179 7 Unconventional Truths for Body Transformation

There is so much info out there on how to get in great shape and exactly what to eat if you want to slim down, get fit and build muscle. But what I want to focus on today is the less obvious - the unconventional truths that you MUST know to reach your desired body.

You’ll learn:

• If you think you have an overconsumption / overeating / overdrinking problem, you’re trying to fix the wrong problem and where to focus instead
• Why you don’t need to believe in your goal, but what’s essential to believe instead
• The 3 mind traps you to avoid to transform your body for good

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Transcript

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

 Hi, and welcome to the Mindful Shape Podcast. I am Paula Parker, if you are looking to release some weight, basically become the healthiest and strongest version of yourself inside and out, then you are in the right place.

Today, I wanna talk about seven unconventional truths about reaching your desired body. Now, first, I just apologize because this is pretty early in the morning. We're, we're recording this at 5:30 in the morning, so I just got up. I have my coffee. I'm getting used to coffee with a little less cream, and we are going for it.

So I wanna talk about, you know, what is a desired body, because I think that it's different for many of my clients across the board. It's just different. They have different goals. So some of my clients, they really want to build muscle and just feel more agile in their body, get rid of any joint pain.

It's really [00:01:00] they wanna optimize their health, and they're thinking longer term, and they're thinking about agility, they're thinking about mobility, being, you know, healthy in their body long term so that they can have independence and have less health conditions. And then there's sort of those of you who might be listening who have, uh, a lot of weight that they wanna release, like let's say like 40, 45 pounds or excess fat that you've been struggling with, and you're overeating, and you want to change both that relationship with food and your physique, right?

And then I also have clients that I work with that are really wanting to get in the best shape of their life. So they are... You know, they have maybe 10, 15 pounds of excess fat. Most people would say, "You don't have to lose any weight." Of course, that's true, but these clients, they have a certain desire, a certain [00:02:00] aesthetic in mind, and they know how they wanna feel, and they know how they wanna look, and nobody's gonna tell them differently, or at least that's what I advise them, right?

Claim it. So it's not that we... The whole process of this is not that we are trying to achieve this goal so that we can accept ourselves, and I'll get into that in a minute. The idea behind this work on this podcast is that we are building that along the way. So we use that goal, that desired body, that relationship with food as a bridge towards understanding ourself and seeing what we're capable of and really reconnecting with ourselves and our body, not as a means to an end.

All right? So let's get into it.

There is so much out there on how to get in great shape and exactly what to eat if you wanna slim down, get fit, [00:03:00] build muscle, you know, longevity. But what I wanna focus on today is a little less obvious. So I'm calling it the unconventional truths because this might be different than what you hear in the fat loss, the fitness industry.

And these are things that I've discovered through my own journey. I've released, you know, 40, 45 pounds, and also have gotten back to pre-pregnancy weight after having two kids. I've kept that off. Uh, I'm 44 years old, and I, this year, am getting into the best shape of my life. So I am pushing myself to my edge.

So in no particular order, here are the seven. One is, if you've been following along, you know this already, but it doesn't hurt to just remind your brain that you do not have an overconsumption problem. You're not broken in any way. It's not even an overeating or [00:04:00] overdrinking issue What I want you to think about is that you just simply have an over desire problem.

It's that physiological desire, so there might be a hormonal imbalance where you're craving a lot of sugar, flour. For some of us, it's alcohol. We're craving those things, and when we stop the sugar, when we stop the flour, we will feel a physical withdrawal. Like, you feel that in your body, and it's very hard to stick to a plan when you have such intense cravings, even for us, you know, mental mastery folks out there.

And then, so that's the first thing is there's physiological over desire. Your body really wants more food than you need. Or put another way, for those of you who are trying to release that last ten pounds, your body may want more food than you need to release weight. Now, for most of you who are in those [00:05:00] last few pounds, it might be that you have no more physiological desire because of how you've been eating to reach that last ten pounds.

So, if you've been eating, you know, very healthy and you've been staying away from alcohol, sugar, flour, artificial sweeteners, then it's most likely your physiological desire is zero, and that's not an issue. But what can be an issue is the psychological over desire. And psychological over desire is where your brain wants more food than you need or more food than you need to reach your desired weight.

