Of course you want faster weight loss results. We all do! But it already feels like you’re doing everything you can. Should you eat even less? Workout even more? My friend, you don’t need to do either one of those things, because I have a short list of two things you can do that’ll really move the needle on the scale – and that’s exactly what we’re talking about on today’s episode.
Hello, hello GOALfriend, and welcome to the podcast. As I promised you last week, I’ve got another deep-dive Masterclass that I pulled up from the Pahla B archives.
This one was called “Speed Up Your Results By Doing These Two Things,” and I know you’re going to find some real gems in here. I originally recorded this webinar way back in early 2023, so a little over a year ago, and it really covers a lot of actionable ground for how to move forward on your weight loss journey.
And just like last week, you also get the added treat of listening in to the Q&A session after the webinar, so be sure to listen all the way to the end. Enjoy!
You guys, come in, come in and welcome! In case you don't know me, I'm Pahla B, I'm a weight loss life coach for women over 50. I am the author of the Amazon-bestselling book, Mind Over Menopause, and the host of the Get Your Goal podcast. My friends, I'm a girl who is all about getting results, and today we are talking about speeding up your results by doing these two things. And the thing about getting results is that even though it is all that I talk about now, about getting your goal, getting results, being the girl who gets what you want, I was not always that girl. In fact, in 2014 I had been in business for myself
For almost exactly two years as a fitness coach. In fact, I started my business on January 1st, 2012 and two years in, I was still in that phase where I was just desperate to create results for myself. And on January 1st, 2014, I vividly remember sitting down with these four huge pieces of paper At the time my kids were in middle school and high school, so you know how you just always have lots of construction paper, lots of arts and crafts, lots of paper and pens around your house, and I sat down with these four huge pieces of paper and I wrote 2014 on it. This was my vision board for the year. This was how I was going to create success. And on the four different pages, I had the four quarters of the year for my business and I had these projections about how I was going to get, I think at the time, gosh, in 2014, I think in 2014 I had 500 subscribers on YouTube and I think I had about 12 followers on Facebook, which would have been like my mom and my sister, and I'm pretty sure I even gave my kids Facebook accounts just so that they could follow my business page so that it looked like I had followers.
I don't remember if I had Instagram yet. I don't think, did Pinterest exist in 2014? I think it might've still been kind of new-ish. I know TikTok didn't exist. I know that I was still trying to be out there on all of the places and had not really reached a very big audience. So here I am on the first of the year and I'm putting all these projections. By the end of the year, I'm going to have 10,000 followers. I'm going to be making the amount of money of my dreams. This is my year.
And then I vividly remember in April of that year when I took all of those papers down and ripped them into shreds and cried my eyes out because none of it was working, none of it was going the way I planned. I felt like the biggest failure in the world. I obviously had no idea how to run a business. I had no idea how to get success. I had no idea how to get results, and I thought maybe I would never figure it out. And yet here I am running a webinar on how to speed up your results by doing these two things because I did figure it out and this is what I am sharing with you today. You guys, the answer for how to speed up your results by doing these two things is these are the two things. Number one, know exactly what you want, and number two, focus only on what you want.
And here's thing. This is such a simple concept and I'm going to say easy advice, although truly the word that's better suited in that part of the sentence is simple. Again, this is simple advice. There's two steps. You know what this means, you understand it, and yet it is virtually impossible for us to implement this kind of thing because thank goodness for the internet. Am I right? You and I wouldn't know each other if we didn't have the internet, but also every single day you go on to any corner of the internet and you are inundated with all kinds of messages about all kinds of things that you can do and be and have. You go onto Pinterest and you've got recipes for the rest of your life that you could never even get to them all. You go on Instagram and you have all the fitness inspo you could possibly need to do every single workout for the rest of your life.
You've gone on YouTube, you've got people who want to tell you about your horoscope. You've got people who want to read you books. You've got people who want to tell you everything you could possibly do, and then you go to Facebook and then you've got all your friends input about what they're doing in their fabulous lives. Oh my gosh, all of a sudden here you are on the internet and you right now might want to lose weight, get in shape, work on your bone density, work on your heart health, work on your muscle tone, work on your balance, reduce your menopause symptoms, build muscle, train for a 5K, maintain your weight, be healthy. And that's just like the top three people in your Instagram feed trying to tell you. These are all the things you could possibly want for yourself, and yes you can. And just so you know, these are fantastic goals.
Truly, these are fantastic goals. I'm not telling you not to do these things, but I am telling you that the way to have all of these things is to get them one at a time because here is what is slowing you down. Here's how this is actually showing up in your life that right now you want to do all of these things or most of them. I mean there might be one or two on here that you're like, no, no, Paula, I don't. But here's the thing. When you want all of the things, this was what was happening to me in 2014. In fact, oh my gosh, so in 2014, okay, first of all, I was 44 years old. I still had all of my estrogen. Life was very different. I was doing in-home personal training. I was also running an early morning fitness bootcamp.
I was posting videos, daily workout videos daily on YouTube to my 500 subscribers. I was running ultra marathons. I meant to look this up. In fact, this was one of the things I was thinking about this morning when I was going for my very short, I was like, how many races did I run in 2014? I remember for sure that I ran a couple of 50 Ks and I know for sure that I ran one 50 miler and well, I know for sure that I ran at least one marathon, probably two and probably a couple of half marathons, 10 Ks and five Ks. Also, this was in my free time because I had free time because I also had teenagers In 2014, I had a 15-year-old and a 14-year-old, which means that they were right at that age where they were social and they had lots of activities after school, but also not quite enough independence to be able to get themselves places.
