Mindset Matters: Why You're Stuck Despite "Doing Everything Right"

Episode 76

Ever wonder why you're stuck in your weight loss journey despite seemingly doing everything right? The answer may lie deeper than your diet and exercise routine.

In this eye-opening episode, Julie and Catherine explore the powerful connection between mindset and weight management, particularly for women over 40. When hormonal changes make traditional weight loss methods less effective, addressing psychological barriers becomes essential for progress.

We dive into why the term "weight loss" itself works against us. Your brilliant subconscious, which runs 96-98% of your bodily functions, actively resists losing things it believes you need. This creates an internal conflict that no amount of willpower can overcome. For many women, extra weight serves as protection from past trauma or negative experiences – a fascinating "second gain" your body provides despite consciously wanting to be slimmer.

Your self-talk matters tremendously. Since your subconscious doesn't recognize negatives, saying "I can't lose weight" only registers as "weight" in your mind. We share practical techniques to identify and release emotional blocks without reliving painful experiences, including powerful questions that reveal surprising insights about what's really holding you back.

Most importantly, we remind you that you're so much more than numbers on a scale or clothing tags. You're the sum of your experiences, relationships, and contributions – a perspective that transforms your relationship with your body and creates space for genuine, lasting change.

Ready to understand why your body might be protecting rather than betraying you? This conversation will shift your approach to weight management by working with your subconscious rather than fighting against it.

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Transcript

Welcome to Far Too Fabulous

Speaker 1 0:25

Welcome to Far Too Fabulous hosted by Julie and Catherine.

Speaker 2 0:28

Join us on a mission to embrace your fabulousness and redefine wellness. Get ready for some feistiness, inspiration, candid chats and humour as we journey together towards empowered well-being. Let's dive in.

Speaker 1 0:42

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. Catherine is already cracking up and I actually thought that was perfectly fine today, it was lovely. I wasn't even looking at you. Welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. Catherine is already cracking up and I actually thought that was perfectly fine today, it was lovely. I wasn't even looking at you. Honestly, it's like trying to work with a child.

Speaker 2 0:57

I thought we were supposed to be having more joy Every time we start this off. Now I have the Muppet show in my head now.

Speaker 1 1:05

This has become a thing. We've made it into a thing.

Speaker 2 1:10

Have made it. I think we managed it when we've got our guests and we behave ourselves, although we didn't in the last one, mandy, said she didn't want behaved.

Speaker 1 1:20

Well, this is true, we don't really want to be, yeah, but it just. I'm watching the time because we have to do this delay before we introduce the podcast and I can't even look at you but I have to look towards the microphone but I'm like trying not to look at you at all, but you already started laughing before it even come to the bit where I was going to say anything.

Speaker 2 1:40

It's brilliant. I hope that people, when they put the podcast on, are now pre-empting this and laughing at us.

Speaker 1 1:51

Yeah, let's hope so. Okay, so this week we are going to be talking about mindset to do with. Well, we were talking about weight loss and we were having a conversation just generally like Catherine and I do about our clients, and you know that mindset plays a big role. Especially when you kind of get a bit stuck or your goal is weight loss is a classic one really. You're doing all the things but the weight isn't coming off.

Weight Loss vs. Weight Release

Speaker 2 2:16

So we thought we would talk about mindset today yeah, absolutely, it's a huge, huge part of it and I think that it's often overlooked. Um, when I am doing looking at other programs or like when I've created my programs, I really like that I get to address the movement and the mindset. I think it's really really important that, along with the nutrition, for me feels like the sort of real sweet spot in everything, is it? Those are the things that will, will help things move. But often traditionally, when people are talking about weight loss, it is either just about diet, just about nutrition, or those two in combination, and that mindset is is often left to the side. And and also things like lifestyle. But I think that I don't know, people tend to look at things uh, with like blinkered, and I don't think that you get to do that with with weight loss and I think that you need to have a look at it just in lifestyle in general yeah, I would agree.

