Ep. 71 Fear of Gaining the Weight Back

Hi, and welcome to the mindful shape podcast. I am Paula Parker. So this is a good one fear of gaining the weight back. So this is something I mentioned in a previous episode that I was going to touch on. And then I heard from some of you over my Instagram account that you were really keen on this one.

So I am doing it ahead of schedule. And it's kind of funny when I think about it, because I'm surprised I haven't done it. Sooner because I know that this is a big thing that comes up for so many clients that I work with. And so I'm really interested in doing it. But when I sat down to do an episode on this, it was a little bit harder for me to connect to this one  only because  I don't personally have this fear.

So even that was really interesting to me. Right. And why?  It's because my level of self efficacy is so high in this area. Self efficacy, I'm going to be talking about it a lot. When I, when I say that I'm really talking about the degree to which we believe we can be effective at something. So really, can we do it or not?

So in this episode, I'm going to break it into three parts. First, why this happens, why we have this fear of gaining the weight back. Why it's important to work through this fear. And then lastly, I'll finish up with some really practical steps on how to work through it. I also, because I think this is such an important topic, have created a PDF with all of the steps that I mentioned so that you can have it handy.

You can go through it. So another self coaching exercise, you can find that in my free resources on mindfulshape. com. Okay. So let's get into it.  My self efficacy in this area is high, meaning I know that even if my weight goes up or if I plateau for a little while, I'll be able to figure out what to do next and I will be able to do it, right?

My capacity to be able to do it is high. If you have fear around gaining the weight back, it might mean that your self efficacy is low, meaning you don't yet believe that you'll know exactly what to do, and you don't yet believe that you'll be able to do it. Now, if you're someone who's released a lot of weight and you believe you can do that again, but the thought of gaining it really scares you, then your self efficacy is higher in releasing weight, but low in maintaining your weight loss.

And this could be true, even if you've just released your first five pounds, you could be afraid that you're going to gain it right back. So if that's you simply apply everything I'm saying toward your belief in your ability to maintain your weight loss, to maintain your results.  Your level of self efficacy will affect your levels of willingness, your motivation, your level of persistence, and how you deal with setbacks like plateaus, that kind of thing.

So more specifically your willingness to allow hunger, maybe invest in yourself or buy a program, plan ahead of time, plan your protocol, your motivation to keep going when your plan goes out the window, or it feels especially hard. Or whether you give up when the scale hasn't budged in a week, or if you let yourself eat the whole package just because you had three and, well, the day is already ruined.

So first, let's talk about why your belief that you can do it, meaning release the weight and keep it off, might be low so that you can really understand it. And when you understand it, You will stop blaming yourself and you'll know how to change it. So there are four things that determine our self efficacy in something, whether or not we think we can do it.

The first is our lived experience. So this includes past attempts at trying it, right? The second is other people's experience. So when we look around, we see other people doing it or not. So their achievements. The third is what other people say about it. So this includes also verbal encouragement or discouragement that we receive directly.

And then the last one is psychophysiological  and emotional states. Fancy way of saying your mood. Whether you have a headache or not, right? So let's talk about some really specific examples in terms of weight loss so if you have doubt and I will tell you that so many of the women that I talk to they really have a Enormous amount of doubt in their ability to reach their natural weight and it makes sense because I think the number one reason Or the number one factor in their self efficacy is all of the past failed attempts.

So if you have tried everything to lose weight, you've tried keto, you've tried counting macros, you've tried Noom, you've counted calories, you've done cleanses, then you turn to working out and you heard weightlifting was good and you wanted to put on more muscle, or maybe you wanted to burn calories, so then you did cardio.

Maybe you thought I need to relax. So then you do yoga and never reached your weight loss goals. It makes perfect sense that your self efficacy would be low in that area, right? Because you're relying on all your past experience, other people's experiences. So you look around and you see most people who want to release their weight are struggling.

Or maybe you see someone who's succeeding, but you think, Well, they have completely different life circumstances or maybe they're just very different in their personality or in some critical way. They have something that you don't. The next one is, of course, what other people say. So maybe the people that are in your network or your family and friends, your loved ones are the just put the fork down kind of people and they do not get it.

Or maybe they do encourage you. But they also encourage you to lighten up and enjoy yourself and have a glass of wine with me, or let's go for ice cream, that kind of thing. And then lastly, if you're dealing with any kind of physical discomfort, say you have PMS or you're perimenopausal or you're in menopause, maybe you have migraines or you're just exhausted.

You're just really tired. Of course, you're going to be less likely to be in that I can do it mindset around Allowing cravings, allowing hunger, and you're more likely to be in the, you know, I just need to get through this day, I'm going to eat this thing, in that kind of frame of mind. Let's also apply this to maintenance for those of you who are afraid that you're going to go back to your old ways.

