Weight loss is actually pretty straightforward. You have a routine and you stick to your routine, and it all goes just fine as long as you're in your routine. But oh my goodness. When you go out to eat or get invited to a potluck or go on vacation or go to your family's house or somebody brings donuts to work or your husband has an award ceremony, or there's a wedding, or a new baby, or a birthday to celebrate. I mean, how in the world can you stay on track for weight loss when you're out of your routine. Well, we are getting into it today, love, and I'm gonna Show you exactly how. Listen. Anybody can help you lose weight after menopause by restricting yourself and using willpower, but my zone of genius is helping you lose all the weight you want and keep it off forever by changing your mindset.
Welcome to the Get Your Goal podcast where ambitious menopausal women come to lose weight for the last time. I'm your host, Pahla B, certified life and weight loss coach, author of mind over menopause and former yo-yo dieter. When you're ready to change your mind about weight loss, I'm here to help. Let's get your goal. Hello, hello, GOALfriend. First and foremost, before we get into the meat of today's podcast, I have to offer you this. You are always on track.
Always. The space time continuum only moves in one direction, and you only have, as far as we know, one life. Your life is the track, and you're always moving forward through time. And because you're listening to this podcast, your goal weight is inevitable. So you, right now, no matter which way you think you're facing, no matter how far off track you think you are, no matter what kind of difficulties you may be having right this minute, you are actually on the track to your goal. And I also know that that's not a very satisfying answer right now. I totally get that. Sometimes that doesn't feel like enough to hang your hat on. I offer it to you, though, because it is really important to be able to kinda wrap your brain around this kind of thinking in order to be able to take in what I consider the, I guess, more practical part of what I'm gonna tell you today, really being able to manipulate your brain and hear how a thing can feel good even if it doesn't always sound true.
Here's what I mean by this. Understanding that you can truly think anything is a big part of mindset work. Coming to coming to mindset work from a place, which is what I did, from a place of, no. Everything in my brain is absolutely true. These are all facts. I'm telling you the story of my life or not even the story. I'm telling you facts of my life. I am reading you the news.
This is the way things are is the fast track, if you'll pardon the pun, is the fast track to not getting where you wanna go. It is what actually people refer to when they're talking about, like, a fixed mindset versus a growth mindset. And I this is somewhat off topic, but I do want you to know that quite literally every single human being on the planet has biologically a growth mindset. You have the ability to turn things around in your mind to manipulate the way a sentence makes sense to you, to be able to get all the way around it and see it from different angles. Even if something does not seem factually, realistically, truthfully true, you can understand that it is real, that it is available, that it is something you can think. Again, I know that sounds really abstract. I offer it to you gently right here at the start, and then we're gonna move into what I believe might sound slightly more practical.
Maybe not entirely. Because, again, I really think that lots of us come to weight loss Really truly believing that there is an on track and an off track, that there's a right way to lose weight, where you follow all the rules and do all the things, and that is all you have to do. And then you will magically be rewarded with the goal weight done rather than the actual way that you're going to lose weight, which is to say that you are not going to follow some external set of standardized rules that exist in the world that you just have to figure out, but rather that you are going to manipulate the idea of rules in your brain. Here's what I mean. And, actually, before we even get into it, I really kinda wanna I wanna put this out to you that this is not necessarily. The kind of mental work that you need to do when you very first start losing weight. When you very first start losing weight, the thing that is the most important part of your weight loss journey really is getting yourself out of confusion and overwhelm by making some decisions for how you'd like to be able to create your first routine, for you to be able to see that you are the one setting the rules to be able to follow them. In order to do that, you are probably still following some kind of rigid ways of thinking.