Speaker 1 3:31

I think one thing yeah, because again, we've got this culture and we've been brought up in this environment where you eat less and you move more and that will give you your weight loss. And then we hit that kind of changes in our hormones and we get over 40 and the body says, no, I'm not really available for that anymore. So we think that we can use the old methods to lose weight and so we do all the things and nothing changes. Or even if we are working with someone like myself or you and we are doing the nutrition and the movement in the right way, that mindset part is the missing jigsaw piece a lot of the time, because you cannot get the change without it yeah, absolutely, and I will just say that we are talking about sort of mid-age plus women.

Speaker 2 4:24

When you're in your 20s and 30s, you can get away with so much completely different it doesn't really matter where your head's at your body is, is there, it's firing in all cylinders and it can sustain almost anything. You chuck at it most of the time and it isn't until, like, we go over that, like we were talking about that magic kind of 40 number and everything changes. The other thing I was going to say is that you said something about that whole eat less, move more, kind of thing and the whole calories in calories out. I mean I literally would like to get a gun license just for the next person that says that to me. I don't. Neither of these things have ever really really been the case. I don't know why they are so widely used the restriction.

Hormones and Mindset After 40

Speaker 1 5:21

And then this ties into the first piece on mindset, really, because the minute you restrict things or you take things away from yourself, then your body perceives some kind of major incident going on. Yeah, oh, my goodness me, why are we eating less? There's a famine. Why are we moving more? There's there's a tiger we need to run from. That's how the the body works. And then that bit that does my head in most of all is that the minute you tell someone that they can't have something, or you tell yourself you can't have something, you just want it, don't you?

Speaker 2 5:58

all you can think of yeah, absolutely. Well, that's because the subconscious does not recognize a negative. Yeah, it doesn't, does it. It doesn't. So I am yeah, I am not going to do something versus your, your positive action. I am going to, and something that's moving forward and is about you.

Speaker 1 6:23

That's what it wants and I think this whole term of weight loss, which I have spoken about before, is that our brain is set up to not lose stuff. Although I need to actually tell my 15 year old son about this. His brain is set up to lose stuff, I swear. But anyway, most people, apart from my 15 year old son and keys, keys, I think are set to lose, lost anyway, but for the most part we don't that way that the brain works. Again, you say it doesn't recognize a negative, it doesn't want us to lose something, so we've got to allow it to be released completely different. So weight release, not weight loss. The minute you say I'm going on a weight loss diet or I'm going to lose weight inside, your brain is going oh no, you're not yeah we don't lose stuff no, no that there's a gap, because we're here to survive.

Speaker 2 7:23

We're going to hold on to this because we might need it. I mean, that's why I keep other shoes right, because I might need them. You might need them.

Speaker 1 7:34

Yeah, I think I might need to let go of some of my shoes. Actually, shoes is a is an interesting one. But yeah, that mindset around losing something is really, really key, and but also that as soon as you put restrictions in place, it's just yeah, you're the way that your brain works. It's going to do the opposite of what you're intending it to do and the word diet.

Speaker 2 7:58

The word diet immediately has those restrictive connotations.

Speaker 1 8:02

It's got die in the word for a start I'm I'm not favorable for that I can't figure right?

Speaker 2 8:08

no, exactly, we're trying to do the opposite, right, but it's. It gives you the feeling that it is temporary, that you're going to do this diet for six weeks, six months maybe. So true, but that it's not a lifestyle change. It's something that's temporary, and then you're going to go back to what you were doing before.

Speaker 1 8:32

Yeah, that is so true. I think that a lot of the time, people will be pretty good with what they're eating and they may be moving and getting the sleep and drinking the water, but if they've got some reason that their body perceives, I cannot let go of this weight happening. Until you address that, your body's not going to let go of it because it's not going to be safe. I mean, a classic one is is if you've were, if you, if something happened to you when you were slim this is such a. This one comes up all the time in my clinic yeah, if something happened to you while you were slim that was incredibly traumatic, or even it doesn't even have to be really traumatic, but enough that you maybe had shame or something, one of those, yeah, horrible feelings that you can have, then your body is gonna think, when we're that certain size, we're not safe, we're not safe.

Speaker 2 9:33

Yeah, this is a huge one yeah, yeah, absolutely do not underestimate the power of subconscious. So it runs 96 and 98 percent of you.

