Are you on a WEIGHT LOSS journey and sometimes frustrated by the slow movement on your scale⚖️? This is a concern I hear A LOT! And if you’re wondering if there’s anything you can do to speed up🚀 the process, this info is absolutely for you!
In today’s episode of the Fitness Matters podcast, we’re talking about what organ in your body is primarily responsible for your results – and the ONE QUESTION you can ask yourself🙋 that changes everything💡!
Let’s GO!
February Book Club
Pahla B’s Book Club pick for February is “Live the Best Story of Your Life,” by Bob Litwin. First-time Chirp Audiobooks users can get $5 off any purchase by using the code PAHLA5 – this link will take you directly there AND apply the discount: https://bit.ly/BestStory5Off
(And previous Chirp users can snag this title at just $3.99 for a limited time!)
Canadian friends: this book is available on Chirp in Canada too!
REGISTER for this month’s LIVE Book Club event on Sunday, February 27th here: https://bit.ly/FEBBookClubReg
My friends, if there are people in your life who want to lose weight faster, please SHARE this podcast! 💛
How to Lose Weight Faster (full transcript)
You’re listening to the Fitness Matters Podcast with Pahla B, and this is episode number 222, “How to Lose Weight Faster.”
Welcome to the Fitness Matters Podcast, where every week we talk about the fitness matters that matter to you. I’m Pahla B, YouTuber, certified life and weight loss coach, soon-to-be author, and your best middle-aged fitness friend. Are you ready to talk about the fitness mindset that matters to you? Me too. Let’s go.
Hello, hello, hello, my friends. You guys, I’m so happy to be here talking with you. I’m really excited about today’s subject. But before we get going, I’m just going to remind you, as I so often do now all the time for the last several months. Information about this month’s book club can be found in the show notes or the description box. We’re going to have a live at the end of February. It’s going to be super fun. We’ve got a great book this month, and all of the details can be found in the show notes or the description box, depending on where you’re watching or listening.
Hey, let’s get into this topic though, because I’m super, super excited about this one. How to lose weight faster. You guys, I was on YouTube this morning, as I often am because I am a YouTuber, and I’ve been doing research for a video that . . . Let me do the math on when this podcast is coming out versus when the video is coming out. The video will not have come out yet by the time you are listening to this.
So I’m doing research, and I’ve been looking up all kinds of things and you know how YouTube does that thing where you search for something once and all of a sudden it’s going to give you 12 videos? “Hey, you searched for this one thing this one time. You wanted to learn how to repair your dryer. Don’t you want to know how to repair all dryers all the time and maybe even washers too?” Yeah. So anyways. So my home feed is flooded with weight loss right now, and that’s fine. It is what it is. There were no fewer than a dozen videos about how to lose weight faster. I was like, “But you don’t want to. Losing weight slowly is the way to go.” Then I thought, “Why is that?” I talk somewhat frequently about being sustainable, being doable and why slow and steady weight loss is totally good for you.
It occurred to me that I’ve never really talked to you about the mindset part of why that is so good for you. The fact is it’s not objectively good for you to lose weight slowly. It honestly does not matter how fast or how slow you lose weight. The fastness or slowness of the weight loss isn’t going to magically fix your mindset. The thing that fixes your mindset is the thing that we’re talking about today. Here’s the thing. You absolutely can lose weight faster by doing this thing that we’re going to talk about. Shall I just tell you what it is? I’m going to. I’m going to tell you what it is. You can lose weight faster by finding your unhelpful thoughts faster. That’s all there is to it, you guys. I say that like, “Ta-da. That’s it. That’s easy. Boom. Done.”
But here’s the thing. You have thoughts. You have lots of them. We have 60,000 thoughts a day. How many of those are about weight loss really when you’re focusing on it? Probably a lot. If you have weight to lose, you have unhelpful thoughts about your body, your weight, the tasks that you need to be doing in order to lose weight, the eventual loss of the weight, what it means to be a person in a healthy weight body. You have thoughts about all of these things, and they are gumming up the works.