Getting out of that first five pounds, that initial, okay, I just have to make some decisions. I just have to take some responsibility, and I just have to start observing what's actually going on in my life, what's actually going on with my habits. Start developing this routine. I mean, like, we talked about how once you've developed a routine, it starts to feel kind of simple, kind of easy, except when you bump up against these special occasions. So for our purposes today, I want you to understand that if you are brand new to weight loss and especially brand new to mindset work, a lot of what I'm saying I mean, a lot of what I've already said might sound a little bit advanced, and that's completely okay. I don't mean to be talking over your head, but I do want you to see kind of the path ahead of you that you are not just going to follow a rigid set of rules to get to your goal weight and then be done and be able to keep it off forever. One of the most important things that you can learn on your weight loss journey is how to create your own rules. And that really is the meat of what we're talking about today.
In the framework of the what I call the three stages of weight loss… Okay. I only called it the 3 stages of weight loss in episode 294, but, actually, in the Get Your Goal group and in basically everywhere else since then, I have referred to it as the 4 stages of weight loss because, of course, maintenance is the 4th stage where you have to really turn the corner and close the door on thinking about weight loss and being in a weight loss mindset so that you can be in a maintenance mindset and keep the weight off for the rest of your life. But so here's the thing. I consider today's conversation to be a little bit more of the middle part of your weight loss, the first 5 pounds, like we just talked about, is really where you are just kinda wrapping your brain around. Okay. Here's what I'm going to do, And here's what works for me in a very kind of controlled container. Really, specifically for most of us, It tends to be, here's what I can do on weekdays at home when I'm really in control of, like, 98% of what's going on and what's going in my mouth and who's around me and what time I'm doing all of the things.
Like, in a very controlled environment, you can set up a really simple routine for yourself. What we're talking about today is how to take the elements of this routine that you have created for yourself and really be able to apply it everywhere you go. Be able to apply the five oh method, which by the way, if this is the 1st podcast of mine that you've listened to, the five oh method is my free weight loss program for women over 50. You can download it at get your goal.com. And the crux of the 5-0 method is that you're doing 5 things every day that make you say, oh, I didn't know weight loss at this age could be so simple. You are managing your mind, which is a lot of what we do here on the podcast and really specifically what we do in the Get Your Goal group. You are also eating the right number of calories, which is to say you have created for yourself a range of calories that you know you can eat. The amount of calories that's likely to help you lose weight is your starting weight with a 0 on the end.
You're drinking the right amount of water, which is to say your current weight in pounds divided by 2 in fluid ounces of water. You're getting adequate sleep by going to bed at the same time every night, waking up at the same time every morning, and not worrying about how much of that time in between was actually sleep because it so frequently isn't. And you are also exercising moderately each day, which is to say an amount that feels like you could do the exact same thing every single day for the rest of your life without ever being overly sore or burnt out. It's not very much exercise, Honestly, it's very interesting how we all think we have to work so hard. But the truth of it is, you want to be able to do all five of these things in a sustainable, dare I say, routine way, which is why when you kind of get a handle on these 5 things, when you first get started, you really do create such simple and kind of controlled routines for yourself. But in order to be able to take the 5 o method with you into the world, in order to be able to maintain your goal weight for the rest of your life, You're gonna need to get off of the diet thinking, merry-go-round, and into this mindset that you are always always in charge of what you do. And here's how you do that. Being able to take your routine anywhere and not have to impose your routine outside of your life, by the way.
But to be able to create an on the fly routine at a restaurant, an on the fly routine at your family's house, an on the fly routine for when you go to, another special event or when you are celebrating or when you are doing things that are different from your normal day to day routine. The truth of it is there are just 2 steps to being able to do this. Number 1 is that you set parameters that you can meet. And then number 2, you meet them. I know that sounds weirdly simple and also kind of ridiculous because you have some historical, what you are calling evidence in your brain, that you don't always meet your standards, that you don't always do what you say you're going to do. And this is exactly what we're talking about today. Taking the time before you go someplace to really, truly think about who you are and how you'd like to show up and what's likely to happen. Taking that gentle, nonjudgmental, honest look at yourself is taking this mindset work to a whole another level.
