165 How to Maintain Your Results - Avoid Success Intolerance

If you’re pretty good at releasing weight but just as skilled gaining it right back, there’s a term for this: Success Intolerance! Let’s explore how this shows up so you can fully understand it and recognize it when it happens to you so that you can ensure you maintain your results and continue on to your desired weight and body.

You’ll learn:

• What ‘Success Intolerance’ is so you can spot it and deal with it head on
• The 4 D’s of how Success Intolerance shows up in your brain: Dominate, Deflect, Dismiss, Desire
• How to avoid Success Intolerance 
• My favorite 1 min journal prompt to help shift your identity 

LEARN MORE about Shape Shift

Watch Build Momentum Video Series 

• Shape Shift Program LEARN MORE
• Instagram: @mindful_shape
• Free Self Coaching Resources
• Interested in getting coached by me? Go to my website mindfulshape.com

Transcript

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

Hi, and welcome to the Mindful Shaped Podcast. I'm Paula Parker and my work is here to offer you some specialized mind and body practices to shift into the next version of you, one in which you feel in charge around food, great in your body, and connected to yourself. I'm gonna talk today a little bit about our brain's complicated relationship with success, because you've probably noticed that you can.

Make some progress. You can be doing really well, and even though externally things seem to be working out, maybe the scale's going down or you feel like you're getting stronger. Sometimes you'll notice that you take your foot off the gas a little bit, or you start becoming more permissive. Essentially, you start slipping up.

Eventually, like initially you think, oh, this is fine. I can get away with this. And then what you might notice is that if you continue that behavior, then the weight of course comes back on and we get into a bit of this cycle. So I wanna talk about that today so that if you have recently noticed you are slipping back after some success, or you are succeeding right now, and you want to know what's around the corner so that you can prepare for it and recognize it when it happens, then.

This topic today is gonna be really important because for me, there was a point at which the scale dropped down. So usually for me it goes more incrementally. But there was a time when it just jumped down to what I think of as a milestone, a new milestone in terms of the scale. And my brain freaked out a little bit.

Of course, I was like, oh wow. Like I haven't seen that number. And I was excited, but at the same time. I had some mixed emotions, like I almost didn't believe it or I started to dismiss it. And then what I noticed in the days following is that I got a little off track. It wasn't that I was significantly overeating, but I just was eating in a way that was.

Going to put my body into fat storage mode for longer, meaning I wasn't gonna retain those results for very long. Okay, so let's talk about it so that doesn't happen to you, and you can get ahead of it. Now, a lot of research suggests that the brain's threat detection system reacts not just to.

Danger, but to any kind of unpredictability or really things just being different. So that's why even when positive change, like success on the scale, or if somebody comments to you and says, oh wow, you look great, you get some sort of recognition. Or if we broaden the scope, new opportunities or trips that are upcoming, those can produce anxiety.

So maybe you wanna think about the last time you got some unexpectedly good news. Along with that joy. Did you feel a little tiny inkling of, oh no, like now what? Now I have to, rise to the occasion, or now I have to do this or that, or experience something new. That's your brain trying to regain control.

Of an uncertain situation. So faced with this discomfort, most people will instinctively choose one of two paths. Some of you will push aggressively forward, so you try to dominate the uncertainty through sheer force of will, whereas others pull back and you avoid the unknown altogether. So our brains, again, we love predictability and we love what's familiar.

So when you slip up, of course it doesn't mean that you've made no progress or you've learned nothing. You of course, are further ahead. Even if the scale goes up, you are further ahead. I want you to consider, how could this be true? I always offer, you've learned something about yourself. You've had to make that progress.

So you've, you have evidence that you can do it. You are always further ahead. There's just no downside in thinking that. So I wanna introduce this concept of success intolerance, and that's essentially your brain's inclination to veer negative despite the positive and cause you to slip up. Get permissive again, what we might think of as self-sabotage.

