Embarking on a weight loss transformation is a mental marathon, girlfriend! It requires resilience, commitment, and an unwavering belief in your ability to succeed. This episode is all about equipping you with effective strategies to build this mental fortitude. We discuss how to stop sabotaging yourself, how to navigate social events with your goals in mind, and, most importantly, how to stay committed even when faced with setbacks. You'll learn to approach weight loss not as a series of hurdles, but as a series of opportunities for self-growth. You CAN do this!
The scale isn't the enemy; your emotional reactions to it might be. We dig deep into how to shift from an emotional mindset to a rational one when it comes to weight fluctuations. Embrace each change as an opportunity to learn and adjust your strategies. We also explore the need to stop comparing yourself to others and to set your own boundaries. By the end of this episode, you'll have a newfound perspective on weight loss, one that's sustainable, enjoyable, and most importantly, mentally empowering. Are you ready to win your mental battle of weight loss? Let's dive in!
ONLY A FEW DAYS TO LEFT TO GET OUR HOLIDAY BONUS!! JOIN ELITE COACHING AND GET OUR 10-PART SERIES: TRAIN YOUR BRAIN FOR FAT LOSS WHERE YOU'LL DIG DEEP INTO THE MINDSET PIECE OF WEIGHT LOSS SO YOU CAN ACTUALLY LOSE THE WEIGHT AND KEEP IT OFF FOREVER, FOR FREE ($400 VALUE!)
APPLY AND LET'S DO THIS!
Connect with me on social
WEBSITE:
www.hilarybalancedlifestyle.com
Embarking on a weight loss transformation is a mental marathon, girlfriend! It requires resilience, commitment, and an unwavering belief in your ability to succeed. This episode is all about equipping you with effective strategies to build this mental fortitude. We discuss how to stop sabotaging yourself, how to navigate social events with your goals in mind, and, most importantly, how to stay committed even when faced with setbacks. You'll learn to approach weight loss not as a series of hurdles, but as a series of opportunities for self-growth. You CAN do this!
The scale isn't the enemy; your emotional reactions to it might be. We dig deep into how to shift from an emotional mindset to a rational one when it comes to weight fluctuations. Embrace each change as an opportunity to learn and adjust your strategies. We also explore the need to stop comparing yourself to others and to set your own boundaries. By the end of this episode, you'll have a newfound perspective on weight loss, one that's sustainable, enjoyable, and most importantly, mentally empowering. Are you ready to win your mental battle of weight loss? Let's dive in!
ONLY A FEW DAYS TO LEFT TO GET OUR HOLIDAY BONUS!! JOIN ELITE COACHING AND GET OUR 10-PART SERIES: TRAIN YOUR BRAIN FOR FAT LOSS WHERE YOU'LL DIG DEEP INTO THE MINDSET PIECE OF WEIGHT LOSS SO YOU CAN ACTUALLY LOSE THE WEIGHT AND KEEP IT OFF FOREVER, FOR FREE ($400 VALUE!)
APPLY AND LET'S DO THIS!
Connect with me on social
WEBSITE:
www.hilarybalancedlifestyle.com
One thing that's often overlooked in weight loss is the mental side of things. It's really easy to hyper focus on the parts that are pretty obvious right Our food, our exercise, our sleep, our water, stress even but like what about the mental side of weight loss? There are some really important things that you have to battle and overcome if you want to lose weight and see results, feel amazing in your body, and today I want to talk about how you can win the mental battle of weight loss. So let's jump in. What's up? You guys? You're listening to the podcast. It's all about balance. With me, hilary Downey, on this show, I'll teach you how to ditch bad dieting once and for all so you can quit gaining and losing the same weight over and over again or get extreme diets that deprive you and don't work. With macro-gounding, you can learn how to lose weight eating the food you love Pizza, cookies and wine. It's all on the table. But we don't just talk about diet around here. We'll cover fitness, mindset, lifestyle habits all of the important topics I had to address in my own 100-pound weight loss journey that you'll need to reach your goals as well. You deserve to look and feel at your best and I'm so excited to walk beside you and show you how it's time to unlearn what you've been taught about weight loss and discover that it's truly all about balance. So let's go.
