Hello, GOALfriend. Welcome to episode number 307, the one where we are talking about 100% consistency. I am so excited to dive into this topic. This is one of those things that when I talk about I know how you hear it when I say it to you the first time, and I am hard pressed to think that I have ever had a full conversation about 100% consistency the way that we're going to have it today. We've talked about how to get where you wanna go using baby steps.
We've talked about how you need to be consistent. We've talked about the 5-0 method, which I'm gonna dive into very deeply here in just a minute. Like, we've talked about all of it in pieces, and today, I'm gonna bring it together for you in a way that will probably blow your mind because I know that it blows the minds of all of the members of my Get Your Goal group. When we talk about how to get consistent, it's so counterintuitive to basically everything you've ever heard before, which frankly is I mean, that might as well just be my business IMO is that I'm just gonna go ahead and teach you that everything you've ever learned about weight loss before you were 50 is now wrong, and we have to unlearn all of it. Are you on board? You ready for this? I know. Me too. So you guys let me give you a little bit of around for the 5-0 method.
For those of you who do not already have it, you can get my free weight loss program, the 5-0 method, which is designed really specifically for women over 50, menopausal women meeting their menopausal needs, and you can grab it from get your at getyourgoal.com. Just go up into the top menu and click on podcasts, and there are the show notes for all 307 episodes. You guys, I realized it is not this week, the day that this one comes out. It's, I think, 2 more weeks from now. I have been podcasting for almost 6 years. What? Like, how is that even a thing, and yet, here we are 300 episodes in, and I'm gonna have a lot to say about that, like, closer to the anniversary. I just wanted to kind of drop that bomb for you here because I was thinking about it this morning, and I wanted to share that with you. So anyways, you guys, the 5-0 method.
There are 5 things that we do every single day in order to lose weight, and they are listed in order of importance. And this is something I wanna be, like, super duper clear about. If you have an older version wow. That word did not come to me. You have an older version of the 5-0 method, really specifically, if you have the one where it was still just called my weight loss resource source for women over 50, which is so sweet. Or if you have one that has you calculating your calories by going to 5 different calories. If you have anything other than, frankly, the newest one, it's going to be ever so slightly different, but that's not true. When did I change my mindset first? Probably a year ago.
I used to list it as number 5 because for the longest time, I really felt like that was the hardest sell. And frankly, for the longest time, I didn't know that it was the most important thing. As I work with more and more women, as I work on my own goals in different ways, I have come to understand that mindset is number 1 for literally everything. Like, everything you could possibly want in life, mindset is number 1, and then everything else follows. The fact of it is until your brain can believe that a thing is available to you, that you could create it for yourself, that you can have it, that you can get it, that you can make it, that you can whatever, You simply cannot. This is why weight loss feels so hard for so many of us. This is why so many things feel so hard for so many of us. We don't believe that we can do it.
We don't believe that we can have it. We don't believe that we can create it for ourselves. Mindset, number 1. Then, number 2, the thing that you think is number 1, that was listed as number 1 for the longest time even in a slight caloric deficit over time. Number 3 is drinking an adequate amount of water. Number 4 is getting sleep. Number 5, I know this is the one you think is gonna be number 2, but it's all the way down there at number 5, exercising moderately. You guys, number 1 is the thing that actually drives weight loss.
Number 2 is the physical thing that you have to do to create the physical, biological reactions of weight loss, meaning, you know, turning fat into energy inside your body. But you can't do that until you believe. Those 2 things are truly the drivers of weight loss, and then the other 3 things are metabolic support. The fact of the matter is, if you are not drinking enough water, it doesn't matter if you are eating the right amount of calories or not, your body won't be able to digest it efficiently. If you are not getting enough sleep, your body will not be able to, well, frankly, do almost anything with efficiency. And if you are not exercising, you can still lose weight. You thought I was gonna finish that sentence differently, did you? I know. We all think that exercise is like one of the prime movers of weight loss and it's not. It's simply something you do because it's healthy.
It feels good. I mean, I'm gonna say burn calories. That's a topic for another day. That is a podcast for another day. It is a metabolic port to help your body behave efficiently, and it's one of the 5 plates that we have spinning while we are losing weight. And here's the thing, when I tell you to come to these tasks, I offer you that you want to be hitting all 5 of them with 100% consistency every single day. And I know that some of you I was gonna say most of you, but probably not even most. You know what? Some of you, most of you, maybe all of you, but probably not all of you, will come to this and be just like, I can't even.
