The Feed My Health Podcast

Weight Loss Simplified: Stop Overcomplicating Your Journey

• Rosalind Tapper

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Rosalind Tapper tackles listener questions on weight loss, motivation, and lifestyle changes, offering straight-talking advice for sustainable results rather than quick fixes.

• Stop overcomplicating weight loss and abandon the belief that drastic measures are necessary
• Motivation is just an emotion that fluctuates – build momentum through consistent action instead of waiting to "feel like it"
• Your environment significantly impacts your success – surround yourself with supportive elements
• Body confidence comes from how you treat yourself daily, not from reaching a specific weight goal
• Setting clear boundaries and prioritizing what truly matters helps balance work, family, and self-care
• Going to bed and waking up at the same time every day can be life-changing for health and productivity
• Examine why you feel guilty about putting yourself first – understand what you're gaining from this pattern

Follow me on Instagram @rosalindfeedmyhealth with any questions, and tune in next Monday for an episode on practical mindset and identity shifts that can transform your life immediately.


If you'd like me and my team to help you improve your daily habits, to lose pounds every week, and keep them off forever...

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Speaker 1:

Welcome back everybody to the Feed my Health podcast with your host, rosalind Tapper, the owner of Feed my Health Online Coaching. I hope you're having a wonderful, wonderful start to your week and, wherever you are in the world, I hope the sun is shining, because we all know how much better life is when the sun is shining. Today I'm going to be answering your questions, so I put on a question box on my Instagram stories rosalindfeedmyhealth if you're not following me there asking you basically to ask me anything. So today we're going to be answering those questions. So I'm going to do I'm going to try and do 10 questions. I do like to yabber, so if it's too, too long, I will probably do less, but hopefully you will identify one of these as being your questions. I want to get straight in to the point. Let's go so. Number one is what's one thing I should stop doing if I want to lose weight for good? Oh, this is such a juicy question. This could be an entire episode. The biggest thing is stop overcomplicating it. And then I would also say what you think you need to do to lose the weight for good is probably not what you need to do.

Speaker 1:

I see a lot of women thinking that they need to do drastic things in order to lose weight, and the reason why they don't get started, the reason why they think they need to be in the right mindset, the reason why they put it off and put it off and put it off and put it off, is because they think that what they need to do is horrendous stuff like water fasts, the 5-2, slimming World, the Cambridge diet you name it Like no, no, no, no, no, no, and also being stuck in a belief that that's what they need to do because once upon a time they did it and it worked for them. So, for example, thinking to yourself OK, so I have to spend ages going out running and doing cardio because once upon a time, when I was overweight, I ran on the treadmill for ages and I seemed to lose loads of weight. So that, therefore, all of that stuff about cardio not being the way doesn't work for me because I'm some kind of precious snowflake. I'm sorry, guys, but it has to be said. I feel like this is my safe space to say what I need to say. Get it off my chest. So that's the. There's kind of the two things I would say, not, not one thing.

Speaker 1:

It's very, very simple. Simple to lose weight. It really, really is simple. A lot of people lack the real, true understanding of how to do it and the guidance on how to get from point A to point B. They don't understand how to make alterations and adaptations as they progress and they don't hold themselves accountable. And it doesn't matter whether you've got the best diet program in the world If you don't have that accountability and you don't hold themselves accountable. And it doesn't matter whether you've got the best diet program in the world If you don't have that accountability and you don't have the guidance of when to kind of pull what lever. It is always going to feel quite difficult.

Speaker 1:

And if you want to go fast I'm not saying fast weight loss, by the way I'm saying if you want to get a result and get on and live your life, you need to go together, and if you want to go slow, you go alone. Simple, as I went alone for a long time because I thought that I knew what I was doing. I thought that, because half of the world got suckered into Slimming World, that that must be the thing that I needed to do. Now we're talking about weight loss injections and that's the thing that everybody thinks that they need to do, and nobody seems to care about their health, by the way, at that point. Everybody talks about wanting this healthy lifestyle and wanting to make it a lifestyle and all the rest of it, but they're quite happy to spend thousands of pounds on weight loss injections and ruin their insides and actually find that they're only losing weight because they've got diarrhea.