Speaker 1:Hello, hello, ladies, all right, at the time that this episode comes out, we will be in the final months of 2023. How did that happen? How did that happen? I'm literally rubbing my temples right now. If you could visualize me sitting at the BBH headquarters, I'm like how Anybody else Did this year fly? Or where are we at? Is anybody else like? No, this one dragged on. I am not even kidding and I know it went through a lot this year, but I'm not kidding. This year flew for me.
Speaker 1:I feel like I blinked and as we round out goodness 2023, in the final two months of the year, I wanted to really honestly just focus on some of the questions that I get a lot On social media. I get a lot of DMs and I listen to you guys and the things that you struggle with, and today's episode actually came from a question that I got from one of you babes who said you know, hillary, I know how to count calories, like I know how to log my food. I've logged my food for five years. I understand protein and I understand how much I need and how to get it, and you know, I understand that fruits and veggies are important and good carbs and all the things. But like there is a mental battle that I fight in a weight loss journey that I need help with. And when I was reading her message I was like, yeah, 100%, because in my 100 pound weight loss journey I caught on pretty quickly to the nutrition side of things, but I fought mental battles regularly throughout that journey and I coach my clients every single day through mental battles. It's just one of those things that I feel like there's a lot of content out there about. Here's a sample day of 120 grams of protein and here are you know, five like volume veggies that you should include and all this. But like, what about? Like the real talk side of the mental battles that we face in a weight loss journey? And again, you can know what to do all day long, like those tangible things like logging your food. But if you aren't addressing the monster that is your mindset, it can hold you still, like, literally, your feet can become cemented into the ground in your weight loss journey and you can go nowhere fast and it can truly feel like a struggle to lose weight. So I want to talk about some ways to win the mental battle of fat loss and hopefully by the end of this episode you will feel confident, confident that you can take on this fat loss journey and win these battles.
Speaker 1:So you know, mentally we just come with baggage. Right, we come with baggage. None of us are fresh young flowers Like we got life and we got some bad dieting. How many of us have bad diets Like, raise your hand in your past, right, we've been through a lot of diets. I wonder who like. I wonder what the count is for like the most diets Try it. I wonder if there's like a Guinness World Record for that Mom. Maybe Mom I'm calling you out Mom might hold the record for that one. Somebody out there is probably more obsessed with trying diets than mom. And either way, whether you've done a few or 50, there's baggage that comes from that, you know. There's baggage that comes from the way that media portrays weight loss and dieting. Right, these ridiculous standards bounce back after the baby and you know, I think we're undoing a lot of that as a society. But again, baggage.
Speaker 1:If you grew up in the 90s. I actually saw like a Reels other day and it was just so like it gave me goosebumps and I'm getting goosebumps literally looking at my arm thinking about it. But it was like all of these clips from like reality TV. Some of these were not that long ago, but there was a bunch from the 90s and as a 90s baby I related and remembered. But it was clips of like people talking about body size, body shape, using the F word, and I always. I talk about fat loss all the time, but like using the F word in the derogatory way that you will never hear me do it. And I'm not talking about the F you, I'm talking about the FA one. Right, like fat loss, but using it as a term to call people names or yourself names, even worse, you'll never hear me do it. And in the 90s it was everywhere, everywhere. I could not believe this.
Speaker 1:And men talking about women's bodies, moms talking to their daughter about their body, just in these video and media clips and I was just like holy cow. No wonder we have baggage about our bodies, no wonder we feel this. You know pressure from society to lose weight and you guys know my stance on this. You can absolutely lose weight and want to lose weight. You should never feel like you have to lose weight if that's not what you want to do. But if you want to, you should feel empowered by that. But by no means should this be for your boyfriend or your mom or your grandma or society Like. This is your journey and for you. And I can't believe, when I see those clips, how much we were just bombarded by other people's opinions on women's bodies Just mind blowing. Anyways, that was a tangent. I did not expect to go on, but my point that I did intend to talk about is that we carry that baggage.
