Hello GOALfriend. Welcome to episode number 293, and you guys, before we even get into it today, I want to remind you if you are listening to this in real time, meaning that you are listening on Sunday the 25th of June, then you have two more days before my book Mind Over Menopause comes out, which means that you have two more days to pre-order the book in any format, digital or audio or hard back and still get in on the exclusive pre-order bonus, which is to say, I am having a workshop. That word did not come to me. . There was a long pause, my editor might have cut it out, but there was a long pause there where I could not come up with the word workshop. I'm having a workshop exclusively for women who have pre-ordered the book Mind Over Menopause, where we're gonna talk about all of the concepts in the book.
We're going to actually put the concepts to work in real time together and then you have the opportunity to ask me questions during the live q and a session. But this is only only available for people who pre-order the book and I'm gonna keep calling it a book, even if you get the digital format like you know for Kindle or whatever or the audio format, which is exclusively right now only available on Audible. And let me just answer a question for you real quick. I've had a couple of people ask me if it's gonna be available on Chirp. I do not have any information about if it will ever be available on chirp. That's gonna be its own deal if or when that ever happens. As of right this minute, it is only available on Audible as the audio book, but this whole workshop thing is only for people who pre-order.
So if you wait until the 27th when the book actually comes out, I love you, but you are not invited because it's a pre-order bonus. So make sure that you pre-order, you've got two more days and make sure that you email your proof of purchase to giveaway@theexperimentpublishing.com before June 27th. If you didn't write that down fast enough, that's totally okay. Check the show notes or the description box wherever you watch or listen to get all the information for that. You guys, you guys, okay, first of all, no, before we get into it, I'm still gonna talk about the book a little bit more because I'm so excited there's so, this is such a big deal for me and for you and for us together that I wanna celebrate with you. And I'm gonna tell you briefly that I am actually also hosting a live on YouTube on the 27th of June at 11:00 AM Pacific time, which will probably be different for you unless you live in Washington, Oregon or California like I do.
That we can all just be together. And I'm gonna read a little bit from the book and I'm almost definitely gonna cry and we're gonna celebrate and I think, you know what, let me just go ahead and announce this. I'm gonna do some giveaways, we're gonna do some fun stuff. So please, please, please join me for all the celebration and all of the mind over menopause fun stuff. And also, hey, let's talk about nights and weekends, right? , because nights and weekends, this is the thing that I think plagues lots of us, you are so good all week long, you're in your routine, you're like, I get up at the time that I get up and then I have my breakfast and then I do my workout and then I go to work and I have this day and I've got all my meals planned and it's super easy and I get my water in and then all of a sudden it's like the nighttime and I'm kind of tired and I'm kind of tired of making decisions and all of a sudden I find myself stuff in my face or I'm good all week and then all of a sudden it's like Friday afternoon, Friday evening, or maybe even I make it till Saturday, but all of a sudden all my planning, my routine, everything just goes out the window and it's really, really hard to lose weight.
It's not impossible, it's never impossible, but it's hard to lose weight when you're being inconsistent with your calories like that. That's part of the issue. But also when you just feel a little bit out of control or a track or like you kind of don't know what's going on here. So today we're gonna talk about what's going on here. I have a solution for you of course because that's what I do. I'm a weight loss life coach. I have solutions, you guys. It's not just me always telling you what to do. This one is a solution that I had to come to in my own life many, many years ago. I was on one of the, one of the, it ended up being successful in terms of I did lose weight on this diet, but it was definitely a diet. This was long before I had, well this was long before I was menopausal.
It was long before I had done any kind of mindset work on any kind of anything. It was one of the times that I lost weight and then you know, subsequently gained the weight back. But I had did this exact same thing. I was actually, I was really good until Friday afternoon, this is when my kids were really little. So up until Friday afternoon I was, I had myself on lockdown. I tell you what, long before lockdown was an actual thing with the pandemic, but I had my eating just absolutely tightened down. And then on Friday afternoons we used to get together with playgroup friends. Do you remember that when your kids were little you would have playgroup if you had such a thing. We had a group of moms whose kids were all, you know, approximately the same age and we would get together on Friday afternoons and so on Friday afternoon I would eat everything because it was like a social occasion, like everybody would bring, you know, like an appetizer or a something and let me just admit something kind of embarrassing to you, but because it was Friday afternoon, we would have a couple of drinks and this was my time to like cut loose.
