You, as a human being, are never actually stuck. But your brain sure wants you to think you are, doesn’t it? I mean, your weight is absolutely, positively, 100% not moving. You’re stuck! And it sucks. That’s why today’s podcast is all about getting you unstuck so you can start losing weight again.
Hello, hello, my ambitious overthinking menopausal friend, and welcome to the podcast. I’m going to assume, because you clicked on a podcast with a title about being stuck, that you’ve been feeling stuck lately.
And I want you to know two things. First, I feel you on a deep soul level. It literally does not matter what goal you’re aiming for, or how many other goals you’ve achieved in your life, the path to your current goal is and will always be littered with stuckness. It’s part of the journey. It’s expected. It’s inevitable.
And as an ambitious, overthinking menopausal woman who has achieved a lot of pretty spectacular goals in my life (and I’m currently on my way to another really big one), I have felt that stuckness. It sucks, I will sympathize with you on that.
But also, because I’m your friendly neighborhood life coach, I won’t let either one of us wallow in how much it sucks, because here’s thing two. You can always get unstuck. Always.
Anytime you feel stuck on your weight loss journey, it’s just your brain telling you a story. It’s a mindset block. We’ve all got ‘em, and it’s my job to help you bust through them.
And let’s stay on this point for a quick minute, about how everybody has mindset blocks. Let me normalize that for you and take all the judgment and shame out of it. Of course you have mindset blocks, and it doesn’t mean a damn thing about you that you do.
The faster you can let go of judging yourself for having blocks, the faster you’ll bust through them.
They’re basically just smoke and mirrors that serve a biological function. Here’s what I mean: you have a biological imperative to stay the same as much as possible. This conserves energy and keeps you alive longer.
And what this means is that your brain will just think the same old thoughts over and over again, even if they don’t serve you. Even if they feel bad. Even if they’re untrue.
Until you, consciously and on purpose, let go of those old thoughts. Which by the way, is another biological imperative. Your brain and your body *will* adapt when they’re asked to.
And hey! That’s where I come in, because showing you how to intentionally change your brain (in order to change your body) is literally what I teach you here on the podcast, inside my mini-course Journal the Journey, and inside my monthly coaching membership, the Get Your GOAL group.
Super quick, because I haven’t mentioned it here on the podcast before, let me introduce you to Journal the Journey. I just created it, and I’m super excited to share it with you. It’s a $30 mini-course that’s a condensed, self-study version of the journaling techniques I teach inside the Get Your GOAL membership. I know that not everybody wants to dig into their mindset blocks in a group, so Journal the Journey makes it easy to DIY the work at home.
The mini-course consists of a visual roadmap that shows you exactly where everybody has mindset blocks and gets stuck and gives you a quick reference for the journaling prompts to get moving again. There’s also a Masterclass with a very thorough explanation of exactly how to use the journaling technique, with examples and instructions.
You’ll also get 50 days of journaling prompts for you to practice and hone your journaling skill, plus (this one’s my favorite), there’s a future self visualization audio, where you get to really see yourself being successful and losing all the weight you want.
There’s a link in the show notes that’ll take you directly to the enrollment page, or you can go to getyourgoal.com and find the link on the homepage there.
And while you’re over there clicking links, let’s get on with the podcast.
First up, let’s chat about where you get stuck on your weight loss journey, because there’s an important point I want to make here: there are really only four main places you’ll get stuck. And this feels like such a relief, right?
Like, if your dramatic brain is anything like my dramatic brain, then it’s been feeding you the story that everywhere you go you get stuck, and no matter what you do, you get stuck, and stuck might as well be your middle name, you’re so stuck. Right?
But taking your whole weight loss journey and breaking it into four easy-to-manage chunks that each have a very simple way to bust through your mindset blocks can really calm down all that drama.
The four places you get stuck happen in more or less the order that I’m giving them to you here today, but honestly, any of them can crop up at any time. I’ll explain what I mean by that while we talk about them.
The first place it sucks to be stuck is when you haven’t decided what you want.
On the scale, this can sometimes show up as weight gain, right as you’re getting started on your weight loss journey. In your head, you’ll hear a lot of “I don’t know” sentences, with an occasional sprinkle of “too much” or “not enough.” Everything about losing weight feels very vague and undefined and unknowable. Your predominant feelings will be confusion and overwhelm, with a generous dollop of frustration on the side.
You’ll find yourself saying things like:
“I don’t know which app is best for tracking calories.”
“I don’t know what my goal weight should be.”
“I don’t know how many calories I should be eating.”