Like, how in the world could I hit a 100% consistency with any of these tasks when I have these circumstances going on in my life, and this is why we address our mindset first. The truth of it is, You can do all 5 of these things. Whether or not it is something that fits into your current lifestyle is the conversation that we're having today. So I wanna tell you, first of all maybe not even first of all because we're, like, 10 minutes in now, but I wanna tell you right now before we move forward with the 100% consistency that the science is really clear. This is why I offer the 5-0 method to you. It's why I offer it to you in the order that I offer it to you. It's why I tell you everything. I have done the research, not the research where I go out and, like, find people and conduct the experiments, but I've done the research where I go to Google Scholar and I actually look up menopause and weight loss.
I look up what's the difference between having estrogen and not having estrogen. I have looked up how it affects us. I have looked up how weight loss works. Weight loss always works when you believe that you are capable of losing weight, and then you eat in a slight caloric deficit over time. It has nothing to do with the foods you're eating, it has nothing to do with what time you're eating them, it has nothing to do with whether or not you are exercising, especially if you are injured and should be doing your physical therapy. It has nothing to do with all of the things that we think and everything to do with mindset and the slight lower deficit over time. So here's why we talk about 100% consistency, and here's the way that I offer you to think about 100% consistency because I'm gonna venture to say that you, my dear high overachieving friend, have come at this like, well, I'm gonna make myself hit 100% consistency every single day. Right? I know.
Me too. It's why I say, I bet this is how you have come at this before. This is where I'm gonna go with them all. We all think that we have to take where we are right now and just shove ourselves to this 100% consistency without regard for who we are as human beings, that we just need to meet that standard no matter what. And what I wanna offer you is that the standard can actually come to you. But, yes, I have laid out the numbers for you. I have given you the mass of your starting weight, or, yes, your calories that you need to be eating, the right number of calories is your starting weight times 10 in pounds, by the way. Because I've had people ask me about this, and I totally apologize.
My international audience, I love you. I think in pounds, and I forget that most of the world weighs things in kilograms. So come on over here to me and my American way of doing things, your weight in pounds times 10, meaning that it has a 0 on the end of it, is the right number of calories that is already your slight caloric deficit. So here's the thing. You can lose weight using willpower. You are capable of losing weight by demanding of yourself that you meet 100% consistency. But you are not going to have any fun at all. You are very likely going to really struggle to either sustain it or maintain it after you've lost it.
My entire philosophy for weight loss is that I don't wanna offer you some kind of, oh, you will absolutely lose this the you've ever lost it. This will be the best way to lose weight. You're gonna drop 10 pounds in 5 minutes in any of those kinds of claims. What I offer you is that when you lose weight with the 5-0 Method, working on your belief first, you will, without a doubt, maintain it with ease. You will lose weight for the last time and keep it off forever because you will understand the mechanics of belief. That belief piece isn't something that you can fake your way into. It's not a thing that you can demand of yourself 100% of, you work for it. You work on it.
You work in it. It is inside your brain and your body. Once you have it, you can't lose it. Like, literally, you cannot lose So here's the thing. Rather than coming at this from willpower, what I wanna offer you today is a way of thinking about achieving a 100% consistency in a way that feels good. The reason I offer this feeling as a good thing as often as I do is because this is biology at work. When in doubt, you can rest assured that I want to work with your biology. I have gone out of my way to figure out how our brains work, how our bodies work, how weight loss works so that we can work with it, so that you are swimming with I almost said the tide, but the tide wouldn't be something you swim with.
You're swimming with the current. That's what you swim with. I don't swim. I mean, I do. I can. It's not my favorite mode of transportation? I would be in a kayak going with the current. That would be quite lovely for me. I would enjoy that greatly, or I would be on a bike with tailwind or I'd be running with a tailwind or even walking with a tailwind.
Something where you are going in the same direction as everything else wants to go, that's the easiest way, the best way, the most sustainable way to lose weight. When you work with your brain and your body, you've got this. You've got it. So rather than trying to force yourself to comply at 100% consistency, what I want you to do is find by simply observing what you are doing right now, where you are already capable of hitting 100%. Now when you first get started, I wanna offer you that this is kind of going to be a little bit of a guess. When you first come to this work, this mindset, belief, and even weight loss work. For so many of us, you haven't really been paying attention. And I don't mean that as anything other than we all got socialized to just live our lives, go along, swim in the current however it's going, but not in the way that works best for us. Like, just Accept what you think you see as the only answer.
When you start paying attention to what feels good. And I mean, physically, like your emotions inside your body. You will recognize just how many uncomfortable feelings you've been shoving down constantly, like, all the time. Women get socialized to shove down our own feelings in favor of compromising, being compliant, being nice, being, dare I say it, obedient? I mean, we get told and I'm sure men do too. This is a conversation for us girls. We get told how to get along with other people? How to get along? How to slap a smile on our face and pretend like everything's okay? How to just work harder? We don't get told how to listen to our bodies. Your body has the information for what you're capable of doing right now and what's going to feel pleasurable aka sustainable over the long run. If you don't have any experience listening to this, it's gonna be a yes, and I want you to know that that's completely okay.
