Habits of Successful Weight Loss [Ep. 79]

This is Eat Well, Think Well, Live Well podcast. I'm Lisa Salsbury, and this is episode 79 habits of successful weight loss. Welcome to Eat Well, Think Well, Live Well; the podcast for women who want to lose weight, but are tired of counting and calculating all the food. I'm your host, Lisa Salsbury. I'm a certified health and weight loss coach and life coach, and most importantly a recovered chronic dieter. I'll teach you to figure out why you are eating when you aren't hungry, instead of worrying so much about what you are eating. Hey everyone. I have a great episode planned for you today. I want to talk to you about the habits that folks who lose weight in my program are developing. So these are the habits that I find time and time again are the ones that are leading to lasting weight loss. So I'm just going to jump right in number one, you're not going to be surprised by this. I talk about it all the time is they listen to their hunger scale. If you don't know what I'm talking about on the hunger scale, go back and listen to the back-to-basics episode I did in October about the hunger scale. Essentially, what I'm asking you to do is to wait until you're physically hungry to eat and that's pleasantly hungry. Not starving, which is not a word I love to use, but you know, we're not getting into that. Like cramping, stomach, kind of hunger. We want to eat when we're pleasantly hungry. It's the nicest time to start eating because you're really ready and your body's asking for food and then we stop eating at enough. Again, this is the nicest time for your body. It feels the best. You're going to feel the best later. You're not going to be overly full. That's the hunger scale in a nutshell, but this is a habit. That. Folks that lose weight in my program. Are developing. They are starting to use this every single day. And sometimes even though I talk a lot about creating their 24 hour plan, a lot of times, as they develop the skill of listening to their hunger scale, what happens as they have more and more days where they did not plan. And the plan is eat according to my hunger scale and they are still able to lose or maintain their weight. Number two. Habit that these people develop is what I call the very next bite strategy. What this is, is when we have an overeat. When we, because as much as we do want to listen to our hunger scale, sometimes these things happen. Sometimes we do it on purpose. Sometimes we're like, I feel like garbage. I know that this food isn't going to help me, but I'm going to overeat it anyway. So sometimes we kind of do it on purpose, right. Sometimes we do it on accident. Sometimes we're just nibbling. It's mindless. It doesn't really matter why it happens. The point is that the very next bite strategy is that. They wait for physical hunger again. And then that very next bite is right back on plan. One over eaten meal. Doesn't turn into an overeat day. Doesn't turn into a, throw your hands up in the air for the week. It doesn't turn into I'll just wait till next Monday or the first of the month or the first of the year we don't wait. To get quote unquote, back on track. There is no back on track because we were never off track. We just over ate one meal, it's a whole different mindset. We're never off track. And so this very next bite really helps my clients just look at that one overeat as a singular experience. And they're not defining themselves as well. I guess I can't do this. Well, I guess this will never work for me. They're just like, yeah, this happened this one time, this week. And then for breakfast, I was right back onto my go-to meals. That is the very next bite strategy and the women in my program, they do this very well. They will report back to me. Yeah. I had this one overeat and it was no big deal. It didn't throw me off my game. number three is they consistently talk nicer to themselves and to their bodies. This is an interesting one because I don't talk a lot about this, but just remember that you cannot hate yourself thin. It's not possible. And I know because I've tried. I think we've all tried. I think we've all tried looking in the mirror and criticizing our thighs and, and, you know, juggling our stomach around and. Talking to our bodies in such a way that we would never speak those words out loud to another human being. We would certainly be correcting our daughter if we heard her speaking in that way to her body. And somehow we decide that it's okay for us to talk to our bodies in this unkind way and critical. I'm talking about those critical thoughts and like, well, if you were just. XYZ. Do these things better. You wouldn't look so gross. Right? I. I don't want to put like thoughts in your head of like maybe things you haven't thought of, but I'm guessing, you know what I'm talking about. I'm guessing you've had these thoughts. These are the things that my clients are able to stop thinking. They stop thinking that their bodies are wrong or something has gone wrong and they start asking how they can take amazing care of their bodies. It's a shift for themselves because instead of thinking, I have to hate myself enough to get myself to the gym. I have to hate this body enough to force myself to eat more salads. They actually start shifting into. If I loved this body, how would I best take care of her? What would look like love. For this vessel