Speaker 1:

Anyway, I'm going to move on to question number two. So what do you do when you feel unmotivated? So, honestly, I stop waiting for motivation. I don't even I don't even sniff this in the air anymore. I don't even see this as a thing in my life, because motivation and I say this all the time, but it's so true motivation is just like an emotion. It is an emotion, it's happiness, it's sadness. I mean, do you wake up every morning and expect to be happy all day? Do you wake up in the morning and expect to feel excited all the time, like, why do you expect to feel an emotion all day long, consistently? Why do you expect to feel motivated all the time? And it if you, as soon as you start to realize that your results won't come or go based on the fact that you're motivated or not. It really frees you. It really frees you from waiting for motivation to happen.

Speaker 1:

What actually helps you to get going and doing the thing is doing the thing. It's based on momentum. You know, if you have a grandfather, not a grandfather, that's a really bad example. If you, ok, if you hold a piece of string, and then you, this is such a bad example, ros. Well, I'm like the queen of analogies and I can't think of one. If you wave a, if you have a pole, and the pole is still, and then you hit the pole and the pole moves, it's moving and it keeps moving and it keeps moving because momentum right, it's the same thing. So it's actually in the small actions that will keep you moving forwards, even when you don't feel like it.

Speaker 1:

And also, I'm just going to say this in the most loving and kind way possible, because I want the best for you is just be a grown up about it. Like there's a lot of things in life that we do, that we don't do because we want to do them. Like I don't want to pay my mortgage every month, but I've got it. If I want to live in my house, you know, I don't wait to feel like paying for my mortgage. I just do it because I know I have to. I don't have to feel motivated to brush my teeth because I just do it, because I'm a grown-up, so it's the same way you have, like, do we really care so little about our own personal health and confidence that we have to wait to be motivated to do it? Like, listen to how that sounds. I know I'm being like I am being crazy, but just think about how you can make your life easier. I think this is really critical, right?

Speaker 1:

What will separate you from somebody that is potentially struggling is the environment that you are in. If you're in a house surrounded by chocolate, wine, a TV in every bedroom, a TV in every room, potentially just if your environment environment is set up to make it difficult for you, then that's not going to help. Okay, so your environment is everything. And then it goes down to like who do you spend most time with? If your circle of friends are people that like to socialize and go out for dinner and go out for drinks and they don't align with your goal because that's not their goal, but then you blame fear of failure, fear of missing out, sorry on the fact that you didn't maybe stick to your plan or stick to your targets that week. That's on you. That's because you've put yourself in a situation, an environment or a social circle that, without sounding drastic, set you up to fail. Okay, now it takes a.

Speaker 1:

Really, really disciplined is not the right word, I don't think. I think it's more to do with your identity, how you see yourself and your why behind your goals, as to whether or not you could go out to a restaurant and not, you know, drink two bottles of wine and order a starter made in a dessert. If that doesn't align with the goal, of course. If that does align with the goal, then go for it. But if you're starting something afresh and then your first week you go out for 25 different social occasions, of course it's going to be very, very difficult. So don't set yourself up for failure.

Speaker 1:

Make sure that your environment supports the kind of lifestyle that you want to have. And here's the real thing that lifestyle that you need to have in order to lose the weight is very much the same lifestyle that you need to maintain the weight, and that is why most people don't maintain their, their goals is because they're not willing to actually make the thing that like help them lose the weight be part of their life. They are just seeing it as a means to an end. If you are only going out for your daily walks because you're motivated by weight loss, you aren't going to maintain it. If you're only going to the gym or going on the treadmill to lose weight and to burn calories, you aren't going to maintain it. Bottom line and I'm saying this from a place of I have been here before. I've been that person that did all of those things, so I now feel I have the right to kind of come down on you a little bit hard, but sometimes I think it's good to hear this.

Speaker 1:

Anyway, moving on to number three, do you ever struggle with body confidence? Oh my gosh, absolutely Absolutely. I mean, I would reckon that even if you know Kendall Jenner, who is absolutely stunningly beautiful and a supermodel, I would say that probably she suffers from body confidence issues on a daily. Like most people are conscious about something and it's very much like you know, if you've got straight hair, you want curly hair. If you've got curly hair, you want straight hair. You'll always be your own worst critic, and when you come from a foundation of being so critical of yourself.

Speaker 1:

You have to really learn to look for the great things, the positive things, and that's actually why it's really beneficial to do progress photographs and have your coach look at them and assess them, because they will be looking for all of the amazing changes. They'll be looking at you know your definition and your muscles and where you're losing the most body fat, and you know your composition and your sculpting. They won't be looking at the things that you think are wrong and often they aren't wrong anyway. It's just the bits that you know. You're going to be very, very picky about what it is you don't like, but what I have learned over the years is that confidence doesn't come from hitting a goal weight. It comes from how you treat yourself and how you speak about yourself. It's the way you talk to yourself, how you nourish your body, how you show up for yourself daily.