I was working very early in the morning at my bootcamp. I was scrambling home to make sure that they were ready to go to school. Then I was going to my personal training clients all day. Then I was coming home and filming a YouTube video and putting it up on YouTube that day. By the way, things were very different then, and then they would come home and I'd be driving them hither and yawn, and then the next day I'd get up and do that all again. I did not have a lot of focus. I was trying to do everything and how it actually showed up in my life and how it might be showing up in your life is that you might actually find yourself procrastinating, things you might find yourself with lots of fears and worries around your goals for yourself. Lots of really weird lack of motivation and actually what I meant to say here is lack of specific motivation.
I did that thing and maybe you can relate where I had tons of motivation. I felt it. I felt all kinds of urgency to get up and do something, and yet nothing to really pour that into. I didn't know what to do, so instead I ended up kind of just sitting and playing on my phone instead. So lack of specific motivation to do a specific thing, lots of confusion, lots of overwhelm, lots of just lack of focus. Even though I knew I was going to post a YouTube video, I knew I was going to go to my bootcamp. I knew I was going to go to my personal training clients. I didn't quite know what I was doing with any of them. My YouTube channel was all over the place. I talked about running, I talked about fitness, I talked about mindset, talked about all kinds of different kind fitness adjacent topics, but I didn't know quite where to put my focus.
Lots of overdoing. I've already described the overdoing. We won't belabor that point. Lots of starting and stopping. In fact, I've said, oh, I posted a video every day in 2014. No, I didn't. I would post a video every day for a month or two and then I would come back to once a week and then I would post a bunch of videos and then I would kind of not post for a while and then I would go all in and then I would kind of do nothing for a while. Lots of stopping and starting so much self-doubt, so much self-doubt constant and the constant searching for more or better information. In 2014, I'm going to say that I followed near about a thousand. I think that number is low. I'm going to say a thousand accounts between YouTube and Instagram, really specifically YouTube and Instagram, but also on Facebook.
I followed so many business accounts who all had advice for me about how to do their specific thing and I had my favorites. There were people that I followed a lot more closely than other, but I was spending so much time on the internet trying to find what I thought of as the thing that was going to get me where I wanted to go. I wanted more and better information and yet, and yet there I was spinning my wheels. So here's what happens when we are here in are doing too much and too little all at the same time. Here's what happens. We actually need to do those two things that I have already offered you. You need to know exactly what you want and you need to focus only on what you want and here's why this will actually work with your brain. And incidentally, your body, your brain is very smart.
Let me just start with that. Your brain is very smart and also there are so much of our brains that are still really related to how we were when we were cave people. The truth of the matter is that your brain does its best and most efficient work when it's focusing on one thing. We as society have decided that we should multitask, that we can get more done by doing it all the time, and yet your brain can't quite work that way. When you are working with your brain, you are not multitasking, you are focusing on one thing in order to get to that one thing, and I know lots of us are like, no, but that'll slow me down. It means I'm only getting the one thing. Interestingly though, when you get one thing at a time, you can have all of them faster than if you were trying to get all of them at the same time.
This also absolutely 100% works with your body. This is actually something that I have known for a long time as a fitness trainer and it took me a very long time to understand, but this is how my brain works too. There's a thing called the principle of specificity, which I mean essentially just says that what you train for is what you will be able to do. So if you want something, you train for that thing. Now, here's the fantastic news. Your body can make any adaptation that you want. However, your body is only making the adaptation for the thing you are currently training for. This is where it gets really hard for all of us. That means if you are training for and focused on one thing, it means in other areas you might have things to give up. I know this is hard for you.
In fact, I meant to warn you, I'm kicking myself right now. I had it in my notes even to tell you that some of what we talk about today might feel like tough love. This is one of 'em, so I apologize for not giving you any warning, but this is a little bit of tough love when you want one thing, there might be other areas that don't suffer, but that change that fall by the wayside in order to have this one thing. And what I'll offer you is that when that one thing happens to be weight loss, the great news about weight loss is that once you have achieved it, it's the easiest thing to hang onto while you get all your other fitness and health goals. Weight loss is temporary. It is a thing that you do. Eating in that slight caloric deficit over time is a thing that you do for an amount of time until you get there and then hanging onto it can include all of your other health and fitness goals.
So here's the thing about knowing exactly what you want and focusing only on what you want. Here's how you do that. In order to know exactly what you want, you're going to pick one goal and go all in. So in 2020, when I hired myself a business coach, the very first thing that she and I sat down to do was figure out what my one thing was. And at the time, I've already described to you by 2020 when I hired a business coach, I had whittled down. No, I had not, had not whittled down. I had gotten rid of some parts of my business and then added others. I had added a podcast, I had added a second channel. I had, oh gosh, it's a little embarrassing to talk about this just so you know about how very scattered I was, and it was really embarrassing when I sat down with my business coach in 2020 and she was like, okay, what do you want?
What are you doing right now? Let's figure out what you're doing right now. And I gave her the list of the 57 things that I was doing and she's like, okay, let's narrow this down to your top three. And then from that top three, Paula, we're going to pick one. And then I started crying because I didn't want to give them up. They were my whoopies, my babies. I wanted to do it all. It's hard. It's hard, and ultimately it is simple and so worth it, so worth it to actually get the results that you want rather than continuing to spin around in that constant state of vague and sometimes not so vague disappointment of not having what you want. So my friend, you're going to pick one goal and you're going to go all in and really what you're going to do is exactly what I did.
You're going to make a list and then you're going to prioritize one through whatever, 57 or however many things you have, and then you start with number one, whatever that number one thing is, that's the thing in your heart that you want most. Go get it, and here's how you're going to focus only on what you want. And here's the other part that might sound a little bit like tough love because in order to do that, you are going to actively reject. I know I don't like that word either, but here I am saying it to you. You're going to actively reject information people, and not necessarily people in your life, but people on the internet really specifically social media, social media accounts and sources of inspiration that seems so inspirational to you but also are inspirational for the thing that is not your priority right now.