Okay. So that's when we have an emotional attachment to food in which our thinking is creating a lot of permissiveness and desire. So we get home from work, we're thinking, "Oh God, I'm so tired. I had such a long day. I really don't feel [00:06:00] like making a healthy meal. It's just too much trouble. I am going to order a pizza, or I am just gonna snack on cheese and crackers."

And then you feel slightly bad about that, and then you continue eating throughout the night. Then it becomes a, "Oh, whatever, I'll just start again tomorrow," and you give yourself full permission to have snacking and, you know, all of the excess dessert, et cetera. So what's happening there is you're probably feeling some sort of negative emotion, unease, boredom, stress, and then your thought about that, even if it's subconscious, is, "This needs to stop.

This shouldn't be happening. I cannot handle this." And so your brain says food is the solution. Now, if we've done this over and over and over again, we might not even notice this. We're not even aware of it. All we know is that when we get home, we just really want cheese and crackers, or we really want candy, or we really want pizza or whatever.

That's all we will be aware of. But what I wanna offer [00:07:00] you is that it's a little bit more complex than that. Now, we do that enough times, it becomes down-regulated, and it does feel very automatic. It's an automatic process, brain-body process. But what's really happening is your relationship with those negative emotions is tethered to your brain suggesting food.

And then if we don't interrupt that pattern, we reinforce all of that over desire, that psychological over desire for food. Because then, of course, what happens is we eat all the food, and that's what we create. We create more over desire, and that, that tether becomes even closer, even tighter. All right, so those are the two main factors in terms of over desire.

Physiological, your body wants more food than you need, and psychological, your brain, your mind wants more food than you need. So it's not an overconsumption problem, it's an over desire problem. It's not just focusing on the over consuming, [00:08:00] like, that's... We have to go deeper than that. We need to solve the root, which is why you have all that over desire in the first place

Number two, and I mentioned this already, is it's not due... Like, if you're overweight or not in great shape, it's not due to you being broken in some way. Or sometimes clients will say, like, "I think there's something wrong with my body." And if you think that, like, for real, go to your doctor and, and get your lab work and get tested if you think there's something going on with your thyroid.

Like, you want that information for sure. But for most of us, it's not necessarily that our body, quote unquote, wants to be at a certain weight. There's this idea of a weight set point, and sometimes we'll hear that and we think, oh, this is just what my body likes to be at this weight. My body likes to put on fat, and it just likes to be at this weight.

And I do actually believe that there is a genetic component to this. Like, I see [00:09:00] there's different bodies in the world. I know my body tends to put on weight more easily than, say, my husband's body, who's just very naturally lean. So yes, of course, there is that, and your weight set point is changeable. So it just means I'm gonna have to be a little bit more precise than, say, my husband is.

I'm gonna have to move my body if I want to be at a certain weight or have a certain physique. I'm... I might just have to work a little bit harder. A lot of clients that I work with reflect on their childhood, and they see how this has been going on for a really long time.

So it could be that within your family, love was expressed through baking or through eating meals together, and this is a big part of how you now self-soothe, because why? Your brain is wired to learn that this is how you take care of yourself,

And many of us can relate to this, right? So most of our programming happens between [00:10:00] age zero and seven, and then potentially up to age 14. And this is when a lot of things get hardwired in our brain. And oftentimes, if your parents, especially if your mom was struggling with food or overeating, or she rewarded you with food, anything like that, it can have an impact for sure.

I'm not saying it doesn't have an impact, but what I wanna say is that there's such a thing as neuroplasticity, right? Which means that your brain can change. So even if you grew up where there was a lot of overdesire basically programmed into you, it doesn't mean that that is a life sentence and that you can't reverse that.

That's all I wanna say there, right? You're not broken.

How you can think about it is as a skill set, and so here are the skills required. You're gonna need to feel instead of numbing with food and alcohol. This is a whole thing I could get into for a very long time, but we are [00:11:00] typically not that great at feeling any kind of negative emotion, even if it's that slight dip in joy or good vibes during a transition.

Like, I notice as soon as I get off a coaching call, that's a bit of a high for me. Then immediately my brain will want to check my email, check my social media. It's just automatic. Why? It's because ... my brain essentially is trying to regulate. It's saying, "Oh, something is down, and we need to bring it back up."

