Ep. 66 How I'm Releasing the Baby Weight

Hi, and welcome to the mindful shape podcast. I'm Paula Parker, and I'm a life and weight loss coach. So it's been a little while, as most of you may know, I've been on maternity leave. And I also have a little cold, which you might notice. But I'm gonna, you know, just get through this anyways, with a little bit of a stuffy nose.

So I hope you don't mind. I don't normally sound quite like this. But so yeah, I'm back and we now have a beautiful little baby girl. And we named her Raya and she's actually four months. So I've been off for about four months now. And it was kind of it's been even longer than that to do the podcast actually, because I was just so tired at the end of my pregnancy, maybe summer pregnancy, who knows.

But anyways, I'm here and I have lots of value to share with you. So I'm super excited to be at the podcast again. So I thought this one, although I have many client stories coming up, which I'm super excited to share for those of you who really like those. I have some of those in the pipeline, but I thought I would start out with more of a personal a podcast episode, which is, you know, just to share with you how I am releasing my baby weight.

Because if you're listening to this, you have some weight, whether it's baby weight or not. Okay. And you want a different shape than you have now. So we are in the same boat. So I just want to go through kind of how I'm thinking about it, my perspective, how I'm approaching it and kind of what my goals are so that you can hopefully take something away from that.

Even if it's the smallest thing, if you can just if it can sort of alleviate some of your suffering in the weight loss process because I really do believe now, and it took me a really long time to get there, but I do really believe that weight loss does not have to be a struggle, it does not have to be difficult it can actually be Thank you.

pretty easy and straightforward, but it takes a lot of what I kind of joke is mental gymnastics sometimes to get there, but it's totally possible. And I really do feel like I've made big strides. So I just want to share that with you and some kind of new insights that I've had since being pregnant and since Just having that experience of overeating during my pregnancy.

And now that I'm a little bit outside of it, I would love to share some of the insights that I have gained through that process. Okay. Another reason I thought this would be a good time to talk about this is that we're approaching the holidays and my perspective of. Body, food, weight, all of that around the holidays.

It's just so night and day from how it used to be. So I just want to offer that if you were in the place where you're thinking, well, you know, I want to release the weight, but the holidays are coming. So should I even start? What's the point? Then I think that this will really help you be inspired, right?

It doesn't have to be miserable through the holidays. If you are releasing weight or if you decide that you just kind of want to maintain, but your goal is just not. Eat everything in sight and overdo it in the holidays so that come January you feel terrible and none of your clothes fit. Okay. We don't want that.

So, okay. So really my perspective is I really look at it like instead of thinking of it as one giant chunk of like December being a time where we just overindulge. And that's kind of how I used to think about it. It's kind of a big chunk of time. Instead, I really think about it specifically. So what are the days that I will want to overindulge?

Maybe Christmas day. Maybe for some of you, you have a social life, unlike me, just joking, but you go to parties, right? Or you have some office parties or things like that. So just want to like, think about those times. But if you think about that, then there just may be a handful. It's not this huge cloud of like, doom and gloom of dread about struggling in the holidays.

Really, you want to think about what are the specific times. So for me, that might mean Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. I don't think there's really any other day that I'm going to feel the need to overindulge. For me, that's really simple. For you, you just, same thing, you just want to just think about ahead of time.

Okay, well, what are the days, realistically, that I will want to overeat? So just plan that out in your head, and then you can think about, okay, well, how do I want to approach that? Well, maybe I do want to overindulge, and then you just sort of plan for that, right? I'm gonna plan to have exceptions, or I'm gonna plan to have this food because it's so nostalgic for our family.

But it doesn't mean you have to over overindulge. It doesn't mean you have to take the whole month of December or the holiday season and just give up in terms of your relationship with food and how you want to feel in your body. So again, if, if our North Star is really How we want to feel in our body and how we want to show up in the world, what kind of woman we want to be, then it doesn't really matter so much about, Oh, will I eat this or that?

Right? It's like there's something bigger going on here in terms of our purpose of why we want to stay to our protocol in the first place. Okay. So the protocol like your plan for eating is really just a guide. It's not your North star. It's not what this is all about. What this is all about is how you want to feel in your body.

And how you want your, what level of food drama you want to be in, which for most of us, I think it's zero, right? That's what we're going for. So just consider that. I hope that wasn't too vague. I hope that you can get a sense of what is the bigger picture here and how will I use that to guide my decisions?

