Celebrating = Overeating?

Celebrating = Overeating?

Sep 17, 2021

Overeating is not a requirement of celebration.

 My client Lindsay had a common cultural association between overeating and celebrating.

 

This goes way back, to a time when food was scarce and being able to really eat with abandon would have been very rare.

This was also a time when gluttony was one of the Seven Deadly Sins, so even those few who could afford to overeat all the time had some social and religious pressure not to do so.

Now, if you truly celebrate a few times a year (say, even once a quarter or once a month), you can probably leave that cultural link in place.  It's so infrequent it may not be undermining your ability to lose weight.

 But after coaching with Lindsay for a few months, I noticed she celebrated A LOT.  Like, at least every 7-10 days.

Again, nothing wrong with that. Like Oprah says, live your best life.

But when you are overeating every 7-10 days because you are celebrating every 7-10 days and in your mind celebrating requires overindulging… well, that's going to interfere with your ability to lose weight.

 Once we noticed the pattern and brought it to the light, Lindsay was willing to let go of the story that celebration and overeating had to be linked.  And that's been a big part of her ability to stop overeating and start losing weight.

Are you ready to bring in an outside expert to get some perspective on how your brain and your habits are interfering with your ability to lose weight?  If so, click here to schedule a call and learn more.

 

Maybe You Can’t Lose Weight.

Maybe You Can’t Lose Weight.

Sep 10, 2021

There's a skinny future version of you.  Do you know how to get to her?

 

I sometimes talk to people who secretly believe they can't lose weight.  They are convinced there's something wrong with them. And they are absolutely right.

 

This version of you probably can't lose weight.

This version of you has been gaining a little bit of weight tiny amount by tiny amount for years.

Without a major interruption to the pattern – without a shift to the status quo – this version of you likely will continue doing what you have always done, and therefore will continue getting what you are getting now.

BUT.

While this future version of you (that's just a rinse and repeat version of present you) is the most likely future version of you, it's not the only possible future version of you.

Imagine all these future versions of you in front of you like outfits in your closet.

Quantum possibilities.  They all exist as potentials until we choose.

Which one are you going to step into?

You can absolutely remake yourself on your own for free.  People do it all the time.

But I will tell you as someone who has reinvented herself a few times – it's easier with a mentor.

We went from refinancing the house every few years to pay off the credit cards (and then running the credit cards back up) to a current net worth of over $2,000,000 with a mentor.

I went from a bottle a night wine habit to not drinking at all (and not missing it) with the help of a role model.

I went from overeating (and not believing I was overeating) to eating in a way that fuels my body – and leaves me to deal with my mind and emotions using the non-food tools I now have – with a leader to follow.

You can do it on your own, but it's so much easier to make the choice to switch from your default future to your dream future with a mentor.  And a mindset coach who has done what you want to do makes an excellent mentor, due to not just her experience, but also her ability to show you your mind and where it's getting in the way.

 If you are tired of wasting time and ready for a change, let's work together.

Click here to schedule a call for a free session.

 

 

When to Eat to Lose Weight

When to Eat to Lose Weight

Aug 6, 2021

Wondering what to eat to lose weight?  This may be the wrong question. Your body needs a break between meals.

 

Traditionally in the US we’ve only paid attention to what we are eating to lose weight and how much we are eating to lose weight, but WHEN we are eating is important as well. 

If you pay attention to Dr. Jason Fung’s work on weight loss, he discusses the power of intermittent fasting and why it works so well. 

When we eat, our blood sugar goes up and insulin rides in to the rescue.  Insulin puts us into fat storage mode to get all that sugar out of the blood. 

When we are constantly snacking, we stay permanently in fat storage mode.

Taking an eating break allows the insulin to drop and our body to go into fat burning mode.  That’s why so many people now are seeing results with intermittent fasting. 

Even if your total calorie intake is the same, having a smaller eating window and allowing a break without eating between lunch and dinner lets your body utilize the fat you’ve stored for just such an occasion.

So while what to eat to lose weight is an important question, it may be that WHEN we are eating is equally important.

Ready to learn all the weight loss tips and tricks I used to lose 50 pounds?  Hire me!  Schedule a free initial consultation by clicking on this sentence.

 

 

How to Assess Your Progress

How to Assess Your Progress

Jul 5, 2021

Give yourself credit for the wins – even the non-scale victories (NSVs).

