All right, welcome back. I'm Kara Hackleman. I am Concierge Weight Loss, and today we are continuing our BRRRR month conversation about learning how to take care of yourself.
while actually, you know, living your life. So, a couple of weeks ago, we talked about why you might want a vacation from your habits.
Sometimes you want freedom or spontaneity. Sometimes you don't want to have to think about any of it anymore. We want to lose weight, we just don't have to think about it all, right? And we talked about how being intentional.
Doesn't always actually have to take.
all those things away. So last week we talked about how easily habits, they can turn into rules that dictate, that govern our lives. So wait for hunger becomes, I have to wait for hunger, and planning becomes, I have to follow the plan. Movement, you know, I have.
I have to work out so.
When that happens.
Something that was supposed to help you starts feeling, you know, like another diet, another bunch of rules, another contract with yourself that you're probably not going to want to keep.
So this week I want to take that conversation just one step further because sometimes the problem isn't actually even the habit, it's how much you've made that habit mean.
You didn't drink your water today, and somehow that becomes I'm so inconsistent. I can't do this. It's terrible. You ate when you weren't hungry, and suddenly it's I have. I have no self-control, or maybe you planned your dinner. You started out great, and then you ate something completely different. Right?
And then that becomes, I can't even follow a simple plan. So when you eat beyond enough or why can't you, like, it's just proof, you know, I worked, I don't work out. I need to get my crap together. It's just proof that I can't do this.
So.
Do you see what happened here? Do you see it? So we went from I didn't drink enough water today to there is something completely wrong with me. And that's a lot of responsibility. It's a lot of responsibility to put on just a simple water bottle.
That's what I mean when I say stop making your habits so heavy. So the habit and the story about the habit, that's what I want to talk about. There are usually two things happening when you don't do what you intended to do.
With weight loss, we have a lot of things we intend to do. So, yes, someone's saying that my hair is different. I definitely got my hair cut, and so she combs it all out whenever she does it, and…
it's straight, and I tried to put some curl in it, so until I wash it a couple times, it's not going to be, um, on here. If you're listening to this on the podcast, um, it's a great time to remind you that I record these live on Facebook.
And that's how my podcast gets done. So if you're finding me on Facebook, great. If you're finding me on the podcast and listening, there's always a video for all the audios.
All right, there are usually two things happening when you don't do what you intended to do. There's what actually happened, and then there's that story that you tell yourself about what's happened. So what happened was that you planned to walk after dinner and didn't.
But the story that you told yourself is that you're lazy. Or if you ate past enough, the story is I have no self control or I'm never going to figure this out. Or maybe what actually happened was you planned to have some cookies. You know, we're not practicing restriction. We're practicing, you know.
eating… eating what we love when, um, to enough. So, maybe you plan to have 2 cookies, and you actually ate 5.
But the story is, why can't I just do what I say I'm going to do? So, the first part is information. It's just what happened. The second part is your interpretation. That's where we talk about the story.
And the interpretation is often much heavier than what actually happened, because now we're not figuring out why you ate 5 cookies, we're trying to solve the problem of you being a person who can't follow through.
That is heavy. Those are two completely different problems, and one of them might not even be true. Probably, usually, is not even true. So imagine learning anything else this way.
Imagine if we learned every new skill the way that we try to learn how to lose weight. Let's go back to learning to drive. You're 16 years old, you're backing out of the parking space, and you turn too sharply.
Your dad says, Whoa, straighten out.
And then you think, oh my gosh, I knew it. I'm a terrible, I'm terrible at driving. I'm a terrible person. I'm probably going to kill somebody on the road. I don't want this badly enough. Why can't I just be consistent with steering this car?
Then you go home and decide you're going to start over on Monday. That would be ridiculous. We're not going to start over learning how to drive on Monday. You're learning how to drive. That's what we're doing right now in this moment.
Of course you're learning to miss your goal like.