And I'm going to give you another example of it when I talk about kind of my approach now. So let's get to that. Okay. So. Let's talk numbers. The math. So, I did the math today on how my weight went up during the pregnancy and then how much weight I've released since then. So, I am 23 pounds down since, like, I would say a couple days after the pregnancy.

And I actually have 23 pounds to go. No, I did not plan that. That was just kind of divine intervention, maybe just a little wink from the universe, but I'm 23 pounds down and I have 23 to go. Okay. So there is no end date for me. Right? I don't have I have to get these 23 pounds down by such and such date.

I haven't even done the math in terms of, okay, like, two pounds a week, or one pound a week, and how many weeks. Because that's not what it is about for me anymore. I just know I'm going to release that weight. The date doesn't really matter. Because I know I can be in charge of the relationship I have with myself and my body in terms of how, you know, happy I am, essentially, before I ever reach that number.

So, that doesn't mean I'm happy all the time, of course not, definitely not, but it just means that I am not tied to any kind of timeline. Within the next like next year for sure, 23 pounds will be down. The nice benefit of that is there's no pressure. There's just no pressure about a timeline. Okay, another thing you might want to consider is what is the quality that you want to maybe cultivate or embody as you approach any kind of weight loss journey, any kind of weight loss plan that you're on right now.

And what I mean by quality is just something that you want to embody. Okay, I'll give you an example. So for me, it's ease. So I don't want this to be difficult. I don't want it to be any kind of suffering. I want it to, I want to be filled with ease. And when I reflect on the last few months, I would say that's where I am in terms of with food.

It's with ease. If I overdo it a little, I don't feel so great or I choose foods that make me a little bit sleepy or I don't feel so great. I'm still, I'm easy on myself in terms of, okay, that didn't really work too great. I thought I really wanted toast, but actually I felt sleepy two hours later. Right?

So these things are going to ebb and flow and you're just going to make different insights and different observations depending on where you're at. Okay. So I want to make decisions with ease. I want to reflect with ease, right? I want to strategize with ease. I just, I want it all to feel natural and feel really easy.

So that is essentially what I'm thinking in terms of North Star. That's what I'm going for, right? That's my like measure of success. Like whatever I'm doing, is it filled with a sense of ease or not? Because that's how I'll know if I'm winning, right? That's how I'm really succeeding or not. Do the numbers matter?

Of course, I'm going to be telling you in a minute, like, what are the things I'm specifically tracking? And then what are the things I'm not tracking? So that you get a sense of maybe for you, what you might want to let go of, or what you might want to start paying attention more closely to. Those are the numbers, no end date, and the quality that I want to cultivate and really embody as I make my decisions and as I just make my choices around food and reflect on what I have eaten is with ease.

Let's talk about what I'm tracking and what I am not tracking. So I am tracking my weight on a day to day basis. I've talked about this before on the podcast. I think anything that you are trying to change, you want, you want to have that information of what is happening, which direction am I going, so that you can know if what you're doing is working or if you need to make some changes or whatever, right?

You just need that feedback. So again, I've done so much work with a scale that It's fine. I can get on the scale anytime. It's not a big deal. Okay. So again, that's probably for another episode, but if you have scale drama, just try to like, have your own back. Don't make the scale be the boss of you. You're the boss of you.

You're the boss of your own brain. Okay. So where am I? Yes. I'll be tracking my weight on a day to day basis. And then secondly, what I'm going to be tracking is what hunger level I want to be at when I'm eating. So what do I mean by that? I just mean that I want to allow my body to experience some hunger before I eat.

I don't want to eat when I'm not hungry with exceptions, right? Of course. I just had a birthday dinner recently. November is my birthday month and we went out for dinner. And then we were going to my in laws for cake after. Was I hungry for the cake? Absolutely not, right? But did I want birthday cake? Yeah, I wanted and I like my reasons and I didn't overeat and I felt fine when I got home because I didn't overdo it.

No guilt, totally fine, but I wasn't hungry. And so what I'm, I say that only to tell you that it doesn't mean you only You make this rule for yourself where you only eat when you're super hungry. No, but for the majority of my days, yeah, for that first meal, I really want my body to release weight. So I want to feel hunger.

I want my body to use the the fat stores that I have as fuel. So I will allow myself for me personally. And again, this is totally up to you. If zero is not hungry at all and 10 is ravenous, I like to get to about I would say 8, 9, or 10 from that first meal. Again, I don't have any problems with hunger anymore.

