Why it's so hard to lose weight & what to do about it.

Our primitive brain only wants three things: to avoid pain, to move toward pleasure, and to reduce effort.  And it will say anything it needs to in order to get you on board with its wishes.

 The motivational triad are the three missions your primitive brain has.  It wants to move you toward pleasure, encouraging you to have sex and perpetuate the species, to get out of the cave and go seek food, to tell you to pull your hand back when you are too close to the fire, and to make sure you aren't wasting those hard-earned calories on unnecessary efforting.

All that is good stuff, and just what we needed to survive and thrive in cave man days.

The problem is, for most of us, survival is no longer an issue.  As a society, we've pretty much resolved these issues.  So to go beyond mere survival and to thrive, we have to go against the constant chatter of our caveman brains.

I have a friend who refers to her caveman/primitive brain as a nervous assistant.  I think it's a great way to approach it.  Because that part of your mind wants to help.  It's trying to keep you safe.  But it's just one input, and we can choose to deal with it exactly as we would with a nervous assistant – to thank it for its concern, and then to explain that we are doing something different, and it's all ok.

Your primitive brain is going to try to keep you to sticking to just the motivational triad, but the good news is that it can't do anything without your consent.  So the more you listen to this voice and realize it is a part of you that means well but isn't on board with the plan, the more you can acknowledge it and move on.

You get to choose what you eat.  And that's very good news.  So let the primitive brain have it's motivational triad, and then you do what you need to do to hit your goals.

Avoid the holiday weight gain by working with a coach.  Email me at lisa@lisaduke.net to learn more.

Look at 3 key areas of life to lose weight.

P.S. It's time for your to lose the weight.  You absolutely can do this once you have the right support.  Jump on a Zoom call with me and we'll get you started.  Just find a time on my calendar.

Here's the actual text to the “what to do when we fall off the wagon” post.  Not sure what happened with the October 1 post.

P.S. It's time for your to lose the weight.  You absolutely can do this once you have the right support.  Jump on a Zoom call with me and we'll get you started.  Just find a time on my calendar.

Decisions ahead of time are the secret to the life we want.

We have two parts of our brain – the habit, or primitive brain, that wants to keep us safe but has some non-helpful ideas on how to do that, and the neocortex, the new, fancy, iPhone part of the brain that allows us access to our higher self and to the ability to plan for the future and to change our lives.

P.S. Are you ready to learn how to use the most modern part of your brain to get what you want from life?  Let's work together.  https://lisaduke.net/schedule

So how is the shame cycle keeping us overweight?

When we set a diet or exercise goal or plan, spoiler alert, we are human, and we ARE going to mess up from time to time.

When we do, many of us will then beat ourselves up with the belief that shaming ourselves is the right way to get us back on track.

And isn’t this what we were taught as kids?

If we did something wrong, we got yelled at, maybe even physically hit (if you call it spanking, that somehow makes it ok, right?), and this was supposed to make us do better in the future. So it makes sense we do the same thing mentally to ourselves to try to correct our behavior.

The problem is, mentally berating ourselves with negative self talk (like “you shouldn’t have eaten that”, or “you are so lazy, why did you skip your workout”) makes us feel awful.

And if you are overweight, you probably are in the habit of EATING to make yourself feel better.

So we eat something that’s not part of our plan, then we make ourselves feel terrible, then we go and eat a cookie to cheer ourselves up (often without consciously realizing what we are doing) and then we yell at ourselves for eating a cookie, and then we feel terrible.

See what’s happening here? It’s an unending loop and part of why we have such negative associations with trying to lose weight. The shame cycle feels terrible.

Instead of getting into this shame cycle, the best thing to do is treat that one off exception to our plan as exactly what it was – a one off exception to our plan. If we want, we can take the incident to our coach to understand what the thinking was that lead to the exception so we can learn from it and be onto ourselves next time.

But we let it go and just get right back on track.

What happened at lunch today does not need to have any effect on what we do at dinner tonight. We haven’t “ruined the whole day”. We don’t need to wait until Monday to start over. We just resent in this moment and go back to our plan.

