The “F” Word

Pahla B [00:00:00]: Okay. Don't worry. Today's episode of the Get Your Goal podcast isn't really about the f word you're probably thinking of, you know, the 4 lettered one, but we are absolutely going to chat about a certain three lettered f word that's slowing down your weight loss. And I'll be sharing my best strategies for overcoming a very common mindset block so you can get your goal. 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. Pahla B [00:00:41]: I'm your host, Pahla B, certified life and weight loss coach, author of mind over menopause, and former yo-yo dieter. When you are ready to change your mind about weight loss, I'm here to help. Let's get your goal. Hey, girlfriend. I am so glad you're here today, and I am so glad that I'm here today because I am sitting inside my oh so quiet house. It is so lovely to be indoors, not that I mind in my, you know, my podcast studio in my minivan, but it's also really nice to just be sitting cozily on my couch. I've got my 2 cats, Liam and Cosmo, sitting not exactly next to me. They are not lap cats yet. Pahla B [00:01:23]: I think they're going to be I'm pretty sure that Cosmo will be. Liam is still really kinda just figuring out whether he wants to be a people cat or not a people cat, but they love each other. They cozy up next to each other and snuggle all the time, and I love it so much. So they are on the same couch with me, but not especially close. It's been so lovely to have a little bit of time to myself today, both of my kids are at work, and my husband has a doctor's appointment. So I have just enough time to sit here so quietly and gently and have a conversation with you about something that I see so so often. This is such an interesting mindset block that I think is probably holding you back. Like, I run into it so commonly with basically everybody, almost everybody. Pahla B [00:02:16]: No. You know what? I'm gonna go ahead and say everybody because I think in the get your goal group, there are plenty of people who never actually tell me exactly what kind of mindset blocks they have worked through like, I'll hear from, I would say, most of the members, but definitely not all of them. There's room for you there if you are the kind of person who likes to join a group and just kinda hang out and lurk. I tend to be a lurker too. I totally respect that. Or if you are the kind of person who comes in and just checks in online once in a while or if you are the kind of person who loves to start conversations and talk with everybody and be nice and social online, there is room for you in the get your goal group. And one of the things that I personally believe that all of us struggle with when we first come to mindset work. And really specifically mindset work about weight loss is this particular mindset block, which is censoring yourself inside your journal, AKA being unwilling to use not just the 4 lettered f word writing out that word in your journal, scandalous. Pahla B [00:03:23]: Right? But the 3 lettered one. Here's the thing. You are very likely, especially if you are a woman of a certain age. My gen x friends, we grew up using the word fat. We threw it out all the time. It was something that we called each other, it's something that we call ourselves. I would be willing, not necessarily to bet. I don't love betting, but if I were a betting person, I would be willing to bet that you are using that word on yourself, but that you are probably unwilling to write it in your journal. Pahla B [00:04:01]: And further to that, really, the 4 lettered f word, this is actually something that I have talked to lots of my get your goal members about. They're like, oh, you know, I just put some asterisks, or I just make, like, a little a little kind of a a jot of a a word that's not really a word, but I don't like to put that word down in writing. And listen. On the one hand, I get it. As a person who grew up being told how to behave and how to be a good girl and how to meet standards and how to follow rules, I 100% understand. I am also a mindset coach who really gets why this is slowing you down, why this is actually a mindset block. I know it's really strange. But here's the thing. Pahla B [00:04:48]: Let me let me start by telling you why you probably do this. I mean, it's kinda what we already talked about with you probably have some socialization that said something about who you were supposed to be in the world. Women our age grew up being told how to be nice girls, we just were. We were told to be a good girl. We were told to follow the rules. We were told that we needed to look and act and speak a certain way. And you might also, I'm raising my hand here, have some trust issues with people, like, maybe repeating your words back to you. Not even necessarily something you wrote in a journal or a diary or, I mean, heaven forbid, if one of your siblings or parents or friends did read something that you had written privately, but even something that you might have said to a friend or said to somebody that you trusted and then have those words come back to you later, like somebody was talking behind your back or somebody making fun of you to your face for a thing that you admitted in a place that you thought was private and safe and secure, I absolutely 100% had experiences like that too. Pahla B [00:06:01]: I understand how difficult it feels to be able to write something down, to be able to trust that there is a safe place in the world to be able to say the things that you are saying inside your head. And here's what I wanna offer you about, well, about all of that, I do actually have some strategies for that. But let me tell you, first of all, why you even want to break through this mindset block. Because you might be thinking to yourself, okay. This isn't really that big of a deal. I'm still getting some place with my mindset. I can still get where I wanna go with my weight loss journey. I don't really understand why I would have to use the f word. Pahla B [00:06:41]: Well, okay. First of all, you don't have to use the f word. I'm not telling you I'm not telling you to start swearing if you don't already, and I'm definitely not telling you to start calling yourself fat if you don't already. What I'm telling you is to get really genuine and honest with yourself if you are using those words, building that bridge of trust with your brain is the 1st step of building the bridge of trust with your body. And make no mistake about it, my friend. If you want to lose weight and keep it off forever, you will need need to trust both your brain and your body, trusting that your brain and your body have your best interests at heart and can, a, think anything and, b, feel anything is the path to lifelong weight maintenance and, frankly, getting any other goal you could ever possibly want in the world. Really being able to trust yourself, your brain, and your body is the path to getting your goal. So how do you do that exactly? Like, how in the world do you build a bridge of trust with a thing, an entity, AKA your brain or your body or your journal or any of this, if