Your Body's Protection Mechanisms

Speaker 1 9:47

It has to, otherwise we'd be exhausted, exhausted and I think sometimes we don't, we, we don't appreciate that. You know when, when children are really young and they're learning so much, they need more sleep. Yeah, they do rest more because it is exhausting. Yeah, because they are process all that and they're a subconscious sponge at that point aren't they?

Speaker 2 10:11

yeah, I demonstrated this the other day as I was doing a talk and I stood in the middle of the room and I went heartbeat, heartbeat, breathe, blink, heartbeat, breathe, blink, walk, talk, smile, swallow guts. You can't do all these things and function.

Speaker 1 10:31

No it that all has to just happen automatically behind the scenes. It's so freaking clever though, isn't it? It's so clever, but it can. It can hold us back, and I think that because this, especially around weight and releasing weight, becomes such a massive burden, almost especially as things are changing and we've spoken in the past about eastern and that insulin resistance, and that we could just be going about our life completely the same, and suddenly, why don't I fit in my clothes?

Speaker 2 11:05

why am I?

Speaker 1 11:05

size 12 and I was a size 10, for example. So we have this situation happening where yet we've got this burden. We want to lose weight, but we've got changes going on, our hormones are going crazy, etc. And we've got this subconscious running in the background that is wanting to keep us safe, conserve energy. So the last thing it wants us to do when it's trying to deal with these massive hormone changes I've got an emergency situation going on. The insulin's gone, um, gone off the rails, etc. The last thing it's going to want us to do is to release weight. Yeah, or?

Speaker 2 11:41

go into some sort of starvation mode or, yeah, it's going to do everything that it can to make you eat.

Speaker 1 11:50

Quite frankly, yeah, and the thing that I found really fascinating is that when we need to make progesterone which we want because we want to feel calm, etc. We want to balance that estrogen. That's gone mad. One of the key ingredients comes from our carbohydrates and often we will get that craving for sugar because our again, our body doesn't know that when it signals to crave sugar, that we're going to go and to the supermarket and buy a load of crap. No, it doesn't expect us to do that. I think so. Oh, we go out and forage some berries and that will give us the. You know what we need. It just doesn't realize that that's what we're going to do. So our body will naturally do these things for us in order to help support, but but of course, we then end up overeating.

Speaker 2 12:40

Yeah, yeah, we haven't quite. We need to remember that when we feel like that, that sort of premenstrual kind of feeling where, if it stays still long enough, you're going to eat it and I just I have a day like that every month and I'm just like I can't stop eating, have a day like that every month and I'm just like I can't stop eating. It's remembering that actually your body isn't asking for all of those sweet treats. Actually I take that back it is asking for them, it loves them, it wants them.

Speaker 2 13:10

It has no idea that they are totally bad for us and and I'm going to use I don't like the words good and bad, but they are bad for us. And and I'm going to use I don't like the words good and bad, but they are bad for us it just knows that it's getting all those good hits. And your subconscious loves the path of least resistance. Your body loves the path of least resistance. It wants stuff to be easy for you, it wants to conserve energy, it it wants to be ready and rested and fueled so that we can run away from said saber-toothed tiger yeah, exactly so.

Speaker 1 13:47

If our, if our subconscious is aiming to keep us safe and we've got a mindset, or we've, we've got a mindset of I'm trying to lose something and our brain is saying, no, I don't want to do that. Yeah, and we've. We've got a mindset of I'm trying to lose something and our brain is saying, no, I don't want to do that. Yeah, and we've had some traumatic experience where, when we were a certain size, something happened. We've got to deal with the mindset in order to get past this issue, especially if you're someone who seems to be doing all the right things. A lot of the time it comes down to how you're thinking about things, isn't it? And what about the stress on yourself when you are not happy with your body and you're looking in the mirror and you're saying, you know, I'm fat and ugly or whatever, I don't look nice in this outfit, then that is going to feed into that cortisol and everything, and then letting go of weight is really difficult. Yeah absolutely.

