You Got There .. Now Make It Stick

How do you keep the results you've worked so hard to achieve?

In this episode, Julia shares the exact mindset and strategies that helped her lose weight, improve her health, and maintain those results for more than 15 years.

You'll learn:

•  Why sustainability matters more than willpower 
•  How to build habits that support long-term success 
•  The role identity plays in maintaining your health goals 
•  Simple accountability tools that prevent backsliding 
•  How to create a lifestyle that makes healthy choices feel natural 

Whether your goal is weight loss, better metabolic health, lower inflammation, or simply feeling your best, this episode will help you turn short-term results into lasting transformation.

Because the goal isn't just getting there—it's staying there.

Transcript

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Hi everyone. Welcome to the Jolie Life podcast. I am so happy that you are here and we are going to talk about today maintaining your health goals because we spend time on the goal on planning, on plotting, on working toward our goal. We put time attention there, but there's less time that is spent on thinking about how do we stay there once we get there? How do we maintain the gains that we have made? How do we make it our last time that we need to do this project? And so that's what we're going to talk about today. I'm Julia. I'm the founder of Jolie Life. We are here to help you achieve your optimal health and our focus is very much on longevity and sustainability using nutrition as our tool for transformation. But in this podcast, we are going to talk about all the things to help you stay where you want to be.
(01:13)
And when I lost weight after my last child, I did a very significant weight loss. I decided that this was going to be my very last time ever being on a diet. And I looked at the statistics in America. This was pre GLP-1s that most people who lose weight gain it back. And even with GLP-1s, some people when they go off of them, guess what happens? They gain back the weight. I have seen this happen. And I decided that, you know what? This is my last child. I don't want to do this again. I want to get to my goal weight and I want to stay there. And so my goal was to make it sustainable, to make it lifestyle oriented, to create a new identity for myself and to build in self-accountability. And so we are going to talk about those things today. And this is going to be good for you whether you are on a weight loss journey, whether you have lost weight, or whether you are on a health journey, maybe you're on an anti-inflammatory journey, maybe you're healing your gut, maybe you are lowering your cholesterol, whatever the journey is.
(02:34)
Once you get to your goal, you really want to stay there because the hard work is getting there. And some people will say the even harder work is staying there, but if you pay attention to these four aspects, it will be easy for you. So you'll do the hard work to get there, but it will be easy to maintain it. So first off, let's talk about sustainability. And this is something for you to think about now. When I was going to do my weight loss journey, I knew it had to be sustainable because in order for your gains to lock in to stay, guess what? You have to be able to keep living eating in that way. So this is not a crash diet. This isn't once I lose 50 pounds, I'm good. I can go back to my old habits once I'm 10 pounds down.
(03:28)
Once the doctor clears me for pre-diabetic, I go back to my habits. No, that's not what happens. Instead, we get there. Our path there is sustainable. And so things that I ask for clients to think about are what are your non-negotiables? Because those non-negotiables we build into your program. For me, my non-negotiables were wine, daily chocolate, and occasional dessert, occasional popcorn. I wanted to have those things in my life forever. And so on the road to get down about 80 pounds, those things had to be in my life. And so I built my program to have those things in it. The second was for sustainability, choose a framework that you like. And my advice is that you choose a framework that's not exclusatory. There are reasons for doing really, really restrictive diets and those are usually very acute health crisis or you have a very strong family history of a disease.
(04:37)
I run across this most often with clients who have heart disease that runs in their family and have had some pretty serious cardiac events. They are on a very exclusatory diet, but the need of it is more motivating than anything else. But if you're looking to lower inflammation or to heal your gut or to lose weight, a non-exclusatory diet is best. And what do I mean by that? We, of course, to accomplish these things, we'll begin to eat in a new and a different way, which we have to sustain, but diets that are very stringent. So let's say you can only eat X, Y, and Z are not really going to work for you long-term. If you can't be on your eating program or eat in a paradigm that is similar to your eating program, when you're on vacation, when you are at a restaurant, then that program is too exclusatory.
(05:40)