When you first get started, even though I tell you, you don't wanna white knuckle your way, that you don't wanna use willpower, that none of that is actually likely to get you as far as you wanna go. It really is where you come from. It's where we all come from. You have been socialized. I have been socialized. Every single one of us has been told our entire lives that the way to get something is to white knuckle your way through to demand of yourself that you meet a very rigid standard and basically just grit your teeth, put your head down, grind it out. And I think that had a bigger place in all of our lives when we were younger. I was thinking about this earlier today.
I absolutely valued and occasionally still value that grind, that ability to just say to myself, this is a thing I'm getting done. This is a thing that I am doing right now. And the difference between being able to do that for some things and asking yourself to do it long term, aka, for the rest of your life really is completely different. There are times I mean, for example, like, literally right now, literally right now, it is I'm not gonna say long past. No. But it kind of is. It is long past the end of my normal workday. I had the kind of normal workday where I was getting things done and also in a very real sense, I was not.
I was not exactly procrastinating. I was working on something that ended up being far more interesting to me than I expected it to be, and it took a little bit longer than I expected it to take. Because when I got in the shower this morning oh my gosh, you guys. I got in the shower this morning and as so often happens, just had a completely fully formed idea enter my brain for the thing I'd like to do next. Like like, it was so it just appeared as though by magic directly into my brain. And I was like, okay. I need to get this down on paper, But also right now, I really need to wash my hair. So I kinda hustled through that and then sat down to work on something that I thought was not necessarily gonna be quick, but just that I thought that I was gonna be able to get the the bare bones of it onto some kind of, not really paper.
I was typing on my computer, but I was trying to get some some of it down. Ended up being so fascinated by all of the different things that I was thinking and creating, and it ended up taking a fair bit of my workday. So here I am rather significantly past my normal working hours recording a podcast for you. And I'm delighted to do so because because every once in a while, it does feel really satisfying to say this is a thing that I meant to do, and I'm going to do it in a way that I'm sacrificing time on the couch. I'm sacrificing time where I normally would've just been playing on my phone and relaxing. And this feels this feels good for me to be able to do this for my business, for myself, and move my business forward in a way that I absolutely, positively would not wanna do every day. There is a time and a place to ask yourself to do something unusual, and let's just go ahead and say, make yourself do it. But weight loss isn't that time, nor is it the place.
Weight loss can absolutely start that way. Don't let me don't hear anything that sounds like judgment or shame from what I'm saying. Again, I think all of us come to weight loss with a white knuckle mindset where we just think we have to do the right thing the right way, which is to say the way somebody else is telling us. But here, in the middle of weight loss, is the time to really start stretching your mindset. Start thinking outside of other people's boxes, but not necessarily outside the box because here's what I really want you to think about. Your brain actually loves boxes. It does. It's why we follow other people's rules so easily.
I mean, relatively speaking, there are plenty of rules that I don't like to follow, but there are some rules that I really like to have. There are edges that I like to know keep me, I'm gonna say, in place. You can hear that how you want. This is why I love the word parameters and why it is, hands down, the word I use most often inside the Get Your Goal group. It's one of the skills that I teach is to really understand that, a, there are no actual parameters out in the world, but, b, your brain loves them. And therefore, c, you could just create them for yourself. In order to let your brain have the, I'm gonna say, the joy of being inside a box, of having some limitations placed on it, of having some edges to be able to bump up against. It's a good idea to create them for yourself.
And yet so many of us have absolutely no experience with this. I mean, you probably have some experience, let's say, in your job. If you have any kind of ability to be creative in your job, you have some experience with setting some parameters for yourself, especially if you are a creative. I mean, I have I have boundless creativity and actually Struggle sometimes to remind myself to set parameters. But when it comes to weight loss, I want you to know that thinking about yourself as a person who is always on track and who can set any parameter you want to for yourself actually helps you meet them every single time. Here's what I mean. Before you go someplace, do something out of your routine. Take a moment of your time.