So one is your lived experiences you've never maintained before. So maybe you've released weight in the past, but you've never maintained it.  You see others release weight and maybe drastically, but then of course they regain it too. So then you started thinking, oh, this is just how it goes. Number three, you might hear people say really limiting things like, this is your thing.

You can't get over this ever. You're always going to have to work at it. Or it's kind of like that once an addict, always an addict. kind of mentality. And then number four is, again, if you're feeling down or physically not great, you're much more likely to listen to that self doubt that it's even possible for you to live like this in your new body.

Okay. So if any of that resonated with you, So, now you know why you have this fear, why you doubt yourself, where it all comes from, why you have all this drama about it and it's not as straightforward as, well, just put the fork down. No, it makes perfect sense given this self efficacy piece. We think we want to be done with this struggle for good.

We want to stop obsessing about our weight, we want to stop overthinking the food. But what our brain wants is what's familiar.  Even if it's painful, or creates an outcome that we don't want, because here's what you get when you stay in familiarity. You get certainty. Even if you don't like the outcome, You're certain of what it is.

You know what's going to happen. There is comfort in that familiarity. There's a lot of comfort and predictability.  You don't have to guess, well, what is it going to be like? You just know. And then when it comes to food and drinks, these are highly predictive. So for instance, think of Starbucks and I'm thinking, I don't know if I've said this in a workshop before or even on the podcast.

If I said it on the podcast, I apologize. This is a section that I pulled out from some previous work, but A great example is, is Starbucks, right? Because why do people love it? Because they know that no matter where they are in the planet, they can go to Starbucks and they're going to have a similar experience.

It's going to feel very familiar, even if it's not the best coffee. Even if you don't love the coffee, you're still likely to have a pleasurable experience. Why? Because it's familiar. Your fear about your weight.  It's a problem that your brain knows very well, but if we don't understand that premise, then we make up stories to make sense of these kinds of habits, why you do them and why you can't stop, why you have the weight that you have and why you can't maintain any weight loss.

You'll say things like, it's my body, it's just the way my body is, or I have no self discipline, I have no self control, I'm too busy, I don't have time, maybe I have too much time now that I'm retired, or I don't have enough support from my family. So my husband or my partner is always eating snacks and, and that's why I'm overeating.

When we have these thoughts enough times, when we hear them from others too, and our society reiterates them, then we believe them and the payoff is that we don't have to change. We get to stay in the familiar where there is certainty and no surprises. Sure, at a weight that we don't like, but it's comfortable here for our brain to keep working at this problem, to keep it a problem. 

So let me tie these things together for you. Your fear comes from your self concept. as it relates to weight loss and your ability to keep it off. Your self concept is comprised of what? Your self efficacy and your most familiar thoughts about yourself, right? Your most practiced belief. Now, here's why it's important to work through this fear.

When you release weight, And things are just easy peasy and working for you. Say you reach your wedding weight. That's a thing, right? You reach the weight that you had when you got into your wedding dress. And that success is a mismatch to your self concept, which is predicated on this low self efficacy.

You are very likely to gain the weight back. The very thing you are so worried about.  So let me just say that again, because it's really important when things are working and you have the result, say your goal weight, and that success is a mismatch to your present self concept predicated on low self efficacy, you are very likely to gain the weight back.

So I want to share with you three sneaky ways this shows up so that you can identify them as they happen in real time and nip them in the bud. Coincidentally, they all actually start with Ds. So here are the three Ds to watch out for to ensure that you really change your self concept and you can maintain your weight loss. 

The first is deflection. We deflect our success. The next is discount. We minimize our success and three is desire. We recreate all the over desire that we had when we first started out in our weight loss. So now I just want to explain these to you and give you some examples. So the first one, deflection, deflection is like when you deflect a compliment.

I was at a wedding one time and this woman complimented me on my dress and right away I said, Oh, this whole thing, this is from Joe Fresh. Like this cost me 50 bucks or maybe less. But the idea is that we get so used to deflecting anything positive about ourselves, right? So we don't allow ourselves to take in our wins to celebrate our own success.

When you are deflecting, you have thoughts like, well, this was too easy, right? You're skeptical. You're like, Oh, it was a fluke.  If you're thinking this way, you go into despair or you feel defeated, despite your amazing results, you still feel defeated and you stop paying attention or you start changing your protocol, the very one that has been working and eventually you quit.

The second is you are discounting.  Your success. So you minimize it. You might be thinking, well, it's still not good enough. I'm still not there yet. I still have XYZ. I still have wrinkles or whatever it is. The next one is you're thinking this won't last. Sure. It's good right now, but it won't last. Then you go into worry.

