Don’t Force; Support!

In this episode of The Joyful You Podcast, we dive into the concept of creating supportive conditions for weight loss rather than forcing it through restrictive diets and intense exercise.

Tune in to learn how adjusting your approach can lead to sustainable, joyful permanent weight loss.

Ever wish you could have someone look at your weight loss attempts and tell you why it’s not working for you and give you a personalized plan for what will? Now you can. If you are trying to lose weight, feel like you’re doing all the things, and you’re wondering why it isn’t working, then signup for a Lose The Weight For The Last Time Joy Makeover.  

WHAT YOU WILL DISCOVER

• Supportive vs. Forcing: The episode begins by addressing common frustrations with weight loss, such as stalled progress despite efforts. The key message is that the body needs supportive conditions to release weight effectively. Forcing weight loss through extreme calorie cuts or over-exercise creates an environment where the body feels unsafe and resistant to change.
• Holistic Approach: Weight loss isn’t just about physical health. It encompasses emotional, mental, spiritual, and social well-being. The body needs a safe and supportive environment, which includes adequate sleep, hydration, stress management, compassionate self-talk, and gentle eating practices.
• Foundational Habits (Fundies): The episode outlines essential habits to foster a supportive environment for weight loss:
  • Sleep: Aim for 7-9 hours of restful sleep to allow the body to repair and manage weight effectively.
  • Water: Drink at least 64 ounces of water daily to stay hydrated and avoid cravings.
  • Stress Management: Implement practices like gratitude, deep breathing, and uplifting activities to manage stress and maintain balance.
  • Compassionate Thinking: Practice positive self-talk and view challenges with kindness to avoid emotional eating and self-sabotage.
  • Gentle Eating: Focus on eating when hungry, choosing nourishing foods, and stopping when full, while avoiding emotional eating.

FEATURED ON THE SHOW

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TRANSCRIPT

This is The Joyful You Podcast, episode 101, Don’t Force Support.

welcome to The Joyful You Podcast.

On this show, I talk all about the tools you need to cultivate a healthy relationship with food, your mind, and your life.

I’m your host, Rachael Collins.

As an eating psychology practitioner, a certified life coach, and a weight loss expert, it is my mission to show you how to work with your body, manage your mind, process your emotions, and create supportive habits so you can live well, feel well, and become your strongest, healthiest, happiest, most amazing self, a joyful you.

Hey, hey, hey, happy September.

I just happened to love this time of year.

For me, it’s like a second New Year.

The kids are back in school and I am ready to work on myself and go all in on my goals again.

I have been talking to a lot of people that are trying to lose weight, and the weight just isn’t coming off.

They are scaling back their calories.

They’re trying to eat really clean.

They’re cutting out sugar.

Some of them were only eating once a day, and others tell me that they’re exercising every day for hours at a time, and the weight’s not coming off, and they just don’t understand what is going on.

I talked to one lady who had been intermittent fasting.

She lost a significant amount of weight, but now the weight won’t budge, and it’s starting to go back up, and she’s frustrated, and she can’t figure out why.

I get it.

I used to think exercising and cutting out food were the ways to lose weight.

I tried for years to starve myself skinny.

I tried over exercising my weight off.

I ran five miles six days a week.

Sometimes the things that I tried worked.

Other times, they didn’t.

Why?

I will tell you why in just a minute.

But first, what I want to talk about is what we usually do when we are in the situations where we’re trying everything and it’s not working.

We usually do two things when we’ve hit these roadblocks in our weight loss.

One, we either try harder, we try to force our body into losing weight by cutting out more, by being even more extreme, by going harder and longer and eating less.

Or the second thing that we might do is we give up and we quit.

Quite frankly, both of these things get us the same result.

Because, and this is the biggest thing that I hope that you will take away from this episode.

So listen up.

If our body doesn’t have supportive conditions, it will not release weight.

It will hold on to it.

Let me repeat that.

If our body doesn’t have supportive conditions, if it doesn’t feel safe, it will not release weight.

It will continue to hold on to it as a protective mechanism.

So when we’re forcing it and starving it, and over-exercising it, or when we’re beating it up and talking critically to it or about it, does it feel safe?

No.

When it’s telling us it’s hungry and we reply back, sorry, but it’s not time to eat right now.

It’s not our eating window yet.

Does it feel supported?

No.

When we’re punishing it by cutting out our favorite foods, does it feel supported?

No.

When we’re stressing out by over-exercising or staying in a job that we hate, or not dealing with the relationship that needs some attention, does it feel supported?

No.

And we can look at it the other way too.

When we quit and we’re over-feeding it and we’re forcing it to eat food, even when it’s not hungry, but food just happens to be our coping mechanism, does it feel safe and supported?

No.

When we’re feeding it lots of crap, and we’re not getting enough sleep, and we’re not getting enough water, and we’re not taking time to get the self-care that we need, are we creating a supportive condition for weight loss?

No, definitely not.

So, if you’ve been trying so hard to lose the weight and it isn’t working, or maybe it worked for a little bit, but now it isn’t, and you’re just so frustrated, and you quit trying, let me help you fill in the gaps of what is going on, so that you can get a better understanding of why it isn’t working, or why it didn’t work.

So, first of all, I want to tell you that we are holistic beings.

What does that mean?

That means that losing weight involves not just our physical health.

It’s not how much we exercise and what we eat.

It also involves our emotional, our mental, our spiritual, and our social health as well.

All of these areas work together as one.

If we’re not paying attention to all of them, and we’re just focusing on the physical, our body still doesn’t feel safe and supportive to lose weight.

Safety is the name of the game.

Your body will not release weight permanently until it has a safe and supportive environment for it to do so.

So today, I want to give you just a short general list of some supportive foundational habits that will help you create a supportive and safe environment for your body to release weight.