Speaker 1:Unfortunately, it's kind of hard, like when you're starting a weight loss journey. So I'm speaking to you because I'm hoping that you're here to do things differently than you've done them in the past. If you're on this show, then you will learn to do things. You will be forced to learn to do things differently, because we don't do fat dieting, we don't do extremes, we don't do foods are good or bad, we don't cut out food groups, we don't do fast weight loss, quick fixes and obsessing over the scale or you know every little piece of piece of cellulite. No, that wouldn't be right Inch of cellulite, whatever we just we really frame weight loss from. Let's fuel ourselves properly, let's feel confident and strong and energized and amazing in our body, and let's do it in a way that's healthy, balanced, sustainable. And so I'm hoping, if you're listening to the show, that that's what you want.
Speaker 1:If it's not, this is not the show for you. If you're looking for a quick fix, definitely not the one. But if you are, what I want you to think about as I talk about them these five ways that I want you to prepare mentally for this journey. You're about to go on or about to start, or maybe you're even in the middle of, but, like, we're going to fight this mental battle together. I want you to start dropping the baggage from the past. Okay, so if your grandma commented on your body, your dad, your whoever boyfriend, ex, what a hopefully ex hopefully he's an ex If he was commenting on your body and thinking that that was okay.
Speaker 1:Like, I want you to start like shedding some of that as you go through this journey and letting it go, because holding onto it is probably holding you back, it's keeping you stuck and if you want to use it as a little fuel and fire to take light under your butt to get you going, like that's okay, but like remember that you're doing this for you and we got to just drop that old baggage and we've got to mentally prepare ourselves for this battle. Like I'm like put your war paint on. I'm just if you could see me, I'm like flicking the war paint on my face, okay, anyway. So let's prepare for this battle that we're going to go on and know that it's going to be a battle, and you all know I'm really about like positivity, like positive vibes, but like sometimes you got to like really just lock in to something that's difficult and call it what it is and prepare yourself to stand your ground. Because if you're too sunshiny and rainbow, I really give you guys a good balance. If you're too sunshiny and rainbow, then that can cause you to be a little like la, la, la la, like I'll get through this, but like sometimes we got to, we got to boil it down and have these hard truth talks and we got to prepare a little bit more like hardcore, and that's what we're going to do today. So start shedding the old baggage and let's talk about the five ways to prepare mentally to win the battle of fat loss, the mental battle of fat loss. Number one I want you to decide right here, right now, today, that you won't quit. I came out with the strongest one first, because I want you to listen. Decide you won't quit. This is a mental battle you need to fight. You're going to fight the whole time. I need you to fight it right now. It'll get easier to fight, trust me, but you got to right now, decide you won't quit. Decide that you are going to keep going, no matter what. No matter what.
Speaker 1:A lot, of, a lot of ladies have not truly committed to their weight loss, so they've got like one foot in the door, one foot out. And I see this show up a lot in women who are talking to me about possibly joining coaching. They haven't joined yet and they're like oh, I just, I don't know, this might not work. And so that language suggests that there's a choice and that you have not decided that it will work no matter what. And again, the baggage is how many times have I failed before? Right, how many times have I failed before? Okay, well, we're going to drop that and we're going to decide no, one foot in the door, one foot out oh, this might not work. Oh, this might not work, it's a cop out. It's a cop out so that when the very first thing presents itself, that the skill pops up or whatever, that becomes the reason of like, oh see, it doesn't work, I'll just quit. It's a cop out.
Speaker 1:Saying this might not work Allows you to have one foot in the door, one foot out, so that the minute that you have a little bit of proof that it might not work, you can just run and you can quit. You're not going to win the mental battle of weight loss If that is the mindset that you have one foot in the door, one foot out. No, you have to commit. You have to decide right here, right now, that you will not quit, no matter what. Yeah, maybe you do have to change something. That first thing you tried didn't work. I can't tell you how many times in my journey I was like, well, I'm going to do this, and then I tried it and it didn't work and I had to try something else.
