Ep. 131 Becoming Mentally Stronger

This transcript was auto-generated, please forgive any weirdness.

  Hi, my name is Paula Parker, and this podcast is really to help you release any excess weight that you might have and feel really in charge around food using your most valuable resource, your mind. The women I coach don't just want to release the excess weight off their body and make their bodies stronger.

What they really want more than anything is to be mentally strong. I was in the shower listening to a. Coach training, that's where I listen to stuff is when I'm in the shower.  And although I've heard of this particular concept that I'm about to share with you before it clicked in a new way, and it really inspired me in that moment and it inspired me to do this podcast.

Sometimes it's just you're in the right place at the right time and you get the right message. Makes all the difference.  So I was in the shower and I was. Maybe six hours into a 20 hour fast that I was doing and I was feeling not amazing and I was thinking about calling it, just saying, okay, I'm just, you know what?

It's not a big deal. I'm just gonna have dinner. I'm not feeling good.  Then I was listening to this training and I was reminded of this particular concept, and it was all I needed to help strengthen my resolve, to help me tap into that mental strength I needed, and I can happily report that I completed the 20 hour fast and felt great afterwards.

So whether you need this concept I'm about to share with you if you need it to get through any kind of fasting protocol that you're doing, even if that's just. Eating breakfast only when you're hungry, right? It doesn't have to be a specific time or whether you need it to get on the scale after eating pasta and wine the night before, or you need it when you want to make an eat chocolate chip cookie dough.

It has helped me, and I think it will help you too. So this concept came to me in a few different ways, and I honestly don't know who to credit for it. I do know that Seth Godin wrote a short book on it called The Dip. I've also heard it coined as the Valley of Despair or the River of Misery. Now I kind of like the dip, the terminology, the dip, only because it has a more neutral vibe and you can feel a little bit more friendly towards a dip than a river of misery.

And that's the key. It's how we relate to it that's going to make the difference sometimes between quitting. Or persevering. So if we can relate to it in a friendly way, those tough moments, those tough times, we are much more likely to, you know, get in those reps of becoming mentally strong and persevere.

So in this podcast, I'm gonna use Seth Godin's term for it from now on whenever I'm talking about this concept. So what is the dip? What is this concept I'm referring to?  I want you to imagine a graph in which the line starts out in the middle relative to the top and bottom of the, of the graph. That's where you are when you initially start your week.

When you start a new workout program or a weight loss program, you are optimistic. You are hopeful. You have the energy and motivation and momentum  when it comes to releasing weight. You're doing the work. You're eating only when you're really hungry. You're allowing hunger. Maybe you're extending your fasting window from 13 hours to 14 hours, or you might be eliminating your usual 3:00 PM sugar fix, having that blueberry muffin at 3:00 PM or that sugary Starbucks drink, and instead you're allowing that craving to happen. 

Maybe you're saying no to dessert, or you're removing that habit of snacking in the evening, and it's all feeling relatively easy because you're feeling positive and motivated.  Then some time passes and that momentum that you were feeling in the beginning, that inspiration, motivation, it starts to die down.

You realize that. You know, this doesn't feel as exciting as before, right? You need to keep this up if you wanna see results, and that doesn't seem very motivating. The novelty has worn off, your brain has become habituated to this new way of living. You're a bit tired of. Saying no to yourself at this point, and it's likely at this point that your initial weight loss has slowed down.

So instead of seeing one or two pounds a week, you're seeing maybe 0.3 or 0.5 for a couple of weeks, which is all perfectly normal by the way, or it's been four or five weeks where there's been no new low on the scale, no new milestone reached. Your weight range has stayed the same. Also perfectly normal for this to happen for four to even five weeks. 

You might think of the dip as a weight loss plateau. That's how we think of when this happens. We think, oh, I'm in a weight loss plateau.  That line on the graph has dipped.  You're thinking, this sucks. Is this even worth it? Should I keep going? Is anything I'm doing even making a difference? I'm already trying so hard and not seeing the results on the scale that I wish I was seeing.

It could also look like. Switching around in terms of your strategy. So maybe you won't think, oh, I'm gonna go back to keto again. I'm gonna do a cleanse. I need more calorie restriction, different strategies to battle those cravings, and feeling like nothing is really clicking, nothing is really working, because either you can't follow through or the scale is just not budging.

And you're not noticing any changes in how your clothes are fitting either.  First, I wanna share with you, there's four mindset shifts that I wanna share with you as we talk about this concept. The dip. The first mindset shift I want to offer is that these dips are perfectly normal and to be expected. So instead of thinking, oh, see, I knew this would happen again.

I keep doing this. I can't seem to figure this out.  What I invite you to think is instead.  I've reached a new level. This is a rite of passage. Everything I know has got me up to this point, and now it's time to uplevel my skills and my knowledge.  You can think of the dip as helpful. It's your friend. It's getting you ready for sustainable weight loss.