So one of the things that I really stress for Optimize Weight Loss Jolie clients is that the meals be the model for what you're eating when you're not eating Jolie. So if you see we've given you this much rice and this many nuts and this much protein and this many vegetables, when you order food in a restaurant, you're replicating that. When you are on vacation, you're replicating that. There is nothing that we do that you cannot transfer someplace else because our goal is that you learn to eat in a way that optimizes your health, not that you do a crash diet that depends on shakes all day and then you go on vacation and of course you're not going to have a shake for breakfast and a shake for lunch and this very specific dinner. You're not going to do that. So we're looking for things that are not exclusatory, where you can make wise choices and you can replicate it elsewhere.
(06:46)
Also, the other thing I did not want to count calories. I absolutely hate calfin calories. And so I wanted a paradigm where I did not need to count calories. That was super important to me. And so I came up with a framework that I like and it's very much like the Jolie programs because it was a plant-centered whole foods-based high fiber, low sugar, high protein, high anti-inflammatory agents diet, which ends up being remarkably metabolically effective in terms of helping the body to lose fat and to keep it that way. The next step for sustainability is to focus on better health, which we touched on when I was talking about how I planned my own diet. When you focus on better health, feeling better helps you to do better. And so you create a very virtuous cycle. The more and more you progress in your journey, the better and better you're going to feel.
(07:52)
And that feeling good when you wake up in the morning, when you bounce down the stairs, when you go to bed and you sleep all night, when your joints feel good, when your rings fit, when you're not puffy, when you're not bloated, that feeling good and noting that, making a mental note of, "Oh, this is what it feels like to live in my body. This is what's possible for me. " That helps you to keep doing these habits, to keep eating this way because you want to keep feeling this way. You want to wake up in the morning and your joints aren't creaky and stif. You want to go to bed and actually be able to sleep. You want to be able to clearly focus and to remember things. When your focus on your journey is better health, you will get that better health. And also in terms of sustainability, include the things that you love.One of the things that my family did when I was on my weight loss journey is every night we had Friday pizza night.
(09:00)
It was important to me that I'd be able to keep that tradition and so I built it into my program. That's one reason why we always have an optimization day because it's important that you allow yourself for the joy de viv to have these traditions in your life, these celebrations in your life and that's how you make your goal acquisition sustainable. So next up we're going to talk about lifestyle because to really accomplish your health goal along the way you are modifying your lifestyle. You're making lifestyle changes because it's your old lifestyle that got you to that pain point where you're like, "Oh my, I need to do something." And so the lifestyle is going to get a little bit of a renovation and here is a really important aspect of making it your very last time that you're doing a quote unquote diet. Spend time on habit tweaks because habits are what got you to where you are and habits are what will get you out and keep you out.
(10:13)
Some of the habit tweaks that I spent a lot of time on were my Starbucks runs. I shifted from frappuccinos to lattes from lattes to drip coffee. Whenever I walked into Starbucks, I had to have chocolate covered graham crackers that shifted to chocolate covered almonds and that shifted away to where I could walk in, order a coffee, just a plain drip coffee and literally walk out without anything else. So that's a habit. That is a daily habit that saves me if I compare nutritionally my drip coffee to my latte with chocolate cupboard graham cracker, you see a very big difference in the calories that I don't like to count and the sugar that is going to make me gain weight. So big difference there. Another habit that I spent time on was reducing the sweetness of things. Sugar is a downfall to mini. It was a downfall to me and part of unhooking from sugar is slowly reducing the sweetness of things.
(11:22)
I'm not a cold turkey person. If you are, go for it, but instead I slowly changed how my palate registered sweet. I wanted it to register it slower and slower and slow, like less and less and less, I should say, not slower and slower, but less and less and less. Another tweak for me was like going to the movies and not having Twizzlers instead of having Twizzlers. I started having Diet Pepsi or Diet Coke. And then after that I gave up those things because they weren't making me feel good and I can have water or I can have an iced tea or something of that sort. So think about where you can focus and transform habits that will help you maintain your goal. And my recommendation to clients as well as to you is to just take one habit at a time. Don't try and overhaul everything at one time, on habit.
(12:19)