Speaker 1:It is always worth it to keep trying and to keep making the decision that you will not quit and that, no matter what, you're going to keep going until you get there. Maybe you have to change the methods, maybe you have to try new solutions, maybe you have to adapt to certain seasons throughout. You have to be willing to say there's no quitting, like that's just just take it off the table, it's not an option. Mentally, it's going to be so hard to win. If you have not decided that you will keep going no matter what, because something will pop up that's gonna throw you off. And if you haven't gone ahead and had the conversation with yourself of well, yeah, if something pops up, I'm just gonna keep going, then it's just so easy to go in the other direction. So, number one mentally prepare yourself, decide today, you will not quit, you will keep going, no matter what, no matter how many setbacks, no matter how many times you have to try again, you will keep going. Number two change your identity.
Speaker 1:I have a lot of content right now coming out about this, doing a lot of talks with clients and just a lot of this idea around identity and changing your identity, and I know it's been mentioned in past podcast episodes and even recent podcast episodes. But one thing that I see women do huge, huge, huge, huge, huge problem that holds them back is things like this Well, I'm a self-sabotager, I always self-sabotage. Okay, well, that okay. So we're assuming that identity then, and you will some of you will die on that hill. Well, I'm a self-sabotager, no, I'm just busy.
Speaker 1:Some of you like attach to these identities that become the excuses for why you're not seeing results and it's easier to just say, well, I'm a self-sabotager, that's why I'm not doing it. Then it is actually fix the self-sabotage. You've got to stop attaching to these identities, especially these negative ones. I mean, if you're going to attach to an identity, attach to an identity that you're not a quitter. Go back to point one where you decided you weren't going to quit, and let's get an identity rolling of like no, I'm a fighter, I'm a warrior, I do not quit, I keep going, no matter what, I'm strong. Let's attach to that identity. Let's shed these old. You're going to have to shed these old identities and I saw this for myself big time, because my identity that I was clinging to is that I don't keep promises to myself.
Speaker 1:I was the person who was a very flighty. That showed up in every area of my life, whether it was work, friendships, commitments, anything, and certainly diet and exercise. Oh, I'm going to cut out this and I'm going to go to the grocery store and get all these foods and like two days later I was like pulling through McDonald's and I was like, what are you talking about? I didn't say that Like, truly, two days later, no joke. So I was really tied to this identity because for so long, probably my whole life, I had been somebody who didn't follow through on commitments, especially the ones to myself, and I had to.
Speaker 1:When I decided, right point one, to do this, I had to shed that identity and say, okay, but I'm not going to be that person anymore. The longer I held on to this idea that I was a self-sabotager, I was somebody who, you know, couldn't stick to commitments, or I was somebody who just ate fast food, I just loved fast food or I was too busy to do it. Like, the longer I held on to that, the longer that I did not see results, period, period. The minute that I started shedding that identity and declaring that I was somebody who did follow through on the commitments and the promises that I made to myself was the minute that I started to change my identity and change my habits and behaviors. Your brain is listening to that inner dialogue and what you say and your actions will follow, whatever you're thinking. So if you think I'm a self-sabotager, well, guess what? Your habits are going to lead to self-sabotage and it's not going to happen right away. But if you start saying and your inner dialogue becomes, I'm somebody who follows through on commitments, I can promise you you will become somebody who follows through on commitments. But you are still hung up on saying I'm this, I'm that, and you're going to die on that hill. Your weight loss journey is going to die on that hill if you cannot shed that identity.