Now, here’s the thing. I tell you as part of our weight loss program, the 5-0 Method, which in case you are brand new and have never heard me talk about the 5-0 Method . . . hey, again, open up the description box or the show notes. It’s completely free (The 5-0 Method https://pahlabfitness.com/programs/the-5-0-method/). It’s an incredible resource honestly. It’s 30-something pages. It’s literally everything you could possibly need to know about weight loss plus the calculators that will take you to counting your calories correctly so that you’re eating the right amount of fuel, plus the formula for how to figure out how much water you need, plus links to your first 62 days of workouts. I only have 62 links in the book, but there’s more than that for free. I have 900 videos on YouTube. There are plenty of workouts for you. I just didn’t want the entire thing to be links.
There are also journaling pages and check-in pages and all kinds of worksheets for you to do. It’s literally every single thing you need to lose weight successfully for free. Open up the show notes or the description box and go grab it. In any event, the thing that we do, one of the things that we do, is find our thoughts and decide if they’re helpful. Doing that is the thing that moves the weight loss needle. Yes, you still have to eat the right number of calories. Yes, you still have to drink the right amount of water. Yes, you still have to go to bed at night and get up in the morning and get your sleep. Yes, you have to exercise moderately. Yes, you have to manage your mind, do all the things. But managing your mind is the mechanism by which you do the other four things in the 5-0 Method.
We never ever, ever do anything without a thought and feeling behind it. I want you to think about that because I know that sometimes we think that what we are doing is simply the product of, “I decided to do this and therefore it got done.” It seems so simple, especially the things that are really easy for us. If you already drink your water or if you already make sleep a priority and that’s not a problem for you, it feels like it just gets done. But those things get done because of a thought and feeling combo. You are having a helpful thought that creates a good feeling in you that gets the action done reliably.
The reason you sometimes struggle with eating the right number of calories or even counting the calories or checking your weight or checking your water or doing the things is because of a thought-feeling combo. When you find your unhelpful thoughts and recognize them, label them, categorize them as unhelpful, the faster you do that, the faster . . . up to a certain point. Let me be really clear. There is still physics, there is still biology, there is still chemistry, there is still your body having literally a billion or more processes in a day, and only one of them – not one of them, but only some of them – are related to your weight. There are still parameters here, but there is a rate at which you have the potential to lose weight from clearing your unhelpful thoughts.
Let me be really clear about that word “clearing.” You don’t actually have to do more than hear the thought, recognize it as a thought and label it unhelpful. I know that when I talk about this, sometimes it sounds so vague. One of the things that I was really thinking about today . . . we’ve talked about the two-step process quite a few times now. I’d like to point you to Episode 89. It’s called “Mind Management” (https://getyourgoal.com/podcasts/89-mind-management/), where we really talked about the two-step tool. You find your thoughts, and you decide if they are unhelpful or helpful. The thing about that, that I was thinking today, is why that works, why simply categorizing a thought as unhelpful actually does the background process.
Here’s what happens. Let’s say, for example, let me start off with what’s happening right now. Maybe this resonates with you, maybe it doesn’t. It is going to be helpful to find your thought and decide whether or not it’s helpful for you. Let’s say that you get on the scale, and the number is either exactly the same or it’s a tiny fluctuation or maybe even a big fluctuation up or a tiny fluctuation down. You have a vague sense of “Eh,” – a kind of disappointment. “I was hoping to get on the scale and have lost five pounds,” like all of us want to do. Not all of us. Some of us are perfectly happy with our weight, but in any event, somebody who is losing weight wants to hop on the scale and have some dramatic drop in the number.
When that doesn’t happen – the dramatic drop – you are having some sort of a thought. And when that thought goes unnoticed – that feeling of maybe vague disappointment or vague kind of whatever – that thought-feeling combo is driving behaviors later in the day. Here’s what I mean by that. That thought, gone unnoticed, is somewhat subconscious, somewhat automatic. Your brain has offered it to you for presumably not the first time. Generally speaking, and I have almost no scientific corroboration for this, but here’s what I’m going to go with. Generally speaking, the very first time you have a thought – first of all, that’s an incredibly rare occurrence because most of our thoughts are automatic – but the very first time you have a thought, you are very likely to actually hear it because it has no automaticity behind it. It’s not something that you’ve been hearing for years or most of your life or even weeks or months, whatever it is. The first time you hear a thought, you’re going to actually hear it.