I did not eat or drink like this any other time in my life it was technically speaking only a cheat couple of hours. It wasn't like it was a whole cheat day, but oh my goodness, the amount of food and drinks that I was shoveling in in just a couple of hours was phenomenal. And I ended up, like I said, being able to lose the weight, but I was so miserable literally the entire time I was miserable during the week. I was miserable on Friday, like Friday evenings after we would come home or Saturday morning when I was like, oh my gosh, what did I do? What did I eat? What was that like? I could not, could not figure out what was going on with me. And over time, even though I did lose the weight, everything that I was doing was so ridiculously unsustainable that I had to find ways to eat differently and behave differently and think differently and feel differently in order to move forward and in order to eventually keep the weight off.
So that's what I wanna talk to you about today is how do you get out of this and get to the point where I am now where you can eat and drink in a way that always feels good and I wanna throw that out there as a promise to you right now. Did you know that you can lose weight while eating and drinking in a way that feels good? Let's just even start with that. Or do you think that you actually have to eat and drink in a really specific way that doesn't feel amazing, but the results are worth it and you're just gonna keep on kind of pushing through because you really wanna get to your goal weight and then then you'll be able to eat and drink what you want. My friend, I will tell you the thing that will help you maintain your weight loss forever.
Not just you maintain your weight right now, but maintain your weight loss is to lose the weight in a way that is actually sustainable for the rest of your life, which means to lose the weight in a way that doesn't feel restrictive or yucky or out of control or flippity floppity or like sometimes you're on track and sometimes you're off track. When you can lose the weight in a way that feels good, then you will be able to keep it off forever. It's why I make the promise that I make about how when you follow the five oh method, which by the way is my free weight loss program for women over 50 that you can get from get your gold.com, it's the very front page by the way. It's literally the only thing you can do on get your gold.com is to sign up for the five oh method and it's completely free and it explains all about how to do all the things that you need to do, which is to say the five things that you need to do to lose weight in a way that you can sustain forever.
Not necessarily that you're going to be eating like that number of calories, not necessarily that you have to go to bed at that time every single night for the rest of your life, but making those decisions and having those routines and being able to see yourself as a person who can create routines for yourself that you can sustain on the weekends, in the evenings, during holidays, on vacation, all of that kind of stuff. Being able to see yourself as in control of the process is the reason I guarantee that you will lose weight for the last time with the five oh method because you will have all of the mindset tools that you can use in every situation. So let's talk about this situation really specifically the nights and weekends thing, which by the way, when I was coming up with the title for this episode, , I was like, okay, this isn't gonna explain anything to anyone except for all of my girls who do this thing on nights and weekends, but it totally sounds like an advertisement for a job, right?
Like must work nights and weekends at so many of those jobs in my lifetime. In fact, gosh, even now sometimes I work nights and weekends, so that still describes me. But here's what I want you to know. The thing that you will do in order to find, I'm gonna call it a system that you can sustain on nights and weekends and vacations and after you lose the weight and truly for the rest of your life is you are going to take the time to gain some self-awareness. This is, if I had to pick the one thing that will take you everywhere you wanna go in life, not just to weight loss goals, but every single goal you could possibly have ever. Self-awareness is the thing that will get you there. It's the reason why journaling is the number one task in the five oh method, which spoiler alert, in case you didn't know that journaling, daily journaling, sitting down and looking at what's in your brain and just being okay that wow, there's some things in my brain that self-awareness is so vital for any goal you want, but really specifically it's the most helpful thing you can do for this nights and weekends situation when you are looking at the times when you're like, okay, I was really good all day, but then seven o'clock rolled around and I didn't know what to do and all of a sudden there I was, I fell in a bag of chips.
Rather than thinking that the mindset that you might want to adopt is forgiving yourself and moving on or thinking about it as a one time only thing or trying to give yourself some grace, not that you have to be mean to yourself, but none of those, none of those trying to be okay with it. Think positively answers are actually garnering you any self-awareness. By self-awareness, what I mean is you are going to take a look at why it happened and really even more specifically than the net, you're going to take a look at why it happened in a way that doesn't feel like you are judging yourself, that doesn't feel like you are beating yourself up. I know this is a whole different kind of self-awareness, right? Because I mean traditionally all of us do this, we have the self-awareness and that was heavy use of air quotes.