You are going to reject any of these things that aren't related to your one goal and here's the tough love. That might be me, you guys. I know you love me. I love you too. You love my vibe, you love how I talk, you love how I do things, and also if weight loss ends up not being your number one goal, me with my constant message of weight loss, I mean everywhere on social media, my handle is Paula, B, weight loss coach for women over 50. Everything I talk about, yeah, by the way, of course I talk about your health. Of course, I talk about menopause, of course, I talk about your bones, of course, I talk about your muscles, but all of those things that I talk about are through the lens of weight loss. I talk about weight loss. I'm a weight loss coach, and even though you love me and I love you, if weight loss is not your focus, that means that I might be distracting you from getting you what you want.
And my friend, what I want for you is for you to get what you want. We can still be friends, but also it means that you can actively reject my message. That's completely okay. I don't take it personally. I would take it more personally if you stuck around here and kind of what I did, which is to say before I actively unfollowed, I used to follow this one business coach. I loved him. He had the best, no, he did not have the best advice. He had the best presentation. I loved listening to him. I felt so and so motivated, and yet the actual context of his, what am I trying to say of his message was a lot of, he was a YouTube coach and he talked all the time about affiliate marketing and brand deals and things I didn't want to do. I have tried, by the way, I have tried selling things for other people.
You've seen me do it over the years on YouTube. If you've been around for a while, I don't love it. It's not my favorite. There are some brands that I'm really willing to work with. Chirp audiobooks is one of them. I'm actually working with them. Again, I love reading that actually fits not necessarily with my message of weight loss, but it just fits with who I am as a human being. But I tried promoting some other things and it always just felt weird, and so every time I was watching this person's videos, I was shouting back at the screen. I'm so embarrassed to say that out loud, but you know what? Let me just normalize this for you. We all do this. We find somebody whose vibe we really like and then we disagree with them. We disagree with the content of what they're saying. Every time I would watch this video, I'd be like, I don't want to do that.
So I finally unfollowed. Here's the thing. You get to make any decisions that you want to not telling you. I'm not kicking you off. I'm not kicking you out of my life. Again, you love me, I love you. We are friends here and I want you to get what you want. So here's how I can actually help you, my friend, but only if you want to lose weight. Here's how I help you. I have the five oh method. In case you don't have this, I actually just reup updated this. Again, I've been updating it a couple of times kind of apropos of our conversation today. I keep narrowing it down so that it can get better and better and better for you to have the exact information and none of the other fluff that'll really help you narrow in. This is what I need to do.
This is how I'm going to do it. So the five oh method is on my website, getyourgoal.com. It's free. It's my weight loss program. It's the entire program for women over 50. It explains exactly why weight loss changed as we were going through menopause and post-menopausal and what to do about it, my friend, you can get on my email list, which by the way, if you're here on this webinar, you are on my email list and welcome and you can invite your friends as well, but every, no, not Tuesday, every Monday and every Thursday, I send out an email with tips, tricks, motivation, inspiration, actual practical advice and invitations to things like this, to my email list. Also on social media, and I'm going to give you a little caveat about my social media, which means things like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.
I think that's all the social media I'm on now. I think it's, if I come up with another one, I'll let you know, but on my social media, as I mentioned in my story, I've been on these platforms since 2014, so if you go back, you will find a very scattered message. You will find lots of information about how to run a 5K. You will find lots of information about how to build your bone density. You will find lots of information that might confuse you if what you want is weight loss. Also, the reason I keep it up, well, the reason I keep it up is two reasons. Number one is if that is what you are looking for, I used to be a great resource for things like that and also you here on this webinar today, you can see me model for you what this process looks like and how long it might take.
I mean, you heard my story. I've mentioned the year 2014 numerous times for those of us who are Math challenge, that was nine years ago. It's taken me nine years to figure out exactly what my message is and frankly, it is ever evolving. In another nine years, I might be given another webinar talking about something else, but right now all of my social media content, like this year for example, I'm putting out a short video on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook every single day of 2023. It talks all about weight loss. They're the little one minute videos. It's a nice little snippet of something that you can take in and take on and implement right away that can help you if weight loss is your number one goal. Also, I have to get your goal podcast, which again, same caveat. Oh my gosh, if you guys have been around for a while, I started this podcast in 2017.
I have 300 episodes as of this Sunday, 300 episodes means the way back in 2017, I was talking about something different because it used to be called the Let's Run podcast, and then when I was a fitness coach, it was the Fitness Matters podcast, and now that I am a weight loss mindset life coach, it's the Get Your Goal podcast. So if you go back into the archives, you will find some information that might sound confusing and or if weight loss is not your primary goal, might have some absolutely fantastic information for you. Also, webinars like this one you guys, this is an early 2024 goal of mine is to host webinars like this with some frequency. I am not ready to commit to monthly just yet. I'm definitely committing to quarterly and the eventual target is monthly, but I don't want to promise you that just in case there isn't one in September.
So you guys, I love to be able to be here with you. I love to give you actionable advice. I'd love to answer your questions. This is something that I will continue to do with a frequency that's to be announced and also Mind of a Menopause, the book I already mentioned this one, you guys, the book takes a deep dive into your mindset and how to use my very specific two-step tool, which is to say a journaling process that I offer to you that can help you lose weight really effectively by working on your mindset. It also in that book offers some information about maintenance and loving your body in general. It is weight loss advice that spreads out a little bit wider, and that's what I really want you to know about how I help everything that I talk about is weight loss and also spreads out a little bit wider.
