Stop doing the math: How to stay sane on a long weight loss journey

You've done the math. You know that losing a pound a week means almost a year to reach your goal  and that thought alone is enough to make you want to quit before you start.

You didn't gain the weight in 8 weeks. Your body has been through pregnancies, hormone shifts, and years of putting everyone else first. Expecting it to change in 8 weeks isn't a good strategy... it's a setup for burnout.

What you actually need is to stop chasing the fast result and start falling in love with the process. Because the moms who keep the weight off for good aren't the ones who found the perfect diet - they're the ones who stopped treating it like a sprint and instead build a lifestyle.

🎙️ In this episode we'll cover:

• Why the scale is lying to you about your progress
• How to measure success in a way that actually keeps you motivated
• The 3 questions to ask yourself every week instead of stepping on the scale
• What to do when impatience hits and you want to throw the whole plan out the window

Want to connect with Christie?

Make sure to follow Stronger Within so you never miss an episode. New episodes drop weekly with practical tools for sustainable fat loss, mindset shifts, and habits that fit your life.

If you want to learn how to make consistent fat loss progress while balancing mom life (or you identified your struggles in this episode and want help) join my 3 day LIVE event Ditch The Diet: Mom Edition for free on June 9th-11th! Register for free here!

Ready to go ALL in on your goals with high touch, personalized coaching and strategy so you can lose fat consistently without restricting yourself or spending hours in the gym? Apply for 1:1 Coaching!