Now, often, for many of you listening to this, it's going to be food or alcohol that you're turning to. So instead, what we want to do is just allow that dip, that dip in energy. We can think of it as like, you know, slower or more contracted feeling energy. We just wanna allow that to happen, or you can think of it as like a dopamine or serotonin drop, and just let time take its course.

So the more that you can finish something, and during that transition time [00:12:00] not turn to scrolling or not turn to snack or something like that, the more you are practicing the skill of feeling that low until your body will naturally regulate again. The next is planning and prepping. So this is not, the most exciting, to be honest.

This is not, like, a skill that you might think, this is gonna change everything." But I will tell you that the more I see clients plan ahead of time, prep ahead of time, and I'm not just talking about planning what they're going to eat. That's helpful. We wanna know, okay, what are we, what are we doing?

Even if it's a general plan. It's more of the mental and emotional prep. So if you are... let's say you're going to a dinner party, or you're going to visit some friends, and you just know that they eat a little differently than you, or they, they're heavy drinkers or something, how are you gonna handle that situation?

This is where coaching really comes in because we walk you through that process [00:13:00] so that you can not only feel confident going into it, is that you'll have the tools to be able to handle whatever comes up in the most challenging situations, when there's pressure, when you're feeling dysregulated, when you have lots of desire, and, like, the food or alcohol looks really yummy and you genuinely want it.

And then of course, you wanna be part of the group. So we talk all about that. So I really do think that is a skill, to plan and prep. Stopping at enough is a huge one. So when I work with clients, we typically set a result-oriented goal that's very tangible, and then we also set a process-oriented goal.

That's something that if you were to master, you would guarantee that ten- achievable goal. So for example, let's say you want to lose ten pounds, what's the skill that you would have to master to guarantee that ten pounds? For many clients, it's stopping at enough and knowing what that feels like.

So for many of us, if we've done a lot of [00:14:00] dieting or we've done a lot of tracking or calorie counting, we have lost touch with what it actually feels like in our body to eat an appropriate amount and then stop easily and move on with our day. Now again, physiological and psychological over desire is going to impede that.

Once you bring those down, it's gonna be a lot easier to eat slowly, feel into your body, and be able to stop at what is appropriate and move on with your day. And then of course, if you get hungry later, it's no problem. You just go back and have a little bit more food. Okay? But I notice with clients is that while they can eliminate the snacking and allow any kind of hunger in between meals so that they're very hungry when they do eat, this one takes a little bit longer.

It requires more embodied awareness, which is knowing what you are feeling [00:15:00] physically, emotionally, all of that plays in

And then the last skill is eating only when you're hungry. And this might sound obvious, but if you, like, just take a look at yesterday and just see were there any times that you ate food when you weren't really hungry, like really hungry, right? If you're trying to release weight off your body, then you need to only be eating when you're really physically hungry.

But most often we are turning to food for escape, for relief, and we're trying to chase some pleasure and What we wanna do instead is develop the tools so that we actually don't do that anymore, but instead, we really only eat when we are hungry. And this is gonna just allow your body to release weight.

Okay? So I'm not talking about being hungry the whole day. Totally fine to eat three meals, but you do wanna eliminate snacking if you can. And then also, you want to feel very hungry at your meals. So if you have [00:16:00] breakfast and you're not hungry for lunch, then you don't eat . Right? And it might be the case that you're overeating at your breakfast, and that's why you're not hungry at lunch.

But you figure it out based on your schedule and what works for you and your energy and what your preferences are. I don't think there is one right way. I also think that it can help if you change things up, so keep that in mind, too. Maybe you go from two meals to three meals or three meals to two meals.

You don't have to be very rigid about that. It actually helps the body when you can switch things up every now and then. Number three is willpower and self-discipline won't save you. Why? Because it wanes. It's not reliable. You need to solve for the reason you're turning to food, not a, what I think of as a Band-Aid solution, like summoning up that willpower and white-knuckling your way through that over-desire in the moment [00:17:00] or those cravings.

Or what you might be trying to do is controlling the world. So let's say you get your food plan or you, you commit to a plan, and then what we do is we remove all of the yummiest foods from our kitchen. What you're trying to do there is... Like, I get it. What you're trying to do is set yourself up for success.