“I don’t understand how journaling helps me lose weight.”
“That sounds like way too many calories, there’s no way I’ll lose weight like that.”
“I don’t know how to calculate the calories in homemade meals.”
“I don’t know how I’m going to drink all that water.”
“Tracking everything takes too much time.”
“I don’t know how much exercise I should be getting.”
“That’s not enough exercise to lose weight.”
“I haven’t lost any weight yet, I’m stuck.”
My friend, let me completely normalize all of this for you. Literally everybody gets stuck on mindset blocks like these. How long you stay stuck here, though, is completely up to you.
Because getting unstuck is as simple as asking yourself what you want.
Which app do you want to use? What features do you want? What do you want to weigh when you’re done? How many calories do you want to eat? How much do you want to journal? How do you want to calculate or track or workout or drink?
There are no weight loss decisions that are outside of your authority or outside of you. Ask yourself what you want, make decisions, and move forward.
The next place it sucks to be stuck is when you don’t like what you’re doing.
In spite of everything I’ve just told you about making decisions based on what you want, you will, inevitably, make decisions about weight loss based on what you think you have to do.
Everybody does this. We’ve been told our whole lives that the only way to lose weight is to work hard, restrict yourself, diet, and suffer.
So when you’re stuck here, your predominant feelings will be restriction, constrainment, and frustration. Almost everything that comes out of your mouth will start with “I can’t,” “I have to” or “I shouldn’t.”
And what you’ll notice is that you are wildly inconsistent with your tasks. You’ll think of yourself as being “on track” or “off track.”
You’ll say things like:
“I can’t eat pizza, it’s fattening.”
“I really have to exercise more.”
“I just can’t get consistent.”
“I can’t seem to find time to sit down with my journal.”
“I shouldn’t be staying up so late.”
“I just have to make myself stick with it.”
“I have got to get more consistent.”
“I can’t lose weight, I’m stuck!”
And my love, not one of these sentences is true. They’re all just mindset blocks, keeping you stuck. But like I promised you in the intro, you can get unstuck, and here’s how: prioritize pleasure in order to create consistency.
This is basically the opposite of how you’ve been taught to think about weight loss. Most people will advise you to focus on consistency, but the truth is that when you focus on pleasure, you’ll create consistency effortlessly.
Getting unstuck from the muck of restriction requires you to wake up and see how much you’re restricting yourself. One of the four most effective journaling prompts that we talked about on last week’s episode is “What do I think about ___?” and then you fill in the blank with one of the habits you’re trying to get consistent with.
You can ask yourself that question with a little more oomph behind it. “What do I really think about eating this number of calories?” “What do I really think about going to bed at 9 o’clock?” “What do I really think about waking up early to workout?”
Suddenly, it’ll be incredibly obvious why it’s so hard to follow through. You hate everything you’re doing! Time to ask yourself, again, what you want, so you can get unstuck.
The third place it sucks to be stuck is when you haven’t let go of the past
Okay, now we’re digging in. This mindset block will show up in your life like the plateau from hell. On the scale, you’ll bounce up from your most recent lowest weight and hover somewhere between three and ten pounds above it.
You will gnash your teeth in near-constant frustration, and what you’ll hear all day long in your head will just sound like a broken record going around and around and around. Every sentence will be some version of “I’ve done this before” or “I keep doing this,” or “I can’t get past this.”
You’ll tell me things like:
“I keep gaining and losing the same five pounds.”
“I’ve been doing all the right things, but now it’s not working.”
“I just can’t get under that number, no matter how hard I try.”
You’ll find yourself ruminating about the last time you were able to lose weight, romanticizing that it was so much easier. You will be tempted to change everything – your goal, your habits, your focus, your job, your haircut. Omg, you just want something to change!
Lots of women simply give up at this point, or (and honestly, I think this is worse) resign themselves to being forever on a diet, but never reaching their goal. They tell themselves that this is just their “set point,” and “it’s not so bad.”
But you wouldn’t have a goal if you didn’t actually want to weigh that amount, so let’s get you unstuck. It’s time to set yourself free from your past.
And that might be the most important thing to know here: you’re not trying to fix something in the here and now, you’re unblocking yourself from something you’re thinking about the past. This will take a lot of focus on your part, because it’s so easy to get caught up in what the scale says today.
That’s why this is, hands down, the thing that we work on most often inside the Get Your GOAL group coaching membership. It’s really insightful to have a coach help you see the bigger picture when you’re stuck looking at one little corner inside the frame.