Speaker 1:So, mentally, to win this battle, you got to get rid of these identities. You've got to get rid of this language and you got to change your identity. On the flip side, you've got to really start framing yourself in a more positive light, even if it hasn't happened yet. Fake it till you make it. Fake it till you make it and tell yourself I am this, I am that. Positive affirmations were huge to me. I know they were huge to mom and I still use them. I use them with my kids like this, my clients, like this is so important that you really start changing the way you talk about yourself. But you're just going to hold yourself back if you continue to just I'm this, I'm that. No, you're not. You are none of those things. Have you engaged in self sabotage before? Yeah, but you are not. Self sabotage. Stop, walk away, walk away, walk away. Start changing your identity.
Speaker 1:Number three we got to win this mental battle and break up with emotional reactions to things. Okay, this is some people. Okay, let me. Let me just say this you got to be like a guy a little bit and don't come at me about like, oh, guys can be emotional too. Trust me, I've got two little emotional guys myself. I let them have all their emotions. Got emotional boyfriend, emotional brother, dad, brother's dad, like I have like men and emotions. Yes, men can be emotional, but like, let's take this with a grain of salt what I'm saying. You got to become a dude about it a little bit. Okay, we'll say dude, you got to become a dude about it and stop having an emotional reaction every time the scale jumps up. If it's sending you into tears, that's a problem. You're not going to. You are not going to win this mental battle of weight loss because, guess what, you could do everything right, the skills still going to pop up. It's going to pop up.
Speaker 1:Fluctuations are the most normal part of a weight loss journey. I would be. I've never thousands of clients have never seen somebody not fluctuate. Never, once, not one time, not one. Thousands, okay, not one time have I seen somebody go through their weight loss journey without fluctuations. So okay, so they're that normal, they're expected.
Speaker 1:Yet you're still having an emotional reaction when the skill pops up and I get it. I have been there, I went through this journey. I know how it feels, how frustrating it is to be logging your food, putting forth the effort, hitting your macros, getting your workouts and doing all the things showing up for your goals and the skill pops up. It's freaking, it's infuriating and it's still to this day, a decade later, makes me mad when it happens. But I don't let myself have an emotional reaction that sends me into a spiral where I then self sabotage or let this dark cloud hang over me all day, to where now I'm down in the dumps and having a pity party over it. I look at it and I'm like, well, that's freaking, annoying.
Speaker 1:Moving on, okay, because if it continues to happen, then like we can address it from like, an actual like, let's find a solution and like tweak something and change something, but like there's zero point and getting sad about it and therefore like eating a sleeve of Oreos. Tell me how that's going to help this problem, please. You cannot tell me that you actually felt better if you did that. And I'm again speaking from experience because remember I had to learn to fight these mental battles myself. I went through the same thing In the beginning. I was so sad and hard on myself when these things happened and I just kept going because again, point one decided I wasn't going to quit. And I learned pretty quickly oh okay, so the scale just sometimes does that.
Speaker 1:Okay, so eating that sleeve of Oreos actually didn't help anything. So I can't keep continuing to beat myself up about this, like it's just part of it. Can't have an emotional reaction. And same thing I can vividly remember a time where I over ate. It was a weekend. I'd gone out to eat like twice I over ate and by the end of the weekend I just totally emotionally beat myself up about it and was like, well, beating myself up is doing me no good, but I had an emotional reaction. So then that whole Sunday I just ate and ate and ate and just like was like whatever, like forget this, like why am I even doing this? And then Monday I woke up and I'm like, well, that didn't help kind of like the Oreos, that did not help and I started realizing that having emotional reactions to these things was causing me to self-saptage and I had to stop doing that. You've got to break up with emotional reactions about these things and look at them a little more like a dude without emotion. Okay, you kind of just like shrug your shoulders and learn from it. If you really want to be productive when these things happen, learn from it.
Speaker 1:Now, with this scale, there might be some patterns for why the scale is popping up carb sodium time a month, all of that. So you can learn from that. But also you have to accept and just understand that sometimes it's just there's no rhyme or reason, it's just your body fluctuating. But learn from the missteps. Okay, so you thought that you were choosing the best salad option and come to find out that thing was like 500 calories more than if you'd have just gotten the like chicken sandwich and fries you wanted. Okay, well, instead of having an emotional reaction and throwing a fit and a pity party for yourself about it, how about okay cool. So I created some awareness. That calorie or that salad was way more calories than I thought. Whoops Again, speaking from experience here. Okay, well, now I know. Now I know next time I can do it differently.