Finding and Releasing Emotional Blocks

Speaker 2 14:40

If you don't have a great relationship with yourself and you don't love yourself, if you, if whatever you're doing does not come from a place of of love and respect for yourself, it's not going to happen because you don't love yourself. That is the reason and you were talking about. If something happens, for instance, your example of if something happened to you when you were slimmer you've put weight on as a protection. It's called second gain. So even though you think that you desperately, desperately want to lose this weight and that obviously that's really really good for you, your second gain in your subconscious is if I and the story is, if I lose weight, I am going to be skinny again, and then potentially this bad trauma can happen again.

Speaker 2 15:41

And so often when you, when you're trying to like willpower your way or motivate your way through things, and it's not working, you keep. It's like two steps forward, three steps back. There is a reason and often it's subconscious that is blocking you because you can't out willpower this thing. And you know I'll just give you a really, really simple example if you're at home and you know there's a piece of chocolate or your favorite lindor ball in the cupboard, once you've remembered that it's there. I dare you to not go and eat it. I mean I double dare you. You can't do it. It's in there, it's in your brain. I know it's there and that is all I can think of. And you'll get to like just before you go into bed and you think I've made it, and then three seconds later, the wrapper's on the side and the thing's in your mouth yeah you can't outwit or out motivate or out willpower your subconscious.

Speaker 2 16:48

You need to deal with the blocks. It needs to start with self-love. Yeah, little tiny time, I know that that's a. That's a big jump. It's a big, big jump. I appreciate that. But it need you need to start somewhere, because if you don't love yourself, then you are not going to love yourself enough to go and do the hard things, because I mean, there are going to be hard bits of it too.

Speaker 1 17:12

Yeah, there's two questions I get my clients to write answers to to find the blocks. Which is so powerful around weight loss? But it could be anything. I want to lose weight but I can't lose weight because and then you get all the excuses come up I can't lose weight because it's in my genes. We've always been big boned, my mum was fat, you know whatever else it is. And you just list all those reasons I want to lose weight but it is hard. I gotta give up my favorite chocolate. I got you know. And then you start to see the patterns and you'll start to see a theme and then you can start reframing those responses.

Speaker 2 17:53

It's so interesting and I bet that half the things that those clients write down aren't even their stories that they have been told to them from their parents, from their friends, from social media. And if you look at that list of of reasons, slash excuses, I bet that you don't even agree with most of them. You know that they're not true yeah.

Speaker 1 18:21

But if you keep going with those questions, eventually you'll get to the. Something will come up and you'll be go. You're, you're like whoa okay. And sometimes this is where the trauma stuff comes up, like I've had people do this exercise and they've said you know, it would have been tied into maybe a divorce or a bad relationship or something that had happened that they hadn't even realized was really behind it. But suddenly it's came come out when they were writing it and they go. I understand now why I'm struggling to let go of that weight because my body is protecting me and that weight is a massive protection for the body.

Speaker 2 18:59

Yeah, massive protection, absolutely. And that ties into, but is not the same as, emotional eating, because you use the, the food, and especially the food that we've got available to us now, as a real comfort again. It, you know, it, lights up all those parts in your brain.

Speaker 1 19:18

It's really, really comforting yeah, yeah, and it initially tastes nice to us, doesn't it? Yeah, and and we know this, when we go to the supermarket and we're hungry, we know the sort of things we're drawn to. When that happens, it's never. We're never going to go and get the broccoli then, are we?

Speaker 2 19:36

no, absolutely and we always spend much more. Have you noticed? I've done that as well when I've gone thirsty. I've gone to the supermarket thirsty and I don't, we don't, we don't drink squash. I don't often like buy alcohol as part of my weekly shop, no, but if I go thirsty I'll end up with all sorts of drinks in there. It's really weird yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 20:01

So I think that the mindset side of it is so huge. If you're someone that is doing everything and you're stuck, you know if you've looked at, if you've looked at the what you're, what you're eating, and you've been really honest about that. Because you've got to be honest about it, haven't you? What you're eating and drinking?

Speaker 2 20:17

yeah, because you can really billy bullshit yourself, can't you?