We have the self-awareness that we've kind of gone off the rails, but we don't take a look at why or if we do take a look at why, we only ask ourselves why to like blame ourselves like, oh, it's because I'm lazy or because I can't ever stick with anything or because I'm just always self-sabotaging. Like we'll give ourselves plenty of quote unquote reasons why it happened, but none of that is actual self-awareness. Here's my definition, it's not even really gonna be a definition of self-awareness. Here's what I mean by self-awareness. I mean that you are going to hear and be aware of the actual thought in your head when you stick your hand into the bag of chips, my friend. It's a whole different world of self-awareness. When you can unflinchingly, ask yourself, what was I thinking when I was doing that? And in that very gentle tone of voice, if you're reading the transcript, let me tell you, this is the gentlest, kindest, least judgmental question you will ask yourself, what thought was crossing my mind when I put my hand into the bag of chips or I put my fork into the cheesecake or I sat down with a box of cheese nips that used to be my that used to be my poison, a box of cheese nips while watching TV or reading people magazine or or something else where I could just totally tune out and check out of my life.
What was the thought on my mind, my friend? It is almost always not something horrible or terrible or about your childhood or about self-sabotage or about anything big. It's probably something as simple as I deserve this or something like, well, everything else I do isn't gonna work anyway. Or something like, I've been good all week. Let's come back to that sentence, shall we? It's how I started this podcast and I know you heard it like, oh yeah, that totally applies to me. I want you to hear what you are saying. Let's get some self-awareness around this thought together. I've been good all day my friend. You are always good. You as a human being are always a good person. You as a human being, do not need to prove your goodness by eating a certain way. You are good when you are overeating, you are good when you are eating for comfort.
You are good when you are eating your feelings. You are good when you are eating sweets, you are good. When you are eating salty things, you are good. There's just a period at the end of that sentence. You are good when you are trying to chase after that. I am good only when I behave a certain way that my friends is where we stick our hand in the bag of chips. That is where we put our fork in the cheesecake. That is where we want to check out of our lives and sit and not think about how hard we're trying to be good all the time. It's exhausting to try like that. What if you were just good? What if you didn't have to chase it down? What if no matter what you said, what you did, how you behaved, how crabby you were with your kids, how you accidentally cried in front of your boss, how you didn't get something done that you thought you were gonna get done, what if none of that had anything to do with your goodness?
It'd be a whole lot easier to not stick your bag in the hand or put your hand in the bag of chips. It would be a whole lot easier to not put your fork in the cheesecake when you are not trying to run away from the exhaustion of trying to be good and just truly accept that you are good, this behavior will actually take care of itself. Here's something else that I want you to check in with. I want you to, if what I just said didn't resonate with you, exactly what I will offer you is that any time you find yourself doing something that you didn't mean to be doing, I'm gonna say always, because always in my experience, every single person that I have worked with who finds themselves doing something that they didn't intend to do, what was going on is that there was a feeling they really didn't wanna be feeling.
There was a situation they really didn't wanna be in. There was some level of discomfort about something that they just wanted to not be involved with anymore. And so off they went to do something that felt comforting, comfortable, pleasurable, like almost anything except the uncomfortable whatever it was. So let's figure out what's uncomfortable. Is it physical, actual hunger? Like are you hungry during the week? This was actually my problem. The story that I was telling you about the diet that I was on, it was a diet, let me tell you, this was many, many years ago. It was, I never counted the calories I was eating like really specific foods. Just note to the aside, I feel like I've told you a couple of different stories over the, the course of the podcast. I was absolutely one of those people who always found a program that told me exactly what to eat.
And it's why I'm so adamantly against it now as a trainer and as a weight loss coach, having somebody tell you what to eat was the problem and not the solution. When you can trust yourself and figure out what to eat, yeah, it's way more uncom uncomfortable upfront. But over the long run, that self-trust goes so far. In any event, I was eating something that people told me to eat. I have no idea how many calories I was eating if I had to guess. I was so severely undereating, I was hungry and I knew I was hungry. Like I vividly remember going to bed at night being like, I am so hungry, I want to eat my arm. And I had all kinds of tricks for it. I would, you know, brush my teeth right after dinner. I would go to bed early. I mean, I go to bed really early now, but I would also, I, like I said, I had young kids, I would go to bed when they went to bed.