Looking for a low commitment way to get direct access to me and my expertise? Join my group coaching program, Strong as a Mother!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey friend, welcome back to Stronger Within, the podcast for women who are done chasing quick fixes and are ready to build real strength and lasting change from the inside out. I'm your host, Christy Magry, and here we talk about becoming stronger within in your body, your mindset, and the daily habits that shape your life. If you're ready to build a body in life you feel confident in for good, you're in the right place. So today we're going to be talking about how freaking overwhelming it can be when you think about your big goal in your weight loss journey. And I remember somebody asking me to touch on this a few months ago actually in my DMs. She was like, I was asking her for recommendations on podcast episodes, like what she would want to hear and listen to. And she's like, Can you talk about how overwhelming it is when I think about the journey and the work that I have to do? And I actually remember having this feeling myself. I remember being postpartum with Carter. Um I actually have one specific memory standing in the kitchen after I put him down to bed. Um, he was finally asleep, and I'm scrolling on my phone, like we tend to do after our kids are in bed, um, and I'm looking through before and afters on Instagram, and I remember seeing somebody that I knew personally that lost, I think it was around like 20, maybe 25 pounds in a three-month time frame, and she looked incredible. And instead of feeling inspired and being like, oh, that's so inspirational, that can be me one day. I remember feeling defeated is the best word I can use there because I was the heaviest I'd ever been. Now, if you're unfamiliar, after I had my son, I gained, well, during my pregnancy rather, I gained a lot of weight. I am a very small human. I am, I like to say 4'10 and 3 quarters, and like barely 4'11. Um, but I always struggled with my weight my entire life. Long story short, I was always trying to lose weight. And then when I had Carter, I put on a lot of weight. I remember at the beginning of my pregnancy, I weighed around 150 for literally years and years and years. I fluctuated between 150 to 155 despite tracking macros and working out six days a week and doing all the things. And then by the end of my pregnancy with him, I know I was well over 200 pounds. So I always say I gained around like 60 to 70 pounds. I think one of the last times I weighed myself, I was around like 220. But, anyways, all of that to say I felt defeated because here I am, the heaviest I'd ever been, and I had been struggling to lose weight for years. And I'm like, oh, well, that must be nice to be able to lose 25 pounds in three months. Like, happy for you, you look great. But then you start doing the mental math in your head, and you're like, okay, well, if I lose a pound a week, 40 weeks, you know, say you want to lose 40 pounds, it's gonna take me 40 weeks, that's almost an entire year, and now we're like that. Because, you know, I am going to have to put in a lot of effort and work just to get a slow result. And here I now see people getting really quick results, and there's this um, what's the word I'm looking for? It's enticing to get those quick results. We see these before and afters, and it's like, oh, well, I would like to see the result quicker, right? But then we often don't think about how that can really backfire. Um, so the point here, I feel like I'm going off on a lot of different tangents, but the point here is that this overwhelm you have is actually just an unrealistic expectation, along with focusing far too much on the long term and not enough on the short term. And as someone who's been on her own postpartum weight loss journey for over three years, since I had my youngest Chloe, I need you to understand this. You are going to reach a level that you once dreamed of. And when you get there, guess what's gonna happen? It's not gonna be enough. You're gonna say, I want to do more, um, I want to achieve this now and this, and so you're gonna set a new goal and you're gonna chase that, and then you're gonna get to that goal, and that's not gonna be enough. Then the next and the next, and the cycle just continues on. So we really need to focus more on finding a way to enjoy the process and the journey because that really is the goal. And it's funny because I look back to even postpartum with Chloe, while my pregnancy and my postpartum were much healthier and easier. I mean, I still had weight to lose, I still gained weight in my second pregnancy. And I thought at that time, you know, once I get to my end goal, I'm gonna be happy. But I didn't realize that I would just constantly be chasing something new, and you know, when I was postpartum with her, I would have dreamed to be where I am now. Now that I'm here, it's not enough. I want more, I'm dreaming bigger, I have bigger goals. But what I've really found is that the happiness is found in the journey, in really becoming this whole new person, not just in, you know, the clothing size or the scale size and all these things that we kind of we think about when we think about that big picture goal. And so, what I want us to do here first is reframe the timeline. So here's the problem that this is what happens, and if you know me, you know very well that I have beef with this topic that I'm about to talk about. I could rant about this for hours and hours and hours, and that is the good old diet industry. The good old diet industry. The diet industry has conditioned us to expect fast results, but here's the thing about fast results, they don't last. That's the problem, and we're seeing it now with GLP ones. I'm gonna make an entire episode on GLP ones actually because I feel like I always touch on them in these episodes because they are very prevalent right now, but people are losing weight quickly, and we see that from the outside, but there's two things we don't see along with that. Number one, we don't see the negative side effects, they're losing muscle, right? They maybe are super lethargic. I actually have a client, she went on vacation with some of her girlfriends the other week, and she sent me a message and she was like, Christy, three of these people that I'm on vacation with are on the shot, and I'm not. And you know, here I here they are like losing weight super quickly, and we've been working together for about a year, and she has worked her booty off to be consistent and make these really big lifestyle changes. And wow, she has come so incredibly far. I actually would love to have her um as a guest on the podcast one day along with other several other of my clients. I feel like that would be really fun to bring in some like guest um kind of like interviews for you to hear this process because I know it's one thing to hear it from me, but to hear it firsthand. But anyway, she's like, three of my girlfriends are on the shot. And she said, Do you know what I realized, Christy? I was the only one that could pick up their suitcase without needing help or struggling. I was the only one that was thinking about like, am I gonna get in a workout on the on the trip? Like, am I gonna be strength training? Am I focusing on overall movement? They weren't worried about that. She's like, I was the only one that was actually fueling my body. They were just kind of like eating whatever, basically like starving themselves, and then when they did eat eating crap food. And so that's the first thing we don't see, okay, with the quick