you don't already, my friend, we're gonna take baby steps. Pahla B [00:08:14]: And there are some strategies that you can utilize that might make this feel better for you. I offer you these really practical strategies not because, oh, this works for everybody, but so that you can manipulate it in your own mind and think to yourself, yes. I think this would actually feel good and feel safe and like a good idea to me. That even in and of itself is part of building the bridge of trust with yourself. So I offer you that you do not have to actually write in a journal. You can simply acknowledge what you are thinking and what you are feeling inside your own head. Starting there might be the place to be. You might also start writing things down on a computer document that you can password protect or delete afterwards. Pahla B [00:09:13]: You might also try a book that has a lock. I will tell you from my own experience it's just when I was a kid, but having a book with a lock didn't actually keep anybody out. I don't know if they make better diary locks now than they did in the 19 seventies, but the one that I had was so flimsy that it really just took a little bit of jiggling before anybody in my family could read my diary. I don't think anybody did. I didn't have that experience. I actually had plenty of experiences of telling somebody that I trusted things like, you know, what boy I liked or really mostly that. And then having it told to me later from somebody else, oh, so and so said this or so and so said that. I have plenty of trust issues that I have worked out by being able to trust myself first. Pahla B [00:10:02]: If you want to use a book with a lock and that feels good to you, please do. I will tell you for my own sake that what I did personally when I first started journaling was I simply ripped up the pages. I would write it out, and then I would pull it out of the book, and I would rip it up and throw it away. You might also if you love a little bit of drama, you might also burn the pages. It's totally okay. Whatever you do that feels good to you. Understanding that what you're going for here isn't following some rule or trying to do things some right way, but rather knowing what the essence of this rule actually is for being able to hear what's in your brain, being able to acknowledge what's going on with you? Being really raw and vulnerable and naked with yourself, both metaphorically and, frankly, physically, that is a topic for another day, by the way. And there will actually be a podcast about that. Pahla B [00:11:13]: I don't remember exactly when, but I know it's on my list, about getting naked with yourself physically. Also, seeing yourself exactly as you are and loving yourself exactly as you are really is what's waiting for you here. Did you know that you can see your flaws and still love yourself? Did you know that you can be really open and honest and gentle with yourself. Because here's the thing that's gonna happen when you build this bridge of trust to yourself. What you think is gonna happen right now, if I had to guess, you think that being open and honest and raw is going to lead kind of inevitably to some kind of betrayal because something like that has happened to you at some point in time in your life. I really wanna normalize this, by the way. We all think that other people have not had this kind of a tragedy happen to them where somebody betrayed their trust. Pahla B [00:12:19]: Somebody talked behind their back. Somebody read their diary. Somebody took something that they said in a moment of quiet vulnerability and used it against them. Every single one of us has had that happen, and it doesn't mean that it's inevitable. You really, truly can trust yourself because you're on both sides of it. You are the trustee and the truster. You are the one who will not betray yourself, and you can know that because it's you. So here's the thing. Pahla B [00:13:02]: You think right now, okay. Well, if I'm open and honest and raw, well, then somebody is gonna be mean to me. Somebody's gonna betray me. This is gonna turn out poorly for me, but it actually won't. When you build this bridge of trust with yourself, when you really allow yourself to see how tiny and vulnerable and small you are inside sometimes, it'll actually be a lot like looking at yourself as a baby. Or if you don't like babies, I know some people don't, I actually really like little kids much babies, babies are cute. Don't get me wrong. Babies are cute, but they're kind of a lot of work. Pahla B [00:13:44]: I really I as I said when I was a preschool teacher, pretty often to anybody who would listen to me, give them to me walking, talking, and wiping their own butts, and I will take them all day long. I love kids when they're, like, 3 or 4 or 5. They're so sweet and so innocent and so adorable and so wild. This is actually how you will see yourself, whichever one you like, babies or toddlers or maybe you like older people or or whatever. Kittens, puppies, cute things, whatever it is that you actually feel some tenderness for, it's for either very young or very old or very furry or very whatever. That thing that you feel tenderness for can be you when you allow yourself to be on the receiving end of your own vulnerability, you will never be mean to yourself again. That f word will actually lose its place, whichever one of it. Well, maybe not both of them. Pahla B [00:14:50]: I tell you what. I never call myself fat anymore, like, literally ever. No matter what the scale says, no matter what I see in the mirror, no matter how my clothes are fitting or not fitting, I really, really never hear that word anymore. The other f word, the 4 letter one, I use that one all day every day and 10 times on Sunday, that is one of my favorite words in the world. If you do join the get your goal group, just so you know, you will actually hear me use that word. Not gonna say it here in the podcast. There's no need for that today. But just so you know, that is how I talk in real life, and it's how I talk in my journal. Pahla B [00:15:29]: Whatever you say in your brain right now has a place on paper so that you can love and trust and understand yourself. The whole reason we come to our journal is for self awareness, self vulnerability, self understanding, self trusting, you can't do that if you are censoring yourself, and that could very well be slowing down your weight loss right now. So, my friend, feel free to take whatever strategy you want that really feels like it'll for you to build that bridge of trust, throw away your pages, burn your pages, put it behind a lock, put it behind a password, do what it takes to start building that trust with yourself so that you can lose all the weight you want, and even better than that, so that you can keep it off forever, my friend. As always, I really hope this was helpful for you today. I'm so glad you were here. Thank you for listening, and I'll talk to you again soon. Hey. Thanks for listening all the way to the end of the podcast. Pahla B [00:16:45]: 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.