Okay? It happens when our results, so maybe what on the scale are a mismatch to our identity. So our self-concept, how we think about ourselves, what we believe about ourselves, even if that's subconscious. So for me, for example. At that time when my weight dropped down, it didn't match my identity.

I was like, whoa, I haven't seen this number before. What is going on? That was not a belief that I held about myself. I hadn't done the inner work to get there mentally, or that was just gonna be normal. There's visualization practices that you can do with this, but essentially there's ways of getting around it so that does feel normal and it doesn't like.

Jar your nervous system, you, your brain doesn't see it as a threat or as something different, even though it is different, right? So I wanna introduce you to success intolerance and talk about what I think of as the four Ds, just a way of framing it. So this is essentially how success intolerance to your own success shows up.

So again, so you can anticipate this, you can get ahead of it, and you can really keep your results. So the scale does not have to go all the way back up. For those of you who push forward, the first D is dominate. So you might be thinking it's still not good enough, or I really need to hold onto this success, and you'll know if it's in dominate because it feels uncertain, it feels panicky.

And then what you might do is you drive harder, you double down, you might restrict more, you might eat less, you might work out even more. Now, again, none of those things are wrong or bad, or. Anything they might even serve you. It's more of with what energy are you doing it with and in this and dominate.

You are doing it with panicky energy, with fear, with uncertainty. So again, we can do something and it can come from, okay, determination. I'm gonna double down and that feels really good. And it feels whole and it feels in alignment versus a more of a white knuckling, double down, totally different experience, and we get a totally different result.

So if it's coming from that panicky feeling, we will then lose sight of the bigger picture. Maybe the bigger purpose that you have that is more in alignment with your health or feeling really calm and in charge, because we get really focused on the nitty gritty of it all. Our own detriment.

Oftentimes the other Ds are the group of people who pull back. This was be me. I would consider myself in this camp. I think we go back and forth. But in terms of the example I shared where I saw that new number and my brain pulled back from it, this is what I wanna explain. So three Ds.

The next one is deflect, where we don't allow ourselves to really hold. And celebrate our own success. So you might be thinking this was a little too easy, right? For some reason it was outside of me. I had nothing to do with it. It's a fluke. So there's some disbelief, maybe some bewilderment, maybe there's some numbness.

So you see the number, but it doesn't really register. Then what we can do then is eat off our plan. We might overeat, we might become really permissive with food, and that confirms that old self-concept, that old identity. And then we think, oh, I knew it. I knew I wasn't gonna able to keep the weight off, or whatever.

And then we give up. The next one is discount. This is minimizing. This is when you see that new number and you think this won't last. And you are fearing about the future that you're gonna gain the weight back, then of course it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. We eat off the plan, we eat out of alignment, we overeat.

And again, what do we do? Same result confirms that old identity, and eventually we get defeated and we give up. The last one is desire. This creates. Over desire. So we see that number. We think, oh, great, now I can relax. I deserve it. I've been working so hard, I can reward myself with food. And this is a very common one.

So be onto yourself. If your brain likes to do this, it creates a lot of desire and permissiveness. And you eat more than you need, or you eat more than you need to continue to reach your goal. And then again, same result confirms that old identity. And we give up. So what is the reason behind this? It's essentially a fear of success.

So success intolerance is your intolerant to success. You're actually, there's like a primal fear, and that's psychologically because it's driven by loss aversion success often requires. Some sort of loss. Us giving things up that we value, that could be comfort, that could be privacy, that could be freedom, that could be basic.

I know what to expect. So predictability, or even as I mentioned a lot in this episode so far, a familiar sense of self. Your self concept, how you think about yourself, your identity. So consciously, you don't wanna go back, but subconsciously you do because it's more familiar. So lastly, I wanna share a few mindset shifts and some steps on how to step out of this.

Okay. So a mindset shift that might be helpful is to remember that, or to decide rather, that this isn't just another, diet program or food plan that you are doing to reach a specific goal. That this is about you becoming the next version of yourself. It's about you stepping into a new identity all together.