Speaker 1 20:19

yeah, you can, you really can, and it's not even like it's intentional a lot of the time no I agree, it's just that I know loads of people that I've worked with that will write their food diary and they don't write all the snacks on yeah or the things that they've just gone in the kitchen, or I just grabbed that because that wasn't a meal so that doesn't go on the food diary.

Speaker 1 20:40

And then when you start to see there used to be that program, the hidden eaters you know that they're people that considered themselves that they eat really healthy. Yeah, and they had those hidden cameras and followed them around and then they were shocked. They were like oh my God, I can't believe I ate all that.

Speaker 2 20:53

Yeah.

Speaker 1 20:53

Yeah, that's again. That's our brain trying to protect us, isn't it? Yeah, and also that's a habit.

Speaker 2 21:01

It is a habit, Like we start to do these things, like when we're cooking dinner and we start to pick up food. I'm terribly eating while I'm making dinner. Yeah, and I also have this. It's funny and you say these things and I now know this is such a story and it's not true. But I want to wait until I am hungry to start making food, because I don't want to eat just because it's dinner time.

Speaker 1 21:29

That's such a story, isn't?

Self-Talk and Language Matters

Speaker 2 21:30

it. Yeah, I want to eat, just because it's dinner time. I want to eat, yeah, but I want to eat when I'm hungry. However, the the bad side of that is that if I start making dinner, don't you when I'm hungry. I've eaten half a meal before I've even got everything on the plate yeah and then, and then I'll, you know, force myself to clear the plate like we're used to. There's a story. There's a story we'll run with all the time clear your plate.

Speaker 1 21:55

Always told that weren't we yeah, yeah, the starving children in africa. I mean, there's all these stories that will be connected to the food. So we have got to look at the food, but we've also got to look at that mindset around this. It's so key. But, yeah, if we're looking at food, sleep, hydration, movement, all of those things, and we feel like I'm literally doing all the things, then we've got to look at mindset and then just some other things like I'm we mentioned about if your body's storing toxins again it's a safety thing?

Speaker 1 22:28

yeah, am I holding on to this weight because my body's protecting me in some way?

Speaker 2 22:32

yeah, you can be quite logical when you're investigating these, these things, and I'd say logical it's. It's quite tough with it, with the subconscious, but go, you can go into these traumatic experiences or you can look at these traumatic experiences and you can release them without having to go and relive them again. You can use things like breath work. You can use things like tapping, yeah, um, and things like um, like timeline technique and like lots of nlp techniques that you can use. You don't have to go and dredge up all of this trauma. You don't have to go and and relive it. You can go and learn the lessons that it was teaching you, because one of the reasons that you're perhaps holding on to these thoughts and these feelings and then potentially holding on to the weight and things like that, is because your body wants you to learn the lessons from so true, from what it was. So learn the lessons, take the lessons. Don't take the, the stuck heavy emotions that are going with them. Find a way of releasing them.

Speaker 2 23:47

That isn't food involved or alcohol involved or gambling involved or something like find a healthy way of uh, of releasing that, and then you get to remember the lessons and then you get to apply them. We do an exercise in um with my clients about looking for for patterns in the in the past and often it's because we've not learned these lessons and the body's going um no, we haven't learned this lesson, oh, we're going to do it again. No, we haven't learned this again.

Speaker 1 24:19

Oh, we're going to do it again. We haven't learned this lesson. True, that is so true. Yeah it nothing goes away until we've learned the lesson it's there to teach us. Yeah, it's so true that that does happen time and time again yeah repeating patterns is exactly your body and your brain, slapping you around the head, saying you still haven't learned.

Speaker 2 24:37

No, and also, like, the subconscious likes the same things, it looks for the same things. So it will until until and it doesn't know right or wrong. It just knows that this repeating pattern has kept us alive for this long. So it must be good, because that's what we want to do. We want to stay alive. So we'll just keep doing that, and until you've given it an alternative version it's going to keep doing that.

Speaker 1 25:05

Yeah, and the alternative version is going to be harder initially.