Of course you're going to misjudge turns. Every one of my nieces and nephews and my son, when I taught them to drive, they thought that you had to go faster to go on turns. Slower and tighter was what they needed each time. But each time they thought, if I go faster, we'll get through the turn faster.
It was a learning process. You're learning where the car is in space. You're learning how quickly it responds. The mistake is part of learning, but when it comes to weight loss.
We think we should somehow already know how to do the things.
we're actively trying to learn. So you should know exactly what hunger feels like and you should know exactly what when you've had enough. You should know how much dessert will feel worth it or when. You should know what to do when you're stressed out. You should know how to plan and you should know how to make.
a better choice when you're exhausted. And if you don't, you make it mean you're failing.
But what if you tell yourself, I just don't know yet. I'm learning that that's a different problem. It's much easier to solve one of those type of problems. So I know what to do. I just don't do it. That's what clients say to me all the time. It's the most common thing. I know what to do. I just don't do it.
And sometimes that's true, you know water is good for you, and you know sleep matters, or eating beyond comfortable into fullness.
isn't probably gonna feel great. You know movement is helpful. You know these things. We do. We know these things. But knowing something intellectually.
And having the skill to consistently use that information in your actual life are not the same thing.
Maybe it's I know how to swing a golf club, at least technically, someone could explain it to me, because, you know, I was told I was not able to be taught by the golf instructor.
I could watch a video, yeah, feet here, hands here, you know, rotate, follow through, great, great, great, whatever, right? That does not mean I'm going to walk onto a golf course tomorrow, or really any time, and play like someone who's practiced for 20 years. So information, that understanding, doesn't mean that it's automatic mastery.
And I think we forget that. We forget that. You can understand hunger, like, enough, and when I'm hungry and how much I should have intellectually, and still need practice recognizing it, especially when we're busy and life is happening and things are happening around us while we're trying to eat.
You can understand all of that and still eat beyond it because it tastes amazing, or you still need to learn how to make a realistic plan for the version of you who gets home exhausted at 6.30.
You know how stress eating doesn't solve stress. We all know that. But still, you find yourself in the kitchen after a terrible day. Mine's ice cream. Mine's always ice cream. My niece says, oh, she's got the ice cream out, what happened?
That's not necessarily because you don't.
do what you know. It's… sometimes you're still learning how to use what you know. So, stop using your habits as evidence against yourself. This is probably the biggest thing I want you to hear today.
Stop collecting your imperfect habits as evidence against yourself.
You know what I'm talking about. Like when you say I didn't work out Monday. Evidence. I ate the chips last night. Evidence. All these are evidence against yourself. I didn't plan today. I I've been eating when I'm not hungry. These are all things that happen.
And we make them be evidence against ourselves. Like, I can't do this. It's… I'm incapable. It's never gonna work for me.
And eventually you've built this entire case. See, I can't even be consistent.
And once…
Once you believe that about yourself, every mistake that you make just confirms it. I can't be consistent. I'm not going to be able to lose weight. I had told myself that and I said, I just need to get happy being heavy because that's what my life's going to look like. I'm.
not capable of losing weight.
Whether it was me personally or physiologically, I thought I'm not capable, I'm not consistent, it's not going to happen for me, so you don't notice the 3 times that maybe you paused or left food behind, but you notice.
You notice the one time that you didn't and you make that into a huge big deal. You maybe you don't notice that eating earlier than you normally would, that you stopped, that you know you stopped eating normally or normally or my words are not coming out today.
You notice that you still ate beyond enough, though you don't notice that you drink more water this week than last week. You notice the day that you forgot your bottle. So see, we make it into that. What is that? My mom used to say a mountain out of a molehill, and so like you don't notice the 10 decisions that were slightly different than.
what you would have done 6 months ago. You notice the one that looks like the old you, like, I'm never figuring this out, like, it dismissed everything in the last 6 months that you did.
That one decision to decide nothing is changing.
