Pahla B [00:00:00]:
You've gained and lost weight before maybe even dozens of times and you are sick of it. You're ready to be done with this dieting nonsense forever. But how does that even work? How do you lose weight for the last time? Like this. 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.
Pahla B [00:00:45]:
Let's get your goal. Hey, GOALfriend. I'm glad you're here. Let's dive in. Today, I'm gonna lay out how to lose weight for the last time in a step by step list. But before I do, I wanna point out the overarching theme. The one key takeaway that if it's the only thing you remember from this podcast, it'll still send you in the right direction. And it's this.
Pahla B [00:01:08]:
Losing weight for the last time requires you to create a loving and trusting brain body connection. If you don't do this, you will continue to create the results that you've created in the past or the results that you currently have. Meaning, you'll gain and lose weight again and again or you'll stay stuck where you are now. On the other hand, when your brain and your body are working together as a team, you will be unstoppable and getting to your goal weight will be inevitable. I'm gonna tell you exactly how to create that brain-body connection, but first, let me show you what it looks like for you right now when your brain and your body aren't working together. If you are anything like I used to be back when I was gaining and losing weight over and over, your brain is almost completely overriding your body. I was and let's be honest, still am sometimes, a classic overthinker and under feeler. I grew up believing that logic and intelligence and book smarts were the be all and the end all.
Pahla B [00:02:17]:
Any sign of emotion was labeled as weakness, which meant that I tried to avoid them at all cost. I learned young that you could bake your emotions away, or you could walk them off, or you could just put a smile on your face and pretend like they didn't exist. And as an adult, this meant that instead of feeling my feelings, I always had a freezer full of cookies. I exercised for hours a day, and I had little Post it notes of affirmations all over my house. My favorite one was fake it till you feel it. When I first came to life coaching and started doing mindset work, I literally had no idea what I was actually thinking underneath all of the affirmations or what I was feeling beyond that low grade anxiety and frustration. So, of course, I couldn't get to my goal weight and stay there. But as I came to my journal day after day looking for self awareness, I learned how to listen to what my brain was actually saying and feel what my body was actually feeling.
Pahla B [00:03:32]:
I stopped dismissing myself or arguing with myself or stuffing my feelings down or telling myself I was being ridiculous. And here's the funny thing. What I did to lose weight for the last time looked on the outside almost exactly like what I'd done all the other times I'd lost weight and gained it back again. So when I tell you the step by step process, you might be tempted to say, but I've done all of those things and it didn't work for me. Yeah. Me either until it did. The thing that changed wasn't what I was doing. It was what I was thinking and how I was feeling while I was doing it.
Pahla B [00:04:16]:
Now not coincidentally, the step by step process I'm about to lay out for you is actually a list of the mindset and somatic skills and processes that I teach inside the Get Your Goal membership. When you join the group, you get instant access to hours of on demand video training that walks you through these exact steps and holds your hand through your entire weight loss journey from getting started and losing your first 5 pounds to losing all the 5 pounds in the middle that you want to, to losing the last 5 pounds, and finally, to lifelong maintenance while you set and smash any other goal you desire. The get your goal group has you covered, and these are the steps that it takes. Step number 1 is to decide that you're losing weight. Now in the past, I used to make the decision to lose weight from feelings like urgency, disgust, fear, or pressure. I had thoughts like, I've got to get this weight off or I'm such a pig or I can't believe I let myself get this big or I have to lose this weight quickly. But when I lost weight for the last time, it was because I learned how to create feelings of calm curiosity, determination, and certainty instead of chasing after any kind of weight loss no matter what. Inside the get your goal group, I'll show you how to create a loving and trusting brain body connection that allows you to simply settle into losing weight for the last time.
Pahla B [00:05:57]:
Step number 2 is to choose a goal weight. Now personally, I never even used to set a goal for how much I wanted to lose. It felt so out of reach, so unavailable to me to hang on to it that I just avoided setting a goal altogether. I had thoughts like it doesn't matter what I want and I'll never keep it off and I don't even know what I want to weigh. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? It never ceases to amaze me how far I've come. I'm literally a goal coach now. And the thing that changed for me here was tapping deeply into my desire. Instead of getting bogged down with the what ifs that your brain shouts at you, I'll teach you how to gently focus your attention on your body to understand what you really want.
Pahla B [00:06:51]:
Step number 3 is to do your daily tasks. When you're using the five o method, the tasks are already laid out for you. You manage your mind with 5 minutes of journaling. You eat the right number of calories, which is your starting weight in pounds multiplied by 10. You drink the right amount of water, which is your weight in pounds divided by 2. You get adequate sleep, which means that you go to bed at the same time each night and get up at the same time every morning, and you don't worry about how much of it was actual sleep, and you exercise moderately. Now this was a big brain body disconnect for so many of us, and there are 2 different ways that this step can unravel. Either you'll find yourself unable to do the tasks basically at all or you'll rigidly follow the very specific and exact tasks with zero variation.
Pahla B [00:07:38]:
If you find yourself doing virtually nothing, it's pretty likely you're coming at this step from a feeling of restriction. For me, so many times, I would go on a diet and just quit it the same day because I was thinking things like, I hate counting calories or this is nothing but rabbit food. But I've also swung the other direction where I was coming from a feeling of tight control and sheer willpower. So I forced myself to eat exactly what was on the plan no matter what and not 1 morsel more or different. I also see this rigid adherence to the very specific and exact tasks coming from the feeling of obligation or a deep need to follow the rules. No matter how you slice it, all of these options are pretty miserable. When I lost weight for good and I focused on creating a loving and trusting brain body connection, everything changed. Rather than restricting or controlling myself, I gently listened to what felt doable and sustainable.