for my soul. We start to speak about our bodies in that way in beautiful language like this, like this is the vessel for my soul. This is the one. Body. I get to walk around and look at all of the beautiful things that this body can do. And we start to really notice all of the amazing capabilities that we do have. And this starts to be the more common thought. It's not that we never notice. I said, we, we talk nicer. It's not that we're like, oh, it's all rainbows and daisies that our brains all the time. It's just that the nice thoughts and the loving thoughts about our body start to sort of outweigh. The critical and the hate. This is a pretty important one. I actually started sort of coaching my mom about this without her consent. Um, which is what I call giving advice when nobody asks for it as coaching without their consent. But I. I just kind of said, you know, you maybe could try, you could try loving your body. Like that's not something you've ever tried before. And she admitted that she has never in her entire life. Try to love her body. And I just hope that I can catch some of you before you are in your late seventies. I want you to start loving your body now. And I think it is so important and so critical For any of your weight loss goals, because it really is the only way. That you will be able to keep the weight off because if we only hate ourselves to get the weight off. It's just not sustainable. It's not maintainable. Okay. Number four habit that I noticed that women have when they lose weight in my program is that they learned that they prefer to stop. At enough. this kind of is a reiteration of the hunger scale, but it's A little bit more nuanced. And what I notice is that they start getting more comfortable with stopping at enough than overshooting. And here's what the interesting thing is when you first start. To practice this and to stop at enough, you're going to be very disappointed. You're going to be like, oh, I hear my body is saying that's enough food, but mentally, this isn't enough. I normally get to eat more. Everyone else is still eating all this discomfort and disappointment is going to come up. But as you progress through the program, and as you continue to practice this, you stop thinking, well, who cares? How I'm going to feel later, I'm just going to eat this now. And you start to be more future-focused. And you start to prefer the feeling of eating too enough. Because you know that you will feel better in your body later. And you're going to feel better in your brain because you won't have to deal with all of that. Again, chatter. And that beating yourself up for yet again, over eating and you'll never get this and all of that kind of thing that goes along with the overeats. And so what happens is you start preferring stopping at enough, which is a really cool shift, because like I said, when you first start practicing this, it's going to be disappointing because you're like this isn't the same amount of food that I used to eat. And so you're going to feel disappointed. And eventually you're going to be like, you know, I actually prefer feeling this way. I prefer going to bed, feeling light and you know, not cramped up and gassy and bloating. I prefer not waking up in the morning, still full from the night before. You're just going to start noticing little benefits like that, that have nothing to do with the scale. Although those results will show up later and you're going to start preferring the feeling of enough. And that is a really, really cool shift of some. Some of the women that are in my program. So these are the skills that, um, we develop in my program and I just got a little sidetracked. I noticed I listed talk nicer to themselves again. Like it was number three and it's number five. Okay. So. Apparently that one's really important to me. So I just ended up having four. So it was, they listened to their hunger scale. They practiced the very next bite to strategy. They consistently talk nicer to themselves and they prefer to stop at enough. So these are the skills I am laser focused on when I am teaching. And these are the skills that will be especially important in my new group program. So if you've never joined a group program for weight loss, or even a group exercise program, let me tell you. It's not like group projects in high school where one person did all the heavy lifting and the other people just sat back and skated through. Nope. In this case, we are all going to put in the work, including me. I'm going to be showing up for you each and every week with a new skill. To teach you. I have a full curriculum for the program. And you'll be able to work on that and implement it that week to move your weight loss forward. This isn't the type of program where I show up and say, who needs coaching? Who needs, who needs help? Who had a challenge? Like now I have a curriculum ready for you. And we will be practicing these skills together and in order. I'll be coaching in that group and you will be amazed also at how this works. So after we're learning the skills that we're going to be working on that week, you'll be watching someone else get coached. Sometimes it'll be your turn. Sometimes it won't be. And you will be amazed at again, this is not like watching someone do the work in that high school project. And you just sit back and learn nothing. When you watch someone else get coached, you're