I'm focusing on my Starbucks run. That gave me a lot of benefit and that probably took a good three months for me to transform that habit, maybe even six months, honestly. So just take one habit at a time and you will eventually get there. So that is part of changing your lifestyle. Changing your lifestyle is built on changing your habits. Other things that I did was that I started the habit of waking up at 5:00 AM and every day I go to the gym. That's just what I do. And that habit is what helped me to create a workout habit where my body expects to be exercising every day around 60 AM and that helped me to sustain my own weight loss. So think about the habits that are helping you now and how to hardwire them into your life and also think about the habits that got you to where you started from and begin to slowly unwind those habits.
(13:27)
The other aspect of making your goal sustainable that is related to lifestyle but is significantly different that we need to place some attention there is transforming your identity. Our identity, how we see ourselves, how we define ourselves really influences what we choose to do, our behaviors, our habits, our actions, which then produce our results. So some identities that I worked on were to be an exerciser. So I wanted to identify myself as an exerciser. I'd always exercise throughout my life, but I wanted exercise to take a center point in my life because it's something that I could hang my hat on as a newly thin person, shall I say? I wasn't having any more children. So what did I do? I created space in my calendar every day, this is what I do. I created drawer space and that's something that if you're not used to exercising, you may not even have a space to have exercise clothes.
(14:44)
And I highly, highly recommend that you have clothes for exercising. That from an energetic point of view is like one of those keys to yourself that, okay, I'm actually doing this. So get yourself one or two things. I always tell my kids want to wash, want to wear and have some exercise clothes, have your shoes for exercise. So have those things set aside. That's part of creating your identity as an active person if you don't already have that. And the other thing is to begin to associate yourself with an exercise that has community. So maybe you're a runner, so you join a run club and you form community around running. Maybe you like to do bar Pilates. So you join a bar membership so that you start to develop a community around doing bar method. Perhaps you are a solid core girl like I am.
(15:42)
Then you have a membership to build community around that because it's not only the exercise and the results that you get that keep you going, but even more than that, it's seeing the people that you like to see and you want to catch up on how their vacation was, how their kids are, what's going on in their life and they want to catch up on what's going on in your life. And so it creates a beautiful space for you to make connection with people and that connection keeps you coming. And so that is one of the double benefits of creating your identity. It keeps you doing the thing that got you to where you are at your goal. The other idea related to changing your identity is you might also need to change some of your hobbies. I started gardening. I started walking my little doggie because, and I had a big doggie at that time actually because it develops in you things that you do just regular.
(16:49)
You're not doing them for a goal. You're not doing them to lose weight. You're not doing them to lower your cholesterol. You're just doing them because it's your hobby. It's something you enjoy. So finding active hobbies makes keeping yourself moving, keeping your body active so much easier. So think about, okay, maybe you're going to golf more. Maybe you're going to start hiking. Maybe you're going to coach your kids' sports team. Maybe you're going to join a men's league. Maybe you're going to join a women's league. You're going to do something that just makes your life active. Perhaps you're photographer. So you're going to spend a weekend walking around New York City taking pictures. Things that are active will help you to keep at your goal. And another identity that's related to that is some of us like to go on vacations that kind of all have to do with food.
(17:48)
I really recommend that you start to choose new things. So maybe how you meet friends, how you vacation, how you go out with your family, it begins to change. Instead of in Missouri when I was growing up, it was like all you can eat buffet is super popular. Instead of an all you can eat buffet, maybe you start going to a different place with your family. Maybe instead of a cruise where you eat so much on those cruises, maybe you start going to Disneyland or you go someplace else. But to think about how you socialize with people, if it's always around food, suggest something new. Maybe we go for a walk, maybe we play a game, maybe we go to the movies, maybe we go to theater, maybe we do something else. So think about creative ways that you can go to a wine tasting, go to, that's food too, so probably not good.
(18:46)
