253: Guaranteed Weight Loss

Today we’re taking a deep dive into how (and why) to guarantee your own weight loss success – because it’s easier than you think!

Wouldn’t you *love* to have a guarantee that you can (and will) lose weight, and get to your goal? Like, wouldn’t it be amazing if there was a program, or a workout, or a way of eating, or SOMETHING that you knew for sure would get you there? 

Well, here it is: it’s YOU.

In today’s episode of the Fitness Matters podcast, we’re taking a deep dive into how (and why) to guarantee your own weight loss success – because it’s easier than you think!

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN:
👉  HOW your desire for a guarantee shows up in your life
👉  WHERE to actually look for (and find!) a guarantee
👉  WHY your own guarantee is the best possible news, and
👉  WHAT practical steps you’ll need to take from here

Join me for this super empowering and inspirational episode, and let’s get your goal!

Transcript

You're listening to the Fitness Matters Podcast with Pahla B and this is episode number 253, "Guaranteed Weight Loss".
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.
Before we dive into today's topic, here's a quick message about the Pahla B Wellness over 50 Book Club in partnership with Chirp Audiobooks. Our latest pick is The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion by Christopher Germer, which you can grab at a steep discount with no monthly subscription fees at chirpbooks.com/pahla, that's P-A-H-L-A. While you're there, be sure to click the follow button to get exclusive access updates and register for the live book club event on Friday, October 21st. I'll see you there.
Well, hello, hello, my friends. Oh my gosh, I'm so happy to be here with you today. I wish we were meeting under better circumstances. And here's what I mean by that. I'm sitting in my car again, because that's what I do, it is so hot here in Sacramento. It is unbelievably over the top hot for the first week of September. This is actually hotter than we normally are in July or even August. We are experiencing a heat wave of proportions that I have never seen in my lifetime. And so I'm in my car as I often am when I've got my whole house fan on in the morning. And even this morning, the whole house fan isn't working, but I have it on full blast trying desperately to get any bit of cool air in my house before we just close it all up and have the air conditioning on all day. But anyway, so I'm sitting in my car and the sound you hear is me sweating. I don't think sweating actually makes a noise, but if it did you would definitely be hearing it. It would be deafening right now.
You guys, how are you? How's the weather where you are? How's your weight loss? That was not really a very good segue, but I'm going to call it good. I was thinking about this. Well, okay. I think about weight loss all the time. Do you know that? I think about weight loss all the time. And here's just a left turn right off the top of the topic, but I think sometimes to myself, about many, many, many years ago when I was a young woman and I thought about weight loss all the time for myself. I actually did some therapy, some counseling about my own thoughts about weight loss and disordered eating habits and things like that.
And I was thinking just recently about how different it is to think about weight loss for other people than it is to think about weight loss for yourself. And I know that... I mean 99.99% of you are not weight loss coaches so this may or may not have anything to do with you, but I was thinking about how nice it is to approach it from a scientific way or a methodology way, a way of thinking about it that extracts you from the equation. And I want you to know that if you have the opportunity to do such a thing, and I try to offer you the opportunity to do such a thing literally every day with the mindset work that we include with the 5-0 Method.
Which by the way, if you just clicked on this and you don't know who I am, I'm Pahla B, I am a weight loss coach for women over 50. I have the 5-0 Method, which is my free online weight loss program that includes every single thing you could possibly need to know about weight loss that is science-backed, it's very simple, and it includes what I think is the secret sauce that is missing from most other weight loss programs, and that's mindset work. That's what we talk about here on the Fitness Matters Podcast is mindset stuff.
So in the mindset work, one of the things that I offer you the opportunity to do is take a step out of your own self, your own thoughts and see that what you are thinking is thoughts. When you... If you, let me rephrase it, if you were to think about somebody else's weight loss, I promise you none of it would feel as difficult as it does when it's your own. This is actually the magic. Again, another left turn before I even dive in, I really do have something to say about guaranteed weight loss, but this is actually the magic also of the Get Your Goal group, which is my paid program where we don't just lose weight till we get any kind of a goal. And it really truly is, I think, the most valuable piece of the puzzle to watch somebody else get coaching on anything. Any topic under the sun, watching somebody else get coaching for something that seems wildly unrelated to you is, in my opinion, the fastest way to have an epiphany about what you are thinking about yourself.