When I first came to this work, I was just using willpower. I'll be honest. When I first came to this work more recently, not necessarily with weight with weight loss, but with other goals that I've had in my life, when I've really had to start tuning in to my body, I realized I didn't know what my body was telling me in a lot of instances. And so when you first come here, you're probably gonna guess with your brain, and then your body will give you information that you can collect over time. So here's the thing. Let's say, for example, that you currently weigh 180 pounds, which means that your daily calorie target with the FIBEL method is 1800 calories. But you, my friend, have been eating this, like, this super stingy, but everybody says it's the gold standard, 1200 calories a day. And because you've been doing that, you have very likely lost almost all of your hunger cues, and I don't say that with any kind of, like, shame or pointing fingers or anything.
Again, so many of us, especially those of you who work in, like, corporate jobs where you have a very specific time of day where you can eat, a very specific time of day where you can go to Very specific times of day where you get to get up and move around. You've probably lost a lot of hunger cues, a lot of I need to go to the You've probably stopped paying attention because you needed to to do a lot of the signals that your body is sending you. So you've been feeding yourself 12 100 calories a day, which is too little. You don't really have a lot of hunger cues. And your belief about eating 1800 calories Something along the lines of no effing way. Like, you just that doesn't even sound possible. I'm definitely gonna be too full. If I eat that much I'll gain weight.
There's no way. That's too much. Just chitter chatter constantly. Okay. My friend, this is where you are, and this is really good information. This is part of what I'm talking about with 100% consistency. Just listen. Just listen to what your brain is telling you, and then listen to what your body is telling you, And then ask yourself, what can I actually do with 100% consistency right now? If I'm being completely honest, if I'm really taking a look at myself and how I feel, like, Physically, mentally, emotionally, what do I actually think I could do? And your answer is probably gonna be 1200 calories, and that's completely okay.
You're absolutely right that you are not complying with 100% consistency the way you think that I mean it. I, when I offer you the 5 o method, am not saying you have to eat my number because it's mine and because that's gonna work for you. What I'm saying is, let's just listen to what you have to say. Let's set 1200 calories as your target, and then Let's actually see whether or not you can hit that with a 100% consistency, because here's what I know about me when I was chronically under-eating. I had lost most of my hunger cues. I was significantly over exercising. And then About every 3 or 4 days, I would not necessarily be starving. I would be, like, emotionally starving, and I would eat everything in the house.
Now that's what I call it. I don't know what you call it when that happens to you, but I happen to know that most of us who are trying to hold ourselves To this stingy little number, there's like a day every either couple of days, couple of weeks, couple of whatevers where all of a sudden we are just eating. And sometimes maybe it's because you're going out or maybe you're on vacation or maybe you're at somebody else's house, and you'd like to think that it's because you're out of your routine, but it's actually, frankly, because you're hungry. And maybe you don't know what that feels like. So here's the thing. You've collected data for a month, and it turns out that you can't actually be 100% consistent at that 1200 calories because it's too low. Again, no judgment here. Your body had some information for you, either when you went out to eat, when you were out of your routine, or just every couple of days when you went to the pantry and said, okay.
Let's go. This is great information because now you have some numbers. And rather than falling down the shame and blame train, what I wanna for you is that you can take a look at those numbers and say, oh, thank goodness. I can't be consistent 100% of the time at that low number. So let's take a look at maybe what you can do. Here's what we'll do. You're gonna take a look at your numbers. The loan number actually was 1200.
You can eat 12 for a couple of days in a row, most of the time, but the high number was somewhere around 3,000 calories if you tracked it. Here's what I will also offer you, when you are collecting this data, when you are taking all the shame and all the blame out of it, and all we wanna do is see which you can be a 100% consistent With track everything. Let those numbers exist. This is actually why I really like tracking my calories with paper and pencil. You could throw that away. I mean, after you've done the analysis at the end of the month. You could just throw those things away, or you can keep them in your tracker, whatever feels best to you, but let's get clear and honest with the numbers. So You notice that you can eat between 1203,000 calories.
That, my friend, is your new calorie window. And I wanna be really clear that I'm not telling you this is the number of calories you can eat to lose weight. I'm telling you this is the number of calories that you can eat that you know you can be consistent with. You have evidence. You consistently, for those 30 days that you just tracked, ate within this window. So now let's make that your target. Here's why. Do you feel the enormous relief of not trying to hold yourself to some teeny tiny standard that you kind of know you can't meet? That 1200 calories was way too stingy.
You also knew that. Even though you thought the 1800 was too high, you thought the 1200 was too low. There was not a lot of good feeling going on there. Now now that your window encompasses everything you could do your quote, unquote good days, your quote, unquote bad days. This is who you are. This is your actual window. You get to be yourself. You get to pay attention to yourself.