Go learn about something you don't know. But developing new ways of connecting with people, it's part of developing your new identity. The other thing is give yourself space. So I gave myself cabinet space in my kitchen. I gave myself refrigerator space, refrigerator space for my jolly life. So I know I have food and that's the shelf that I take from and that becomes a habit I don't take from my kid's shell. I take from my shelf. And also I have a cabinet that has all my things. It has my protein powder, my creatine, my very dark chocolate, my olives, my nuts, my seeds, my fasting bars. So I have a space, a cabinet that I open and I grab from. So I don't need to open their cabinet and see pretzels and whatever else that they want, chips, things of that sort. So that's another way that you help to reinforce your identity.
(19:40)
Part of it is giving yourself space. One of my girlfriends says if you want to create something big, you have to create space for it. So giving yourself actual physical space for your tools of wellness and beginning to see yourself as that person. I am that person. And here's where mantras are very important and to notice how you think about yourself and how you speak about yourself, particularly your own self-talk, begin to add in things like, "I am a fit person. I am in love with how my body feels. I'm a healthy person. I am an active person. I am a person who feels really good in her body." Begin to identify you as that, not you as I'm a person with a heart condition or I'm a person who's overweight. I am a person who's thin. I am a person with a very healthy heart.
(20:36)
Even if that is not true, beginning to identify that way creates connections in your brain that influence your choices and your habits and it gives extra momentum to you actually becoming that person with a healthy heart. You actually becoming that person that is no longer pre-diabetic. And lastly, we're going to talk about built-in accountability. And this is super important because when you're in maintenance, you need to know, okay, am I still where I'm supposed to be? So built-in accountability might be twice a year you have your blood panel checked by your doctor. Built-in accountability might be like for me, everything got tailored. Everything fit just so because I wanted to know if I gained weight or if I lost weight. Everything fit just so. I didn't wear Lululemon all day because literally you can gain a good 20 pounds in Lulu and never know that you've gained it.
(21:38)
So that is another way that you can create accountability in your life. Fitted clothes, not Lulu all the time. And this scale is also a very important tool here. I know some people don't like scales, but scales are your friend. They're your numbers that actually tell you where you are. And here I sit just a range, a five pound range that you can go up and down with and that helps you to be accountable. If you're on the high part of your five pound range, you know, okay, maybe I need to pull it back a bit, leave a few more bites on my plate, skip my glass of wine, skip my chocolate that day, and then I get back into the middle of my range or the low end of my range. So having that built in accountability is very helpful. I like to use the inbody because I like to know if my muscle mass is maintained and if my body fat is maintained.
(22:38)
Those two things are super important to me and the numbers tell me it outside of myself and it's just information. The other way that you build in accountability is you keep to your habits, you keep to your workout habit, you keep to habits that are attached to the workout. So maybe if you're used to going to sauna after you go to the gym, you keep doing that because it keeps you in that mindset of, "I am this person." And the other thing that I found extremely helpful, and this is more for a weight loss client or a weight loss goal is to buy yourself the clothes that really let you up and are an investment. I did this for myself because I love fashion if you knew me or if you know me, you know I love fashion, but at a certain size fashion did not work for me.
(23:35)
So once I got to the size where fashion did work for me, I invested in it. And my agreement with myself was you can have this as long as you stay in it for the rest of your life. And it has been 15 years and I've stayed in for the rest of my life. My daughter's getting married this summer and I did the same thing with my mother of the bride dress. I want to literally be able to wear it for all seven weddings, assuming that there will be seven weddings, you never know. But those are all ways that you can build in accountability to keep you at your gold space. And so to recap, we put energy into sustainability, into our lifestyle, into our identity, and into building in accountability so that we can stay in the place that we work so hard to achieve.
(24:34)
And 15 years later I am same way in better health because I have more muscle and actually less fat. But literally each season I can bring my clothes out, put them on. I never have to worry. I can go to Miami, which I did this. I'm like, "You are a little bit insane." I pull out the summer clothes, it's like January, I throw them in the suitcase, didn't try them on, got to Miami. I'm like, "Oh gosh, I hope this worked." And of course it did. This is what I want for you. So that's all. If this helped you, please let me know, please share it with someone. You can connect with us at thejolife.com and you can connect with me at julia@thejolife.com and looking forward to seeing you soon.