So, that's heavy, and it makes practicing so much harder than it needs to be. So, what if it was? What if it was just data? What if it was just some information? What if instead of evidence, it was data? I planned to walk and I didn't.
What happened? I was exhausted.
I was exhausted when I got home. Okay, great information. Maybe the plan wasn't realistic. Maybe I need more rest. Maybe I need to walk before work, or maybe 10 minutes after dinner would have been doable when 30 minutes was not.
And I could have done it, but I thought that if I wasn't doing the whole 30, it wasn't worth it. So, there's lots of things that it could be. Maybe I just didn't feel like doing it, and I chose not to. That's information, too. So, like, planning for cookies and 8-5.
Okay, they were really good, you know? Like, what are we telling ourselves? Was I hungry? Was I really hungry and that was the first available thing? Was I eating them standing in the kitchen while I was doing something else? Okay, maybe I need to pay attention to something a little more, go sit at the table, or…
Was I having those restricted feelings that a 2 cookie decision and I rebelled against it so was I thinking I've had 2 so screw it I've had already more than 2 so I ate 5.
There's something to learn every one of these. It's something to learn, but you can't learn much when your entire analysis of it right when you completely think I just suck at this. There's nothing to learn. It shuts down. It becomes judgment instead of curiosity. And.
Curiosity gives us somewhere to go. It gives us something to try, to fix, to solve. When it's just us being terrible and bad, that sucks. So we shut down and we don't want to do anymore. Why would we want to give ourselves the opportunity to feel more terrible, more bad?
So the scale makes everything heavier too and when we we can't talk about this without talking about the scale so because this is really where.
Um, where we really start piling meaning onto things. So, you drank your water, you planned, you waited for hunger, you stopped enough, you walked, you did all the things, right? Great, great, great.
And then you step on the scale.
And…
It was up. Now what? Well, apparently none of this is working. That's what we tell ourselves. Suddenly yesterday's habits weren't self care anymore. They were transactions. I did this. So the scale should give me that, right? I did the thing. Where's my.
Where's my prize? And when it doesn't, we think, why bother? This is one of the reasons I don't want your habits carrying every ounce of responsibility for today's number on the scale. So your body isn't a vending machine. Insert water walk.
you know, stopping it enough. Press, what, B7, and the weight falls off. That's not how it works.
There are too many things happening in your body for it to work like that. So your habits matter because of what they build over time. And that doesn't always get an immediate result on the scale. So one day doesn't have to produce a result.
One choice doesn't have to prove anything. Your job is not to make every habit pay you back immediately. Your job is to practice taking care of yourself.
But I do need to be consistent. Yes, yes, you do. So consistency matters. I am not telling you what you do doesn't matter. I'm not saying do whatever you want and call it data. If you consistently eat beyond what your body needs, that's going to matter.
For sure, if you consistently aren't sleeping enough, it's going to affect you. If you're not hardly ever moving your body, you're going to feel it. So if you want something to change, some of your choices are going to have to change. But consistency is not.
doing it every single time. Consistency is much closer to I keep coming back to it.
That's what it is. Think about that brushing your teeth again. Analogy I've used the last couple of weeks. Have you brushed your teeth perfectly twice a day, every single day of your entire adult life? Probably not.
But would you still describe yourself as someone who brushes her teeth? Definitely.
The occasional miss doesn't define who you are, it doesn't define the entire pattern. You return, that's consistency, and I want you to start looking at your weight loss habits the same way. Did you miss?
Okay. Come back. Did you overeat? Okay. What happened? Come back. Did you not get all your water in yesterday?
Fill the bottle today. Let's just start today. Let's have it happen in this moment right now when we notice it. So you don't need to punishment. You don't need the punishment workouts on Monday anymore. You just start moving again.
So the return is part of the habit that's important, because most of us think the habit is, I wait for hunger, I stop it enough, I plan, I exercise, I drink my water, but maybe part of every single one of those habits needs to be, and when I don't.