When you are in it yourself, sometimes it's so hard to see. But when you're watching somebody else say the things that you think about an entirely different topic, it's like, "Oh, that's a thought. That's a thought and it's totally not serving her and she is not going to get where she wants to go if she keeps believing that thought." And as soon as you can start recognizing that in other people, it'll be so much easier to recognize in yourself.
Okay. Coming back to the actual topic at hand, which is guaranteed weight loss, you guys, you guys, did you know that I guarantee weight loss with the 5-0 Method? I don't talk about it very much because it feels like... I'll be honest. When I decided to call this podcast episode Guaranteed Weight Loss, I was just like, "That sounds so smarmy." It sounds so... And no offense if you sell used cars, but I'm sure you've heard this before. It sounds like a used car salesman. It sounds like I'm trying to sell you a lemon that I don't really believe in. But you know what? I really believe in this. I really, really, really believe not just in the 5-0 Method, but far more importantly, I believe in you.
And here's the thing about Guaranteed Weight Loss. We all approach the method, the program, the plan, the workouts, the food, the whatever, we all approach somebody else's way of telling us how to lose weight as though that is the thing that is going to guarantee us weight loss. I remember doing this myself. Every time I lost weight when I was younger, I was thinking about this morning, I honestly can't even remember which weight loss program I did. It was either Jenny Craig or Nutrisystem. It was one of the ones... I mean, like most of them, it was one of the ones where you go and you weigh in and you buy your food for the week from their closet of prepackaged teeny tiny, gross tasting food. No offense. It's not good. It's not. And to be fair, this was also... Oh my gosh, this was 30 years ago.
Oh, you ever have one of those moments where you're like, "Oh yeah, I'm in my 50s. And so therefore things that I did in my 20s that feel like yesterday was 30 years ago"? Yeah. Okay. So anyways, this was 30 years ago and maybe their food has gotten better. I have no idea. I haven't done that kind of a prepackaged program in quite some time, any event. I remember being there, being all in being like, "Yes, it's the food that's going to make me lose weight. It's going to talk to that person that's going to make me lose weight. It's stepping on the scale in front of other people that's going to make me lose weight." I gave all my power to the program as though the program could overcome some kind of just fundamental deficiency in me.
Now here's how this might show up for you. Whether or not what I've said so far resonates with you, let me give you some examples of the ways that I see this showing up from not you personally, but the big broad general you, you, out there on the interwebs, things that you say to me, things that I read in comments, things that I get in my emails and my DMs and things like that. I hear a lot of women looking for testimonials. This is actually something that happens really frequently when somebody first gets started on the 5-0 Method. They'll come into the free Facebook group, the Beehive, and they'll be like, "Okay, has anybody lost weight eating this number of calories?" Whatever their number of calorie is. And generally speaking, it's somebody who, and I say this with so much love, has more weight to lose and therefore has a higher calorie number.
Higher calorie number though is in the eye of the beholder. I have had women come in with what I consider to be a low number saying, "I've never eaten this much before. I can't believe I'll lose weight on this." It's always a matter of your own personal opinion of what's a high number or a low number or anything like that. But they'll come in and they'll ask, "Has anybody lost weight with this much to eat? Or has anybody lost weight exercising this little?" Those are the two main questions. Really just searching for somebody else who is like them in some way who has had success.
We also quite literally ask for assurance. I get asked point blank. I'm going to say not every day, but several times a week I get asked, "Pahla, please tell me that this will work for me. Please tell me that this number of calories is correct. Please tell me other people's experience or your experience with exercising this little." The other way that this shows up is I consider it skepticism, or I don't have a nice word for it so I'm going to leave it at skepticism, where people will leave me comments, not even asking questions, not asking like, "Has this worked?" or, "Could this work?" or, "Will this work?" but telling me, "Well, you exercise more. That's why this works for you" or, "Well, you eat less than me and that's why this works for you." Or, "You are, fill in the blank, different somehow. Your younger than me. Your..." I'm trying to think of other examples.
Those are the ones that come up to me. I do get a lot of 'You're younger than me" which I love it actually because I mean, you just heard my whole self-concept about, oh my God, I'm in my 50s. So it is kind of fun for me when I'm still younger than other women. But it could also show up in kind of... Again I'm trying to say this nicely. I want you to know that no matter how I approach any of my topics ever on the podcast, I always try to give the disclaimer that I'm not calling you out for something that's wrong with you. What I'm hoping to do is offer you an example of something that you are thinking or feeling, and then gently show you that it's not the best way to look at something. And there's a fine line there between calling somebody out or pointing something out about you and being gentle about it. And I hope that you always hear it as gentleness.