It's preparing you for not only releasing the weight, but it's showing you the skills that are required for keeping the weight off and maintaining your results. Because who cares about releasing weight if we can't keep it off?  The dip shows you where you need to hone your skills, where the gaps are. We all do things when we're really motivated.

That's easy. But the true test of your skills is when that wears off, which it will. What typically happens is that people hit the dip and they quit. You start your week with the best intentions of not overeating, but then you can't stick with it when you hit the dip. So then you know what we do is we start over and over again only to keep continuing that pattern where we hit the dip again and then we quit.

And there are two reasons this happens. Two things that will get in the way of you getting through the dip to the other side. So you can imagine now that graph. Once you go through that dip, it curves up and it goes even higher than before. And that's your desired weight. Where you wanna be in terms of your body shape and where you wanna be in terms of your relationship with food.

That's where you're going. Two things that are gonna get in the way. One is you're not sticking with the right strategy for long enough, and number two is you're sticking with the wrong strategy for way too long. So number one is a mindset issue, and number two is a strategy issue.  So, for example, let's say you have a solid strategy for eating, meaning one that is proven to help your body become efficient at burning fat for fuel, optimizing fat for fuel, and is a way of eating that you could conceivably do for the next, say, three years.

So this isn't a quick fix, this is a lifestyle change. You're simply not overeating, you're not emotionally eating, you're not eating. After a stressful day, you're not eating beyond the past of comfort in your body. You're not consuming more than your body needs, and you are actively encouraging your body to use its fat.

Stores from previous overeating.  My way of thinking about how to not overeat is to eat only when you're really hungry, stop at enough and choose foods that serve you.  When it comes to eating to optimize fat, there are really only three elements to eating that you can think about to optimize fat loss.

One is when you eat. Two is what you eat and three is how much you eat. These are all the variables that you wanna play with. This will determine whether you encourage your body to gain, maintain, or release stored fat. When you want to release, you will have to be intentional about when, what and how much, and that's gonna look.

Probably really different than when you are gaining or maintaining your current weight. How you were eating then, right? What you were eating, when you're eating, and how much you're eating. So let's say this is the plan that you're following. You decide, okay, this week I'm gonna eat only when I'm really hungry.

I'm gonna stop when I feel satiated in my body. I'm not gonna eat one bite more than that, and I'm going to eat healthy. I'm gonna do minimal flour, no sugar, no alcohol this week. And you do this for maybe two weeks and you're feeling better, the scale's going down. You have less puffiness, you just feel like a little bit better in your body.

You're sleeping better, great.  But then you get used to feeling like that. This is habituation in your brain. You just get used to it. You don't really notice all of these benefits anymore. And what's worse is maybe the scale isn't moving so quickly. So for the next two weeks, you're not noticing the results of all your efforts.

You're still doing all of the things, but you're not getting that external reward. You're not getting that validation from the scale, from the weight coming off. So of course, you start to feel a little discouraged when you have a craving, when you want to eat that muffin. When someone offers you a glass of wine, you say, you know what?

I can allow it. Screw it. And you quit. You're in the dip. Then likely you feel bad about doing that, and then you start overindulging. So you haven't stuck it out long enough to see real lasting results. You like exit the dip. All right. In this scenario, you really haven't learned the skill of handling how to, you know, really notice the wins even when they're old news.

Or being patient and compassionate with your body when it doesn't release weight as quickly as you would like. You haven't learned how to handle feeling discouraged without overindulging, finding new ways of being able to handle that emotion in your body. The dip is showing you all of this, so everything you can learn to get through it for next time. 

Number two, the number two thing that's gonna get in your way, or it's gonna make you get off the track and get out of the dip and quit, is you're sticking with the wrong strategy for too long. Examples of this is if you are forcing a really specific rigid meal plan. You are counting calories and using a calorie budget or macros on an app like Lose It or MyFitnessPal, or you're eating three meals and two snacks because a trainer once told you that you need to do that to kickstart and rev up your metabolism.

That breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Okay? So if, if you're doing any of that and it's all working for you, amazing, great, keep going. But if you are doing all of that and you've been following. That kind of program for months or even years, and you are not seeing the results on the scale and you are not seeing improvements in your mental health,  your relationship with food, you need a different strategy period.

If you're forcing a fasting protocol that's only making you spin out into a binge restrict cycle. Something needs to change. In this case, you really do need to quit. Okay? You need, you have a wrong strategy. It might be the wrong strategy, or it might be your application of the strategy. So you might have the wrong application or the wrong mindset, but yeah, something needs to change if you're gonna win. 