Now, once this environment is in place, your body will automatically start to release weight.

You won’t have to force it.

You are supporting it and the result of that, the natural result of that is weight loss.

If you want me to take a personal look at these areas and how they are affecting weight loss specifically for you, sign up for a Lose The Weight For The Last Time Joy makeover.

I will leave a link in the show notes so that you can grab one.

Okay, the first foundational habit or fundy, as I sometimes call them with my clients, is sleep.

Sleep is huge.

It’s also the most underrated habit.

At night, while we are sleeping, our body focuses on repairing our muscles, repairing our organs and burning off excess fat.

So when we’re not getting enough sleep, our body can’t do that.

And when our body is not repairing our muscles and our organs and our tissues, and getting rid of all the stuff that like detoxes at night, of course, it’s going to make our body unhealthy.

So the first habit is sleep.

Seven to nine hours is how much we need to create a supportive and safe environment for weight loss and optimal health.

Now, a lot of people want to fight me on this.

A lot of people want to tell me I only need four hours.

And I say, okay, let’s do an experiment.

Try experimenting with more and let’s see what your body does.

And you know what happens?

Their body starts releasing weight because they actually needed seven to nine hours.

Okay, the next fundy is water.

Our body is made up of mostly water.

And so it needs water to be able to function properly for all the gears to turn properly.

And when we’re dehydrated because we’re not getting enough water, it will feel like crap.

It will not work properly.

Another thing that it does is it will throw up cravings for food in an attempt to hydrate us so that our organs and our brain can function.

So a lot of times some people are like, I just feel so out of control around food.

And I say, okay, how much water are you getting?

And they will tell me, yeah, I usually drink three cups of water, three to four cups of water a day.

And I say, okay, let’s try increasing your water and see what happens.

And their cravings go away.

So I recommend at least 64 ounces of water a day.

And this should be on top of any soda or smoothies or whatever kind of other drinks that you drink in a day.

So be drinking your water.

The next fundies are stress management habits.

These are things like being grateful and breathing and taking time to be present and getting morning sun.

These are things like connecting and moving your body and listening to uplifting music.

There are lots and lots and lots of stress management habits.

What I want to tell you about stress is that each of us has a zone where we are most comfortable and our bodies are able to function at their very best.

But when we have these high levels of stress, which life is going to do to us, our body operates outside of this zone.

Now I like to call this zone home base.

And when this happens, our brain is doing everything it can to protect us.

And several things happen when we’re outside of home base.

Our digestive system slows down.

Our body doesn’t absorb nutrients like it should.

And this all results in low energy, hormonal imbalances, a deregulated appetite, and an unsupportive environment for weight loss.

When we are in a stress state, when we’re outside of home base, the body also increases production of a hormone called cortisol, which signals the body to store fat, hold on to weight, and not build muscle.

Those are things that we don’t want, right?

Now, there are several things that you can do to manage your stress better.

The goal is not to eliminate stress because that’s impossible.

The goal is just to manage it.

It’s to train your nervous system to be emotionally resilient, and it’s to train it and how to deal with uncomfortable emotions, to know how to handle any emotion that will come your way, so that we’re able to go in and out of home base without issues.

That’s the goal.

Okay, the next fundy is compassionate thinking and self-talk.

I’m combining these two together.

Now, believe it or not, our mindset or our thinking about ourselves and about life and about other people, and also the way that we talk to ourselves, what we say inside of our mind and the things that we say about ourselves and about other people and about our life, it affects our health and our weight.

So negative self-talk and trying to beat ourselves up into losing weight seems like it would totally motivate us, right?

But usually it just results in us feeling bad, feeling unsafe, and then emotionally eating to try to cope or to try to soothe ourselves.

This of course is making the body feel super unsafe.

We’re constantly viewing ourselves or our circumstances as a threat, something that we need to be scared of.

The body definitely doesn’t feel safe to release weight, and it’s going to hold on to the weight because it wants us to be bigger, because it thinks the bigger we are, the higher likelihood we have of winning the battle.

The biggest person wins, right?

Or so our brain thinks.

So, compassionate thinking and self-talk, being the boss of your brain, what you say to yourself and about yourself, is huge for creating a supportive environment for weight loss.

Okay, the last fundy that I’m going to mention on the episode today is what I’m going to call gentle eating.

This looks like eating for your body.

Things that give it pleasure, but also things that support it and support your health.

It also looks like eating when your body is physically hungry, stopping when it’s had enough.

So some things that you can start paying attention to are things like, are you emotionally eating?

Are you implementing some gentle nutrition?

Are you leveling up the quality of your food?

Are you eating for hormonal health?

So let’s just recap really fast.

Here are the foundational habits or fundies that we talked about today that are going to help you create a supportive and safe environment for your body to not only improve your overall health and well-being, but to help you naturally release weight without you having to force it.

You’re just supporting your body with these fundies, with these habits, and then a result of that is your body will release the weight.

All right, the habits that we talked about today are sleep, water, stress management, compassionate thinking and compassionate self-talk, and then gentle eating.

Our body wants to be at its natural weight.

It only holds on to weight because it thinks that it is protecting us.

Create a safe and supportive environment and see what happens.

I think you’re going to like the results.

Again, if you would like a personalized plan that is specific for you, grab a Joy Makeover.

Maybe I’ll see you over there.

If not, I hope you have a great week and I will talk to you soon.

Bye bye.

Thank you for listening to The Joyful You Podcast.

If you’d like additional support, click the link in the show notes and let’s chat about how we can work together to get you to your goal.

If this episode was helpful to you, make sure to subscribe and please share it.

The most helpful thing you can do in return is to go leave a review.

If you want to hang out on social media, you can find me on Instagram, at A Joyful You, or on my website, A Joyful you.com.

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