Speaker 1:As women, we're so hard on ourselves and when I say emotional reaction, what I'm equating it to is you're being so dang hard on yourself. We're so hard on ourselves. If you watched Barbie, you know right the scene. I mean it were just ridiculously high expectations like, oh my gosh, you can never do anything wrong. That's unrealistic. You're going to have missteps in your journey. You're going to make some mistakes. Plain and simple. You didn't pre-log. You got the thing that you thought was the best and turns out it was a calorie bomb. Okay, so we learned something and it's gonna do us zero good. I know it's frustrating, but it's gonna do us no good to beat ourselves up and have an emotional reaction and be hard on ourselves and feel guilt and shame and think that we've ruined it. Definitely not. So we got to stop having these emotional reactions. Break up with the emotional reactions.
Speaker 1:When I say be a dude about it, I think it's because I'm very visual and I envision a guy messing up about these things and again, it's not black and white, not everybody. This is not speaking for everybody, but just in general. I just imagine a guy doing this and realizing oh dang, that was way more calories. And then just being shrugging and being like okay. And I'll tell you this comes from experience. I work with women, but I had a period of time where I did work with men in a gym setting and did the nutrition and I saw this firsthand. The reason that the men I truly believe the reason the men had better weight loss results than the women in this setting is because I saw the women make mistakes and let it just absolutely tear them up inside to the point where they were stressed, they sabotaged, and all this and the men would make the same exact mistake, if not worse, and shrug and be like huh. Okay, well, now I know. And move on, just moved on. It was insane and they had better results. I'm telling you I share that all the time, because I just see that women hold themselves back by having these emotional reactions when I say become a dude about it, keep that visualization in your head of just like huh, just like shrug, and be willing to learn from it. But move on.
Speaker 1:I swear the reason I lost 100 pounds is because I switched to this very fast. I very quickly switched from an emotional beat myself up, turmoil, spiral out of control to a huh okay. So the rational, logical side of my brain is just saying like okay, so we didn't. Pre-log, we learned a lesson from that. Okay, we didn't realize that salads have way more calories, sometimes because of all the toppings and the dressing and the avocado and the bacon and the ranch and the pecans, like cob salads are insane. So okay, so we learned from that. So huh, shrug. Now next time, I know, check out the calorie amount before pre-log, double check, ask if you can have things on the side, shrug, move on.
Speaker 1:You're gonna have to win the mental battle of learning how to shrug these things off and keep going. Number four arm yourself ahead of time and create some boundaries now. So, before you go into your weight loss journey, or if you're starting right now with this mental battle, want you to mentally prepare yourself with some of the boundaries that you need to set? Some people get into this and they start trying to set boundaries and it's like okay, like if you had set some of this up ahead of time. It would serve you far more, because now you're in a situation where you're sitting at a restaurant and you're having fun with your friends and everyone's looking at you about what you want to order and you're trying to fight a little mental battle right there. That's a whole lot harder when their eyes are on you and the server's eyes are on you and everyone's waiting and you're trying to make a decision do I get this or do I get this? And if you had walked into that situation a little more prepared, you wouldn't have to fight this mental battle right here.
Speaker 1:So things like eating out, things like parties, social events, traveling, alcoholic beverages what kind of boundaries do you need to set ahead of time so that you aren't fighting a mental battle in the moment where impulse is at play? If you are intentional about what it is that you want and the boundaries you want to set for yourself, and you can give yourself the space and the time to think and decide, you are going to walk into situations confidently, with intention and a game plan, and it's going to help you execute and stay on track and not have to again feel impulsive in the moment. I I saw this with clients very early on. I mean, I learned this for myself, but I really saw this play out with clients when I was very early on into coaching, actually, and I created an eating out guide and some of the tips in it were talking about things around setting boundaries and intention. And all my clients would come back to me and be like you know, once I read that part and I actually took action on that, I stopped struggling with overeating or choosing the thing I didn't want to, and it clicked with me very quickly that so many of us that are trying to lose weight or just walking into situations and like hoping we have enough willpower in the moment to deal with stuff, but, like, in reality, we're impulsive, right, and so oftentimes, if we're left to our own devices in the moment, we're just going to choose the thing, the old, familiar habit or the thing that I don't know.