going to be able to see it really clearly for them, especially just after a couple of weeks. You'll see the solution to what is happening for them. And you'll be like, oh, obviously, because you weren't as emotionally invested as you are with your own problem. And then when it's your turn to get coached, you might feel really stuck. And other people are going to be able to see your solution. And so what's going to happen is over time, you're going to have these aha moments maybe later, or maybe while that person is getting coached. And you're like, oh, that's really similar to my challenge. Maybe it's just a different food or a slightly different circumstance. And you're having that same, it's so hard thought. And then you're going to be able to apply the coaching that you've heard on that other person to your own problems and challenges. So you'll be surprised at how much you learn, even if it's not you being coached. So we are also going to get together every Monday for a meal planning call. I'm really excited about this addition to the group program. This is going to be a working call. So it means a time for you to actually get your planning done. I find that planning a time to do the planning is often what my clients or myself struggle with. So I decided, you know what, let's just get together to do it. So after we get going, I'll be chatting with the group participants to make sure this call is at the right time for everyone. Right now I have it scheduled for Mondays at two o'clock, but that could change if everyone is like, no, we need to do it later in the evening or maybe early morning, maybe we'll all come in our PJ's and bedhead and get it done first thing in the morning, but in any case, we'll find a time that works for most people. I will have some meal planning tips. I'll share each week for a few minutes, just some ideas to get going on that week's session. And then we will work quietly for 28 to 25 minutes. We'll take a break and share if anyone has some great ideas. And then if you're not done, we'll continue on for another 20 to 25 minutes. And then share again at the end. So it will not only be a time to get the work done, the planning work, but also to share if you've got some great meals planned, so you can share with the group. And then if you finish your meal planning, then it will also be a great time to work on any of the skills that we've been learning in that week session, or get caught up on some of your guided journaling from the workbook. That sort of thing. So it's just an extra call I'm really excited about doing with the group. I looked at several research studies this week, trying to determine if the research showed benefits of group over individual coaching. And it's hard to find in this particular kind of coaching there's. Studies on a lot of programs like weight Watchers or other programs where it's just like a group exercise class. Um, the ones I did find though, definitely showed more benefit with the group coaching. Over individual, but specifically if they brought a friend along. So, not just in a group of people, they didn't previously know, but with someone they cared about, so groups where they didn't know anyone were also successful, so don't think, oh gosh, I don't know anyone. So it's not going to work for me. It does. But I just wanted to let you know, that's why when you sign up for my wait list, you'll get a little bonus discount for you and for you to pass along to a friend that also signs up. So that bonus and waitlist is actually going away this weekend. Because we will be starting full signups for the group and getting everyone onboarded. So there won't actually be a wait list anymore. So if you want that discount. Be sure to get on the wait list in the next couple of days. If you're listening to this later, I'll give you some dates. That discount will go away. Saturday, January 27th, because onboarding is beginning Monday, January 29th, and you will have a week then to get signed up and ready for us to begin on February 7th. The other benefit I noticed in one of the studies is that the group programs tend to be a cost savings over one-on-one sessions. And that is true here as well. I've got all the pricing listed in the emails going out this week, along with the payment plans, but just so you know, it's less than half of my current one-on-one client cost. Lastly, if you have any questions at all, or if you're wondering if group or one-on-one is right for you, I'm still doing free strategy calls for the group program. You don't have to be interested in one-on-one coaching in order to schedule one of those calls. So get one of those scheduled this week. If you want helping help deciding if this is the perfect fit for you. Okay. I'm looking forward to meeting a lot of you in the group. And maybe even this week, if you want to chat a bit on a strategy call, I just remembered one thing I didn't mention. Yes, the group sessions will be recorded. So if you miss one, no worries. You can always catch the recording. So I've also put my email directly in the show notes of this episode. I don't normally do that, but honestly, feel free to email me any questions you have about this. I want to be really available for you. In the next two weeks to make sure that all of your questions are answered about the group program. Okay. Thanks for listening to the eat. Well think, well live well podcast.