You know how it feels so good to get an encouraging pep talk from your best friend? Well, today’s weight loss podcast isn’t like that. Instead of handing you some sugar-coated platitudes about how you’re doing amazing, sweetie, I’ve got the straight skinny on where you need to get to work. So if you’re ready for it, let’s dive into the tough love weight loss advice you need to hear.
Hello, hello, my dear overthinking GOALfriend, and welcome to the podcast. This is going to be a challenging one, for both of us.
As a life coach, and just as a human being in general, I prefer to be a nice person. I love being encouraging and kind and understanding. But I also deeply value transformation, and I know that change is only sparked by challenging your status quo.
And sometimes the exact right challenge comes from tough love advice, like I’m about to dole out.
Let me start with the love part first, before I get tough, because I want both of us to be mentally and emotionally prepared for this episode.
My friend, I know that you can change. I know that you can hear what I’m about to tell you with an open heart. I know you can handle it, and use it to create what you want. I know you can lose weight. I know you can break out of your self-imposed limitations. I know you can have anything you want.
Two of the biggest changes I’ve experienced in my life came from tough observations, handed to me from a person I loved.
The first one was many, many years ago – long before I had any self awareness whatsoever – and came from one of the worst boyfriends I’ve ever had. This guy was bad news from the minute I met him, but honestly, I’m so happy we dated, and here’s why.
One day, I was complaining about… something. Who knows what. I used to complain about pretty much everything, and he called me out on it. He looked me right in the eyes and said, “Pahla, you are the most negative person I’ve ever met.”
All these years later, I honestly can’t remember what I said or did in response, but I probably stormed off in a huff. I’m sure I felt defensive and angry and hurt.
But also? I thought about what he said. And not just in that “He’s so mean, he doesn’t understand me, what does he know anyway, that jerk” sort of way.
I mean that I really thought about it. I turned it around in my mind. I looked at what he’d told me with curiosity. And – no, this wasn’t immediately afterward, nor was it a fast transformation, and yes, I still complain sometimes, but – I started making decisions about who I wanted to be and how I wanted to show up in the world with a new perspective.
The other tough love observation I received was just a few years ago from my dear husband.
We were out on a hike and I was asking for his advice about … something. I don’t remember the specifics, but I do remember that I really thought I was telling him the facts of the situation, that I was in a pickle and there was no good way to get out of it.
And he asked me, with genuine curiosity and love, “But, Pahla, what would you do if you weren’t feeling sorry for yourself about this?”
I totally remember the shock I felt when he asked me that. It had literally not occurred to me at all that I was feeling sorry for myself. I thought the situation was hard. I thought I was actually incapable of getting out of it. I thought… well, I thought lots of things, all of which amounted to exactly what he had pointed out to me.
I was feeling sorry for myself.
And for the first time in probably my entire life, I heard… like, really heard, that this was just one of my options, not the sole truth of the matter. In that moment, my perspective – my mindset – shifted. I could, just because I wanted to, see both the situation and my role in it differently.
This.
This is what I’m offering you with today’s episode. The opportunity to see yourself and your weight loss journey in a different light, from a different perspective than you’re currently looking at it.
I’m challenging you to think differently.
So buckle up, Buttercup. Here we go with four tough love weight loss questions you need to hear so you can change your mindset, change your weight, and change your life.
Tough Love Weight Loss Question Number One: Losing weight after menopause is hard, so now what are you going to do? Quit, or figure it out?
Let’s pretend for a minute that I agree with you, that weight loss is hard. It’s not actually hard, it’s just different, and that's a whole ‘nuther podcast, but let’s just say, for the sake of my point here today, that weight loss is hard.
Now what?
Are you going to keep complaining about it? Are you going to stay stuck in helplessness, powerlessness, and it’s not fair-ness? Are you going to keep blaming your body, or your family, or the world?
Are you going to keep telling yourself that menopause ruined your life? Are you going to keep saying that you can’t count your calories, or you don’t know what to journal about, or that you’re doing everything right, but your weight just won’t budge?
Are you going to continue to fixate on your metabolism, or aging, or genetics because those are out of your control?
Or are you going to ask yourself to see this situation differently?
You are not a stranger to doing hard things. And before you use that against yourself, like, “If I’m capable of doing hard things, why can’t I lose the weight I want to?” let’s use your hard things experience in your favor.
You know how to do hard things. You’ve grieved your parents. You have an advanced degree. You’ve run a marathon. You’ve raised a kid who needed something different from you as a parent. You’ve built a business from the ground up. You have always figured things out.
You know how to break a tough situation down into manageable parts, and then get to work. You know how to keep going when it looks bad. You know how to make decisions, and collect data, and think like a scientist. You literally are a scientist.
Take the skills and the experience and the resilience you’ve created for yourself in other areas of your life and use them here, for weight loss. If weight loss is hard, what are you going to do now?