You second guess yourself. You stop paying attention or you start making changes to your protocol and you quit.  The third one is desire. You start generating over desire for food or alcohol or both. This is you if you release some weight and start thinking, well, now I can relax a little, loosen the reins, not be so strict.

I deserve to have some fun now. I've worked really hard. So you might start allowing more unplanned exceptions. You might reward yourself with food. You will stop paying attention to hunger cues, fullness cues. You'll basically stop doing all the things that helped you release the weight, like self coaching, or getting coached, or journaling, food tracking, weighing yourself, all the things. 

So consciously, you don't want to regain the weight, but unconsciously you do because it's familiar. So your brain comes up with deflection, discounting, and desire so that you can relive your familiar experience. So take a deep breath if that was a lot. The good news is there are really practical, simple tactics you can do to offset this.

And you are leaps ahead because you now know you are aware of all of this. You know that it can happen, you can even expect it so that when you start going down that line of thinking, you'll be like, oh. This is okay. Nothing has gone wrong here. I was expecting this. So just take some comfort in that. So here's what you can start doing today to help offset this phenomenon, to increase your self efficacy and self concept.

First thing is don't change what's working. If you have a protocol that's really working, just stick with it, right? We can get so tempted by the shiny objects of like, Oh, maybe I should do this. Maybe I should do that. But if it's working, stick with it. Number two is notice when you have any of those thoughts that I mentioned so that you are paying attention and you're just not operating on autopilot.

Thoughts like it's still not good enough, this won't last or it was too easy or it was a fluke or now I can relax a little, loosen the reins.  Third is allow for that big jump in your self concept. I always use the example of. when you, when you can think back to maybe the first job that you ever had. So first jobs are great examples because they're a big identity shift.

For example, I'm trying to think maybe my first job was, I think my first job other than babysitting was working in a grocery store. So I went from one day being a customer going in with my mom when I was 14 and shopping as a customer, and then the next day being stocking the shelves, right? Bagging groceries and stocking the shelves.

So, That was very uncomfortable, of course, right? It was very awkward because it felt like this isn't me. This is, I should be shopping, not packing somebody's groceries up, right? It was a big leap in my self concept. Of course, you know, even maybe two weeks later, that felt normal. Why? Because packing groceries was just what I thought of as my job and part of my new self concept, okay?

So just let it be a little bit awkward. Another example that I have for this Which is so good, which is my husband within the last year has really transformed his relationship with clothes. So he, when I first met him, he was somebody who was typical kind of, when you think of from salt spring Island, like somebody who just doesn't care about clothes, clothes, even people that are very wealthy on salt spring.

Oftentimes they don't dress in a performative way. It's not a high status thing. So for him, he saw it that way. And. Over time, he has, instead of rejecting clothes, has really started to embrace learning about style, learning about how to dress himself in a way that is makes him feel how he wants to feel.

So it's been really interesting to watch, but what is even more interesting is to see other people's reactions to how he's dressing because oftentimes, especially where we live in Victoria, it's pretty casual. Most of the time people are wearing their Lululemon tights in a hoodie or something, right? And so if he's wearing a blazer, it stands out, especially people in his inner circle and our family.

They will comment like, Oh my God, why are you so dressed up? Why? It's because he's changing his, his self concept and other people are noticing it. Right? So. Just accept that this is who you are, your self concept, your identity can totally change based on how you're thinking and relating to things.  Number four, remind yourself why you are in a better position now than in any other point in history to maintain your results.

So what skills have you learned? What habits do you have now that you didn't have before? What are your big and tiny wins? We want to remind our brains of this number five is surround yourself with others who are on a similar journey, who are on this path, who are winning at this. So maybe that's in a Facebook group, maybe that's in a group coaching environment or with a coach who will encourage you and will believe in you, who, who sees that future self already manifested and discount any kind of naysayers.

Number six is keep listening to podcasts like this that inspire you, that show you examples of success stories to teach your brain what is truly possible when it comes to weight loss, when it comes to maintaining, and when it comes to having the relationship with food that you want.  And lastly, is number seven, complete the self efficacy self coaching exercise PDF that's in my free resources that also includes it will includes all the questions that I just went over.

So you don't have to be writing them down. I know so many of you are on a walk. Or in your car. So download that when you get home so that you have all these questions. And in that PDF, I've also included a bonus activity to increase your self advocacy, which comes from an association that I recently joined called the Institute for Equity Centered Coaching.

If you are a coach I would highly encourage you to check them out. Okay. That is what I have for you today. As always, if you have any questions, comments, please reach out to me and I will talk to you again soon. Okay. Bye.