I wanna challenge you to not do that. And the reason I say that is because what can serve you better mentally and emotionally is, right out of the gate, is to decide that you are in control no matter what. So often I hear clients say, "I feel out of control," or, "I felt out of control." Don't let your brain lie to you, because you are always in control.

Even if it doesn't feel like it, there is still your hand moving to the food and putting it to your mouth, right? No one is forcing you to do that, which means you are in [00:18:00] control. But what we do is we remove everything because we don't wanna experience that desire. And I wanna flip that and say that the more desire you experience, and you can allow for that, which means opening up to it and leaning in and developing some tools to handle it, the more in control you will be.

You will see yourself, you will change your identity into someone who can handle that, and that is true freedom around food. Freedom around food is being able to be in a kitchen with tons of cookies, with tons of muffins, with, in my case, tons of dried coconut, like those big chunks of dried coconut, not the shredded, but the big chunks.

To have that in the kitchen and know that if desire arises, you can totally handle it. Like, it's not a big deal. That's, that's like the higher standard that I wanna offer rather than... I think what most programs tell you is, you [00:19:00] know, avoid bakeries. Like, don't bring that stuff into your house. And for many of us who have families, it's just not even possible.

It's not realistic. So flip it. Make it into something that this is actually strengthening me. The more desire I feel and the more capability I cultivate in handling that moment, the more powerful I become. Number four is you don't need to believe you're gonna reach your goal. Now, this might be contrary to even what I have said in the past or what other people say, is because your belief also is going to wane, just like willpower.

So some days you will be in total belief that it's gonna happen, and some days you'll be at twenty percent. I think doubt is part of the process and something that you can work through. As a coach, this is part of what I do with clients. So I am constantly believing you. Like, my belief does not wane whatsoever because I know you can do it.

Now, I can hold that space when [00:20:00] you don't, and that's why coaching is effective. Because you're gonna come to me with problems and challenges and thoughts that are blocking you from seeing the truth, which is this is a hundred percent possible for you, right? And I hold that space, and then I can reflect that back to you.

And what happens is, every week when we meet together, you tap into that and it starts to become easier for you to believe, okay? But you don't need to believe it to reach your goal. All you need to believe are these three things: you know what to do, you're capable of doing it, and that if you do it, it'll make some sort of difference, even if that impact is that you're going to be better off because you have learned something about yourself or your body or what didn't work.

Number five is there's more to the story than eat less and move more. So yes, is that effective, eating less and moving more? Yes, but you also need to allow your body to use [00:21:00] its excess body fat as fuel. So whether that is staying in a calorie deficit, but making sure that you're eating enough fat, fiber, protein, vegetables, all of that, or you're doing some sort of fasting protocol in which you are allowing hunger so that your body will use its excess fat as energy.

Okay? So it's not just eating less, because what happens is it, it's harmful to your metabolism essentially, right? And then so you need to continue to eat less and less and less to reach your goal, to continue to lose weight. So that's not effective. What you need to do is

eat in a way that's optimal for your body to use its fat as fuel You also need to be eating foods that serve you so that you're not hangry all the time, right? So that you feel satiated and that your blood sugar is balanced. This is going to be removing the obvious Sugar, flour, [00:22:00] alcohol. Now, you might not wanna remove those entirely, but you will want to reduce them.

There is cer- gonna be some changes that you're gonna need to make in order to release weight off of your body, to balance that blood sugar so that You're lowering, essentially, that physiological over desire. And to do all of this, you need to attend to your mind. So this is where a lot of the eat less, move more just misses the picture of that developing cognitive awareness.

Cognitive awareness is knowing why you do what you do. And if you're listening to this podcast, you know that's a critical component to all of this. Because it doesn't matter what strategy you have. There's lots of great strategies in terms of eating better, and you can choose one based on your preferences.

But what you're gonna need to do is work with your brain so that you can follow through on that, and also that you can stick with it long-term. So that's the managing the psychological over desire. And I wanna offer [00:23:00] three mind or thinking traps that often get in the way of this, which are all or nothing thinking.