Speaker 1 25:09

It's going to take a bit of work and again the body doesn't really like that it doesn't like it it likes to, it likes to make things easy for you and then I think, when we're in that process especially related to weight release, because this is something we get asked all the time is tracking and measuring other markers, not just that relationship with gravity. Yeah, because there will be changes going on inside your body. If you're specifically targeting things, you may you may have a reduction in the fat percentage. You may notice that there's a half a centimeter off your waist measurement.

Speaker 2 25:48

All of these things are way more important you just like the way that you look in the mirror a little bit better and actually you might not look any different, like you might withdraw the line around your body and you'll look at yourself one day and you'll be like, oh. And you'll look at yourself another day and go, oh yeah, look at me and you may not be any different. It's just the way that you are feeling.

Speaker 2 26:13

Feeling that day yeah so, so true, and you were just saying about like weight loss or weight release, and we're talking about the scales and your relationship to gravity, which I think is so funny looking at your language. Your language is so, so important, and so I keep trying to. I don't like the word see. I don't like the word try I don't like the word try.

Speaker 2 26:41

I don't like the word, but my aim is to use the word change your body composition. Yeah, nice, always, rather than use talking about the scales or talking about weight loss or even weight release, but I like. I like weight release because you don't want it back again no, you just literally don't want to find it again.

Speaker 1 27:02

No, so yeah, it's so, so important. The language is really key because, of course, we speak our life into existence, don't?

Speaker 2 27:12

we.

Speaker 1 27:13

So if we're always saying I can't lose this weight or I'm always going to be this size or whatever it is, Remember, because your body doesn't recognise the negative.

Speaker 2 27:22

So all it, it just hears weight. It doesn't hear that, can't it just? And if you're talking to yourself badly, it hears that yes, and that's a stress yeah, absolutely if you are talking about other people, if you are being a little bit of a dodgy pants and you are being a bit of a a mean girl we've all had these conversations in the past and you're talking about somebody in a negative way. Your subconscious doesn't know that you are talking about somebody else.

You Are More Than Your Size

Speaker 2 27:57

It takes it personally and it takes it about you. Yeah, so your language as you're speaking it out loud, and your language in your head is so important. So just, yeah, watch the, watch the chatter inside your head as well. That's really, really important. And just if you catch yourself being mean to yourself, I would get you to think about whether you would say that out loud to somebody else. And if you wouldn't say the words that you're saying to about yourself, to yourself, to somebody else, then you're going to need to find a a kinder way to speak to yourself and I think any one of us, even if we're not feeling very happy about ourself it's normally quite specific it will be like I don't like that.

Speaker 1 28:50

You know I'm carrying a bit more weight on my belly, but there'll be something about you that is that you perceive to be good yeah maybe you've got nice eyes, your hair looks good, you've got good boobs, I don't know whatever it is. Then, when you catch yourself being horrible, then you just say however, I do have my hair looks really good today, yeah, or whatever that is.

Speaker 2 29:15

And remember that it changes from day to day, from hormone flux to hormone flux, how you feel about yourself.

Speaker 1 29:21

From scale to scale, your scales, my scales, this mirror, that mirror whatever it is, still the same person.

Speaker 2 29:27

still the same person, still the same incredible human being and like subconscious is at the base of everything that we've been talking about today, how amazing it is, how absolutely incredible it is. And just to, yeah, just to just celebrate how amazing you are, how wonderful you are and we love you.

Speaker 1 29:49

Yeah, I saw a post to finish off, I think I saw a post that one of our friends put up on Facebook where it said you're not your weight, you're not a number or the size of your clothes. It had all of these things that we tend to measure and be unkind to ourselves. It says you know, you're the books that you read, the music that you listen to, the people in your life your experiences, the songs you sing, yeah and that was really lovely and it.

Speaker 1 30:16

Yeah, I think sometimes we focus on the wrong things, don't we?

Speaker 2 30:20

yeah, you're so right. I love that. The doggies we walk, yeah, and the lovely people that we children we've raised that, yeah all of these things, what we are, we're not.

Speaker 1 30:31

I'm a size. This I'm not. This is how much I weigh. None of that I love that.

Speaker 2 30:36

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Speaker 1 30:46

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Speaker 2 30:50

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Speaker 1 30:54

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Speaker 2 31:03

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