The way that I notice, and this manifests in me pretty frequently, is what I call overthinking. And I know you call it that too. But I call it overthinking when I read your comments and when I get your emails about what it is that you're doing. I very frequently get this in emails much more so than in public and I think it's because there's a part of us all that understands that we're overthinking it and we're a teeny, tiny bit embarrassed about it, which is why I don't want you to think that I'm calling you out. I get emails from women who go into a lot of detail about every single thing that they are doing or every single thing that they're eating and they're trying to pick it apart for the one thing that must be going wrong.
This level of overthinking where you are pulling apart every single action that you have ever done in the last five years and trying to find the food that isn't working or trying to figure out the difference between 1,475 calories versus 1,485 calories and could that be the thing that's holding me back, that kind of... Again, I say this with so much love, but there's a desperate vibe behind it. And almost all of the emails that I get are "I've done everything and I can't figure out what's wrong." That's the sentence. I know. That's the sentence that got you. I feel this way too sometimes. Not with weight loss. But here's what I want you to know. This type of thinking where we want the program or the number or the formula or the person or the coaching or the thing, whatever the thing is to solve our problems, this affects us all. If there is something that you have ever wanted in your life, you have probably looked for a way to solve it that was outside of you.
I did this. I did this for years with YouTube. Oh my gosh, years. I tried everything. See, it's a sentence we all use. I really, really, really thought that there must be something fundamentally wrong with me and the way that I was doing YouTube that somebody else could fix. I took all kinds of free advice. I took all kinds... Oh my gosh. So much free advice. I watched every YouTuber ever who... You know YouTubers who tell you how to YouTube and they are YouTubers themselves? Yes. I watched every single one of them. I paid for consultations. I paid for, gosh, individual coaching. For a year and a half I did individual coaching. I've paid for programs. I've gone through free programs. I've gone through paid programs. I have paid for all of the, I don't know if you even know this exists, but there are services that you can pay for that will help you find keywords and look at what your competitors are doing and things like that that frankly keep you in, or kept me because of my own thoughts about myself, kept me in a place of compare and despair.
Here's where this might show up for you. Are you following a lot of people on Instagram who are losing weight successfully and using that against yourself? Or are you in a group, even my group on Facebook, and you're always looking at everybody who's having all this weight loss success and you are using that against yourself? Yeah. My friends, this is the problem with looking outside of you for the answer. You are the guarantee of your success. And I want you to hear that again. You are not the person who might or might not get you success. You are the guarantee. You are the sure bet, the sure thing. Do you remember that movie with John Cusack? You are the thing that will 100%, 100% get you to your goal. It's you.
Now, did you just break out in a cold sweat when I said that because it really felt like a lot of responsibility and you don't know if you can handle it? Yes, that was my experience too. That's exactly how I felt and it's why I kept looking outside of myself. It's why I kept paying a lot of money to somebody else to tell me how to do things because I just didn't think I could figure it out. And here's the thing. I don't think that anybody needs to figure it all out from scratch for themselves. This is why I have a free program. I mean, honestly, this is why I have a program. This is why I have coaching. This is why I do what I do so that I can help you.
The 5-0 Method, personally, if I'm going to toot my own horn, and I am, toot toot, I'm going to tell you that I think it's actually a brilliant balance of both telling you exactly what to do and leaving you just enough gaps to figure it out for yourself. I do this with my coaching also. I tell you exactly what to do. I tell you exactly how to journal. Do you remember literally last week when I told you exactly prescriptively for almost an hour exactly how to journal? Yes, I tell you what to do. And then, you, because you are the guarantee of your success, both get to and have to make it work for you. The most anybody can ever do, even if they're giving you their prepackaged gross food, it's still a framework. You still have to make that work for you.