Mindset shift. Number two, the dip makes the high so much sweeter.  After the dip, the line on the graph goes higher than your starting point. That's where you reached your desired goal weight, and you have the relationship with food that you want. If you look around, many people are not there. Many people do not have both of those things.

They might have one or they might have the other. It's really sad, especially for women, right? We've been working at this for so many years. We don't need to suffer like this. We don't need to live like this.  You can achieve that when. You know how to get through the dip. Most people wanna be in a healthier, fitter body. 

I don't know. Most people probably, I mean, I don't know what the stats are lately, but a lot of people wanna be healthier. They wanna be in a fitter body, or they want to feel more in charge with food, and they're not so concerned with their body image, but they're more concerned with their relationship with food and feeling like they are in charge.

They want to easily be able to say, no, they want to not have all of these cravings anymore. Okay. They want their energy to more balance, they wanna have more agility in their body, that kind of thing. If there were no dips. Everyone would have what they wanted. They would have the body that they want. They would have the ease of movement in their body that they want.

They would feel in charge with food  if it was just smooth sailing.  If it was just smooth sailing,  that would be the case, but it's not. There are these dips every day. People are quitting every day. Other women want to pick the salad and they get the sandwich instead. Okay, they wanna do the yoga video and they put it off to tomorrow and they work another couple of hours, or they watch another show instead.

They hit the dip and they say, screw it, and they eat. Not you. You are going to resource yourself and get the results you want no matter how long it takes.  One of the reasons we admire other women who can say no, who have fit bodies, right, who choose the salad at lunch, is that we know how easy it is not to do that, how easy it is to overeat, to avoid.

Resistance training and things like that, it requires something of them to create that as a habit, to create that as a lifestyle.  When you navigate the inevitable dips, you get to be this kind of person. Also, someone who is mentally strong, mentally tough.  Mindset. Shift number three, the dip is a shortcut.

We are always looking for shortcuts, right? We try. We really try to avoid the discomfort as much as possible. We wanna avoid the discomfort of hunger. We get these, you know, if you're like, okay, I wanna do keto because then I'll never feel hunger. I can do these fat bombs. We want to avoid the discomfort of stopping it enough when the food is really delicious.

So we graze, we eat out of containers instead of portioning out our food. We eat just because food is in front of us, or it's time, even though we are not physically hungry. Because why? It would feel weird. It would feel unfamiliar if we don't. Or sometimes we're afraid of being hungry. Later on, we're afraid of future discomfort.

We definitely try to avoid the discomfort of going without highly palatable foods. Sugar, flour, we load up on artificial sweeteners, which of course only make the sugar cravings worse, but unfortunately, none of that avoidance works. So. We keep quitting instead of learning how to get through that dip, the only way out is through  every dip is an opportunity to learn more and get better. 

Here's another tip for getting through a dip. How many times have I said that word?  Quite a bit. Okay. Have a compelling reason that's bigger than something external, like a wedding that's happening this summer. So. I am not calling you out.  I just wanna say that is a great external reasons are great for kicking off giving you temporary motivation, but it is not sustainable.

I wanna share with you a personal example. So when I was living in Vancouver, I. Many years ago, my sister and some friends, and I bought tickets to see the band Radiohead, which was like really popular at the time. I bought them in say, February in the new year. The concert was in August, so it was gonna be an outdoor event.

I'm imagining, you know, a warm summer night. I made a secret declaration to myself. That I would reach my goal weight by the concert. I figured I had enough time. I imagined myself in my, you know, summer gear, like summer shorts, feeling amazing at the concert.  And then the months were on and June came and I wasn't any closer, and I doubled down  the master cleanse.

I cut carbs. I went for longer runs, 60 minutes. I did half marathons. I ran six days instead of three days. Of course you can probably imagine what happened. The harder I tried, the more the pendulum swung in the opposite way,  the more futile it felt. When that night came, I was so disappointed. I told my sister I wasn't even gonna go.

I. She lived in the same apartment building right across the hall, and she came over and knocked on my door and she was standing in my doorway and she was so surprised and, and she kept saying, you know, are you sure? Like, it's gonna be so fun. Are you sure? Are you sure you don't wanna come? And I just couldn't bring myself to tell her that I felt so badly in my body at that time, and so disappointed in myself that I just couldn't go.

I just told her that, you know, I didn't feel well. I was really vague about it.  I kept on using these mini milestones, these external things, like my birthday, my wedding, summer, to compel me to eat right, eat the way I wanted, and release any excess weight. It never worked for my wedding. Sure, I was successful in releasing weight, but then I gained most of it right back in the months following. 

It really wasn't until I connected with a more compelling reason or you know, vision for myself that was more internal versus external that made the difference. So what is your compelling reason for doing all of this?  For me, I have a deep calling. Do you have that deep calling? Just check in with yourself.