And it means that every single day, you get to check that box. That feels good if you are anything like me. I love checking boxes. This. So the 2nd month, you are collecting your data. Your window is between 1203,000, and you're like, oh my gosh. I can totally do this. And you start to notice on some of Those days where you're like, gotta stop at 1200, and you're like, oh, wait.
I don't have to stop at 1200 anymore. I could actually have this thing that I want. I could actually fit in some dessert today. I could actually have that Casa wine today. Now I'm not talking about the days where you're eating the house. I'm talking about just every old day where you're like, oh, I've got some wiggle room here. I can eat a little bit more comfortably. Here's what, generally speaking, is going to happen in this 2nd month: you've got a nice, big, generous, spacious window that you can hit with 100% consistency.
First of all, you're going to hit it with 100% See. And second of all, your range will be a little bit smaller. There will be not so many days where you felt like you had to hold yourself to the 1200. And definitely, because you felt so expansive and generous and spacious with this number, you didn't even come close to 3,000. Like, there was 1 or 2 days where I mean, okay. We had a rough day at work or something happened or whatever. We got a little bit closer up there, but nothing like you used to when you thought you had to hold yourself into this very restrictive little tiny window. And here you are, you're hitting a 100% Let's see.
With this glorious window, and you notice that the range really isn't that big, that you bet you could probably do, like, 1300 to, like, 25100. Like, yeah, you could probably do that. You make a guess, and that's where we are for the coming month. You're gonna collect your data. You're gonna see what happens. You notice that that 1300 feels really good at your low end, and Sometimes, you go a little bit above that. And then on those days where you're still feeling a little bit like, what's going on my body? I've gotta do these things. Not happening very often at all.
Like, now we're down to maybe once or twice a month instead of once or twice a week. And even then, it's just not that much because you know you've got room in your window. Your window is so generous. It's So easy. You can totally hit it no matter what's going on in your life. 100% consistency. See. That's your new theme song.
Then you collect your data. A 100% consistency, baby. And you make another guess. I wonder if I could do, like, 1500 On the low end, you notice your low numbers aren't nearly as low as they used to be. You notice your high numbers aren't nearly as high as they used to be, and there's so few of them. Could probably even drop that down a little, not a lot. Let's do, like, 22100. We don't wanna, like, we don't wanna get bumping Up to that upper edge and feel restricted, we wanna make sure that we're hitting that 100% consistency with generosity, spaciousness, all those good feelings in your body.
Month after month after month, you notice that, a, you are 100% capable of hitting 100% consistency See, given the right window. You also notice that it feels a little Good in your body to actually eat food. You start to get your hunger cues back. You start to actually notice your body. Notice that I'm not Saying that you've got results on the scale yet. I don't know if you will or not. I gotta be honest with you. Results on the scale, they'll come when they come.
This work of believing that you are capable of hitting a caloric window, of hitting 100% consistency is The work that will feel so good, that will drive you inevitably to eating at your correct calorie deficit over time, my friend, when you are kind to yourself, When you give yourself generous, spacious room to hit 100% consistency, your way, Or maybe let's call this one my way, because my way is not willpower. My way is not trying to jam yourself up to that 100% consenting no matter My way is giving yourself all kinds of time, all kinds of space, all kinds of room in your brain to just pay attention to what you're doing now, what feels good now, what you think you can do, what you know you can do. When you build belief, the number one driver of weight loss, you will lose weight, My friend, I know this one's hard to wrap your brain around. I know. You're like, okay. So am I supposed To eat 3,000 calories, is that what Paul is saying? What I'm saying is ask yourself, what do I think I can do with one 100% consistency. Then go out and try that, then make another guess about what you could do moving forward that you can hit with 100% consistency. This is not about trying to follow my rules, except that this is a rule that I'm offering you, but it's not not trying to do things my way.
It's about recognizing that what you are doing is perfectly lovely, listening to your Self is even lovelier, and creating your very own 100% consistency is the key to it all, my friends. I know this one is tough. If you would like some help with this, this is literally the conversation that I have with the members of the Get Your Goal group. When you all come in there and you are just confused and overwhelmed, and you're feeling like, oh my gosh. How in the world am I gonna meet my calorie target, and I'm confused by my calorie target, and I'm overwhelmed by my calorie target? These are the kinds of conversations that we have in the coaching calls where I can help you figure out what your glorious, spacious, loving window is, and then we're just gonna go get a 100% consistency because that leads to weight loss. If you would like that and that sounds good to you, Come on over to the Get Your Goal group, my friend. getyourgoal.com/work-with-me, and I'll see you inside. I really hope that this was super, super helpful for you today.
Thank you so much for being here. I'll see you again soon.