Here’s the process: brainstorm all of the associations you have with the weight that you (allegedly) can’t get under - stuff like, “This is the least I’ve weighed in my entire adult life,” or “The last time I weighed this it was right before my mom got sick,” or “Right after I got down to that weight, everything in my life fell apart.”
Really hear your brain putting two completely unrelated events together, and then break the association apart by feeling the unpleasant and uncomfortable feelings, instead of continuing to shove them down.
I know you might be thinking that it would be easier to change your goal, or change your calories, or stop eating bread… basically anything would be easier than feeling your feelings!
But changing what you’re doing right now doesn’t set you free from your past. So, if you wanna get unstuck, it’s time to feel your feelings.
The final place it sucks to be stuck is when you haven’t decided who you’re going to be at your goal weight.
As you come around the corner, cruising onto the home stretch of your weight loss journey, just when you think you’re about to be done forever… yeah, insert that needle scratching off the record sound here, because you will get stuck.
And true story, but don’t let it frighten you, I’ve seen so many women – including myself – get stuck here after they’ve gotten to their goal weight, too.
So, it’s not so much that the stuckness shows up on the scale (though… you know, technically speaking, your weight might not be changing because you’re literally in maintenance), but it definitely shows up mentally and emotionally. Meaning that you’re still on a diet, you’re still thinking diet thoughts and having diet feelings, even though you’ve almost or completely finished losing weight.
The energy around this stuck point is very anxious, very urgent, and (oddly enough) very impatient. You desperately want to be done, while also simultaneously, are deeply afraid of being done.
Your language vacillates between frustrated sharpness and frightened uncertainty, with lots of “I just want”s as well as “I think”s and “Maybe”s floating around, with a few “I don’t know if”s thrown in there, too. You’ll find yourself saying things like:
“Maybe I should lose another five pounds, just to make sure I have wiggle room when I’m maintaining.”
“I cannot wait to never think about this stuff again!”
“Maybe I should keep counting calories for a little while longer.”
“I don’t know what I should be doing for exercise now that I’m done losing weight.”
“I just want to get this last five pounds off, so I can pay attention to the rest of my life.”
“I think I’ll probably stick with what I’ve been doing, because it seemed like it was working.”
This push and pull is literally the worst, but thankfully, there’s a fix. As I promised you, there’s a way to get unstuck, and it’s this: decide who you are at your goal weight.
There is nothing we humans worry about more than the uncertainty of the future. What could happen? What’s coming next? What will I do? How will I feel?
We hate that shit! And often, instead of moving toward that uncertain future, we stay stuck in our old habits and old thinking. Y’all this is literally the cause of yo-yo dieting. We gain the weight back because we’re afraid of being a person who is completely finished losing weight. I mean, who even is that girl?
So you know how I was telling you about Journal the Journey earlier? One of the resources I included in the mini-course is a future self visualization, and this stuck point is exactly why.
When you know who you’re going to be at your goal weight – because you’ve spent time imagining it, feeling it, living there in your head – there’s no anxiety, no urgency, and no impatience about who you’re going to be because you’ve already seen it all and decided it all. There’s nothing scary about future you, because you’re already her.
Decide who you are at your goal weight. See it, feel it, know it deep in your bones and get yourself unstuck.
Woo doggies, that was a LOT today. I always am, it’s part of my charm.
No matter where you are on your weight loss journey, or how long you’ve been feeling stuck, I’ve got more resources to help you get unstuck and lose all the weight you want for the last time.
If you’re brand new to this mindset stuff – first of all, omg, good for you making it all the way to the end of this episode. You’re a rock star! And, you’ll be really well-served with my free guide, The Four Most Effective Journaling Prompts for Faster Weight Loss. It’s a super simple framework with easy prompts that’ll get you moving in the right direction. There’s a link in the show notes, or you can find it right on my home page at getyourgoal.com
If you’re ready to dig in with your journaling and use a proven process that’ll really speed up your weight loss, Journal the Journey is exactly what you’re looking for. I’ve already mentioned it a couple of times, it’s a quick self-study mini-course that covers your weight loss journaling journey from start to finish. There’s a link for it in the show notes, and you can also find it right on my home page at getyourgoal.com
And if you’ve been around the journaling block for a minute and you really resonated with the deep dive we took here today, then the Get Your GOAL monthly group coaching membership is for you. It is deep transformation in the company of other ambitious menopausal women who just get it. The conversation here goes way beyond weight loss and gets right to the heart of who you want to be. There is, of course, a link in the show notes, or on my home page, getyourgoal.com
My friend. Thank you for being here, thank you for listening. I’ll talk to you again soon.