This is what we do in the Get Your Goal group. This is actually my premier offering is the Get Your Goal mastermind group where I very specifically did not call it Get your goal weight because you are welcome there with any goal. It is a weight loss group where we talk about goal getting, where we talk about the mindset that it takes to work through and to your goal. There's a weight loss focus absolutely, but it's all about managing your mindset so that you can get your goal, my friends. The other way that I can help is by answering your questions right now. Oh, by the way, the way that you can find all of these things on my website, get your goal.com, and I would love to know what is on your mind. I'm so proud of myself. I told you 30 to 45 minutes in my mind I was like going to be closer to 45 and here we are right at 9 28, which means we've got lots of time to answer your very specifically weight loss and weight loss adjacent questions.
Heather in North Carolina says, I did 30 days and then felt great. Oh, I did 30 days felt great and then stopped. What's my problem? Oh, I love this question and I will tell you I don't think it's a problem that something happened that 30 days. What I love to think about is that when what I am doing doesn't seem to be working, it's not that there's a problem, it means that I have an opportunity to dig in a different way. So what generally happens at 30 days is that your brain doesn't love a lot of changes that we can white knuckle our way through lots of changes for a short amount of time, and then we find ourselves saying things like, well, life kind of got in the way or things happened, and let me be very clear. I say it in that little bit of a sing-songy voice.
I'm not accusing you of making excuses or anything like that. This actually is exactly how our brains work. Our brains are really okay with short-term overriding of long-term programming, but the long-term programming is always going to win. The habits that you have had for years are the habits that will come back because you've had them for years. It takes a real intentionality to observe what your brain and body are doing and to come to it with not thinking this is a problem that I need to solve, but with some curiosity. It's why I offer as part of the five L method, a journaling practice every day so that you can hear that old programming. Just hear the thoughts in your head that say things like You should eat less and move more. It doesn't work anymore, but we all think it. You guys, okay, let me, Nicole has a great question.
Do you have to eat if you're not hungry? I love this question and what I want to offer you about thinking about your hunger, your hunger is a tool that you have at your disposal and it's not necessarily your most accurate information and here's why. Hunger has both a physical component as well as like a, I'm going to call it a programmed component. We all are like Pavlov's dogs. We will drool at the sound of a bell. We have all been socialized quite literally our entire lives to eat at certain times of day, whatever time of day your parents decided to serve you. Dinner when you were a child was when you got to eat, so your body learned how to be hungry about 15 minutes before that. Right now, if you have a job, you know that you're going to eat breakfast at a certain time, you're going to get a lunch break at a certain time, and the end of the day comes and then you get to go home and have dinner, so your body is programmed to be hungry at those certain times.
Also, what happens is that we can program ourselves to not be hungry, and it doesn't mean that our body doesn't need fuel. It means that our brain has overridden our body's signals. Again, we get socialized into this and really one of the main tenets of what I teach in the 5.0 method and in the Get Your Goal group is how to gently create a brain body connection where you can really hear and feel your hunger and satiety signals. Right now, depending on where you are in your weight loss process and depending on where your brain body connection is, you simply might not have the hunger signals that you can count on, so what I suggest is that especially if you are just getting started with weight loss, counting calories is the way to go so that your body can get used to an amount of food, it can get used to that kind of regular fueling, and then as you go and build that brain body connection, you will get better at understanding your hunger and satiety signals, and by the time you're ready for maintenance, you'll be able to stop counting calories and simply eat what your body needs to maintain. Thank you so much for asking that question.
Oh gosh. Susan has a question that I'm going to take a minute to read through carefully, so if doing a certain activity, for example, extensive yard work, weed whacking on my 23 acres, Vermont hilltop, okay, I'm both jealous and not jealous because 23 acres sounds like a lot to take care of. I would love the space. I can quite literally out the side of my house, I can reach the fence, literally just the length of my arm. I can reach the fence and then that same distance again, I can reach my neighbor's house. The idea of having acreage, even one because I have a fifth, even one sounds so glorious anyways, okay, and feeling sore afterwards. Knees back and shoulders, yes, I imagine so weed whacking on 23 acres does sound like quite a bit of work. I want to still do my 23 minutes of daily exercise from my weight loss goal.
No, there's no need plus, I just love doing your videos. You know what is super fun? If you have decent wifi, like when you're out on your property, you could just listen to me. You could totally just listen to me while you're doing your weed whacking because believe me, those kinds of chores, that kind of activity, absolutely 100% not only counts, but probably counts as almost over exercise for your day. If there's some way that you can break that up into smaller chunks, I highly recommend that for you. If you can't, I will offer you that paying attention to what needs to be done and considering it a hopefully temporary season where there's a lot of work during certain times of year, and then you will have the ability to rest at other times. Looking at it as a season where you are not doing, let's call it intentional exercise, even though truly that is intentional exercise and you even say, but I'm concerned.
Should I still do the exercise? No on that day, or would it cause increased inflammation and possible waking? It really could and slash probably does. There's almost no way that that won't be over exercising for you. What I'll offer you gently and with love is that sometimes our brain tells us because of old programming that we have to eat less and move more. Sometimes our brain will tell us, but you didn't exercise today. Yeah, you really did, and just hearing, observing that thought in your brain can go such a long way into helping this decision feel so much better for you knowing that when you move your body, it is exercise and really specifically knowing, because I tell you guys all the time, and I'm pointing to the 5.0 method where over exercise is actually the problem and not the solution. Exercise does not drive weight loss and can be the cause of weight gain.
Anytime. Anytime. You can take it off your list for the day, take it off your list. If you have physical therapy, if you are injured, if you are tired, if you are sore, if you have inflammation, if you have chores to do, exercise just goes on the not today list and this is exactly why I have a podcast, or you can just listen to the workouts. You can always have me along for the ride with you no matter what you are doing to move your body. It doesn't have to be one of my videos. Thank you so much for asking that. That was such a great question.