And how long this moment is, honestly, when you first start doing this work and you first start learning this skill, it's going to take more time than you think, and it's going to feel very clunky. It's going to feel very difficult, and you're likely to make some guesses that are still coming from a little bit of restriction, a little bit of diet thinking, a little bit of thinking that you need to be in a very firm and tidy box. But as you practice this, you'll get better and better and better. And you will build this bridge of trust with yourself knowing that you can set a perimeter and meet it. So here's exactly how you do this. You picture yourself at the event, at the restaurant, at the potluck, at the celebration, wherever it is that you're going on vacation. And you do a thing where you very gently consider other times that you've been in situations like this and, also, consider how you'd like it to go, which might be exactly like it has always gone before, or it might be completely different. And understand that the more different it is from the way that a thing like this has gone in the past.
The more likely you are to come bumping right up against and possibly go over your parameters. Another word for parameter in this situation is guess, and I'd like you to think about that. Guessing how you will behave In the future is frankly what we're always doing. The truth of it is you have absolutely no idea what's coming in the future, and you are always guessing at it. But the more of a guess it is as opposed to a repeat of something you've done before means that there are more places where it might not go the way you've guessed. Really doing a balance between a full on wild, I have absolutely no idea, and anything could happen guess. And here's some historical information that I have about the way that something similar to this has gone in the past is what can help you decide on what sort of a parameter you'd like for this coming occasion.
Let me give you a really specific example. My husband and I actually just got back from vacation, which not even just. It was already, like, 2 weeks ago, but it's still recent enough. It's more recent than our our previous which was oh my gosh. When was the last time we traveled someplace? Oh my gosh. That was a while ago. So my husband just retired at the end of 2023. And in order to retire and get, like, all of his sick days and all of his PTO and all of the whatever, I don't I don't actually know what it was.
But he ended up not taking I don't think he took any vacation in 2023, or he took less than normal, something like that. So it was a long year with very little traveling and very little time off. And honestly, towards the end of the year when he really knew he was gonna retire, he didn't even take, like, state holidays and stuff. Like, he was like, no. I'm gonna work every single hour I can so that when he retired, first of all, it would feel amazing, but also he would have whatever whatever he had stored up in his bank. In any event, somewhat recently got back from a vacation. And before we were heading out for the vacation, we sat down together, and we were like, okay. You know, here's what we're gonna do.
Here's where we'll be on these days, and here's how we'd like to manage what we're doing. There were a couple of days where we were visiting family where I had absolutely no idea whatsoever what we would have access to in terms of food or water or traveling or exercise or like any of it. I it was it was a big blank wall. And so we set some parameters for what we'd feel most comfortable with, what we'd feel less comfortable with, what we're perfectly fine doing, what we would feel least comfortable with, but would still go along with it because it's family, and that's what you do sometimes. And where we would draw a reasonably firm line in the sand and say, you know what? We're just gonna go ahead and take care of ourselves, and we will, you know, see you later, alligator. As it happens, we didn't even come close to what we considered our firm boundary. We ended up being well within the parameters that we had set for the time we wanted to go to bed and the amount and types of foods that we were eating, the amount and types of outgoingness we were having, which is to say my social battery, it's it's very low. I don't have a lot of it. So I I'm I'm very careful about that when we travel.
I I like to make sure that I've got a little bit of time to just sit quietly in my own head. I am quite an introvert. So I was able to meet all of the parameters that I had set for myself in terms of activities and social activities and eating and drinking, It ended up going exactly like what I considered our best case scenario even though we didn't have all of the details. On the days where we were not hanging out with family, my husband and I have actually traveled together enough and lived together long enough that we tend to have the same or very similar parameters for what time we wanna go to bed, how much activity we wanna be having, whether or not we're gonna, you know, sacrifice drinking water because we know we're traveling for a long time, you know, things like that. Like, we're we're both very on the same page as far as how we'd like to make sure that we're managing our hydration without without having to go into the the airplane bathroom because it's very small. I know that might sound silly to some of you. It's not a hard and fast parameter for me, but it is one of the ones that I like to be cautious about. I will use an airport bathroom 5 times before I get on a plane, which will change as we start traveling further and further distances.
