Losing Weight 101

Trying to lose weight can be tricky. Heidi has been helping men and women lose weight for the past 3 years. This episode explores why we think we can't lose weight, the solutions most people have tried, and a different (hint: emotional) approach to losing weight.  

Get the 5 Ways to Lose Weight Without Dieting here. 

Ready to lose 20 pounds in the next few months? Info call with Heidi is Friday, October 17th at 11 am Mountain time. Sign up here. (That's 10 am PT/12 pm CT/1 pm ET)

Take Aways

• Being overweight is a big problem for people right now
• Reasons people tell themself they're overweight: no willpower, our culture...food is everywhere...gathering, entertainment, and at work, fast-paced lifestyle, traveling a lot, watching tv or scrolling social media, hormones, thyroid issues, overeating, stress, poor sleep, genetics
• What if the bigger issue to losing weight is emotional?
• Stopping overeating is easier when we address overdesire and overhunger.
• Learning to recognize and experience urges, cravings, and emotions (without eating) NEEDS to be part of sustainably losing weight.
• Emotional help + better information about the body, insulin, and fat adaptation = more success in losing weight
• There ARE ways to lose weight and stay at your ideal weight that are natural and sustainable. YOU CAN DO IT!

Want to feel better? I'd love to help. Book a 30 minute call with me (Heidi) here. 

Heidi's links:

• Heidi's website
• Heidi's Instagram

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Music 

• Music- Island Breeze by Surf House Productions |...

Transcript

Episode 75: Losing Weight Part 1

[00:00:00] Hello, this is the Living Well with PMDD podcast. I'm your host, Heidi Bradford, certified life coach, mom of five and PMDD Survivor. Happy to have you here. This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only, and should not be considered health advice.

Hello and good morning to you. I hope you had a wonderful weekend and are enjoying some pleasant, fall weather. , I know we are, I feel like our cloud cover this, we're now in October, but even September and August and still in October is so much more than it was last year. I don't know what's going on.

I actually kind of have some hopes that maybe. Even though we're in New Mexico, we might get a little snow , this winter based on all of the clouds and the rain we've been [00:01:00] getting late into the fall, so we'll see. But it's, it's nice. It was really nice weeding this morning with a nice cloud cover and then we had to come in 'cause it started raining.

We had a cloud burst. I was like, okay, we're done with that for now. Anyway, I hope you're having , a great morning.

Today we're gonna talk about losing weight. What we think the problem is, and then we look for solutions based on what we think that problem is. And then what if the problem is something different and can be solved in other ways?

Right now, obesity and being overweight is a huge problem. You probably already know this, it's not really a big secret, but I wanted to share, , some statistics from the CDC website. This is actually data from the National Health and [00:02:00] Nutrition Examination Survey.

During August of 2021 through August of 2023, the prevalence of obesity in adults was 40.3%, with no significant differences between men and women. Obesity prevalence was higher in adults age 40 to 59 than in ages 20 to 39 and 60 and older. The prevalence of severe obesity in adults was 9.4% and was higher in women than men for each age group.

From 2013 to 2014 through August of 2021 through 2023, the age adjusted prevalence of obesity did not change significantly while severe obesity prevalence increased from 7.7% to 9.7%, so that's a 2% increase. [00:03:00] And I think that last statistic is interesting because I think it might hint at a problem with a lack of hope.

That there's no hope. And so the severe obesity has raised, maybe that's not true. I just kind of wonder about that.

Okay. So when you think of losing weight, what do you think the problem is? And if you're by yourself, go ahead and say it out loud. Just name 'em off. You can think of yourself, you can think of someone else that you have noticed is overweight or obese. Why? Why is that? Why do you think they are overweight? And I'm telling you, if you don't struggle with this, someone you know, does. Someone you love struggles with this.

The list that I came up with is, , a [00:04:00] lack of self-discipline. I tell myself, I am not gonna do. X, Y, Z, and then I do it. Or I am around the cookies and I see them and I eat them. So that's one . And here's a list of others. Our culture we gather and gathering is paired with food. We attend parties. Even if they're work parties, right? There's gonna be food there, entertainment, there's gonna be food along with the entertainment.

Another reason is it's fast paced. I'm going from activity to activity to activity. If you're a mom, I'm driving my kids from here to there to there. I literally eat in my car. It is my restaurant, it is my kitchen. Maybe you live a fast-paced life because of your career or because you travel a lot.

It makes it difficult to make healthy eating choices.

Maybe the problem you think of is just overeating in general. [00:05:00] Or, , hormone changes or stress or poor sleep or thyroid issues.

Maybe genetics. Maybe it's watching too much TV or scrolling on Netflix while you're sitting down. Well, not scrolling on Netflix. , I mean, scrolling on social media or watching Netflix. Or just the convenience of our life. We can have Uber Eats drop off the food. Um, so we sit to eat the food and then we sit to watch our show, and then we lay down to go to bed.

You know, that's a lot of hours without any movement. Another thought I had , are just kind of linked behaviors.

It's kind of the reverse of habit stacking that. Um, James Clear talks about in his book Atomic Habits, which I love and I highly recommend. If you haven't read it, it's very good. But he talks about using, , stacking one habit on [00:06:00] top of another habit that you already have. And then once you've established those two, go ahead and stack another, a new habit on top of those two.

It can be super effective in achieving your goals and, , accomplishing a physical task while accomplishing an intellectual task or just. You know, doing something intellectual along with the physical. Anyway, it's pretty cool, but in this case, it can really work against us, right? If we're stacking, say, going out to dinner with our friends, and then we're adding to that overeating and we're adding to that having dessert.