Oh, anonymous attendee, this is so fantastic. Can you define goal? Yes, I can. Are you saying I can't lose weight and meet work goals? You can, and what I will offer you is that I've done this in my own life and what I have offered myself is that in order to meet two really separate goals like a work goal and a personal goal, it does actually mean that both of them are going to take a little bit longer really being on board with, I know I'm splitting my focus here and I'm okay with that. I want them both and they're not in actual conflict. Here's the thing about, okay, really specifically, let me come back to my list here where if you want to lose weight, get in shape, work on these things, reduce menopause symptoms, build muscles, train for a 5K and maintain your weight.
So many of these, in fact literally everything below this, everything below lose weight requires you to not be eating in a caloric deficit. All of these fitness and health gains means that you need to be fueling at full capacity. This losing weight is in direct contrast to all of these. This is why I really truly, I mean as a weight loss coach, yes, I have a dog in this race. I really truly suggest that you focus on weight loss so that you can be done. It's temporary. You just do the weight loss right now, any of the other fitness gains that happen to come along, you can build muscle, you can get in shape, you can make improvements, but also those are all just gravy right now. Then once you've lost the weight, it'll be very, very simple to maintain while really focusing on one, I'm pointing, but it doesn't matter which one of these other goals.
Now having said that, a work goal and either weight loss or some kind of health or fitness goal, depending on what your job is, are probably not in contrast, so you are very welcome to have two absolutely unrelated goals with the understanding that it could therefore just take a little bit longer, just take a little bit longer, not a lot. I'm not putting a timeframe on it like, oh, this is going to take you five years longer. No, just a little bit longer because you will have seasons where it's like, okay, I am so 100% here on my work that the weight loss is a little bit lower. Yeah, I'm focusing on it, but it's a little bit lower and sometimes, especially at the very beginning, weight loss, it takes up so much mental bandwidth. It'll need to be the thing that you focus on for let's say a month or two a season where you're like, I just need to get this dialed in.
I just want to make sure that I'm making decisions. I've got some routines, I've got some things figured out. I've had a couple of bumps in the road and worked my way through those, so this can come down and focus a tiny bit still my primary health goal, but it can come down and focus a little bit and now let's go work. You can have them both and they're going to just shimmy their way up to your goal versus if for example, you don't have a work goal and you only have a health goal or you only have a, which one did I just say? Whichever way the other way is you only just have the one goal. It would be faster to just have the one goal. Thank you so much for asking that. I'm really glad that I got a chance to explain that and let's see.
Oh, Melissa says, I have gained 15 pounds in the last six months beforehand I had kept the same weight for many, many years. I made it through menopause, keeping my weight the same, and is that what has happened? I lost my focus and didn't realize it. You know what? Maybe, and also maybe not in the case of what I'm going to call sudden, I mean six months isn't sudden sudden, but it's kind of sudden and especially if you are postmenopausal, I would check in with your doctor. I would just eliminate any kind of physical reason for such a thing before we go willy-nilly calling ourselves lack of focus because it's not necessarily what's going on here and it's always a good idea to get a medical opinion before we try to figure out what else might be going on, so that's my answer. I don't actually know what might be going on, and honestly, here's my understanding of menopause and here's my personal experience with menopause.
I am actually still perimenopausal and I have gone through a lot of the physical changes that all of my research made it sound like it was all going to happen post-menopausal, so your personal journey through menopause and when your body makes certain changes and when your body suddenly, I'm going to say can't, even though it can, your body can still do everything that it used to do. It doesn't recover the way that it used to. Your body might've actually still been recovering really well until six months ago. For whatever biological reason your body has, I do not claim to understand all of the mysteries of our bodies. It could still, even if you are quite post-menopausal, it still could be a menopausal reaction in your body. That means that now we just work with our bodies instead of the way that we used to for years and years and years.
That was my experience. I had no problem maintaining my weight until I did, until it was a problem. Oh, I love this. Peggy says, question, how do I get motivated to just start this? I do tend to start and stop. I will tell you that one of the best things that I ever did for myself, and this is not the only answer, but it is an answer that really worked for me and it's why I am a coach, is I hired a coach, having somebody else sit next to me while I whittled down my 57 things into my top three and then into my top one. I told you this story. I cried. I cried and cried. I technically could have done that myself. I could have, and yet I didn't. I needed somebody to sit next to me and hold my hand and say, this is all going to work out.
If that is in your wheelhouse, I suggest it. I really do. It's not a lack of motivation, by the way, when you're saying, how do I get motivated? It's not a motivation thing. It's really not. There are all kinds of complex reasons why we do what we do, and for me personally, one of my love languages is to have somebody. It's an acts of service. I like people to do things for me that I am perfectly capable of doing for myself. It's why I've hired a coach to help me write a book. It's why I hired a coach to help me with my business. It's why I run a coaching business. I literally just sit next to you while you do the work because that's exactly what helps me. The other day, the other day, I had to call the IRS, okay? This was not a big deal.
It was a letter that we got in the mail. They just wanted to verify my identity. Actually, I called my accountant and I'm like, is this actually a thing? I've been paying taxes for 30 years. Do I actually have to call the IRS? And my accountant was like, yeah, they're doing that. If you get a letter that's real, if they call you on the phone, that's a scam. If they email you, that's a scam, but if you get an actual paper letter in the mail, that's real. And I was like, okay, good to know. And I put it off and put it off and put it off and put it off, and then I put it off some more, and then I looked at the date and I was like, oh, crap, I have to do this today. And so I asked my husband, I was like, can you just sit next to me while I call the IRS?