Pahla B [00:08:45]:
Now step number 4 is to collect data and analyze it. Now in full transparency, this step was something I used to be terrible at. Yes. I counted calories sometimes, and I did weigh myself every day most of the time, but I never and I do mean never looked at the numbers later to assess how I was doing. I buried my head in the sand and just grit my teeth and got on with the diet. Honestly, I look back sometimes and I wonder how I was able to lose weight at all, but it's no surprise that I didn't keep it off. I was constantly telling myself, this will never last when the scale was down. And, I knew I'd gain weight when it went up.
Pahla B [00:09:27]:
With every calorie I totaled up, I would think I'm gonna overeat. I don't have enough. I'll be starving by the end of the day. And I frequently was hungry because I was restricting myself so much. So building my loving and trusting brain body connection here on this step was tough because I started with absolutely none, but it was so worth it. When I lost weight for the last time here in my fifties, instead of constantly worrying that I was gonna screw everything up, I could just look honestly at my numbers and see where I was succeeding. I learned, and this is exactly what I will teach you inside the get your goal group. How to collect data without analyzing it in the moment because weight loss is a long term project and trends only emerge over time, and how to analyze that data at regular intervals later without judgment, specifically, how to actually see wins instead of fails.
Pahla B [00:10:32]:
Now step number 5 is to trust yourself when you're out of your routine. Now we're getting into the more advanced stuff here. The first layer of building your loving and trusting brain body connection is really about observing, seeing your thoughts as thoughts instead of facts, and recognizing the feelings that your thoughts create inside your body. But now we're starting to dig deeper and actively feel our feelings on purpose. This work is so powerful. I used to hate going to anybody's house to eat or going out to restaurants. I just knew that I would overeat and feel miserable, and I never seemed to be able to stop myself. The restriction and willpower that I was using, you know, so successfully at home didn't seem to apply when I was out of my routine.
Pahla B [00:11:27]:
But then, oh my god, the guilt afterwards, it was so hard. Inside the Get Goal group, I coach really frequently on the super almost deceptively simple solution, which was actually the subject of last week's episode, how to stop eating your feelings. On our weekly coaching calls inside the membership, I facilitate the process of feeling your feelings all the way through, helping you to keep your brain focused and allow your body to do its work. When your brain and your body are on the same team, there's really no such thing as being out of your routine, and you'll recognize that you have the power to do exactly what you want to do no matter where you are. Step number 6 is to untangle your past. If there is one thing that's missing from mainstream weight loss advice, even the programs that offer mindset, I honestly think that it's this. I truly believe that untangling your past is the thing that actually creates permanent weight loss. Because not only are you creating a loving and trusting relationship between your brain and your body now, but you're extending that love and that trust to every other version of yourself, including all of the past use that failed at losing weight or made bad choices or couldn't get it right or wallowed in self pity or gained weight back again or honestly or whatever you feel bad about.
Pahla B [00:13:04]:
And here's the real magic, untangling your past sets you free to create any future you want instead of being doomed to keep repeating it again and again. I gained and lost weight so many times that I really thought I wouldn't be able to break free from the cycle. I honestly believed that losing weight was a sisyphean task right up until I let my past go and realized that I could maintain my weight forever and literally never diet again. Step number 7 is to release the scale’s hold over you. This is the one you've been waiting for, and there's a reason that it's almost last. This is the penultimate step. You really need to have all of the other lessons under your belt before this one will stick. There's a cartoon I've seen where 2 little girls are standing next to a scale and one says to the other, don't step on that.
Pahla B [00:14:08]:
It'll make you cry. And for a long, like, long time, I used to laugh because I thought it was true. But when you've created a loving and trusting brain body connection, you'll know that there is nothing true about that at all. You will be able to let the scale be an inanimate object. And then step number 8, it's the final one, Decide that you're finished losing weight forever. I've used that word decide very intentionally here because this was the thing that I didn't know I needed to do and it bit me in the butt again and again. I regained all the weight I'd lost half a dozen times because no matter what the scale said, I was still telling myself that I was fat. I was still thinking that I needed to lose weight.
Pahla B [00:15:05]:
I was still complaining about my weight. I was still thinking that I needed to watch what I was eating. I was still dieting even when I had hit. Well, I mean, as we've already established. I didn't actually have a goal weight, but I had a weight where I thought I'd be happy. Spoiler alert, Your weight doesn't make you happy. That's an inside job. Hey.
Pahla B [00:15:34]:
It's a brain body connection job. You saw that coming. I know. Rather than hanging on to your maintenance weight with white knuckles, constantly worried about when, not if, but when you'll gain it back, you can decide from a calm, generous place that you're done. In fact, you can decide that you are better than done. You're finished. It is truly the ultimate in a loving and trusting brain body connection to step into complete diet freedom. So let me recap these steps for you because I know that we were talking a lot about each of them.
Pahla B [00:16:18]:
So step number 1 is to decide that you're losing weight. Step number 2 is to choose a goal weight. Step number 3 is to do your daily tasks. Step number 4 is to collect data and analyze it. Step number 5 is to trust yourself when you're out of your routine. Step 6 is to untangle your past. Step 7 is to release the scale’s hold over you. And step number 8 is to decide that you're finished losing weight forever.
Pahla B [00:16:55]:
And remember, that it's not what you do that has you losing weight for the last time even though I've just given you the step by step. It's what you're thinking and how you're feeling, your brain body connection that gets you where you want to go. And if you want some help getting there, come and join us in the get your goal group where I will teach you all of this and more. Thank you so much for listening, my friend. 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.
Pahla B [00:17:38]:
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