So if you don’t hear the thought, it’s been in there for a while. It is operating on such a background, low hum level that you aren’t noticing it. That’s completely normal. That’s completely natural. That’s the way thoughts are supposed to go. That’s the way your brain is supposed to work. There’s nothing wrong with that process, except for the fact that that not-so-helpful thought is creating that not-so-helpful feeling. And because it’s already automatic, it’s going through your brain far more often than you realize. It’s coming up for you when you are, say for example, coming out of the shower and getting into your breakfast, when you’re not really measuring what it is that you’re eating, when you’re not really counting your calories, when you’re not really doing the things that you mean to do. “Oh, I drank some of my water, but not as much as I intended.” That low grade, not quite following through on your intentions to do all five of the things in the 5-0 Method – it’s creating slower results for you because of a thought.
Now let’s say that you hop on the scale, and it does either a big fluctuation up or it stays the same or a tiny fluctuation down, and your thought is – that automatic thought is – “I’m not losing weight.” “I’m not losing weight,” is a pretty automatic thought for lots of us. Maybe even especially those of us who are maintaining our weight. That thought, “I’m not losing weight,” and that resulting either vague or not-so-vague disappointment that comes with it – that is driving actions. That disappointment of, “I’m not losing weight,” is the thing that comes up again and again and again during your day when you’re making a decision, “Am I going to measure this? Am I going to count this? Am I going to work out? Am I going to work out really hard instead of moderately? Am I going to drink my water? Am I going to go to bed on time? Am I going to manage my mind? Am I going to find my thoughts? When am I going to journal?” All of those other tasks have that automatic thought running through your brain.
When you actually take the time to find this thought, okay, you step off the scale and you actually think to yourself, “What am I thinking right now? What do I think about that number?” And you take the time to hear the thought, “I’m not losing weight,” which by the way, I have an entire podcast episode and it’s literally called, “I’m Not Losing Weight.” I highly recommend that you go listen to it because it discusses that thought in great detail and how it is super destructive for you. It is episode number 79 (Ep. 079 “I’m Not Losing Weight” (https://getyourgoal.com/podcasts/79-not-losing-weight/). It is not a helpful thought. It is driving actions all day long that you don’t really necessarily think about because of the automaticity of the thought.
But when you take the time to find that thought, recognize it as unhelpful and really kind of bring it forward, bring it out of the subconscious and into the conscious, start listening for how often you hear that thought during the day – because trust me, it’s coming up again. It is absolutely coming up for you again later when you are making decisions about going to bed and drinking your water and exercising and eating and counting your calories. It is absolutely coming up again and again and again and again. Like I said before, the automaticity of that thought is exactly the way your brain is supposed to work. That brain automaticity or thought automaticity is actually incredibly helpful. If you had to consciously think about every single step of going for a walk like, “Pick up my foot, move it forward, set it back down, swing my arm,” – if you had to consciously think about every single thing you do during your day, it would be ridiculous.
Your brain is automatic on purpose. It’s very efficient on purpose. It’s good for you. When you think about all the things that you can do automatically because of the automaticity of your brain, it’s incredibly helpful for you most of the time. The time that it’s not helpful is when it’s not helpful. It is when you are thinking thoughts like, “I’m not losing weight,” or, “This isn’t working,” or, “I don’t like this number,” or any number of the things that you think in that one instance of getting off the scale and feeling that vague, “ugh,” feeling. That feeling isn’t really all that vague. When you question it and find the thoughts behind it and bring those thoughts out of automaticity and into the light, as we say, when you recognize, “Hey, this is an unhelpful thought. That unhelpful thought is getting me unhelpful results,” you can recognize it every time.