And he was like, yes, I can. I was like 10 minutes on the phone. It was not a big deal at all. Just needed somebody to sit next to me while I did the work. This might be what you need. You are the one who knows. Again, I happen to know, happen to know that my love language is the acts of service, and you don't have to actually know your language of love, but if you know that it's really helpful for you to just have somebody sitting next to you and holding your hand, it might be time to hire a coach. It really is, so thank you for asking that question. I love it. Cindy says, I've been undereating for years now, not intentionally. I just started counting calories. I know it's kind of shocking, right? You're like, holy moly, how have I not been losing weight? But also once you understand in the five oh method that undereating is the problem, it's like, oh, that's why I haven't been losing weight anyways. I eat a thousand calories per day, should be eating 1650. How do I increase calories without gaining weight? Here's the thing, your body actually needs the fuel to lose weight.
I know that just blew your mind. I know that it's hard to comprehend, even though it's easy to comprehend. It's also really hard to comprehend. We've been told our entire lives, our entire lives that the only reason you gain weight is because you're overeating. It's not true. The science is clear. It's clear. You have to fuel your body to fuel weight loss. Having said that, I don't suggest that you just add 650 calories to your day. Your brain's going to freak out, your body's going to be fine, but your brain is going to freak out, figure out what feels like a really doable step. What do you think you could actually eat every day consistently and not feel completely freaked out by it? Is that 1,020, 1,050, 1100? You get to decide what your step is and then when that feels calm, when your nervous system has taken care of itself and you're like, okay, this is actually really doable, and oh, by the way, I'm starting to get some hunger signals.
I've been underfeeding myself all these years, and now my body's like, oh, hey, are we actually going to eat? It'll start giving you hunger signals. Then you get to decide your next step. Is it 20 more calories? Is it 50 more calories? Is it a hundred more calories? This process might take you, and I say this with love, this is me and my love. That didn't sound like tough love. It might actually take you months to be able to stare step your way up to the amount of calories that is actually going to produce weight loss, and in that interim, you are very likely to see fluctuations that your brain is going to offer you as weight gain. It is not necessarily weight gain. It is simply your body figuring out what to do with these inputs. It doesn't mean you're eating too much. It means you're making changes and everything that you can do.
For example, journaling to keep yourself as not even calm, but just to understand that your brain is offering you thoughts that just aren't true, and not only are they not true, they're not helpful. Your brain saying you have to eat less is untrue and feels terrible, which means that it's unhelpful stare stepping your way so gently, so kindly, so lovingly, giving yourself just tons of spacious time to be able to get all the way to your calorie target before you're even really looking for weight loss. Trust me, I know you're looking for weight loss, but before you're really looking for weight loss, just be like, you know what? Here I am. This is what I'm doing. I'm going to get up there to my calorie target, and then I'm going to see how everything's going with my body. This is just a really beautiful science experiment of one, and along the way, I'm probably going to feel a little bit panicky and I can absolutely journal about that and feel that and be with that and observe that, and it's all going to be okay. It's all going to be okay, and thank you for asking that. Okay? Oh, thank you.
Robin says, all of your advice is helpful and applicable in other areas of my life, not just weight loss, and I mean I can help you with weight loss, but also yes, all the weight loss adjacent things I actually meant the other weight loss adjacent things.
Yeah, let's come to all the ways that I can help you. There's all the ways that I can help you and yes, oh my gosh, doing any kind of mindset work, it shows up everywhere. It shows up everywhere, and I hope I pronounced your name correctly. It says, my mindset fluctuates with my emotions, which is a big problem for me. Actually. That is a perfect description of your mindset. Your thoughts create your emotions, not the other way around. You do have thoughts about your emotions, but your thoughts are the ones creating your emotions, and that's completely okay. They're supposed to fluctuate, not a problem at all. I know it feels like a problem. I know that that just sounded like I was totally dismissing everything you said, not my intention to dismiss you, but rather to absolutely corroborate with you that you have 60,000 thoughts a day.
Every single one of them produces an emotion. You don't notice most of them. So many of those thoughts are subconscious, and so many of those feelings are just really mild. There are things like, I'm going to call it an urgency, but it's so mild. It's just like a little desire, for example, to walk across the room and sit in a chair. You actually do have a feeling, an emotion that gets you to walk across the room and sit in a chair. Just that we don't really notice it. It doesn't feel like a big emotion, but anyways, I just don't know how to remain consistent. You don't have to, you guys, for an emotional person like me, this was the best news I ever heard when I first came to life coaching and I understood that you are supposed to have all the emotions that you have.
This was the biggest weight that ever got pulled off of my shoulders. You're supposed to have thoughts, you're supposed to have feelings. None of it's a problem. Here's what you do. Rather than trying to be consistent with your emotions, you could simply observe them all. This is all part of my glorious human existence. This is part of being a human being on this earth is that I have a lot of thoughts and a lot of feelings, and it is my desire to behave in a specifically consistent way. I mean, I'm assuming that your goal here is weight loss because that's what I do. I talk about weight loss, so you'd like to behave in a consistent way, but you know what's great? You can behave consistently from a variety of emotions. I'm pointing behind me because the emotions are what drives your behavior, so you can eat your calorie target in all kinds of emotional weather.
You can go to bed on time in all kinds of emotional weather. You can exercise moderately in all kinds of different emotions going on in your life. Life. You can behave consistently while feeling all the 60,000 things a day that you feel totally okay, and again, hopefully that feels really empowering and really good news to you. You don't actually have to squash down your emotions to lose weight. Amazing, and I love it. So Linda asked essentially the question that I answered earlier, but I do want to shout out to you. Linda says, question, I know you said to focus on one goal, is it possible to focus one personal goal weight loss for me and one professional goal, make money from my writing? Yes, and the whole reason I wanted to read that out loud is because yes, go make money from your writing, so happy for you.
