Sometimes you feel really prepared to start your weight loss journey, and sometimes – you know, five minutes later – you’re pretty sure you need to do more research, and it’s off to Google you go. This constant back and forth, you may have noticed, isn’t really helping you lose weight. Will you ever be fully ready to lose weight, or at some point do you just have to close your eyes and take a leap of faith? Well, actually the answer is somewhere in the middle, and there’s a good chance that you’re more ready than you think. So today I’m sharing three signs that you – yes, you – are ready to lose weight for good.
Remember playing hide and seek as a kid – where somebody would be “it,” and everybody else would hide nearby, waiting to be found? Well, I was that kid who would completely overthink their hiding spot, trying to find the perfect place to squeeze into – you know, one that wasn’t super obvious, or too small, or too far away.
And inevitably, I would spend so much time thinking about my hiding place that I wouldn’t actually hide until the person was finished counting down and was saying, “Ready or not, here I come!”
So it probably won’t surprise you to know that I was almost always the first one found, and spent a LOT of hide-and-seek games being “it.”
The good news here is that I actually prefer seeking to hiding, so that worked out well for me, and was sort of foreshadowing for my eventual degree in Criminology, and a personality trait that serves me incredibly well as a Life Coach. I am always looking for the hidden thoughts that are blocking you from losing the weight you want.
And, on the flip side like today, I’m great at spotting the clues that you’re more ready to lose weight than you realize.
If you are an overthinker like me, this episode’s for YOU. So let’s get into it. Here are three signs that you’re ready to lose weight for the last time.
Sign number one that you’re ready to lose weight for good: You notice how much you’re complaining about your weight.
This doesn’t sound like a sign that you’re ready to lose weight, does it? But I promise you, it is! When you’re NOT ready to lose weight, you’re just a complainer and you don’t even think twice about it.
This was me for such a huge part of my life – a person who complained about not just my weight, but pretty much everything. Somebody I knew a long time ago actually told me that I was the most negative person they’d ever met. And at the time, it really hurt my feelings, but it was also a really good wake up call.
Way back when they said I was a negative person, the thing that I complained about most was my job. I was so bored with it and I had known for a long time that it wasn’t going to be a career for me. In fact, I was only supposed to work there for a year or two while I went to community college. But there I was four years later, still taking a class or two a semester, working long hours at a job I hated and not getting where I wanted to go.
And as soon as I noticed – like, really noticed – how much I was complaining about it, the answer of what to do next was so obvious. Within weeks, I had applied to a couple of four-year universities and just a couple of months after that, I was on my way to my bachelor’s degree.
After that, I noticed how much I was complaining about relationships. Within a month, I met the man who became my husband just a year later.
A couple of years after that, when our kids were small, I noticed that I was complaining about not having mom friends. As if by magic, within just a few weeks I’d joined a young mother’s group and had weekly playdates set up.
When I noticed myself complaining about my skillset, I went out and got certified as a personal trainer, then as a health coach, and a functional fitness specialist, and eventually as a Life Coach and a Master Coach.
And finally, over 25 years after that friend called me out for my negativity and after I’d gained and lost weight half a dozen times without really noticing how much I was complaining about it – I noticed it. I really heard myself complaining about my weight. If you’ve been following this story, you know what happened next. I lost the weight I wanted to lose, and this time it was the last time.
When you really notice yourself complaining about something, you’re ready to change it.
Sign number two that you’re ready to lose weight for good: You can spot a diet that’s not right for you.
Way back in the day, I would try *anything* to lose weight. And I do mean anything. Whatever the diet of the month was in Cosmopolitan magazine, I tried it. If my friend lost a couple of pounds taking some weird-smelling pill from the vitamin store, I gave it a go. There’s not a fad, a quick fix, a pill, a cleanse, or a shake that I haven’t tried.
Until… and here’s the thing, I’m not really interested in naming the specific trendy diet that was the end of the line for me, because it’s not about the particulars. The point I want to make here is that after years and years and years of trying anything and everything, there came a day when I stopped and thought about it first.
I actually asked myself, “Is this for me?” And not from a place of thinking, “This diet won’t work for me because nothing works for me, and I always gain it back” but from the legitimate standpoint of “Do I WANT to eat like this? Do I LIKE this plan?”
I cannot overstate what a change this was for me. In every way imaginable, I had spent my life giving the diet – whichever diet I was on at the time – all the power of my results, and when it finally occurred to me that I was the one making the choices and that I was the one living inside my body and my life, and that I could just choose what I wanted… well, that’s when I was ready to lose weight for good.
Inside of the Get Your GOAL membership, we call this concept “taking agency” and it’s something I coach on a lot.
As women in general, and particularly as women of a certain age who grew up in – let’s call them “different times,” we have not been socialized to ask ourselves what we want.
So when you do – when you look a tempting quick fix diet right in the eyeballs and think to yourself, “You know what? This isn’t for me.” Well, the first time it’s going to feel weird and unfamiliar, but after that it’ll just feel like straight-up POWER.
This, my friend, is a sign that you are ready to lose weight for the last time.
And sign number three that ready or not, here you come is that you are listening to this podcast.
That sounds funny, doesn’t it? But I swear it’s more of a sign than you realize. Back in the day, when I was not ready, and hey, let’s just call it what it was, when I was UNWILLING to change my mindset about the things that I wanted to change in my life, I didn’t go looking for mindset resources.
When I wanted nothing more than to lose weight quickly, I scampered on over to the magazine rack in the grocery store and found a new diet that promised to change my body. I did not go to the self-help section in the bookstore to figure out what was going on in my brain (and yes, as a matter of fact, that is a shameless plug for my Amazon-best selling book “Mind Over Menopause” that’s coming out in paperback soon.)
There were many, many years when I truly believed that weight loss was just a body thing, a willpower thing, and a self-discipline thing. So I read books and subscribed to magazines and listened to podcasts and watched YouTube videos that all corroborated what I already believed.
We all do this, by the way. Your brain loves to believe that it’s correct, so it goes out of its way to find information that supports your current beliefs, and actually even blocks out evidence that would prove you wrong.
Which means that if you’re here, listening to this podcast, you already believe – at least on some level – that YOU can master your mindset and lose weight for the last time by understanding your thoughts and feeling your feelings instead of shoving them down.
You’re already on board with what I’m saying. Which means you are ready to lose weight for good. And if you want help doing that, I’ve got you covered inside the Get Your GOAL membership where there are literally hundreds of hours of content like this (including Masterclasses, weight loss courses, and coaching call replays) that will not only have you ready to lose weight, but help hold you accountable to the actions that move the needle on the scale, too.
Inside the community, you’ll have the support and camaraderie of other ambitious menopausal women just like you who have ditched dieting in favor of learning sustainable self love.
If you’ve been wondering about whether or not you’re ready to lose weight, wonder no more, my friend. Here’s a recap of the three signs that prove it’s time to lose weight for the last time:
You notice yourself complaining about your weight
You can spot a diet that’s not for you
You’re listening to this podcast
You ARE ready, so let’s go. Thank you so much for listening, I’ll talk to you again soon!