In any event, here's what I'm saying. Do your best to take historical data plus guesses and decide for yourself what you want. What do you want? How much do you wanna eat? How much do you wanna drink? How much exercise do you want to get? How would you like to get along, meaning compromise with the other people that you are with. Having that line in the sand takes some well, I'm gonna say it takes some skill, but it doesn't really take skill nearly as much as it takes it takes the ability to think about it beforehand and then notice in the moment exactly how it's going. Sometimes it's going the way you anticipated, and sometimes it is definitely not. And then evaluate afterwards. What happened here? What happened there? Did it go the way I expected it to? Did it go differently? How can I make a different parameter next time if need be? The more you practice setting a, I'm gonna say, realistic parameter beforehand. It's not always based on realism.
Sometimes it's based 100% on guessing. But recognizing that you have the ability to make that guess and then meet that guess. When you first start practicing this, you will find it very awkward. You will find yourself going well beyond your parameters and judging yourself. That is exactly how we all come to this work. In fact, it's one of the things I coach on very frequently inside the Get Your Goal group. Really treating this set your own parameters and then meet them is a skill set that takes time and effort to get better at. But you can.
You actually have the agency over yourself all the time to be on the track that you want. The difference between setting a parameter that you think is going to make you lose weight versus setting a parameter that keeps you on track could be quite different. And this is where I wanna come back to where we started. Imagine if you believed that you were always on track. Imagine if you could really, truly see it that way, that this is the track of your life, that living your life means setting the parameters that you can meet and then meeting them from now until the end, the end of the track, it feels very different, doesn't it? It feels kinder, nicer to yourself, much more loving, much less like, well, I'm planning ahead to only eat salad and be really careful and only have 1 drink and really exercise a lot because I'm sure there'll be a lot of walking and always be on track. Versus, this is an occasion where, historically, I have enjoyed drinking. Historically, I have enjoyed sampling all the desserts. Historically, I have enjoyed getting to bed later than normal and getting up later than normal and laying around more than normal. I'm thinking about a vacation.
Sometimes. I gotta be honest. My vacations almost always are centered around some kind of hiking, some kind of activity. My husband and I really like to see things on foot. So for me, I don't actually spend a lot of time relaxing on vacations. Vacations are very active for me. But but I know that there's value in that. In fact, I have been on vacations where there was sitting on on chairs and watching the ocean, and that does sound absolutely lovely.
Time and a place for everything. Here's what I want you to know. When you believe that you are in charge of your parameters. When you believe that you are always on track. When you take the time to practice the skill of thinking ahead, of thinking about how you'd like to show up and then practice the skill of showing up the way you intended to. This will be the track of your life. Really knowing that you have the ability to set your, what I'm gonna call, main parameters, your routine parameters, as well as special occasion parameters, parameters that you are only ever gonna use one time in your life for for this one very specific and particular situation, or and here's where we get to even slightly more advanced work, in the moment parameters. We had to consider this.
What if you knew, without any doubt whatsoever, that you would always be able to set a parameter and meet it even if you didn't think about it ahead of time, even if right now you were suddenly faced with somebody saying, hey. I've got 2 tickets to paradise. Pack your bags. We'll leave tonight, and let's go get a cheeseburger in paradise. Let's see how far I can take this thing. What if you knew because you're always on track, because you've practiced setting parameters for yourself, because you know deep in your bones that there are no external parameters that you have to meet. And then you just knew that you would always always meet your own parameters. Imagine how relaxed your weight loss journey would feel.