I love making money from my writing. It's like such a dream come true, and so if I was not only focused on weight loss, the thing that I would talk about, I would talk about money all day long, all day long. In fact, we do actually talk about it pretty frequently in the kids or goal group. I love it. Crystal, great question. If I am inconsistent with my workouts, do I change my calories for that day? What I'm going to offer you is that my general rule of thumb is no, unless the inconsistency with your exercise is consistent, and here's what I mean. Let's say for example, I get this question really frequently from my lovely bees who are like house cleaners and nurses, people who work very physical jobs, teachers, oh my gosh, going back to school right now, yes, up your calories while you are going back to school these first couple of weeks, you need more fuel.
You need more fuel, you need more water. You do not need to be doing a formal workout, my friends, all of you, all of you teachers who are probably at work right now, but maybe watching the replay if you are consistently inconsistent with your workouts, meaning that you have a 12 hour shift and then you also have a day off, yeah, definitely account for that. If this is a question like, okay, there was just this day last week where I was so frustrated that I had to go walk twice as far as I normally would or something like that. If it's like a once in a while, anomaly, no, your calories are totally fine. Your body, your body will throw out outliers. Your body is a really good, I can't think of what the word is.
I'm not even going to try. I don't know what it is, but I know that app, happy scale, that takes all of your saw tooth fluctuations in your weight and it just normalizes them and smooths them out. Your body does that all the time. If you have an anomalous day where you have eaten way over or way under your calories or you exercised way too much, I mean there's no such thing as way too little, but if you exercised way too much, your body's going to take a look at that and be like, okay, not cool, but also I'm going to hang on to this until tomorrow and the next day and let's just see what's going on with it, and then if tomorrow and the next day are where you usually are, it'll go on forever and just be like, no big deal. No big deal here.
So if you are inconsistent inconsistently, don't worry about it. If you are inconsistent consistently, then yes, absolutely make accommodations for your regular inconsistencies so that you are always fueling for what you are doing. Such a great question, Eliza says, so weight loss is my goal, but I'm also a caregiver for my sister who has cancer, and let me just send you a little love from my heart. I was a caregiver for my sister when she had cancer too, so I'm finding it hard to focus on the weight loss. Any tips on how to balance this? Yeah, don't.
Take care of your sister. Whew, I got an opinion about that one. Take care of your sister. Take care of your sister. Take care of yourself. Weight loss can wait. It can you guys, this is my answer for all of you. Whether this cancer is temporary or more temporary, more permanent, if you have a thing going on in your life right now, if you are grieving, if you are in a season where you are taking care of somebody who needs more care than you, it's really okay to just take care. It's really, really okay. Yes, you want the thing for yourself. Yes, that is my message. That was my whole thing today. Focus on you, but also focus on you when you have the bandwidth to focus on you. There was nothing that was going to happen in my business, in my life, in my personal life, in my health, in my fitness.
Nothing was going to happen when my sister had cancer, and that was okay. That was temporary. I mean, for my sister, it was permanent. My sister did pass away in 2017, but I feel so good about the decisions that I made to be there for her and then when it was time when I was done, not done grieving, but when I was through the worst of the grieving and it's time to really think about who I want to be, how I want to show up, how I want to carry on my legacy with her. I mean, those of you who have been around a while, you know my sister. This is me honoring her. I dedicated my book to her. I told my whole story about her in the book. My sister is such a part of my success of my one goal and I'm really glad that I took that time with her.
So there was my advice. Take your time with your sister and give her a hug from me. Erica says, I'm losing with the five oh method, hallelujah, but I'm wondering what it will look like when I reach my weight loss goal. What will maintenance look like? My friend here is the simplest answer that I have for you. Maintenance is going to look a lot like weight loss looked, and here's why I offer that. If you find yourself white knuckling all the way through weight loss, I'm just doing this temporarily. Can't wait to eat what I want to eat, can't wait to get back to my real life. Then maintenance is also going to feel a lot like white knuckling what I offer to you really specifically in the five oh method and the thing that we talk about in the four phases of weight loss, the fourth phase by the way, is maintenance in the Get your Goal group.
We talk all the time about living in a way right now that you could sustain forever. And yes, after you lose weight, you might have different fitness goals. That means your actual behaviors are different. You might have a push day and recovery days as opposed to working out moderately all the time. You will hopefully not count calories anymore because you'll have such a great brain body connection that you'll be able to eat intuitively. There will be behaviors that are different, but your overarching feeling, your mood, your feeling about weight loss is exactly how you're going to feel about weight maintenance. And I strongly suggest, this is why we do all the journaling with the five oh method. Find all the thoughts that feel lousy about weight loss and about weight maintenance so that you can feel amazing. Weight maintenance can feel amazing, and I know this doesn't sound like an answer, and yet it's the thing that I'm going to say to you.
You can literally do anything in weight maintenance. You can reach any other health or fitness goal you want. You can run a 5K or a marathon, you can write a book. You can have other kinds of goals and maintain, and so therefore your specific behaviors are going to look specific to your goal. So rather than me saying, oh, this is exactly how many calories you eat and this is exactly what kind of workouts you do, you get to choose what you want in maintenance and then you get to fuel and rest and all those things for that and paying attention to how that feels emotionally is the key to being able to maintain. Thank you for asking. That anonymous attendee says, I've lost 25 pounds and now I have plateaued for a long time. It's been challenging to lose more. Do you have suggestions on what to do?