And maybe adding to that, having some wine or some alcohol as well. You can see that the reverse is also true and that maybe that's the problem. Maybe it makes it hard to lose weight because we're doing these things that seem like we're only doing them once every month, [00:07:00] but we're stacking multiple things on top of it.

But in any case these can definitely be reasons for not losing weight,.

When we are thinking that these are the reasons we're not losing weight, we tend to look for solutions to these problems.

We might decide I'm not going out to eat with my friends, or I'm not gonna go to that family gathering, I'm not gonna go to the church activity. , We might try to solve for our hormones or thyroid issues by going to the doctor, getting our thyroid checked or her hormones checked and then getting on some medicine for that and hoping that will help.

Maybe it will, I'm not saying it won't.

 If it's stress, we might ask for reduced hours at work, or we may ask our husband to make dinner, . Or maybe you think if somebody else is cooking, then you won't be piecing on the food as you cook [00:08:00] and therefore that will help you to be able to lose weight. Those can help. Go for it. I encourage you to try anything you think will help with your health.

If it doesn't actually help in the way we think it helps, it will usually help in other ways.

However, I want you to consider something a little different. What if the bigger issue and the bigger problem to losing weight is actually emotional?

What if you or those that we love that struggle with, , their weight, haven't been taught how to handle emotions. Maybe , we haven't been taught to notice our emotions, to identify them and then to feel them. Maybe we've literally conditioned ourself or been conditioned by our environment to eat [00:09:00] our feelings.

, Maybe we haven't learned how to address urges and cravings. While those may be emotional or they may be driven by a physical cause,., Whatever's causing them. If we haven't been taught how to handle them appropriately then that could be the reason you're not losing weight.

We may feel like we want to eat almost as if it is a feeling. Or maybe when we are sad we go to food to feel comforted.

And remember, food isn't bad. Food is something we need. Also are, our body rewards us for life preserving activities. One of those activities is eating food. You will get a dopamine hit for eating food. , We automatically get an increase in dopamine and we feel a little bit better.

I don't know if you knew that, but [00:10:00] that was something that was new to me when I learned about stopping overeating and I really dove into, , a course on learning to coach women and men through stopping overeating. I did not know that, and just that awareness has helped me to realize why I am reaching for the chocolate chips.

Okay, if the bigger issue, or maybe it's just the issue you haven't addressed yet, is emotional, then we look at different solutions than we would otherwise. We might look at, um, how to solve for, our emotional issues instead of for our physical ones.

What if the goal of a weight loss journey is to learn how to allow and process emotions. And [00:11:00] what if when you go into, , a goal to lose weight, what if you go into it instead of, um, changing all of these physical things, which should be an aspect of it anyway. But you also, go into it thinking, I'm going to learn to allow and process my emotions.

Maybe that is the missing piece for you. Maybe that's the only piece that is missing. When we recognize that that is a piece of this whole problem that we are not processing emotions. We're not allowing emotions. We don't know how to deal with our urges and cravings., Then we can solve for those in ways that might be less traditional.

We can solve for overeating by solving for over desire,. We can get better and more targeted information to [00:12:00] help us solve for our overeating.

Once we recognize that maybe our emotional state, and our emotional, um, wellbeing is affecting our ability to lose weight then we can look to trying to lose weight by solving for overeating.

, The second way that we would pair with that is getting better targeted information. Some of the teachings I use are the three hormones that are really important to know and to be able to manage when you are trying to lose weight.

They're also the three hormones affected by when we gain weight. , Learning about those. Learning about urges and how to allow them. , How to become fat adapted where you don't, you just aren't hungry even when you've gone hours without food because your body has [00:13:00] learned to access your fat stores instead of being a sugar burner.

, Also you need information on how this is sustainable. . How to transition from losing weight to maintaining the weight loss. The way that I help people lose weight, it's very easy to then maintain their ideal weight, their natural weight.

So it's not a hard transition. There's just a little bit of, , tweaking that we do. , If you do recognize I am starting to gain weight, , how you can get back on track sooner rather than later. We can't solve for problems arising in life at inconvenient times.

That's just gonna be a part of our life. If you have extra weight because of something like that, this is a great time to address it. Down the road. If that [00:14:00] happens, , you can have the information and the know-how to put these practices into place again and get back to your natural weight again.

I hope this has given you hope there. There is so much hope. There are ways to lose weight and to keep it off, to stay at your natural weight, to learn how to feel and also, just to get better information. Let go of these things that you think are keeping you from losing weight, things that are out of your control or ways that you are being over controlling, , about your environment that may actually not even matter.

I have included for this podcast, my Five Ways to Lose Weight Without Dieting. It's a simple,, graphic, a little flyer. If you implement those five ways, over time, you really will [00:15:00] be able to lose weight if that is a goal of yours. I am also going to host an information call for my Lose 20 pounds in 20 weeks course. And that information call is Friday at 11:00 AM Mountain Time, 10:00 AM Pacific Time, 12 Central Time, 1:00 PM Eastern Time.

 I will, put the link in, , the notes for this episode. It'll either be a link or it will be a way to sign up , for that info call.

If you really think now is the time for you to lose 20 pounds. I highly encourage you to come to the informational call on Friday. If now isn't the time, but you would like a few tips please download the five Ways to Lose Weight Without Dieting.

It will help you maintain weight [00:16:00] to lose some weight to be healthy overall. So yeah, you have that right now. Have a great rest of your week. Have a wonderful weekend.

Thanks so much for listening to the Living Well with PMDD podcast. To learn more about life coaching with me, visit my website Heidi, H-E-I-D-I, bradford coaching.com. Until next time, keep hoping, keep loving, and remember that you are not alone.