I used to have lots of drama about it, but now I can allow that and it's totally fine. Then I want to think about, okay, well, what, how hungry do I want to be for that next meal, right? That will just help me make decisions on when to eat rather than going on a certain time or anything like that. Okay, I will also mention that all of this like planning, tracking, all this stuff that I'm doing, I'm doing in the MindfulShape Daily Planner.

Now, this is not an episode to promote the Daily Planner, okay? So I'm not gonna go into it in detail, but I do think, like I wasn't even gonna mention it, but I do think that it is a awesome resource and I am very proud of it. It has all of my... process in there step by step on like how to create a protocol, how to follow through and then how to do reflection that doesn't feel terrible, right?

So if you are interested in that, you are welcome to go to the link. I'll put the link in the show notes and you can go and purchase that. It's not on the website or anything like that. So you'll have to find it either through my Instagram account. You can find it through my link on my Instagram, which is mindful underscore shape.

So you can find it there. And again, or in the notes. So I won't go into it, but just a couple of things, and this actually applies to any kind of food journaling that you're doing, whether you're, or tracking where you're using an app in your phone, okay? So if you're already using an app or using Noom or something like that, any kind of tools that you're using, here's some tips to really make that work for you.

The first tip is the tool is for you, meaning you are in charge. This is the case with an app, food journaling. or the scale. You are in charge. You are the boss of it, not the other way around. So don't let your mind drama make you think that you should feel guilt or shame around any of these tools.

Another thing is if you haven't been using it, okay? So Give yourself permission to pick it up at any time, even if you've missed a meal or a few days of planning or tracking. Okay? So the key to making this planner work is that, yeah, you're probably going to have some days where you missed or you forgot to put in this or that.

I cannot stress this enough. the freedom that you will feel when you give yourself permission to just pick it up at any time. Okay. It doesn't matter if you missed a day. It doesn't matter if you missed a week or whatever. You just pick it up because it's, again, it's for you. It's just, we're not about a hundred percent perfect.

Okay. Nobody's going to be going back through this and being like, Oh look, you missed a day or here's three days gap. Like, no, nobody's, it's not a report card. Right. So use it for you. Kind of went on a little. Tangent little rant there, but I just if you're gonna use anything just make it work for you.

Okay. Here's what I'm not tracking I'm not tracking every morsel of food that I put in my body. I'm not tracking calories or macros or Even the quantities of food like a quarter cup two tablespoons anything like that. I'm also not tracking Every single thing like that. I have in the salad Why? Because it's not really that relevant for what I am trying to do, right?

It's like, not going to make that big of a difference in terms of my North Star. So if you are feeling like really pressured about every single thing to jot down in your journal or in your app or that kind of thing, you might just want to re evaluate. You might just want to see like, how useful is Now, I think there is a certain time when you might need to be more precise.

Say you hit a a long period of time where you're not releasing any weight or you really need to change things up. You might want to be more precise, more specific, but I would say for most of us, it's not really required. We don't need to track any of that. We just want to get a sense of what foods feel good in my body.

And am I doing what I said I was going to do? That's kind of what we're going for here. And I have my daughter. I'm actually feeding her right now. So if you heard any little gurgling noises, that was Raya. I also wanted to share with you a new super simple method for handling any kind of cravings that you have, or if it's not a specific craving for like a specific food, but it's just urges to eat outside of your mealtimes.

Okay. So any, anytime it's outside of your mealtimes, this is something that I came up with. When I, well both, I would say during my pregnancy when I had a lot of cravings and urges to eat outside of my mealtime And the result was 50 pound increase in my weight, right? But I did use this and this new method I want to share with you and I have also been using it a lot Since trying to release the weight, right?

Because, you know, to be fair during pregnancy, I really did give myself much more leeway and much more license. Okay. So this is going to be really effective for you when you want to release the weight. Okay. Again, cravings are just to overeat outside of meals. I made up this little acronym. It's, CAFN you can think of it as caffeine.

I don't know if that's memorable or not, but it kind of reminds me of caffeine, which is the sustenance of life. And so you can think about it in terms of that's how important it is. Okay, so CAFN. It's C A F N. And again, I don't have this anywhere. This is going to be in the transcript notes, but this is kind of the first time I'm sharing it.

So the steps are basically four.

 C is for check. 