I do, and the short answer truly is to use the journaling pages in the five oh method because there's, I'm going to say there is rarely a physical reason for a plateau. It is almost always a thought slash emotional plateau, meaning that we, all of us have mindset blocks and associations with our weight and certain events that have happened in our life. I actually told this story in mind over menopause in my book about how I had associations with my weight about things that had happened in my life at that same weight that were blocking me from getting there. Every woman I have ever worked with who has some kind of a plateau, had some kind of mindset block, emotional block about that number, and so digging into the journaling pages and just asking yourself, what do I think about this number? What is the association that I have with, for example, the one that I hear all the time getting under 200 pounds?
Lots of women really struggle with that one. It feels like a physical, and I promise you it's an emotional barrier. Lots of women that I work with really struggle with weighing less than their husbands. Lots of women that I work with struggle with getting under a weight where something happened in their life, a divorce or a death in the family or an illness or something that had a lot of emotional load at that time. It's completely illogical. I just want to offer you this. It's completely illogical that your weight had anything to do with that thing going on in your life, but your brain associated it. This is how brains work. It's exactly how your brain is supposed to work, so it's your job to just unstick the thing that happened in your life had literally nothing to do with your weight, even if it seems like it really did.
I hope this is a dramatic example and if this is what happened to you, let me just offer you that. I am not saying this lightly, and I offer this hopefully as an overdramatic, but let's say your husband left you because you weighed whatever, XX, x pounds. There would be a lot of emotional load and yet that still had nothing to do with your weight. Your husband's got his own reasons for doing his own things that we will never understand because we don't have access to another person's thoughts and feelings, but it really wasn't about your weight. You can unstick that as much as any other association with your weight. Your weight is for all intents and purposes, meaningless and you get to weigh whatever you want to weigh. So using the five oh method, using those journaling pages to unstick those associations, we'll set you free and we'll help you lose weight to wherever you want to get to.
Oh my gosh. Oh gosh. There's actually quite a few more questions here. Let me actually pick a couple more really quickly. I really want to be respectful of your time. We're already at the one hour and says, Seth question, I went right into menopause at the age of 28 due to a hysterectomy. I'm now 62. I did not do HRT. I don't even know what I should weigh. At this age, I have at least 50 pounds to lose. What do you suggest as far as what we should weigh? My height is five seven and this is my first webinar. Oh my gosh, Sue, I'm so glad you're here. Here's what I have to offer you. You can weigh whatever you want, and I know that that might've simultaneously felt like freedom and panic, right? When somebody offers you that you actually have full agency over getting what you want for yourself, there's kind of this moment of like, oh, but I don't actually know what I want.
I've never really listened. I've never really listened to what I want, and this is what I'm offering you. Listen to what you want. Just be really quiet with yourself for however long it takes. This is not necessarily a let's do this right this moment kind of a thing. Just listen, what do you want? What do you want? And if it doesn't seem clear right now, let's go ahead and give you what you want. That's for right now. If there's what you want, like, okay, I would really, really like to get under pick a number. Let's start there. Let's work towards that one. Let's feel really, really good about that goal, and then when you're there, you can decide, do I want something else or is this what I really wanted? You always get to choose what you really want. That number can be anything, and I will put the very nice caveat on that, that I'm never encouraging you to be underweight.
That is never my intention. My intention is to allow you to not always ask your doctor or ask the internet or ask the charts or even ask me, I love you and I have opinions, but all kinds of things, but you it to be your own advocate for what you want and really that listening into what you want is so key that my friend is the brain body connection that I offer you as the solution to literally everything knowing your brain and your body are connected, your brain has thoughts, your body has feelings, and those two can talk to each other and tell you what you want. Thank you so much for asking that. I love it. Let me see. I'm going to answer one more.
Oh, I love this one, Nicole. It says, how do you start counting calories? I love this. This is actually a reasonably practical question and what I'm going to do, you guys, just so you know, I really do again want to be respectful of your time. I'm going to download all of the q and a questions. There is a very good chance that you will see answers in my email coming up very soon, and also in future podcasts. When you guys ask me questions, it helps me answer your questions in public ways where lots of people can see, so I will be answering in other places, podcasts and emails and social media for sure. So thank you so much for asking your questions today. So in order to start counting calories, my suggestion, and this might not be everybody's cup of tea, but my suggestion is just start with paper and pen.
Just get an idea. Use Google. Google exists and thank goodness for it. You can just Google how many calories in a piece of bread except that, I mean presumably your actual bread loaf will have calorie information on there. Just even starting to become aware of, okay, I had this piece of bread, I had this egg, I had this piece of bacon, and then I Googled it and then I added it up. Just becoming aware of your calories is the first step. Then if you want to, and if you like technology, there's some technology I really like and some technology I could live the rest of my life without. I personally, when I was counting calories counted on paper every day, I never went to an app. I never liked any of the apps. They all felt overwhelming. I could have done the mindset work on that night, chose not to.
If you happen to like using apps or using a spreadsheet, you can absolutely count calories using technology and also you never have to. A lot of the apps, this is actually really apropos for what we're talking about today, about knowing exactly what you want and really separating the wheat from the chaff. A lot of apps will try to give you information that's not very necessary. They'll try to tell you about your macros. They'll try to tell you about things that you should be doing to eat healthy. They'll try to predict your calories based on how much exercise you're doing because their algorithm is made for 30-year-old women or actually 30-year-old men. When you can actually ignore all of that noise and just write things down on paper with a pen. I personally find that to be more helpful. If you know exactly what you want and you understand that a lot of the information in those apps is extraneous and unnecessary for you, feel free to use an app. If that feels easy to you, absolutely go for it. If it doesn't feel easy, if it feels like a barrier or a burden, paper and pen is the way to go. My friends, you guys, thank you all so, so much. I'm so glad you were here. Thank you for all of your wonderful questions. Thank you for all of the hearts and emojis and everything. I love you so much. Go get your goal. I'll see you again on the next webinar!