Would working with a coach help you break the shame cycle and lose weight?  Let's jump on a call to see if my program is a fit for you.  https://lisaduke.net/schedule

So let’s talk a little about how your brain works.

There are different areas of your brain that evolved at different times and that have different objectives. It’s just confusing because they all sound like “you” in your head.

Your primitive brain wants to keep you safe, but what it thinks is safe is a very small life.

Your more evolved brain is the part that wants you to uplevel your life and achieve your dreams. That’s the part of your brain that wants you to lose weight.

What we do in coaching is become a scientist of your mind.

We sort of metaphorically put your brain on the table and look at it and study it together.

Is what the primitive brain offering you actually true?
Is what you do habitually getting you where you want to go?

Often you accept what your brain is telling you as the truth and just how the world is, but a coach can offer you an alternate perspective and help you poke holes in what your brain is offering you and help you see how that’s derailing you.

 Want to see for yourself how coaching works?  Let's find a time to chat. https://lisaduke.net/schedule

Once you set a goal and step out into a new way of thinking, feeling, and acting, you are going to feel discomfort.

Need a coach to help you manage your mind as you cross The River of Misery?  Schedule a complimentary initial consultation on my online calendar at https://lisaduke.net/schedule

Do you know how to achieve your weight loss goal?

There's a straightforward process to achieving your weight loss goal.

So let’s discuss how to create and achieve your goal. I’ll use the example of weight loss, but this process works for anything you want in life.

1. Get clear on where you are. What is your current weight?
2. Be honest about what you think about where you are. What do you think about the fact that you weigh what you currently do?
3. Now, take a moment to reflect on that statement. How does it make you feel?
4. When you are thinking that thought and feeling that way, what are the sorts of things you do? It might be snacking between meals or in front of the TV at night, eating sweets, or other behavior that has led to your current weight.
5. And then for the result, write your current weight again.

Now, go through the same process for your goal.

1. What would you like your weight to be?
2. What would you think about yourself once you achieved that goal weight?
3. How would you feel once you hit that goal and while you were thinking that thought?
4. What sorts of things is that new version of you doing? Maybe exercising and eating for fuel instead of fun? What is she NOT doing?
5. Then write your goal weight and the bottom of your model.

Once you can see the gap between where you are and where you want to be, the trick to achieving that goal is to step into that new version of yourself now, by thinking the thoughts and feeling the feelings that future you has. Then it will be easy and natural for you to do what the future version of you does.

Would you like to go through this process with me live for free?  That's exactly what I do on my free initial session.  After, if you are interested and if I feel you are a fit for my program, we can discuss the additional paid support I offer.  To schedule a time to do this, check out my calendar online at https://lisaduke.net/schedule.

Smile if you are eating in a way that doesn't spike up your insulin (at least most of the time).

One of the main hormones you need to understand if you want to lose weight is insulin.

Insulin is basically our body's response to sugar in the blood.

When we get a normal, natural amount of sugar, such as what's in fruit, our body goes to work moving that energy out of our blood and into our muscles and liver (to use as quick energy) and then into fat cells, to be stored for future use.

After storing all that sugar, insulin levels drop back down. Once they do, your body can use that energy in your muscles and your liver to do things like take you on a walk or power your brain while you think about this blog post.

When sugar gets used up and insulin is low, your body can then access stored fat for additional energy. It's like a second fuel tank for emergencies!

The problem is, if we overeat at every meal (without realizing it), eat lots of refined sugar and flour (which breaks down into sugar), and are almost constantly snacking, our insulin never drops down and our body never switches from fat storage mode to fat burning mode.

Now this is very much a layman's explanation, but thinking about what I was eating and when I was eating it with an understanding that I had to get out of fat storage mode and into fat burning mode helped me eat more veggies, lean protein, and plant-based fat, smaller portions, and helped me snack less.

So now let me ask you: do you think you’ll make changes to how you eat based on this new information? Do you think you might need support from a coach to make this change?

If you’d like to learn more about how I can support you in your weight loss journey, schedule a call with me to learn more.