Imagine how relaxed the rest of your life would feel. I like thinking about this one even more than the weight loss journey. There is I think no matter how much I tell you that you can relax during your weight loss journey, I think there is a little part of your brain and sometimes even a lot of your brain that's like, no. This is different. This really requires some sacrifice and some hard work and a little bit of restriction and a little bit of things being outside of what I'm gonna do when I'm living my real life again, which is why I love for you to really stretch your mind into the future and think about what maintenance will feel like. Maintenance is not going to be you never thinking about what you eat ever again. It is not going to be you just willy nilly flying through your life by the seat of your pants and never thinking about any of this and just loving your body and always being free and happy. Maintenance does have a lot of free and happy because of this kind of work.
When you are thinking about how you'd like to show up and then showing up that way, it actually does feel really free and easy, but it doesn't feel like never thinking about it again. It feels like thinking about it generously, kindly, lovingly towards yourself. This bridge of intimate trust with yourself is how you create the confidence that I know you want. The number on the scale is never going to give you the confidence to maintain your weight forever, but this kind of work absolutely creates feelings of confidence. There's also and this is the one that I personally love the most. There is a complete and absolute lack, a dearth, an absence of shame or blame or regret or guilt. When I went on vacation, I ate foods I don't normally eat. I ate different amounts than I normally eat.
I was outside of my routine, and every single minute of it was inside my own parameters. I loved how I ate, how I drank, how I stayed up to a different time of night, which, by the way, we are absolutely doing now that we're back home too. It's been very fascinating. I knew that this was gonna be the weirdest part of retirement. For years years years years years, my husband had to be at work at 5 AM. So we've traditionally gotten up, you know, between 2 and 3 AM in the morning, in the middle of the night. And so it's been really fascinating to just kinda look around at, you know, 6 PM, 7 PM and be like, I could stay up as late as I want. I have not stayed up super late, but we have definitely stretched our bedtime and waking time parameters.
I always know exactly what my parameters are, and I always meet them. I never ever shame myself. I never ever feel guilty about what I've done. I never ever regret what I've eaten or what I've drank and or how late I've stayed up or what I've exercised. This is what I offer you. When you really embrace setting parameters that you can meet and then meeting them, you will just absolutely know in your bones that you are always on track. My friend, I offer this to you freely here on the podcast as something to turn around in your mind. This is not the easiest concept to really fully embrace and understand without support.
I truly believe that socialization is one of the best ways to Learn a new skill like that, a new way of thinking like this, a new mindset like this. It's why I've created the Get Your Goal group. Normalizing this kind of behavior, thinking ahead, not just going off the rails, but truly embracing your agency over your choices, truly embracing, trusting yourself, getting intimate with where you are right now, and understanding that this is standing. But this is gonna feel awkward and difficult at first, but it doesn't have to be all or nothing. It doesn't have to be going off the rails, being off track or sticking to your routine so tightly that it's all you can do, and then you just finally exhale when you get to your goal weight. Having a group of other women who are going through these same struggles, who are succeeding in ways that you would love to be able to succeed and struggling in ways through with things that you have already worked out. Being able to really embrace the support of other women on this journey is invaluable. Truly.
And along with I mean, the community is hands down the best part about it. But along with the community really does come the coaching skill that I offer, as well as all of the resources, including the one that I was working on this morning, the one that came to me in the shower today, which is going to appear as if by magic inside the Get Your Goal group within the next couple of weeks. Really learning how to embrace your on trackness might need some help, and I have it. It's what we do inside the Get Your Goal group, and I would love for you to come and join us there. You can find out more at getyourgoal.com/work-with-me. My friend, I really, really hope that this was helpful for you today, And thank you so much for listening. I'll talk to you again soon. Hey.
Thanks for listening all the way to the end of the podcast. My friend, there's no better time to lose weight, And there's no better way to do it than with the five o method, my free weight loss mindset guide for women over 50. It's simple, sustainable, and backed by science. We start with your mindset because your body only goes where your brain goes first. This is the thing that's been missing from all those other weight loss programs you've tried. Download your free copy today at getyourgoal.com.