So you're just checking in with your hunger levels. So you're just checking in with your body. Like, am I physically hungry? Or is this more of a head thing and a heart thing? Like, what is really going on here? How hungry am I? Oftentimes, this will be enough for you to have enough awareness to be like, Oh, actually, I'm not even physically hungry.

I'm maybe a two on the hunger scale. And that's not what this is about. This is about something else. So, first one is Check. 

Next one is A for ask. 

And this is an interesting one. I want you to ask what the promise is of that food. What I mean by that is there's always a promise. Your brain is thinking, if I have those handful of nuts, or if I have the, a bit of cheese, or if I have that cookie, I will get something.

And you want to get really curious and you want to take a look at what is that thing that your brain thinks you're going to get from that. So for me, for oftentimes, it would be escape from some kind of negative emotion. So it could be escape from overwhelm. And yes, I've been experiencing more overwhelm, even though I thought I banished it.

Okay, so it can come back and that's okay, just more work to do, right? So just ask yourself, what is the promise? It might be just pleasure. Oftentimes for me, that's the case. It's like... There's the only promise is that that's gonna be pleasurable and I want some pleasure. Okay, whatever it is You just want to get really clear on What that food is telling you that you need it might be escape from boredom from Overwhelm I mentioned from any kind of stress. Anything like that.

So you will know for yourself. It might be entertainment. Like if you're watching a movie and there's it's popcorn or something that you want, that might be some of the promise, but you want to ask yourself what the promise is. 

Next is F for feel. 

And that is going to be feeling whatever comes up for you when you say no.

So you're checking with your hunger level, you ask what the promise is that you're going to get from the food, and then you're just going to feel. And so you're going to feel both whatever happens for you emotionally, that can feel like self pity, that can feel like maybe sadness. That can feel maybe like anger or like entitlement, like I should be able to have that, what's the big deal, like that kind of thing.

And it can also show up in more of a physical way where you feel your energy drop. For me, I've experienced in the past where there's a real energy drop and I can just like feel it in my body. And I go into a bit of like sadness or like kind of a mini temper tantrum, right? Like, Oh, I can't have that thing, which is like so terrible in the moment.

It seems so terrible. Of course, after you're like, Oh my God, I can't believe I was having such a temper tantrum about not eating that food when the craving or the urge passes. So, F is for feel, N, so at the end of the CAFN, N.

N is for notice.

Notice what replaces whatever feeling you had, because as we know, that feeling will dissipate, right?

Even the craving, the urge, it will dissipate. And then you just want to notice what replaces it, what comes in. So oftentimes, This is something like calm or a feeling like I'm proud of myself that I was able to manage that without turning to food or it can be a sense of accomplishment. Anything like that is usually pretty great, right?

Or it could just be very neutral. It could just be like, Yeah, I managed to get through that. Let's move on. But you just want to notice. Usually there is some sort of sense of calm or something like that. So just notice what happens. Okay, so I'll just review that real, real quick. Is caffeine? So check, ask, feel.

Notice. Check, ask, feel, notice. Okay, so if you are interested in just kind of more of this personal stuff, like more of kind of what I'm going through it's my goal to just share insofar as I think it will help others because oftentimes we feel so alone. And I feel more comfortable sharing that through email.

So if you are interested in following me along this journey, as I just release the 23 pounds, I'm going to keep you updated. I will be sharing kind of what I'm going through and what I'm finding helpful in my emails. So if you are not on my email list already please do so if you're interested in this, you can just access that through my website at mindfulshape.com. And just right now, just go to the free resources page. I think this might be changing in the next year, but for now, free resources page, you'll sign up for the resources, whether you use them or not, it's totally fine. You will be on that email list. And then I will be reaching out to you. And that is what I have for you.

So I hope that you are able to take a little gold nugget from today. If nothing else, use that CAFN method. I promise, promise, promise that if you use it, you'll start to notice a shift. So there's a awareness of what's happening, but we really want to practice what we know. So there's awareness. We know the information, but we want to practice it.

That's how you're going to see. real change. So that's my call to you is to practice that method at least a couple times and then reach out to me. Let me know if it worked for you, if you found it as simple as I have. I know some of the other stuff that I've shared with you maybe has been a little bit complex, you know, I'm really trying to simplify it even for myself because I know that if I'm not using it Then most likely, you know, you guys aren't using it either.

So I hope that was helpful and I will be on here again soon. Okay. Bye.