Tough Love Weight Loss Question Number Two: The only thing stopping you is you, so what are you willing to do to get out of your own way?
I’ve noticed that so far, you’ve been willing to beat yourself up, to shove your feelings down, to white knuckle your way through, to blame yourself, to leave your results up fate or luck or patience or time, and you are oh-so willing to restrict yourself more and more and more.
You’ve been willing to deny yourself pleasure, to call yourself names, and to completely ignore your body when it’s sending you signals of hunger or pain or exhaustion. You’re willing to slap a smile on your face and pretend like everything’s okay. You’re willing to spend all day stewing in frustration or drowning in self-pity.
You are willing to complain about your habits, make excuses for why you’re not doing what you said you’d do, and wait around for something to change.
But are you willing to open your eyes and see that none of this actually serves you? Are you willing to hold yourself tenderly to a standard you truly desire? Are you willing to speak kindly to yourself? Are you willing to feel proud of yourself?
Are you willing to ask yourself what you really want? Are you willing to ask yourself difficult questions and sit with yourself lovingly to listen to the answers?
Are you willing to step up and out of your judgments of yourself? Are you willing to accept yourself exactly as you are? Are you willing to celebrate your successes and imagine the future you want to create?
Are you willing to let go of perfectionism? Are you willing to fulfill your own dreams?
The only thing stopping you is you, so what are you willing to do to get out of your own way?
Tough Love Weight Loss Question Number Three: It’s not your calories, it’s your beliefs, so when are you going to get to work on your belief?
A belief is just a thought that’s been repeated over and over because it has a strong feeling attached to it. This is how biology works. It’s your brain and your body, working together.
Right now, you’ve got all kinds of beliefs that are holding you back from getting to your goal weight – beliefs about what you’re eating, when you’re eating it, how much you’re eating, and whether it’s healthy or unhealthy or fattening or “good” or “bad.”
You’ve got beliefs about calories – how many of them are too much, how many aren’t enough, whether you really want to track them or not, and if you’re tracking them correctly.
You’ve got beliefs about yourself, your ability to lose weight, your past failures, the improbability of having what you want in the future, whether or not you deserve to weigh what you want, and what your weight means about you as a human being.
Good golly, you’ve got beliefs about the scale – you actually believe that it’s talking to you, that it’s telling you you’re eating too much or doing something wrong. You believe that it can make you feel bad and ruin your day.
You’ve got beliefs about your metabolism, menopause, aging, the shape of your body, the sagginess of your skin, your wrinkles, your dimples, your arms and thighs and belly.
And before I stop this train at the station, let’s be clear that you’ve also got beliefs about drinking water, sleeping at night, and how much exercise you’re supposed to be doing, too.
Here on the podcast, I’ve shared exactly what to do with these unhelpful beliefs, which is to journal about them and use the Two-Step Tool to gently extricate them from your brain, feel them in your body, and make room for helpful thoughts that will take you directly to your goal weight.
The 5-0 Method shows you what to do with those beliefs and gives you sample journaling prompts. My book, “Mind Over Menopause” goes into great, explicit, 272 pages of step-by-step detail of how to use the Two-Step Tool and if you’re in the Get Your GOAL membership you have even more resources available to help you dismantle the beliefs that are holding you back.
So when, exactly, are you going to get to work on it? And by “work on it” what I mean is “feel your feelings instead of continuing to shove them down.” Next week? Monday? Maybe tomorrow? Probably later today, but only after you think about it some more?
They’re your beliefs, GOALfriend, and they’re stopping you from losing weight. So let’s get to work now.
Tough Love Weight Loss Question Number Four: Nobody’s coming to save you, so what will you do to take responsibility and save yourself?
You and I are a product of our patriarchal times, my friend. Literally every movie, every tv show, every book, every magazine article, every news story, and – here, let me just say it – everything in our entire lives ever has promoted the narrative that women are weak and helpless and need to be rescued.
And not only is it not true that nobody is coming to save you, but it’s really, really not true that you “need” to be saved.
You are not weak. You are not helpless. You are not powerless. You are not at the mercy of other peoples’ opinions or habits or judgments. You are not a victim of your circumstances.
You are the hero of your own story. You are the brave one, the strong one, the one who knows what she wants and then creates it out of thin air. You have the magic.
You are the one who harnesses the power of her brain and her body.
You are the one who makes the list and then executes on the plan. You are the one who takes charge. You are the one who recognizes fear and worry and overwhelm and learned helplessness and who looks herself in the mirror and says “I am doing this.”
You are the one who opens up her journal. You are the one who puts down her fork. You are the one who says “no” as a complete sentence. You are the President and CEO of your life.
You are already everything you want to be. So stop waiting to be rescued and go create what you want.
Thank you for listening, beautiful friend – I’ll talk to you again soon.