I’ve said that this is one step, but truly it’s a couple of steps that are repeated. The most important part . . . Here’s where I was getting to with this entire conversation. The most important part of this process is believing that this process is going to work. This is what I was thinking about today. This is what I was realizing when I was thinking about the difference between slow weight loss and fast weight loss. Slow weight loss gives you the time to work through this mindset stuff. To actually see and gather some evidence for yourself that finding your thoughts and labeling them as helpful or unhelpful is a process that works. When you are already all in, when you have already bought into the fact that this process works, it moves faster. When you really believe that finding your thoughts and deciding if they’re helpful is helpful in and of itself, it becomes a helpful thought.
Here’s the thing that I was thinking about this, and this is, oh my gosh, this is such an onion. This is so meta. It is like thinking about itself, thinking about itself. But here’s what happens. When you find the thought and decide whether or not it’s helpful, you are also somewhere in there, hopefully automatically thinking, “This process is helpful. This process of deciding a thought is helpful or unhelpful is helping me lose weight.” You can hear from the sound of that, that you would feel confident when you think that thought. “I’m doing the right thing here. I am finding my thoughts. Oh, there’s a thought, and that’s unhelpful,” creates – because of another thought – a feeling of confidence. “I found an unhelpful thought,” is a helpful thought. Did you follow me on that at all? I know. I know. Because here’s the thing. Every single thought you have is either helpful or unhelpful.
All the thoughts that help you drive to work without thinking about it – very helpful thoughts, incredibly helpful. They get you to work safely every day. When you have helpful thoughts, they will help you get your results. When you are having unhelpful thoughts, they are slowing you down. Finding those unhelpful thoughts and then triggering the helpful thoughts of, “Oh my gosh, I found an unhelpful thought and now I’m moving faster,” is a helpful thought that will help you lose weight faster.
When you believe in this process and actually execute on it – go find your unhelpful thoughts, label them as unhelpful, believe that that process is working – that will help you lose weight faster. So here’s the thing about being all in. It means that you have to believe this, and that’s your homework for today. This is where I’m going to leave you. Do you believe that this works? That’s a real question. That’s why I was silent afterwards. “I’m all in. I totally 100% believe in this process.” Here’s the thing. If you don’t, if there is a subtle, “I don’t know if this is working. I don’t know if this is getting me where I want to go,” that is also slowing you down. That, “I don’t know,” energy that, “Maybe this is working; maybe it isn’t” is – here we go – an unhelpful thought.
I recognize the circular nature of the logic here. “If you don’t believe it, you’re proving it true” kind of thing because that doubt is unhelpful. But honestly, let that be the proof that this process does work. When you doubt that it’s working, you are creating doubt, and that doubt is slowing you down. Isn’t that funny? But take the time to recognize the doubt because here’s the thing. If you do doubt that this is working, that is an unhelpful thought. You can still use the process, whether you believe in it or doubt in it and find the unhelpful thoughts. Recognize that every single thought you have, first of all, is creating a feeling. And second of all, that feeling is driving your actions. And third of all, that action is driving your results. But also that thought is a thought. All of your thoughts are thoughts. Recognizing any of them, labeling any of them as helpful or unhelpful is the mechanism by which you will move forward faster towards whatever goal you want, truly and again, within the realm of physics, space, time, biology, chemistry, all of those things.
Moving faster or slower in and of itself is not a problem, and it’s not necessarily the right way or the best way. Moving forward in a way where you are recognizing your unhelpful thoughts and creating for yourself helpful thoughts is the way to: A) get where you’re going, and B) get where you’re going at the speed at which you can. I’m not sure if that was grammatically correct, but I’m going to leave it there.
My friends, man, if you followed me through this onion, thank you. I hope it was helpful. I hope you have a wonderful day. Open up the show notes, the description box, listen to more podcasts, come sign up for the book club, do all the things. Thank you for listening. I’ll talk to you again soon.
If you are getting a lot out of the Fitness Matters Podcast and you’re ready to take it to the next level, you are going to love the Get Your Goal Coaching and Accountability Group. We take all the theory and knowledge here on the podcast and actually apply it in real life on your real weight loss and fitness goals. It’s hands-on, it’s fun, and it works. Find out more at pahlabfitness.com/get-your-goal, and let’s get your goal.