When you are working to lose weight, it is important to recognize and celebrate your non-scale victories (NSVs).  Celebrating the small wins keeps you on track for the long haul.  Here's how to track those non-scale victories.

I suggest you do a check in each week to assess your progress. 

For this evaluation (which I learned from Stacey Boehman), you will ask 3 questions.

1.      What’s working?

This question forces your mind to focus on the positive first, which is something most of us don’t do.  Celebrating non-scale victories, like a pair of pants from the back of your closet magically fitting again to going up a flight of stairs without being winded, can help give you the fuel you need for the long haul.

It’s important to recognize and celebrate your wins to help you stay encouraged and to lock in those changes. From this optimistic place, we can then ask:

2.     What isn’t working?

It’s important to be honest about what isn’t working.  But don’t use this as an opportunity to beat yourself up.  Use it as a chance to troubleshoot.  Look at what’s not working objectively, as if it were a puzzle to solve.  How can you overcome the obstacle?

3.     What do you want to do differently?

As you move forward from this week, what changes can you implement to support your progress?

Recognizing non-scale victories and celebrating them helps your primitive brain understand that it did something good, which helps lock in that behavior as a new habit. 

Ready for professional help?  Click here to talk to me about how coaching can help you. 

Planning as a Weight Loss Tool

Planning as a Weight Loss Tool

Jun 4, 2021

Planning is a great weight loss tool I use to help women over 40 lose weight with more ease.

 

One of the practices I encourage my clients to adopt is planning their food the day before they will eat it.  So for example, on Sunday they plan and document what they will eat Monday.

 

What does planning as a weight loss tool do for them?

 

It helps engage the pre-frontal part of the brain, the neocortex, which is our most evolved part of the brain.  This is the part of the brain that is responsible for long term planning.  And THAT part of your brain is the part that wants to lose weight.  You want that part of your brain making the decisions about what kind of foods you will eat, what size portions you will have, what time of day you will eat, and how frequently you will eat– all factors that control whether we lose weight or gain weight when we eat.

 

The other advantage of planning your meals a day ahead is that it gives you time to come up with options.  If you think about lunch today for the first time at 2 PM today, you may not have many choices.  But when we thought about lunch today YESTERDAY, that gives us time to go to the store and make sure we have healthy options available.

 

If you are looking for more weight loss tools, strategies, and tips (or if you know what to do and just can't get yourself to do it), I'm here.  I can help.  Planning as a weight loss tool is only one of the approaches that help my clients lose weight with more ease.

Schedule a free initial consultation today at https://lisaduke.net/schedule.

 

How Tracking Helps with Weight Loss

How Tracking Helps with Weight Loss

May 31, 2021

One thing that I see in both money management and weight management is the importance of tracking.

 

One of the most powerful tools we have is awareness.  Many of our habits are subconscious, and when they are we have very little power over them.  By focusing our awareness on those behaviors, we can start to see what we are doing and why we are doing it.

 

Seeing what we are doing is the first step to being able to change it.  That’s why I always tell my money management clients to track their spending and their weight loss clients to track both their weight and what they are eating.  Then you will start to get clarity on what is working for you and what is not.

 

So start tracking your weight and writing down what you eat all day, and notice the thoughts and feelings that come up for you as you do so.

Are you ready to start tracking your weight and your food so you can look and feel the way you want to?  I've lost 50 pounds and I can help you do the same.  Email me at lisa@lisaduke.net to learn more.

 
Why You Act Against Your Best Intentions

Why You Act Against Your Best Intentions

May 30, 2021

Master your mindset to take control of your weight.

 

You know in a cartoon how a character will have a little angel on one shoulder and a little devil on the other shoulder?  Have you had a similar experience, where maybe you want both to pay off debt AND to buy some cute shoes, or you want both to lose weight AND to eat a sleeve of Thin Mints?  Well, today I’m going to tell you why this happens and what to do about it.

 

We tend to think of our mind as one voice, that is “me”.  But in fact, science has now shown that often different areas of the brain have their own consciousness, all of which speak in that same internal voice.

 

So your neocortex, the newest, most evolved part of the brain, sets an intention to lose weight.  That involves short term pain in exchange for the long term pleasure of being at your goal weight.

 

At the same time, your primitive brain may see the cue of the pantry and think “I want a cookie”.  Or it might have the cue of finishing dinner, and send the message of “I’d like just a little something sweet.”  Because your primitive brain wants short term pleasure at the expense of the log term pleasure.

