and maybe you were exhausted, you fell asleep, you were busy, you were traveling, your schedule was weird, you were running out the door late, whatever happens.
The next opportunity, the next morning, that night, usually, usually you brush your teeth and you don't stand in the bathroom thinking, well, I didn't brush last night, so obviously I don't want healthy teeth badly enough. You don't say, I've ruined my streak.
You don't decide it's Saturday, I'll start brushing again on Monday. And you definitely don't go on vacation and say, I just want a week where I don't have to think about oral hygiene. You brush your teeth because you understand what brushing your teeth does for you.
And if you miss it, you return to it right away.
There's very little drama, and that is what I want for you with the habits that we're building around weight loss. Your habits are not something to be done to you.
This is such an important distinction. Your habits are not a punishment. They're not the price you have to pay because you want to lose weight. They're not something I'm doing to you as your coach.
They're not laws that you're required to follow. They're ways you're learning to take care of yourself. Waiting for hunger isn't about proving you can wait. It's about learning when your body actually needs food, and stopping it enough isn't about eating the smallest.
Possible amount. It's about learning the amount that lets you enjoy your food and feel good afterward. Planning isn't about deciding what you're allowed to eat and then forcing yourself to stick with it no matter what happens. You know, it's about giving yourself some support before you're tired.
Hungry, busy, trying to make every decision in the moment.
And so pausing is… it isn't… it isn't about talking yourself out of stuff. It's about giving yourself enough time to actually choose. Those are different things, completely different. And I think early on, it's easy to follow.
the habit like it's a law. I'm supposed to wait for hunger. I'm supposed to stop it enough. I'm I'm supposed to plan. That's okay. Sometimes we need instructions while we're learning, but eventually I want you to understand the intention behind the habit.
Because once you understand the intention, you can adapt it to what you need, and that's when it becomes yours. Think about it like the difference between following the letter of the law and understanding the intention of the law. If I think the law is, I have to follow my plan, then someone asking me to go out for ice cream feels like a problem.
My plan and my life are suddenly competing against each other, but if I understand the intention, planning helps me make thoughtful choices that support what I want. Then going for ice cream isn't a problem, it's simply another choice.
I can use that exact same skill in a different circumstance. That's what you're trying to build. You don't have to do it exactly the same everywhere. This is where all or nothing thinking gets us. We think our choices are, do my habits exactly like I do at home.
every single one of them, or don't do them at all. So, many options between those two things. Maybe you normally work.
out 4 days a week, and on vacation you don't work out at all, but you walk everywhere and love it. Maybe maybe you normally plan your meals the night before, but you're traveling. Planning simply just means looking at the restaurant menu before you go.
Uh, maybe breakfast normally happens at 7, but on vacation, you know, I like to sleep in, or the weekend, and I don't get up and eat until 10, or maybe I just go ahead and wait until lunch, because I'm not even really hungry for breakfast.
Um, it could be at a party. There's, you know, 6 foods you really want to try, so you just have a bite of them instead of thinking, I shouldn't have them. You have what's enjoyable. You have what you want, what you need.
Your water doesn't have to be perfect. Maybe your sleep isn't perfect or your hunger, nothing looks exactly like it does at home. That's okay. Taking care of yourself can look different in different circumstances.
So you don't have to abandon the intention just because you change the execution of it. And that is a skill I want us practicing through these burr months because life is about to give us a lot of opportunities. You know, Halloween candy and Thanksgiving. I've talked.
a billion times about pumpkin pie parties, travel, family, you know, all the things Christmas cookies.
Busy schedules, you know, stress. There will be plenty of reasons to say I'll deal with this in January, but what if you didn't need to? What if you don't need to?
So when a habit feels too hard, I want to address one more thing. Sometimes your habits really do feel like work, and if that's where you are, I'm not going to tell you. Well, sustainable habits should be easy, so stop doing that. I feel like I've said a version of that, and if that's what you heard me say, I'm sorry.
No, you are learning, but I also don't want you to carry 10 habits around that feel like your entire weight loss future depends on whether you perform them correctly, because look at how much pressure that creates.
This is what it takes. I have to do this. If I really wanted it, I would do it.
If I can't even do this, I'm never going to lose weight. I need to be more consistent.
I have to get this right. Of course that feels heavy. Of course it does.
There's so much writing on every little decision. Suddenly drinking your water isn't just drinking your water, it's evidence of whether you're capable of losing weight.
Waiting for hunger isn't just practicing hunger. It's evidence of whether you want it badly enough. And planning dinner isn't just helping yourself make a bit easier decision. It's following the plan means you're good and you're changing. It means you failed. No wonder you want a vacation from all of that. So.
So if your habits feel like too much, I'm telling you, do less.
Practice fewer habits. Make habits smaller. Practice one piece of it. Maybe right now you're just learning to recognize hunger. Maybe you're practicing one pause during a meal. Maybe you're working on water. Maybe you're planning dinner and leaving the rest of the day alone.
Remember why you're doing it. Your water bottle is not directly responsible for every single bit of your weight loss, and there's not that much writing on your water bottle. One walk isn't responsible for all of your weight loss, and one night's sleep isn't responsible for it all, and one dinner isn't.
Definitely one vacation isn't. These are all pieces. They're all pieces of learning how to care for yourself.
And you're going to get better at them by practicing them, not by demanding that you already know how to do them perfectly. You once, remember, didn't know how to walk or use the toilet, and you learned.
And you were a whole lot less capable back then than you are now. You can learn this, too. Do your best with where you are right now, and if you need help.
I have a free call. Just a free call. I'm one free call away. I am at www.coachingkara.com/freecall.
Let me help you. I'll see you next time. Bye.