This is, "If I've gone, if I've had a few chips, then screw it, I'm gonna eat the whole bag." Or, "My weekend, you know, I overindulged, so Sunday night is a bit of a write-off, and I'll start again Monday." This is all or nothing thinking that is for sure gonna slow your progress. The other one is justification thoughts.

So your thought could be, "I just want it," or, "I deserve it," or, "This is how we celebrate, this is how we relax." Any of those justification thoughts are going to generate in your body permissiveness and desire, and then what happens is we overeat. So we wanna be aware of those, and we wanna have some tools to start reprogramming how we respond when our brain offers up justification thoughts.

And then the last thing or last thinking trap that I notice is a negative bias. So often, a big part of what I do with clients is just showing them what [00:24:00] is working so that they can stay in momentum or, in some cases, they can get back into momentum. What happens is our brain is looking for the tiger in the grass always, even if that is the time where the scale bumped up or the time when you overate a little bit.

Humans are just bad at looking at their own progress, right? We will tend to see what is going wrong versus what is going right, and then it just takes a wind out of your sails in terms of showing up in the way that you want to. Getting to your workout, although for many of my clients, that's not an issue.

You all are super active, and there's no problem there. It's more food and alcohol that we're addressing So just know that, that you have that negative bias, and so you want to almost, , counteract as far as you can in the other direction. Overcompensate, essentially. Two more. Number six is self-acceptance comes first [00:25:00] and builds along the way, not afterward as a reward for achieving your goal.

And now, this is, could be a tough one, right? 'Cause if you are in a lot of self-loathing or rejection of your body, then it can be... almost seem impossible to accept where you are. But this is the work then that you really need to do. Because what you want to do is build confidence and pride into the process, rather than being hyper-fixated on the immediate results or the scale going down or changes in your clothes.

Because those will most likely be slower than you would like and, and your brain is going to, again, go to negative bias. And there's an opportunity here to realize, oh, this whole weight loss thing, it's really just about self-acceptance. And that's what I'm going for. When I imagine myself at this desired body I will [00:26:00] accept it and I will accept myself.

And what we wanna do is work on bridging that gap in your brain, in your relationship with yourself, so that you start cultivating self-acceptance where you are, that you do that along the way, because that is a, a real skill. And also I think just a state change, that relationship with yourself just changes.

Because what happens is you can change the circumstance, but your thought is still gonna be the same. So you'll get to your desired body in terms of the number maybe or the size of clothing, but you still won't accept yourself because your thoughts, what's happening on the inside, has not really changed.

Now, it might be easier to think self-accepting thoughts, but if you're not skilled at doing that, regardless of the circumstance, because of our negative bias, Your brain will find something else to fixate on because you're not skilled at deciding, "No, I just accept myself."

So it [00:27:00] will find, you know, now you have too many wrinkles, or now you have loose skin, or now you have cellulite or something like that, or you got a C-section scar, right? So it will find something. So what we wanna do is find that balance of both, that you can cultivate self-acceptance along the way while you are making changes.

So I'm not saying eradicate your goal. What I'm saying is go for your desired body while you are cultivating that. Don't use it as a reward and withhold that from yourself until you've achieved it. And, and I know it's easier said than done, uh, but this is why we do this work. And then the last one is I wanna offer to you that it's super simple.

I think we make this really complicated when it doesn't need to be complicated. Now, it's not easy, which is why support is often required Why? Because we have that over desire piece that cannot be solved with a strategy, that cannot be solved [00:28:00] with a workout plan or a meal plan or somebody telling you, "Okay, limit your alcohol consumption to one a week."

No, it's deeper than that. So it is super simple in terms of behavior, but it's not easy because of what's going on internally. So if you need support, please reach out to me. I would love to talk to you about what working together would look like, whether that is in my group program or private coaching.

We can discuss all the details. You can book a next steps call. Go to the link in the show notes, and you can go ahead and book that. Or you can just email me if you have a question, and we can chat, and we can talk about what would make the difference for you, whether that's you wanna focus on the... Really, whichever one of these unconventional truths you wanna focus on, which you think would be the biggest step moving forward.

Is it self-acceptance? Is it that you want to get really clear on your [00:29:00] strategy, or is there some sort of feeling piece here that the psychological over desire is really getting in your way? Whatever it is, we can talk about it. Okay, I hope that was helpful, and I will talk to you again soon. Okay, bye.