results. We don't actually see what's happening underneath the surface. And the reality is with a lot of those quick fixes, and even just outside of GLP one, just like under-eating extreme fixes, they come with consequences, guys. Losing weight and being a number on the scale does not equal health. I need you to understand that. And it is enticing again, right? We see, oh, she lost X amount of pounds in X weeks, that would be nice. We have to get out of that mindset. And here's the second thing that happens, or we don't see. Now they gain the weight back the second they go off the medication or the second they ditch that quick fix, and they're like, Yeah, this isn't for me anymore. Guess what happens? The food noise comes back, the cravings come back, the old lifestyle habits creep in because we never addressed addressed, addressed, addressed the root cause of the problem. And so while it can be enticing, and we are constantly fed these quick fixes, and I can't even watch a TV show now without being promoted a GLP1 ad. I'm so sick of it. I'm like, how do I like unsubscribe from being shown these? Um it it really gets to us. So we actively have to work on our mindset and reframe that timeline and reframe our picture of health. Half a pound to a pound per week is sustainable fat loss. That is a healthy rate of fat loss. The time is gonna pass anyways. And the question you have to ask yourself is like, who do I want to be at the end of this? Just like we talked about the other week, in case you missed this episode, um, go back and watch it. It was a really good one. But it was all about your identity. And the goal really is to shift our identity. It's less about getting that quick result and really more about embodying this new person, right? Embodying this new identity of who we want to be. It's the process of who we become, not just the number on the scale. And the people who are looking for the quick fixes, they're not changing their identity. They're just saying, I'm gonna do whatever it takes as quick as I can to get there. And then what happens again is that the people who are doing it the right way, aka you and me, we're like, no, I want to do this as a lifestyle, but then we get overwhelmed by the amount of time that it takes. So we have to get real here too, right? You didn't gain the weight in eight weeks, you didn't get to this place where you're uncomfortable and unhappy in your body in a few short months. You're not gonna get to this place where you've lost all the weight and you're super happy and super confident in your body overnight either. You have to give yourself time. And what we also need to do here is we need to stop measuring success in pounds. Instead, you want to start measuring your success and behaviors and feelings. This is gonna make it feel a lot less overwhelming when it comes to, oh my gosh, it's gonna take all this time. So, three questions you can ask yourself weekly instead of stepping on the scale and measuring your success that way. Number one, did I move my body and take care of my body in a week in a way this week that felt good? Question number two, you can ask yourself, did I nourish myself most of the time? Did I really fuel my body? Question number three, do I feel a little more like me? Do I feel like I am embodying this identity a little bit more this week? Even if I'm not fully there, even if I still have old habits to break, am I there? Am I a little bit closer this week? And the power of non-scale victories, honestly, I think that non-scale victories are so much more powerful than a stupid number on the scale. The wins that I get from my clients, like having the energy to play with their kids, not hurting for the first time ever, running around with their kids, being able to walk up a flight of stairs without being out of breath, um, their clothes fitting differently, being able to pull out a um a pair of jeans that have been sitting in their closet since before they had kids, sleeping better, being able to show up in the morning and really feeling like themselves and not, you know, operating from a place of being on empty, especially as moms, really just being able to show up and be fully present and be that happy and healthy mom that they want to be, that is so much more powerful than I lost five pounds on the scale. Like, cool, the the scale is a result of those things, and sometimes the scale doesn't always show that full picture, which we will get into that here in a second. But I want you to be utilizing other forms of progress outside of the scale. Because what I find is typically this overwhelm of like, oh my gosh, this is gonna take so long. Let's say you want to lose 50 pounds. That feels overwhelming, that number feels big, but instead, when we can focus on those non-scale victories and those other forms of progress, maybe that's progress photos, taking measurements, paying attention to how your clothes fit, how you feel, how you're sleeping, your energy levels, those things are what you really want. Who gives a shit what the number on the scale says? Nobody is gonna look at me and say, hmm, I think Christie weighs X amount of pounds. Nobody would ever know because it's my body composition at the end of the day that that's what matters, and that's what I work on my clients with. We don't focus on, you know, you know, sometimes they have a specific number of pounds they want to lose, but really the goal, if you want that toned, defined look, which I don't know about you, but that's what I want, that's built through building lean muscle and losing body fat. And sometimes the scale does not always tell that number. And I see it with clients all the time. I actually have a client who I just she started with me about two months ago, and I just put her progress picture side by side, and the scale says she's lost six and a half pounds in like six six-ish weeks, and I'm like, dude, it looks like you lost 15 pounds. I'm like, that's insane. Because weight on the scale does not equal body fat, okay? When we can have knowledge around the scale and how that works, the number on the scale reflects so many different things, not just body fat. So, again, use other forms of progress, focus on those non-scale victories. Um, and the other thing we want to do here is we want to set a process goal, not just an outcome goal. So instead of saying, I want to lose 20 pounds this week, and this is something that I will actually catch my clients doing early in their time of working with me. One question I ask on their weekly check-in form is what would what's one thing that would make you feel most proud of achieving this upcoming week? In their check-in, we're diving deep into, you know, how did our week go? What went well, what maybe didn't go so well, and then we're always future pacing. We're thinking about the week ahead. Like, all right, now that we know have all this information from this week, how do we translate that into having a successful week next week? And sometimes I will catch them saying, like, what would make me feel most proud is the scale going down or losing X amount of pounds or whatever. We have to shift our goal to a process goal, meaning instead of the goal being I want to lose X pounds, what is the result that you actually want of that goal? Like, what is the thing that you actually have to do? So, for example, the process goal could be I will get in three strength training workouts this week, or I will walk 20 minutes four times this week, or I will track my food every day this week. You have to focus less on the outcome and more on the process it takes to get there. And when we can