Like I had all kinds of ways to try and ignore the hunger, but that uncomfortableness of being hungry and trying so hard to be good is what led to the off track. Gotta go off the rails. Let's eat everything in sight on Fridays. I was hungry, my friend. If you are hungry from day to day, you aren't eating enough the end. And I don't mean hungry like, oh, it's dinner time, it's time to eat dinner. But I mean like, okay, I'm done with dinner and it's an hour later and I am hungry, my friend. If you are hungry, you are not doing yourself any favors. You are not going to sustainably lose weight and keep it off forever. The magic of the FPO method is that you are eating in the exact slight caloric deficit that helps your body dip into your stored fat without getting to that point where you are hungry and deprived and really can barely function.
If you are hungry, recalculate your calories. That is the uncomfortableness that you are trying to escape in the evenings or on weekends. And also the second one, and this might be a little bit more tricky, check in with your, and I'm gonna call it emotional hunger. And there's a larger conversation to be had about like physical hunger versus emotional hunger. But really all I'm saying here is do you feel uncomfortable with how you are trying to lose weight? That's a big broad question. And if your immediate answer was ooh, kinda, then there's something to check in with here. The reason I offer you the five oh method as the way that you will lose weight and keep it off forever is because it feels good. And if it doesn't, it has a tool built right into it.
Number one, the journaling to find all the things that feel uncomfortable.
If you feel uncomfortable, really specifically if you feel restricted, if you feel like you're trying really hard to be good, if you feel like you don't trust yourself to do anything but this very specific method of like counting your calories and doing this exact routine, if you are feeling uncomfortable in any manner with what you're doing, that is what I'm referring to as emotional hunger. You are seeking comfort in the evenings or on the weekends when you find yourself doing something that you didn't intend to do. When you find yourself off of your routine in a way that doesn't feel good for you, my friend, you actually have the ability to feel good when you're losing weight all the time. Ah, that's a big promise, . Cause there's gonna be times really specifically, there's gonna be times when you're journaling, when you're uncovering some of these thoughts that create these really uncomfortable feelings and you're getting the self-awareness of, oh my gosh, that thought is rattling around in my brain.
That feeling is like in my body. No wonder I was seeking comfort from this feeling. This feeling is really uncomfortable. Okay, but like big picture, most of the time you can feel good about losing weight. There will be parts of it that are uncomfortable, but not the parts you think. Not the part where you're like, oh, I can't eat that thing that I want to eat. Oh, I can't go off my routine. Oh, I have to count calories. Oh, I have to be really perfect at doing all the things. All of those are discomforts of your own making and all of them can be resolved. You don't have to put up with any of those discomforts on your way to your goal weight, my friend. If you find yourself having a rough time on the nights and the weekends, there's something for you to be self-aware about.
There's a thought you're having that feels uncomfortable that you'd rather not feel, which of course leads me to the final step. Go ahead and just feel that discomfort. I know that sounds like it's not gonna be very fun and it's not, but also it's just not gonna be very fun for a couple of minutes as opposed to days or weeks or months on end. For example, I'm raising my hand here every single Friday for months, honestly. Well, no, it wasn't years. The actual weight loss was months. Oh, but there was still the discomfort for years. There was still that feeling of I have to clamp down, I can't let myself go. If I eat what I want, I'll never be able to keep it off. That was so uncomfortable and my friend, when I could let that go and feel comfortable with my choices, feel like I trust myself to always be myself and have what I want.
It's so amazing on this side of it. So let's start with the self-awareness. What am I thinking when I'm doing these things? Gently, kindly ask yourself the question and hear the thought. That's creating. A feeling that's driving you to an action you'd rather not be. Taking this self-awareness, not only will it help you on your nights and weekends, it will help you get all the way to your goal. It will help you maintain your weight for the rest of your life. It will help you with every other goal you could possibly set for yourself in your life. Thank you so much for listening. I really hope this was helpful for you today. I'll talk to you again soon.