Speaker 1:

Have you ever noticed how, when you eat good foods and you go out for a walk and you do your workout, you feel really good about yourself? You show up differently, you walk taller and no, you wouldn't have got like a five stone loss in that day just from doing those few things, but you walk taller because you've treated yourself with the respect that you deserve. And if you do that every day, imagine how you would feel. So just something to think about there. Um, number four I'm guessing this person must be an entrepreneur or own their own business or something, because this would be the sort of question somebody like that would ask. But it's, how do work in progress?

Speaker 1:

Um, I think, with children, I think. I think when kids are little, you're desperately waiting for them to grow up and be independent. So you've got your time back and stuff, and I think obviously there is that element of it. But I also think that you get a lot more kind of guilt from it as well. So, for example, a lot of our children, a lot of our children, that we've got 20, 20 kids, our children, bar maybe one. They are quite self-sufficient and they just sort of, you know, fester away in the bedrooms.

Speaker 1:

And if you'd have said to me when they were maybe five, six years old and like, pulling down everything off the shelves and getting in everything, this is what they'll be doing you would have thought like, oh, you know, that sounds great, but actually it just comes with a load of guilt because you think, oh my god, are they getting enough sunshine? Are they spending too much time on their phones? Should they be exercising more? Should they be doing other things that aren't just staring at screen, you know? Should they be learning the oboe or running a marathon, or? You know there's a lot of oh. Am I spending enough time with them? Are we having enough conversation? You know there's a lot of guilt. So I think all children all that, to say all children at any stage, is a work in progress, and there's different devils at different levels is what I'll say.

Speaker 1:

But what I've learned is that to have balance isn't about doing everything perfectly. It's about knowing what matters most in each day and each moment. So this is something that I have been refining since forever. Because I'm so into making my life as effortlessly uncomplicated as possible. I try to streamline everything strategies to make the cooking simpler, the housework simpler, the business simpler, raising of the kids simpler. If I can find a simpler way, I will, and I'm all about optimization. So, with my time, I very much spend it on projects or things or with people that bring something to my life and will move my life forwards.

Speaker 1:

I do not spend time with anybody that is going to sap the life out of me or is wasting my time, and I don't do things that waste my time. There is a difference, by the way. So sometimes I'll sit and I'll watch the Kardashians and I'll feel really guilty for just sitting and watching the Kardashians, which is, you know, absolutely crazy. But it's remembering that downtime and just doing nothing sometimes is just as important as being on the go, being busy and just doing stuff all the time. So it's finding that balance between work grind really like building the empire and helping as many people as possible, spending time with the kids and giving yourself time to do things you need to do as an individual. And you know boundaries. Having boundaries is a game changer, something that I think you know. We can always always look to refine.

Speaker 1:

Um on a more practical kind of sense, it's setting clear work hours. It's planning, planning in things and just not expecting every day to go exactly how you want it to. Yes, you can be in control of your time blocking and you know doing this, that and the other, but things do crop up and it's just realizing that you know, as long as what you're doing most of the time is helping you get from point a to point b, then that's great, you know. Don't. But don't compromise what you truly need and want deep down for surface level crap, like don't sacrifice your time for yourself to get outside or to do a gym session over you know the washing up, because I can guarantee that when you are lying on your deathbed you aren't going to be saying I wish I'd spent more time washing up. You will probably be thinking I wish I'd spent more time strengthening my body, protecting my health, so I could live as long as possible and be with the people that I love. So in the moments when you're talking yourself out of doing the thing that's hard or that you don't really fancy doing, that's a really good little reflection tool.

Speaker 1:

Number five if I only have 20 minutes to work out, what's the best thing to do? So 20 minutes in terms of an entire week, or are we talking for a one session? Or I would definitely need to have more context? But number one I would always say is let's go with the whole premise of you've got your steps covered, you've got your sleep covered, you've got your nutrition covered. If we're talking about specifics, I would be doing strength training and I'd be doing a full body session with weights and that, whether that be at home or at the gym, that's what I do for 20 minutes.