Right now, I have a deep calling to feel the best in my body I possibly can. I have a deep calling to use my relationship with food to learn about myself, to connect to myself more, to heal myself and take care of my body.  My health, I've learned so much about nutrition and movement because I've had this goal of releasing weight.

I've not been somebody fortunate enough to have the metabolism or insulin response that I can just eat whenever I want. I just don't have that body. So I have had to learn how to take care of myself in terms of what I eat and how I move my body, and I've also reaped a lot of rewards because of that as well. 

If you are trying to release weight for a wedding this summer, there's no problem. Again, I'm not calling you out for that, but just see if you can go even deeper because then you'll keep going after the wedding, after their birthday, after the event. External motivators can be useful. But they aren't often enough to get you through the entire dip.

You need to be clear and connected to why this matters to you internally. Like really like, do you have a calling to do this? Okay. Switching gears a little bit,  here's what to focus on in aep. Small incremental improvements.  Incremental is quantum. 1% wins that matter to you. And maybe no one else. Okay? Only you will notice.

It's so tempting to think nothing is happening. There's no progress. Maybe you had some initial success in the beginning and people were telling you that you look great, or Wow, you have so much discipline, or I'm really noticing positive changes. Maybe your partner's saying, wow, you're really eating healthy.

And some time has passed, and now it's kind of normal and no one says anything. You're just doing the work all on your own. You gotta notice the tiniest improvements. Oh, look, I didn't beat myself up as much  for eating that granola bar at 3:00 PM as I might have six months ago. Oh, I drank way more water today than I usually do. 

These things that are 1% or even 0.3%, they are wins that add up over time to create real weight loss. And also you as a different person, you will be a different person after all of that. It's not about where you are now, it's about the direction you are going in. So what is the trajectory of where you're headed?

Because if that's good, if you like what that looks like, if at some point you will reach your desired weight. It is inevitable. Okay? It's happening. It's just a matter of days on the calendar. Mindset shift number four,  it will probably take longer than you think to write out that dip. To learn what you need to learn for sustainable, healthy weight loss. 

Let that be okay.  You may have decades of bad programming when it comes to body image and overeating. Those neural pathways will change. That programming will change, but it's not overnight.  Can you speed up the process and become mentally stronger sooner? Yes, you definitely can. Okay.  But it is still going to take as long as it takes. 

Okay. I'm gonna wrap up. Here's some key takeaways. Knowing that there will be dips, there will be weight loss plateaus is the first step to getting through it.  Two things that will get in your way of getting through the dip to your desired weight is, number one, you're not sticking with the right strategy for long enough.

Cultivate patients, cultivate compassion. The  second thing is you're sticking with the wrong strategy for way too long. All right,  and there are four mindset shifts that I mentioned that you can adopt. Number one is the dip makes you mentally stronger because it shows you what you still need to learn to reach your desired weight and keep it off.

And that's the key. Number two is the dip makes the high so much sweeter. Not everyone is gonna do this and that's okay, but you are cut out for it. You can do it. Number three is the dip is the shortest way. When we keep stopping and starting and we don't ride out that discomfort, it's just gonna take longer.

Number four, it's just gonna take as long as it takes. Even though we are riding that out, even though the dip the way through is the shortcut, it's still gonna take time, and that's okay because your desired weight and your relationship with food that you want is inevitable. So long as you do not. Quit. 

Ride it out as best you can. Celebrate your small wins, those 1% improvements on the daily basis. Okay. Get a coach that will help you do that. Okay? That's the funnest part of my job is when a client comes on and they say, okay. Here are all my wins, and whether they're tiny or they're huge, we get to celebrate them together to build up that self-concept.

As somebody who is winning at weight loss, at this weight loss game, somebody who's doing something hard and is tackling it, there is nothing that is more gratifying than that. When you can make the weight loss journey, which people say it's such a struggle, it's so hard when you can make that more enjoyable by celebrating your small wins on a regular basis.

I promise. I. It will go faster and you will enjoy it more.  Give yourself some credit for coming this far. You are becoming mentally stronger as you work through these dips. You're getting those reps in and you're getting stronger every day.  If you want direct support helping you through these inevitable dips, then I encourage you to reach out to me.

I would love to talk to you about how we could potentially work together to really help you make your weight loss goals inevitable, and also, of course, do it in a way that's enjoyable and do it in a way that feels really empowering to you. Whether that's figuring out what the right strategy is and tweaking your current strategy to make it work for you.

And or if it, you have a great strategy and you just need to learn the skills to follow through, I'm here to help you. I'm here to support you. You can reach out to me at my website@mindfulshape.com. We can book a call and just chat about it and figure out what your next step is, whether that's working together or that's figuring it out on your own.

And I'll help you, you know, determine what it is that you really wanna focus on. Alright, I will talk to you again soon. Bye.