And I'll tell you how I made it work for me when I was doing whichever one it was with the prepackaged food. I don't think it was Jenny Craig. I think it was Nutrisystem. It really doesn't matter, but for some reason that's bothering me. Whichever one it was. I remember really specifically that they had these little, teeny, tiny waffles. Oh my gosh, if I had to guess, they probably had me on a thousand calories a day. There's no way I was eating enough food. There's no way. And I was in my 20s. I mean, I didn't really exercise when I was in my 20s. I kind of did.
I was a very sporadic exercise once in a while, think I hated it and then stopped for a long time kind of girl, but I was active just in general. I was in my 20s. I had a lot of energy. I can't even imagine. I remember having that much energy. I worked a very busy job. I was waitress. I was on my feet anywhere from four to eight hours a day, and/or night. So I was busy all the time. I expended a ton of energy. I know for a fact, they weren't giving me enough food because I remember thinking to myself, "I'm going to make this work for me." And what I did with the waffles is instead of eating one, I would eat three. Instead of just eating the waffle plain like you were supposed to, I would put peanut butter and maple syrup on it. And I have no idea why I didn't lose weight, except I think I did.
I feel like I had some success with that program. I don't remember how long I did it. I know I did it for a while. I'm going to say maybe six months or so. And I probably lost five pounds, I think. And then I got fed up and then I thought, "Oh, this program doesn't work for me." okay, here's a bit of a left turn. That thought, "This program doesn't work for me" is the thought that kept me from naming my program the 5-0 Method for three years. I had this program... Anybody who's been with me a long time, I think there's a couple people that I'm thinking of really specifically that are in the Get Your Goal group who still sometimes kind of refer to it as Pahla's method or Pahla's way, or just listened to what Pahla says, which is my favorite thing. But I was really reluctant to call it a thing because if I called it a thing, then somebody could say that thing, the 5-0 Method, doesn't work for me.
I had a lot of mindset work to do about my own program, let alone the other programs. I had so much mindset work to do about me. And my friend, that's what I'm going to offer you. This is your opportunity no matter what program you use. Yes, mine, the 5-0 Method, is guaranteed. It is based in science. It is fundamentally the best weight loss program and it's really specifically geared for women over 50 because by the way, I don't know if you've known it, but every single thing about you has changed since you entered perimenopause and/or actual menopause. Your body is fundamentally different than it used to be. So workout and weight loss programs for younger women don't work. You can't starve yourself and exercise to the point of weight loss anymore. It actually causes weight gain. Ugh. So annoying, right? Right?
But here's the thing. Even though... No, not even though. Because my method is guaranteed, it gives you the opportunity to check in with yourself. When you believe that a method is going to work, that's how it works, that's why it works. It doesn't work because of the method itself. It works because you believe it. When you believe in the method, it gives you an opportunity to take a sneaky little peeky at what belief feels like. When you know what belief feels like in your bones and you kind of start to take that in, it gives you a starting point from which you can build your belief in yourself. You are the guarantee. And the thing about this that it took me so long to figure out, so long to figure out, is because... Okay, for me personally, I was really afraid of being my own guarantee. I have a long history, as I imagine you do too. And I say this with love, but I feel like this is a common enough thing that I'm not pointing something out to you or accusing you of something that is not somewhat universal.
I think we all, especially in an area that we struggle with, weight loss for me, I struggled a little. Just enough. I struggled just enough to be like, "Okay, I understand what this feels like. I know what it's like to hate my body. I know what it's like to think that I can't lose weight." But I also didn't have to work really, really, really hard on all the mindset stuff to get to a point of success. For me, the big struggle, like huge struggle, was figuring out how to follow through on things, figuring out how to finish things, which really manifested for me in my running career and it definitely 100% manifested for me in business and making money.
I had to learn how to believe in myself, in another area to even understand what believing in myself would feel like in an area that I struggled. And this is why I offer you that believing in a program can help you believe in yourself and you can also look to other areas. If there's an area of your life where you've had a pretty decent amount of success that didn't feel crazy hard to do, for lots of you, that's your career. I mean, I spend a lot of years being very jealous of all you women who got out of college and went into a career that you love and make a lot of money at and have never, ever doubted that you're good at this. Dude, I was in my late 40s before I thought I was good at a job ever. Ever. And I've been good at job. I just didn't believe in it. I didn't believe in myself. I didn't think I could do this until I did.