Speaker 1:It might feel uncomfortable when everyone's looking at you to order, like something that's considered diet food, which is crazy, like a salad, so nutritious. Yeah, if you order a salad, you're on a diet, right. So, anyways, like that impulse control comes out. But again, if you are approaching these things with intention and arming yourself ahead of time, then you'll win the mental battle far more than if you're just kind of winging it in the moment. So create those boundaries, know what it is ahead of time and even at the beginning of your weight loss journey, like, decide, like, am I going to be more intentional about not eating out? You know your coworkers ask you to eat out all the time. Maybe you're going to set the intention of I only eat out once a week, and I know we're eating out Friday night, you know, after the game or whatever. So like, no, I am setting the intention right now so that when my you know coworkers ask hey, do you want to go eat? No, I don't, you know. And so again, ahead of time, before you're caught in the moment, arm yourself.
Speaker 1:The last one that I want you to mentally prepare yourself for is you got to stop comparing your journey to other people. This will kill your journey dead in its tracks, because I can tell you someone's going to move faster than you. Let me tell you right now someone's going to move faster than you. Someone doing the same plan is going to move faster than you. Somebody in your coaching group if you're in coaching, they're going to move faster than you, even if they started at the same time your coworker who's doing a diet, like at the same time that they're going to move faster than you, somebody is going to have far more progress in you. So what? So what? It's not your, their journey is not your journey. Who cares?
Speaker 1:So many women, oh man, this is definitely a woman thing. Sorry, guys, like we just compare ourselves constantly to the women around us, and not even in a bad way, like, not in, like I'm judging like a judgmental way, but in like a well, I'm doing the same thing. She is like why can she eat all that and not gain weight? And like, look at me, I see that all the time here, at all the time, rather. Like my friend can eat all this stuff and she doesn't gain anyway. And I even look at bread and I gain weight. And it's just like what? Like why are you even comparing yourself to her? You have no idea. No idea. And even if you do have an idea, we don't always have a full view of people's habits and exercise and how many calories they're even consuming in their day. So like you don't know what extreme methods somebody is doing, even somebody on the same diet plan.
Speaker 1:I see this. We've seen this in our 28 day challenge, where people will just lose a ton of weight at the beginning of the challenge and other women would come to us and be like, why am I not losing that fast? And it's like you have. No, I have no idea. It's not private coaching, so I'm not looking at their food logs. I have no idea what they've done. You can't, you can never know these kinds of things. But it doesn't matter. It literally does not matter. Comparison is the thief of joy and it will rob you. Rob you in your weight loss journey and I've shared this story before.
Speaker 1:But I really struggled with the beginning of my weight loss journey, with this because I was new to like really trying to lose weight like outside of like silly things I'd done in high school and college, just like weird, random, again two day diet, and so this was the first time that I was really serious after I had Tom and I've shared this. But I had friends that were starting diets at the same time and are trying to lose weight and a lot of them were doing different things Advocare and just some of these different things and they were losing weight so fast compared to me. So fast? Okay, cause they were posting about it publicly, so I was seeing it, and I can vividly remember having moments where I was like, well dang, am I doing the right thing? Like suddenly I'm questioning myself even though I felt really good about it.
Speaker 1:Now, all of a sudden, I'm questioning should I be doing that? Should I be, you know, moving faster? Like what's going on? And I had to have a talk with my own self because I didn't have a coach and it was very hard Sometimes. I wish I had a coach. I would have moved through these things so much faster. Why did I make it harder on myself, gher? Anyways, I truly would just have to have these talks with myself of hey, that's that's them, that's their journey. I have no idea what they're doing. Really, I also don't care. I'm focused on me. Right, like in school, keep your eyes on your own paper. I'm focused on me and what I'm doing.