 

So the good news is, it’s not you, you aren’t broken – it’s just the way your brain is wired.

 

So what do we do about it?  We have to allow the urge to weaken the primitive brain’s urge-reward pathway by allowing, rather than fighting, the urge.

Ready to learn more about how you can use your brain to remake your body?  Email me at lisa@lisaduke.net to learn more.

Why You Have Intense Urges to Eat

Why You Have Intense Urges to Eat

May 29, 2021

If you’ve been trying to lose weight, you are probably trying to eat less, but you are probably also finding you have some really intense urges to eat.  Why is that?

 

Mainstream society tells us that it’s because you are bad or weak, and that you just need to use willpower to control yourself.  But that’s not the reason and not the solution.  The real reason is that our food today is specifically engineered to hit the pleasure centers in our brain in a super intense way that we are not equipped to deal with.

 

This engineered food creates overpleasure, which creates overdesire. 

 

Over time your brain learns to turn down the dopamine to a level you are more designed for, but you still want that same pleasure.  So you eat more and more of these factory foods that contain sugar and flour.  It’s the same process as what happens to a drug addict, just in a legal package.

 

So, if you want to reduce these urges, you have to learn how to allow them.

 Ready to reach your weight loss goals?  Email me at lisa@lisaduke.net to learn more about how I can support you.

 

 

 

How to Allow An Urge

How to Allow An Urge

May 28, 2021

Healthy in your mind, healthy in your body.

The key to stopping your brain from going down and down the neural pathway of overeating is to remove the reward, but NOT by resisting the urge and pushing it down.  When we do that, the urge just gets stronger.

 

So the way to stop overeating is to start to pay attention – to notice the urge – and then to allow the urge rather than resisting it.

 

Resisting is what we are usually told do to, but it doesn’t work, as the urge just gets stronger.  Plus it requires willpower, and research shows we only have a limited amount of willpower.

 

What you have to do instead is ALLOW the urge.

 

An urge is just a thought/feeling combination.  A thought can’t hurt you, and you can feel any feeling without permanent damage.  So the next time you feel an urge, instead of reinforcing it with a reward or pushing it away, get curious and really mentally move toward it.  Open up to it.  Close your eyes and feel the feeling in your body.  Is it hard or soft?  Fast or slow?  When you visualize it in your mind’s eye, what color is it?

 

When you observe the feeling, you instantly get a bit of relief – a bit of detachment from the feeling.  And if you can just allow the urge and feel the feeling, you’ll feel it will pass within just a few seconds to minutes. 

 

Allowing the urge without answering it actually causes the neural pathway to become “grown over”.  If you allow enough urges, they will stop coming altogether.

 

If you are ready to manage your mind, your weight, or your money with a long term view, contact me to schedule a free initial conversation.  We'll go over where you are, where you want to go, and develop a plan to get you there.

How to Stop Overeating

How to Stop Overeating

May 27, 2021

Is your future self at your ideal weight?

Did you know you can hack your brain to stop overeating?

To understand how to hack your brain, you have to understand a bit about two of the parts of your brain, the primitive brain, and the neocortex.

 

The primitive brain is the part of the brain that generates the urge, but on its own it can’t do anything.

 

All your power lies with the neocortex, the newest part of the brain, who gets to decide whether or not to give in to the urge and reward it.

 

Now if you’ve read the story of Pavlov’s dogs – or even if you just have a dog – you know the way we reinforce a behavior is to reward it.

 

So every time your primitive brain says “cookies” and your neocortex rewards it with a cookie, that neural pathway – the trail in your brain – gets stronger and stronger. 

 

The key to stopping your brain from going down and down that neural pathway is to remove the reward, but NOT by resisting the urge and pushing it down.  When we do that, the urge just gets stronger.

 

So the way to stop overeating is to start to pay attention – to notice the urge – and then to allow the urge rather than resisting it.

 

An urge is just a feeling, so we are going to feel the feeling by moving toward it with curiosity and openness.  What does it feel like in your body?

You will find the urge will just pass within about 90 seconds. 

 

The more you just allow yourself to feel that feeling, the less you will reinforce the behavior and the less strong the urge will be.

Are you ready to improve your health or finances?  Let's talk live to see if you'd be a fit for one of my programs. Schedule a call at https://lisaduke.net/schedule 

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