When you start examining the things that you think about yourself, about your abilities, about what you think of as some fundamental flaw in who you are as a human being that stops you from losing weight, that's where the magic is. That's where the guarantee is. When you find those thoughts and recognize that they are thoughts, they're just thoughts, "I can't make money" was a thought, "I can't lose weight" is a thought, it doesn't mean anything about you that you have struggled. It doesn't mean anything about you that you would really, really... Like the responsibility to lie outside of you in the program or the person or the food or the workouts or the whatever, it doesn't mean anything about you that that's how you feel right now. What it means is that this is where you're starting from. Even if you've been doing this for a while. I don't mean that starting thing to be some kind of a weird insult.
This is where I'm starting from. In my business, every single day I wake up and I'm starting from here and I'm building from here. Every single day you wake up and this is where you are with your weight loss and you are building from here. Everything that you have built up, all of the mindset work that you have done in other areas and in weight loss are all about to have such a huge cumulative effect for you. You can guarantee your success.
And here's the cost of guaranteeing your success. Here is your money back guarantee. You get to and have to examine the thoughts that aren't serving you. Examine the thoughts that aren't helping you get to where you want to go. And here's why I call this a cost, because it means that you are going to change your opinion about yourself. And I want you to take that in for a moment. You have an opinion about yourself. I had an opinion about my ability to be a business woman. I had lots of opinions about my ability to be good at anything. I had lots of opinions, thoughts, about my ability to follow through, about my ability to be reliable, about my ability to get my goal. And I had to change all of those opinions.
This is your work. You're going to change your opinion about yourself. And I want you to think about what that's going to sound like, like literally sound like. "Oh yeah, I lost 100 pounds." Past tense. "Oh yeah, I lost weight a long time ago. Oh my gosh, thank you. Yes, I have been losing weight. Oh, I know exactly how to lose weight. I can tell you how. Oh yeah, I'm done losing weight. I'm onto other things now."
Can you picture saying things like that about yourself? "Oh, I love my body. Oh my gosh, I'm exactly the size I want to be. Oh yeah, this morning's weight? That's exactly what I've been maintaining." Imagine. And I mean, this literally. Imagine yourself saying those things so casually, so easily because you think they're true. This is the work and this is the guarantee. My friend, when you take on the responsibility, which by the way, I keep using the word responsibility because that was the part that was really hard for me, but it's also such a gift. It's such a gift. I want you to really think about what a gift this is. It means that nobody else can stop you. Nobody. Nothing can stop you. There are no obstacles to you getting to your goal weight. Of course, you heard the except in that sense, except your own thoughts. Like except yourself. Yes, you do have thoughts, they're slowing you down, but that's easy.
I mean, relatively speaking, that's easy. It means that other people's opinions don't stop you. It means that your current circumstances don't stop you. Your current maybe inability to make decisions about what you want to eat can't stop you. Nothing that you think that's outside of you that could stop you. The method, the program, your circumstances, other people, none of that can actually stop you. You can do this. It's amazing when you think about that, right? You are capable. You have your own permission to do so. You guarantee your weight loss.
My friend, I'm so proud of you for this. This concept of guaranteeing your own success, well, it's one of my favorites to talk about, maybe you noticed I got a little passionate, but also it's one of my favorites to offer you. When I recognize this power in myself and simultaneously recognize that everybody has this power, this is the fire that gets me up every single day. This is the thing that sends me to work, talking to you, creating content for you and talking, writing to you. You have this power. Feel this power for yourself. And my friend, go get your goal. 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.

Listen to the full episode here, and be sure to leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts.

Originally aired September 11, 2022
Today we’re taking a deep dive into how (and why) to guarantee your own weight loss success – because it’s easier than you think!
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Meet Your Host

Mindset expert and certified life coach Pahla B knows a thing or two about changing your mind to change your weight and your life. She’s the creator of The 5-0 Method, Amazon-best selling author of the book “Mind Over Menopause,” and former yo-yo dieter who has cracked the code on lifelong weight maintenance. Join Pahla B each week for the personal insights, transformative mindset shifts, and science-backed body advice that can help you lose all the weight you want and keep it off forever.