I know how to return without making it a big deal. That is a sustainable habit. So how much pressure?
How much pressure are you putting on today's choice in this moment? I want you to notice this week, when you have a decision in front of you, how much pressure are you putting on it?
Because sometimes…
we're standing in front of a cookie, thinking like the entire future of our body is being decided right now. And other times, we can't even consider it, so we eat them all. So…
When that happens, when you're standing in front of the cookie thinking, you know, the life of your entire healthy weight loss is being decided on this cookie.
Do you decide, do I eat it, do I not? What does this say about me? Am I sabotaging myself? Do I really want my goal? Will I regret this?
Am I ever going to lose the weight if I keep doing this?
Goodness, it's a cookie. Maybe you eat it, maybe you don't. Maybe you have half.
Maybe you decide you aren't even hungry and you'd rather have it tomorrow when you are.
Maybe you eat 3 and afterward think, yep, 1 probably would have been enough. These are all conversations I've had with actual clients. You are allowed to learn from a cookie without making it a referendum on your ability to lose weight forever and always anyway.
So.
Today's decisions do matter, but it doesn't have to mean everything. It doesn't mean everything about you and who you are, or whether you will ever be able to lose weight. You don't have to prove anything today. I think this is where so many women get stuck.
Every day becomes another opportunity to prove I'm committed, I'm disciplined, I'm consistent.
I'm serious this time. I really want it. I love hearing these when they tell me it. Of course you do. That's all I say, of course. So, but you don't have to prove any of that today. You just have to practice. Just practice it. What do I want? What do I need?
What am I capable of? What would taking care of myself look like today? These are things.
What's the better choice that fits this exact moment? Those are just choices. So you make choices every day, see what happens, learn, and then make another choice later. That's it. Your entire weight loss journey doesn't have to sit on the shoulders of any one decision.
This week, here's what I want you to practice. Notice when a habit suddenly gets heavy.
Maybe you missed something you planned to do, maybe you eat more than you intended, okay, the scale goes up, you realize you haven't exercised all week, listen for what happens next, that's where it's at.
What are you making that mean? Are you making it mean that you can't be consistent? I always do this, I have no self-control, I'll never figure this out, I don't want it badly enough, and definitely I screwed up this week. That's what we say.
And then I want you to separate the things, right? What actually happened.
That's the information, the data, right? And what am I making this mean? What am I making it mean about me? What am I making it mean about my weight loss? And then take the meaning away for a minute.
What if this is just information? What can I learn? What might I try next time?
And most importantly, how do I want to take care of myself now? Not Monday, not after you fix it, but definitely not after you punish yourself enough to make up for it.
Now, because your habit, the habits, they don't need to be proof that you're succeeding. And your misses don't need to be proof that you're failing. You're practicing, you're learning, you're building judgment, you're building confidence and self-trust.
And part of building a sustainable habit is knowing how to come back to it when you don't do it perfectly.
So stop making your habits so heavy. Let's let today's choice be today's choice.
So learn from it, and then give yourself the freedom to make another choice, maybe a different choice. Maybe it's the same choice, because sustainable weight loss isn't built by never getting it wrong. It's built by getting really good at knowing what to do next.
Or being willing to try something different next.
So, if this is where you keep getting stuck, and if you're listening to this thinking, I understand all this, but I still keep making every choice mean something about who I am, or whether or not I'll be able to lose weight.
Maybe you know what you want to do but can't figure it out by yourself. You're not sure why you keep getting stuck in the same patterns. That's the kind of stuff that I work with clients on. We look at that together. So I offer a free call where we can talk about what is actually getting in the way of your weight loss, what you've already tried.
And what might need to be different this time, so there's no pressure to have it all figured out before you schedule a call with me. You don't have to prove you're ready enough or committed enough or doing enough first.
We can start with where you are.
You'll find the link at www.coachingkara.com/freecall. All right. I'll see you next week. Bye.