Speaker 1:This is my journey and it doesn't matter if it takes them, you know, six weeks and it takes me six months, like I will still get there, I will still win at my weight loss journey. But looking around at everybody else has me fumbling over my feet and keeping me stuck and I'm not making the forward progress I need to make, cause I'm too busy looking around at everybody else instead of walking my straight path. So I had to physically again you know I love visualizations put my head down and look at my path and keep my eyes on my own feet and my own path and just move forward, and I'll tell you how it turned out. Everybody else gained their weight back. You know they were doing all these extreme things and everybody else that was around me at that time gained their weight back. And guess what? I created a sustainable diet. I lost 100 pounds. I created a sustainable diet. I never cut out food groups. I enjoyed my journey. I don't care that it took me longer. It might have taken me longer, but I enjoyed my journey. I felt empowered by my journey, I had a fun time doing it and I kept my results. So I'm good and I want you to be good too.
Speaker 1:You are going to fight a mental battle because we do tend to compare as women of looking around at the people in your group, at your coworker, at your friends, at whoever influencers, whatever and you're going to see that they're losing weight faster than you and you're going to question are you doing the wrong thing? You're not. If you are still not seeing the results you want at the end of 30 days, guess what? You're going to know that it's time to adjust something or to dial something in or fix a tweak. But, like you, cannot be concerned in the day to day with what everyone else is doing.
Speaker 1:This is your journey and your path and you've got to overcome all five of these mental battles if you want to win a weight loss. And it's not going to happen the first time. The first time that you say I am changing my identity. I am not a self-sabotager, I'm somebody who keeps promises to herself. That's not going to be enough. You're going to have to do that a couple times and build that trust up.
Speaker 1:You're going to have those times where you have an emotional reaction to the scale and you eat the Oreos and then you're going to go oh yeah, hillary told me that this is not the right way, so let's try again. And you're going to compare yourself and you're going to have a moment of I'm just going to quit and you're going to again go. No, hillary said. We're going to decide that there's no quit If you can overcome those mental battles. You are so much further in this journey than you even realize. You will get there. You will get there because of point one alone you will get there. I promise you have everything that it takes. Everything is already inside of you. You can lose weight. It's not impossible for you. Your body is not broken. You got to double down on these five things and start strengthening your mind and building a resilient mind so that you can win the mental battle of weight loss.
Speaker 1:I'm cheering for you so hard and if you are just like I, can't do it alone. I cannot do this alone. I need guidance, I need accountability, I need support. Click the link. Apply for elite coaching. If you're a woman who has 20 or more pounds to lose, I'll reach out. Read your application. I'll reach out to you. Let's chat, let's see if we can get some things figured out in the DMs about how you can start moving forward on these things and see if coaching is a good fit for you. I want to help you see that your mental battle you don't have to go through it alone. I'll go through it with you. I'll hold your hand through it. We'll work through these things together, having that accountability and the dedication of coming into coaching can be the difference between somebody just spinning their wheels, spinning their wheels and finally doing it, losing their 20 pounds.
Speaker 1:For some, that's just the start. They've got more to go, but that first 20 pounds. Let's tackle that together. Again, link and buy or link and buy. Link and show notes Apply for coaching. Let's fight this mental battle together if you need to. Of course, I love when you guys also just shoot me a DM on Instagram. I'm at Balance by Hillary 1L. Let me know if this episode was helpful for you. I'd love to hear from you guys. I will see you guys in the next show. Bye, guys. Thanks for hanging out with me today. I hope you enjoyed this episode of it's All About Balance. If you did enjoy today's show, make sure that you're subscribed so that you never miss a new episode. If you have not already. Please connect with me on social media. I absolutely love meeting you guys and getting to know you. I will drop the links to my social in the show notes, as well as our website. I will see you guys next time.