Speaker 1:

Number six what's one piece of advice you'd give to your younger self? What's one piece of advice you'd give to your younger self? That would be that it's not your job to make people like you. You don't have to like everybody, they don't have to like you. So the kids are now back from school, so you'll probably hear some racket in the background. But the next question is how do I stop feeling guilty for putting myself first? Now my question back to you would be how does it benefit you to put yourself last and how does it benefit others for you to put them first? Because regardless of the wheres and the whys, there's always going to be a reason why we do something and what the benefit is to you.

Speaker 1:

So perhaps when you were a child, you felt that you weren't given the attention that you deserved. Perhaps you experienced something where you there'll be two different ways of looking at things. So maybe you've got a parent who didn't give you any attention, like you were very much ignored, and then maybe you've got a parent who really overindulged you with their time and put you first, and usually what happens is that you as a parent or a spouse or a friend will go one of the directions. So you'll either rebel against the reality that you experienced or you will really kind of lean into what you experienced, and in either situation you're going to face difficulties. But it just helps to give you a little bit more clarity on why you're doing it.

Speaker 1:

So sometimes people will say you know, I never put myself first, I always put everybody else ahead of me, and that's it's sometimes an excuse, because maybe they don't really know what they need to do, maybe they don't really want to do the thing that they know they need to do. Maybe they don't really want to do the thing that they know they need to do and so by making it seem like I'm being really kind and considerate and noble, by putting everybody else first, it makes them not doing the thing seem okay, like they're justifying it to themselves. So that's one way of looking at it. The other side of it is what benefit are you gaining from putting yourself last? And again it goes back to maybe you're gaining the fact that it's justified that you're not doing the things that you need to do. What are the people who you are putting first gaining.

Speaker 1:

Well, perhaps you feel that the way in which you show somebody love is by doing everything for them, being available for them. Maybe that's because you didn't experience that as a child, or maybe that's how you did experience things as a child. So there's always a rhyme and a reason for why we behave in a certain way. But here's the thing you actually get to choose. If that's serving you In the short term, it might serve you, but in the long term you get to choose whether you think it will, and then you get to decide a different direction if you so want to. So that's the power of being you, that you're an individual.

Speaker 1:

And then, from a more kind of practical standpoint, I always like to think of the fact that once upon a time I was an individual. I mean, I know I still am now, but I think that as a parent and as a partner and as a husband and as a wife, we actually forget that. I think that we think that when we have children, when we have a spouse, that we are forever like joint at the hip and that we can't have our own thoughts and we can't have our own interests and we can't spend our own money and do our own things, and we always have to run it by somebody, or you know, I always. I know it sounds really drastic, but I always like to imagine if I was no longer with my husband and I was single, would I still make the decisions that I make based on being with him? No, because I'd be on my own. And the reality is, you are just a piece of paper away from still being the person you used to be before you got married, and so why would you suddenly stop showing up for yourself? You want less of a person. You don't have less needs. So just another way of thinking about it. So lots of different pieces of food for thought there, but I can't tell you to stop feeling guilty. My question is why do you feel guilty and what are you gaining from it? Because you will be gaining something from it. Even if you can't see it now, you will be gaining something from it.

Speaker 1:

Number nine what's one daily habit that's changed your life? I would say going to bed and waking up at the same time every day, and I never would have thought I'd have said that, but it's just weirdly. It's just something that happened by chance, I don't really know why, and one day I felt really great and I did it again. And I did it again. Then I did loads of research on it and again, like in pure Roz fashion, was like, how can I optimize this? And yeah, single-handedly has changed my life. It's made losing weight easier, it's made me a nicer person, it's given me better habits, given me more structure. It gives me so much flexibility and freedom in all areas of my life and I think a lot of people would see it as oh well, I don't want to go to bed when you know this time or whatever, honestly, it'll be the best thing you ever do. Hands down. And then number 10, although I think I've only answered nine, I've skipped one because I just don't think it's relevant.

Speaker 1:

So, number 10 what's something people don't know about you? What don't they know about me? You could say I mean, I've got a sister, older sister, I've got a stepbrother. Um, my dad lives in Colchester. We don't see them, we don't have, we don't really have a relationship. Um, yeah, that's about it. I mean there's probably loads of things to be honest, but off the top of my head I can't think. I think, um, yeah, I don't know. We'll go with that one anyway. I hope you have enjoyed this episode. I hope you've taken something away from it and if you ever have any questions, just feel free to drop them in my Instagram DMs rosalalindfeedmyhealth. Next week we have a bit more of a mindset-y identity practical action steps you can take to change your life pretty much immediately episode. So be sure to look out for that on Monday on Spotify and until then, please keep feeding your health.