And I've noticed that a lot of the people that I work with, a lot of the people that are in my world, this is what they're up to, right? They could do a meal plan, they know what to do, but for some reason they're not doing it. And I think that for some reason is inherent in this identity piece. So it's like we can do all of the things, but then we haven't shifted what's going on in our inner world, and so we can't maintain the result.

So this is a little bit deeper work. Again, when I talk about identity, it's how you think about yourself. And your personal standards, we want high standards for you. How do you step into a new identity? The first step is going to be self-awareness. You need to understand what are your brain's favorite thoughts about you, about what you're capable of, about what your relationship with your body, how you think about your body.

Do you ever have the thought, my body's working against me, or my body just wants to be stuck at this weight? All of those kinds of thoughts. What are your brain's favorites? We also wanna get familiar with what are your brain and body's favorite go-to memorized emotions. Because most of us, if we've done a lot of self-inquiry, we know it's oh, my brain likes to go to anger.

My brain likes to go to sadness, my brain likes to go to self pity. And of course, you're a human, you're gonna experience all of the emotions at some point. But there typically are ones that are a little bit more. We're tethered to a little bit more that hook us we experience more often. And then what do you typically do?

It's really good to be able to recognize what do I typically do? Do I scroll Instagram? Do I turn to sweetss? Do I. Isolate myself, and I don't respond to texts or emails or anything like that. What is my typical behavior when I'm triggered or when I'm at capacity, and when I feel like I'm maxed out, so that you can start to notice, oh, these are the cues again, so that we can be proactive about it and catch it.

Not that anything again, not that anything is going wrong, it's just a signal now you know about you. You know what to watch out for, so that then you can move yourself in the direction of where you wanna go. Now what can be helpful is noticing the d's. So are you dominating? Are you thinking it's still not good enough?

Are you deflecting somebody gives you a compliment and you deflect it right away? Or you think it's too good to be true? You don't trust it. You think I'm gonna gain all the weight back anyway? You discount it, you think it's only five pounds, like I still have 50 to go, or it's only two pounds, I still have 10 to go.

Or do you create desire? You start getting permissive again. You start to reward yourself with food. See this as your. Alter ego, there's a part of you that's just keeping you safe. Nothing has gone wrong. If this happens, the reason I can mention it is because it's a pattern, right? Our shared consciousness experiences us.

So step two is basically I wanna encourage you to, when you are self-aware, now it's time to take on. That awkwardness of the difference, the discomfort and the uncertainty, you just take it on head on. So you wanna rush towards it. You wanna embrace it. So first we need to expect it and know that you are not the only person.

Not eating cake, not drinking, not having the cookies at the book club. You are in a group collectively, even if it's just the people who listen to this podcast. You are in the Mindful Shape Club, okay? It's an unofficial club and you are invited. You are in good company. I promise. So just know that it's going to feel not like you, but you are in good company and it's okay to feel a little bit awkward in the beginning as you start making these changes.

And then the last tip I wanna share, just to add onto this, is really practical tip that if you are into doing journaling, if you like doing morning pages, if you like. Little self coaching prompts, then this is a really good one that I encourage you to do. Do it as an experiment. You could do it every day for three days.

You could do it every day for a week, for a month, whatever feels compelling to you, and it's this every day. You just write in your notebook or in your planner an I Am statement and an I will statement. So this is gonna take two minutes max. One minute, probably I am. And then whatever you are aspiring to be, and that can change day to day, but today might be I'm focused or I am confident.

Whatever it is, and then the I will statement could be, I will, and then what your intention is that day or it's reaffirming your goal, so I will release another five pounds or I will work out today. You just answer it and what we're doing is we're starting to shift from that old identity into that new identity and starting to make that normal.

Okay. I hope that was helpful and I will talk to you again soon. Okay. Bye.