break this down into, right, we have our big yearly goal. This is also something I do with my clients. We kind of like reverse engineer their goals. What is the big goal this year? Let's break that down into each quarter, into into each month, into each week, and then into each day, all the way down to the daily action steps, as far back as you need to. We really need to break that big goal down into digestible chunks so that things don't feel so overwhelming. Because we're like, I don't I don't have to worry about like the next 12 months. All I have to worry about is today. What am I doing today? What am I doing in the next hour? Focus on that. So let's now move into impatience because all of this sounds great in theory, right? You're with me, I'm sure you're like sounds great, but then the impatience comes in. We start doing the work, we start showing up, and we're like, it's not happening quick enough. I am there with you. Impatience is so normal, you're not the only one that feels that way. So here's a couple of tools that you can utilize when you're feeling impatient. And these are all things that I do in my own journey. Number one, which we actually just kind of touched on, but zoom in. Like typically I say zoom out, but with this one, we're gonna zoom in and focus only on today. What is one thing you can do right now? What is one habit you can control right now? What is one way you can show up for yourself today that is going to bring you one step closer to your goal? Number two, look back, not just forward. Now, this is a really big mistake I see a lot of moms make is they just focus on this is where I want to go to, this is the goal I have next, future, future, future. Yes, we want to future pace, yes, we want to think about future goals, but we need to take time to also say, hey, I'm gonna take time to celebrate how far I've come. And this is something I force my clients to do in their check-ins as well. I'm like celebrate one win from this week. And if they don't give me a win, I will find one for them. And typically that is, hey, you submitted this check-in, even though you had a hard week. That is a win, that is self-ownership, that is accountability, that's you know what you're here for. So take the time to celebrate how far you've already come. And I know in the beginning this can feel a little bit harder, but even if you're only a week into your journey, think about what you've done over the course of that first week that you are super proud of. Even if you have so far to go, don't focus on that. Focus on asking yourself questions like, you know, would I trade places with myself a week ago or six months ago or whatever, however long you've been in this journey. And then lastly, find your why outside of the number. Again, this is something that I prompt all of my clients to do, whether it's group coaching, one-on-one coaching, doesn't matter. I prompt all of my clients to really focus on creating a why outside of that number. Because here's the thing with that number, like we just talked about, that number can be very tricky, it can be discouraging, it can make us feel like we're not doing enough when in reality our why goes so much deeper than that. And we know when it comes to motivation, a lot of times they hear, well, Christy, I'm just not motivated to sh to work out, I'm just not motivated to eat healthy or track my food or do XYZ. So we need to find a why that is super powerful that not showing up, that's not an option. It's not an option. So some of your whys could be having energy for your kids, modeling healthy habits for your kids. For me, it was breaking the cycle for my kids. You know, I grew up with a single parent who didn't take care of herself, ate crap food, never moved her body, drank every single day. I was like, hell no, I do not want my kids to have that mom. I was embarrassed to have that mom. Breaking that cycle was not an option for me, and that was so powerful, emotional, like almost like brings me to tears thinking about it, that I'm like, I'm gonna show up, even if it's imperfect some days. I know that I'm not gonna give up on this goal and I'm not gonna give up on myself. Maybe it's feeling confident so you can be in the pictures with your kids. So 10 years from now, you're not looking back. You know, they're asking for to see pictures from you know 10 years ago or whenever, and you're like, well, I'm not in any of them, and that kind of sucks. And when I'm gone, pictures of me are the only things my kids are gonna have, and I avoid them. That's really powerful, that's emotional, more so than a number on the scale. So find that why for you. Find that really powerful emotional pull that allows you to not only find the motivation to show up, but show up every single day, even when you don't necessarily feel like it. And I guarantee you, every single mom who has seen success in their fat wash journey has felt exactly how you feel right now of like, oh my gosh, it's been, you know, I have so far to go. And especially if you are someone where you're like, I've been trying, Christy, I've been trying for weeks, for months, for years, and I am still in the same dang place. That's really frustrating. I know that feeling. I was literally that person, so you don't have to tell me. And one thing that I kind of told myself every single day, and I've shared this on my Instagram story a few times, just like a picture of me, like a selfie of me working out, um, or a picture of me in the locker room in the mirror, and I'll put something like 1% better every day, or I'll do like dues paid, like I paid my dues, I showed up and I moved my body today. And so I focus on less on again the big picture of how far I have to go, and more of like, okay, I'm one step closer today. That means I'm one step closer today than I was yesterday. We have to remember that it's a marathon, not a sprint. I would rather it take you longer to lose the weight and you actually be able to keep the weight off than be that person that looks for the quick fix, looks for the easy way out. How can I lose the weight as quick as possible? And now you you can't sustain those habits because the methodology that you use to lose the weight, you can't actually stick with. The people who take their time to build a lifestyle of change are the ones that keep it off. And I've been working as a fitness coach for over six years now, so I can very confidently say this. But all of this to say we need to, again, we need to adjust our expectations, we need to focus less on the number, we need to focus on focus less on, oh my gosh, this is how far I have to go, and more of focusing on the small wins, focusing on all the things outside of the scale, and saying, you know what, even though I'm not exactly where I want to be yet, today I get to make the choice. I get to make the choice to show up in a little bit in a little way that works for me and supports my life as a mom, that's gonna bring me 1% closer to my goal. You don't have to do things perfectly, you don't have to be 100% perfect all the time, it's not realistic. I say it all the time, not the first time, not the last time you're gonna hear me say it. We are humans, not robots. Let's let's adjust our expectations, but we have to find a way to focus less on the outcome and more of the process. It truly is about who you become in the process. Okay. So I hope you guys enjoyed today's episode. Thank you for spending this time with me. If this episode resonated, I'd love for you to share it or leave a review. It helps this message reach even more women who need it. Until next time, keep becoming stronger within.