159 The Biggest Challenge to Releasing Weight is Not What You Think

You just need to follow through. Be more consistent right? Wrong. Well kinda. If you only listen to ONE of my podcast episodes, please let it be this one!

In this episode you’ll learn:

• Why trying harder is just spinning your wheels
• How to challenge your current capacity
• A 1 min real time somatic exercise to make following through accessible and automatic

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Transcript

 This transcript was auto-generated, please forgive any weirdness.

Hi, and welcome to the Mindful Shaped Podcast. I'm Paula Parker. My work as a certified coach involves helping you feel in charge with food and great in your body. So here's what you might think is the biggest challenge towards doing that, to feeling in charge with food. Great in your body. And for many of us it means releasing some excess weight that we have.

You probably think it's sticking with it, right? That's most often what I hear is I just need to be consistent. I just need to follow through. You wanna be that person who follows through on their workouts, who does what they say they're gonna do, who can cut out the food and stick with it? Who can say they're not gonna have a glass of wine and they don't.

You wanna be the person who. Is able to weigh themselves every day maybe, or who is already at your natural weight. And you don't wanna weigh yourself every day. You wanna be the person that can say no to dessert, that can say no to eating after dinner. Anytime your brain offers a snack, because you really don't wanna go to that zoom meeting, and so you're like, Hmm, maybe I'll have a snack that will make me feel better.

All of this, all of these meal plans, all of these workout plans, they are really hard to stick with. You get hungry, you get injured, and you can't do that lifting program that you signed up for. Other people are eating around you. There's always temptations. We're going into the holiday season, there will be lots of temptations.

You might be tracking macros or tracking calories and feel a little defeated because you can't know exactly. With precision, everything that you're eating and be able to get that accurate information. We also get really busy. We get too tired. We don't wanna miss out on enjoying life and enjoying the pleasure of food.

We might get bored of all that healthy food like chicken breast and. Steamed broccoli, right? I don't suggest that you have to eat that, but that's what sometimes we think we need to do. Food has a big role in our lives. We are so used to using food to celebrate with others, to relax after a long day, to have fun, and oftentimes to connect with others.

And so it can be very difficult to follow through so you're not following through, which means you are. Getting the feedback that you're just not that good at it, right? You're not that great at following through. You're not that person. So then what you might do is start researching fat loss methods.

What's the latest? How do I make this easier? How do I make this faster? You might also try to control your environment, like you don't go to social events, or you remove all of that highly palatable food from your kitchen. Or you offer yourself a reward if you reach your five pound goal. Like if I reach my five pound goal, then I will do this nice thing, or I will buy this nice thing for myself.

But all of that following through is not the real challenge. That's just action. That's just doing things, that's moving your body in space that's not eating the food. When you want to not drinking the wine, when everybody else is drinking it, those things aren't actually hard. They don't actually require a lot of energy for you to do.

What's hard is what you feel. It's the negative emotion you experience when you think about doing those things. Or while you are doing them. So for example, let's say you're sitting on the couch and you think, Hmm, this would be so much better if I had some popcorn, some buttery popcorn. It actually requires more energy for you to get up.

Make the popcorn and then come back down and eat it. Then it does to just remain where you are and just watch your show. It requires no extra effort on your part. It actually requires more effort to get the popcorn, to get the snack. You do not have a follow through problem. You have an under feeling problem.

When you get good at processing all of that emotion that comes up when you tell yourself, no, we're not gonna have popcorn tonight. You will automatically follow through because you'll be really skilled at processing the aftermath of that. No. At first, this is quite hard for those of us who have been turning to something external like alcohol or food or online shopping or social media or anything like that.

So we need to practice and get skilled at attuning to what's going on in our bodies because we, what we have been practicing is seeking something externally, going to the kitchen, making the popcorn. That's what we've been practicing. So we're really skilled at doing that. What we wanna do again, is get skilled at allowing that emotion to be there.

Most of us, we just have never learned this, so it's nothing against you, it's just a new skill that you get to learn and it's not as hard as you think. So here's a quick technique that can help you right now. So feel free to come back to this at any time and skip ahead until you get this. But you can do it with me in real time.

First, I just want you to draw your attention to the space above your head. See if you can focus your attention there. Then move your awareness down through your head, through the back of your neck, and drop it down into your chest. So your awareness is now in your chest area. Allow one breath to move just a little deeper, not forced.

Just invited and notice any sensation. What's the sensation in your chest? Is there warmth? Maybe some tightness? Is there openness or maybe you don't feel much at all? There's numbness. That's something. Nothing needs to change. Now you can place one hand gently on your chest and feel the rise and fall under your palm.

Let that movement remind you. You are here. You are safe. This is your truth of your experience, whatever you are feeling. And then take one more slow inhale and a soft unhurried exhale. And as you return to whatever you are doing, listening to this podcast, see if you can keep even 5%. Of your awareness inside your body.

Just a small thread of presence of centering that you can come back to at any time. This type of exercise isn't simply to relax. It's to become skilled at being present and noticing what you are feeling to allow for that feeling to create space for it. Another way you can think of it is challenging your current capacity to feel.

So let's imagine your capacity to feel is like a container. And let's imagine it's a little ping pong ball right now, and we'll use the example of overwhelm. So your capacity to feel overwhelm is the size of a ping pong ball. How do we know is almost any time you feel overwhelmed, it hits the edge of that ping pong ball and you go to eat.

Or drink or yell, whatever it is for you. Okay. Overwhelm is just a common one because it leads to a lot of permissiveness and desire to eat food that you don't need. So the next time you feel overwhelmed and you wanna reach for the food drop into your chest, that's typically where most of us experience emotion, but it could be anywhere for you.

So wherever you feel it. Allow yourself to feel what's there without trying to escape the feeling of overwhelm. As you do this, you are stretching, you are challenging your capacity, expanding that container, that pink pong ball into maybe a tennis ball, right? That's how much you can handle the sensation, the feeling of overwhelm in your body.

And once you get good at that, you're just challenging it more. You're expanding it more. Now. Maybe we get to a basketball now, maybe we get to a beach ball. What's the biggest ball We just get? Getting bigger and bigger. Right? You don't need the food anymore. When you have the capacity to feel what is going on for you.

You don't need anything external. All right. I hope that was helpful and practical. With enough conceptual understanding there to get your brain to buy into seeing it slightly in a new way, that it's not necessarily about just, you know, buckling down and more willpower and following through. It is much more about attuning to your body and getting really skilled at processing what's going on for you inside.

Okay, I'll talk to you again soon. 

Bye.