Welcome back. I'm Kara Hackleman. This is concierge weight loss. We are wrapping up our September burr month conversations today, and it's finally cold enough to get to wear a sweater, so I went and got my sweater on for the burr month.
I want to pull together what we've been talking about all month.
We started with the idea that sometimes you want a vacation from your habits. You don't want to think about hunger. You don't want to plan. You don't want to pause.
You don't want to feel like the version of you who made a decision earlier gets to control what you do now. You don't want to have to, right? And we talked about freedom, spontaneity, intentionality
become when every miss, every mistake, turns into evidence that you are inconsistent, or lazy, or unmotivated, incapable of losing weight, right?
I told you then, the return.
of the habit. The return is part of the habit. So, returning to those habits. Today, it's not the I am or I'm not doing it, it's the return. I want to make sure I'm making that part clear. Today, I want to bring all of that together with one idea.
When life changes, your habits are allowed and should change to
And then you even went to bed on time, and everything felt organized. You're clicking on all cylinders, as they say. And then life changed. Maybe for kids, it was school starting, or your work schedule changed, someone got sick, something happened.
you started traveling more, you got busier, maybe it's just the weather changed, or you got tired of something, I don't know, you're help… for me, helping your parents, your kids are… I don't know, something, right? You're eating out more, something has happened, you got on vacation, and again, you know, bourbons, holidays start filling up your calendar. It doesn't matter, whatever it is.
The weather's worse, the evenings are busier
I need to get back to what I was doing.
But what if the habit isn't I walk outside for 30 minutes after work?
What if the habit is I regularly move my body because I want to be strong and capable and just.
Feel better
Now we have options. We can still have that habit be the, you know, the force without messing it all up. So maybe you, you, with your other options, you, you walk outside at lunch because it's still daylight, you know, maybe you do 10 minutes in the morning and 10 minutes at night.
Every Sunday you planned all your dinners for the week. Great. Meal prep, all the things. And then your schedule got unpredictable.
You had evening commitments, maybe your husband started working late, your kids had sports, and you're eating out twice a week.
You don't know who's going to be home when, and now planning the entire week feels impossible. So what happens
that kind of choice could probably feel good to me. Maybe ask yourself that ahead of time, or even what's my backup plan if I get home starving and I don't feel like cooking.
You didn't abandon planning. You adapted it in so many ways, so the intention can stay even when that execution, that follow-through, changes.
So this is probably the line I want you to remember most from today.
You don't have to abandon the intention just because you changed the execution.
You don't have to abandon the intention
something special and intentionally choose to eat beyond physical enough. You can still care about those things. You can care about planning even if the plan changes. You can care about movement even if your usual workout isn't available. The question.
Isn't always how do I do the habit exactly the way I normally do it? But the better question might be, what is the habit trying to do for me? How can I honor that here? That's a very different way to think. So the home version isn't the only right version.
And suddenly, it feels like the whole system that you had in place has disappeared.
But if a habit only works in one moment, in one environment, one setting, you don't necessarily have the skill of that habit yet. You have a routine and routines are great. They make things easier, but skills.
They travel.
That's what we're building. We're building the skill of those habits. I want you to know.
How to take care of yourself even when the usual
people hear, sometimes people hear, you can adjust your habits. And it… and they translate it into, nothing really matters. I can do whatever I want. That's supposed to be the beauty of this, right? That's not what I'm saying.
Flexible does not mean meaningless. It doesn't mean nothing matters. If you want to lose weight, your choices still matter. If you consistently eat more than your body needs.
That definitely matters, it's important. If you're consistently… if you consistently don't move.
That matters. You're going to get stiff and feel terrible. If you consistently sleep too little, it affects you for sure it affects you. So we're not pretending the outcomes don't exist. We're saying that the path to those outcomes doesn't have to look
Did I follow the rule? And instead of that, now we're going to start asking what works here. That's that. That gives us so many other options. So what does good enough look like in this season? Sometimes I think we also need to look at seasons because.
Not every season of your life
offers you the same capacity. There are times when you have more energy, more time, more structure, more support, and there are
What can I get through the drive thru? So there are going to be weeks when you sleep beautifully and weeks when life is just messy. The question is, what is the best way I can take care of myself in this season, this moment? Not what would my ideal self do?
That's a lot of expectation on our ideal self when it's not even available. So we don't ask, what did I do 6 months ago? Maybe we consider it, but what would I do if I had more time right now? What fits now? That doesn't mean you never challenge yourself. Sometimes the better choice is doing something that
on what fits. So, your habits should serve your life. This is the part I want to leave you with. Your life does not exist to support your weight loss routine. Weight loss routines are going to eventually be.
Something you just do every day and it's going to be a distant thought that it was something you started for your weight loss. It's just how you take care of yourself. Your habits are there to support your life. So that's a very different relationship. You are not trying to build.
A perfectly controlled
And sustainable weight loss has
Depression keeps you in the conversation. It keeps you involved. It keeps you from abandoning yourself and your goals just because the old version.
Doesn't work anymore. Stop forcing it. Let's just evolve, right? So build more than one version. Here's something practical I want you to try. Take one habit that you care about and create more than one version of it. So let's use movement.
Your best version. I love this good, better, best. You've heard me say it many times, I'm sure. So your best version might be a full workout, you know, an hour. We hit all the spots. It's like very detailed workout. You feel like I showed up and I'm great. I did all the things.
your whole day, or your whole week. And a better option could be, maybe you just plan your dinner, or your biggest trouble spot where you're a little more crunched for time.
And a good option, it might just be deciding the next meal with a little more intention before you're starving, right?
Um, you could do this with water. So, you've got a water goal. Maybe that's your best option. You hit it. And better would be, like, refilling your glass through the day, or good might be just drink a glass now and with your next meal. It doesn't matter. Like, it can look however it needs to look.
Instead, it's knowing that whatever happens, I can totally figure out what to do next. I can. I can figure… I can make a choice.
That's a big deal. I don't need an exact breakfast. I can make a choice. I don't need an exact workout. I know how to move. I can adjust. I know what movement means. It's when we start criticizing ourselves for it not being enough or it not being right. That's when we start having problems.
So, I don't even need the restaurant menu ahead of time. It's nice! That is definitely one of the tricks that I coach people with, is if you have the availability, just look at it ahead of time.
Here's what I want you to look at this week. Pick one habit that feels like it's not working quite right right now, and instead of asking why can't I get back to doing this, I want you to ask what has changed.
Maybe your schedule or energy responsibilities, priorities, environment, something's changed, right? Just ask yourself what it was, and then ask, what is the intention behind this habit?
What is it helping me do? What is it helping take care of? How am I taking care of myself with this habit? So finally, what could this habit look like now? Not six months ago. Not if you were being perfect. Not in the most perfect week. Maybe it's.
smaller or it moves to a different timeframe, or it looks a little different
You can keep trying them. So if you keep trying to force yourself back into an old routine, and if you're listening to this thinking, I know something needs to change, but I can't figure out what. Maybe you keep trying to restart the same routine every Monday, right? Every, every month.
Maybe it works for a week or two and then it falls apart again. Maybe you're tired of feeling like you can't, you constantly need to get back on track.
That's exactly the kind of thing we can look at together. I offer a free call where we talk about what's actually happening in your life, what you've been trying to make work, and, you know, what a more realistic approach to weight loss could look like for you. You don't need to have the perfect plan before you book. You don't need to have even lost any weight yet.
You don't need to know what the problem is yet. We can figure all of that out together.
You'll find the link to this schedule at the bottom.
You'll find the link to schedule your free call in the show notes, but it's www.coachingkara.com/freecall
next week. Bye.
