How to Break a Bad Habit

How to Break a Bad Habit

Feb 4, 2022

Train yourself to lose bad habits.

 I work a lot with clients at the beginning of our engagement on how to create new, positive habits, but for many clients, breaking bad habits goes hand in hand with creating good habits.

If you remember the story of Pavlov’s dogs, they were trained that when a bell rang, they would get fed. So after enough repetition, they learned to start drooling as soon as the bell rang, because that meant dinner was on the way.

So having trained them to drool when they hear the bell, how do we train them to stop?

The answer is, you ring the bell and you don’t feed the dogs. You still have the cue of the bell ringing, but you don’t allow the behavior or the reward.

It’s the same with humans. If you currently have a habit that every time you walk through the kitchen you get a snack, you’ll need to provide the cue, but not engage in the behavior and not get the reward.

And instead of resisting the urge, you need to just allow it. Allow yourself to feel the emotion of wanting to engage in the behavior and not giving in to it.

It won’t be fun, but it won’t last long, and it goes a long way toward breaking the habit.

 Are you ready to get coached?  Schedule a time to get started by clicking here.

The Vodka Trick

The Vodka Trick

Jan 28, 2022

Most of my weight loss clients are trying to cut down on refined sugar, since we all know sugar has a lot of empty calories.

Now, I believe, and there’s a good amount of research that shows, that sugar is addictive, so it’s important to know how addictable you are before you try this trick. For some people, any sugar at all sets off their addiction and cravings, so this may not work for everyone. But if you aren’t super addictable and you want to cut down on your sugar without completely eliminating it, this trick may help you moderate your consumption.

What I want you to do is go through and tell me everything you ate today, but if the food you are eating is sugar or has sugar in it, substitute the word vodka.

So here’s an example to a day with a moderate amount of sugar.

1. Black coffee – skip breakfast (intermittent fasting)
2. Lunch – salad with protein (chicken) and fat (vinaigrette dressing)
3. Dinner – fish with veggies, then vodka.

In this case, the “vodka” was a piece of chocolate mousse cake.

So for me, if I eat clean all week and then eat that way once on the weekend, I can still have a little sugar and lose weight.

Now imagine a typical America’s day.

“I got up this morning and put two tablespoons of vodka in my coffee”. Right there, your friends would be concerned.

Now add in all the sugary pastries, the mid-afternoon vending machine, desert every night – we see there’s a problem.

So if you are the kind of person who can eat sugar in moderation and wants to continue to do so, there’s a mental trick to help you balance how much you have and how often you have it.

 Are you ready to get coached?  Schedule a time to get started by clicking here.

Treasure Coast Weight University

Treasure Coast Weight University

Jan 21, 2022

Losing weight on the Treasure Coast – from Sebastian to Palm Beach.

 

Are you a Treasure Coast resident who is looking to lose weight?  Local weight coach Lisa Duke can help you meet your weight loss goals from her office in Stuart, Florida.

Whether you are a Florida native or you just moved to the area, the fact is that living on the Treasure Coast means – for better or for worse – that it's always shorts weather.

In fact, whether you live in Palm City or Port St. Lucie, pool parties in paradise are a perk and a peril of our endless summer.

If you are tired of declining invitations from friends because you are self-conscious about how you look, weight coach Lisa Duke can help.  With her new signature program, Weight University, Lisa teaches the 12 concepts and 3 skills that she used to lose 50 pounds.

So if you are ready to go sleeveless at the beach (or just in downtown Jensen Beach), consider scheduling a time to chat with Lisa Duke about your weight loss goals.  She can help you with a unique and innovative approach to help you clear the blocks and limiting beliefs that have stopped you from keeping yourself at your goal weight in the past.

 Are you ready to get coached?  Schedule a time to get started by clicking here.

3 Strategies to Choose From For Weight Loss

3 Strategies to Choose From For Weight Loss

Jan 14, 2022

You can lose weight while still enjoying life – and food.

 I wanted to share 3 great strategies that you can choose from while designing your own weight loss plan.  You don't have to use all (or even any) of these, but they are tactics that have worked for me.

1.  Skip breakfast during the week.

Breakfast is only the most important meal of the day when you are trying to generate profits for a cereal company.  Otherwise, you may be able to cut it out and never even miss it.

I usually skip breakfast during the week, and then we often go out for breakfast on the weekends.  Even then, we try to delay breakfast so it can work more as lunch and then I can have an eating break between that meal and dinner.

 2.  Cut out all snacking.

Snacking between meals keeps your insulin high, which keeps you in fat storage mode. 

Often people advise snacking between meals to stave off hunger, but for most of my clients, hunger has zero to do with when they are eating or how much they are eating, so it's a moot point.

Snacking after dinner is also just junk calories.  You can't possibly be hungry – you just ate what is most likely your biggest meal for the day.  Figure out what is driving this eating.  Is it a habit you can break?  Are you just restless?  If so, can you deal with your restlessness by allowing it or doing a substitute activity, like having tea or doing a craft project?

3. Take half home.

When you do eat out, plan to put half your food in a to go box.  Restaurant portions are ridiculously huge.  You can go, eat half, be satisfied, and have a “free” meal for tomorrow that will still be yummy then.

 

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.

 

One Question to Help You Lose Weight

One Question to Help You Lose Weight

Jan 7, 2022

Ask, answer, and then make a different choice.

 

Ready for one question that could change your weight?

 

There's one question you aren't asking yourself before you eat, that, if you ask it, could solve your weight issue immediately.

Ready for the question you need to be asking yourself?

The magic question is:  am I hungry?

Whut?

I know, right?

The average American woman is completely out of touch with her body and its signals.

We were raised to clean our plates and not to waste food – to get our money's worth.

But what about if instead of worrying about getting our money's worth and the state of our membership in the clean plate club we were to pay attention to our body's signals more?

Am I hungry?  If not, why am I eating this?

You might be eating for pleasure, which I get, but which may not be compatible with your goal of looking like someone who eats for fuel instead of for fun.

On a darker note, you may be eating to make yourself feel better.  Again, I get it, but if there is a problem in your life so serious you need to drug yourself with an outside substance in order to deal with it, it's time to change your life and/or your thinking about your life and/or how we deal with unpleasant feelings.

These are all things I could help you with as your coach. 

Let's get started today.

Ready to learn how I can help you lose weight?  Email me at lisa@lisaduke.net and we'll jump on a Zoom call and chat.

 

What Happens When You Get Weight Coaching

What Happens When You Get Weight Coaching

Dec 25, 2021

Understanding the Client Lifecycle

 

Most of my clients follow a similar path as they work with me to lose weight.  Here's what to expect.

 Each client is different and my coaching is custom, so I meet each client where they are, and not all of them follow this pattern.  For example, Sabrena came in, lost 20 pounds in two months, and THEN freaked out.  But here are the normal client lifecycle phases.

1.  Let's talk about food and exercise.

This is where most clients start, because for most clients this is where they believe the problem is.  And this is what diets teach us, right?  The first steps are usually cleaning up the diet and starting an exercise regime.

I don't share my clients' confidence that this is the issue or these are the solutions, but I do take advantage of this initial burst of energy and enthusiasm to support them in making a few changes.

We talk about everything I've learned about the science of habit creation to help them make some changes – changes that THEY choose (because we all basically already know what we should be doing).

2.  After two or three weeks, their enthusiasm for whatever they've put into place starts to wane.  This is where we quit when we start on our own (hello, New Year's resolutions).  But this is where I as a coach really start to swing into gear. 

 

There's a saying in ThetaHealing – the problem is never the problem.  And usually this is the phase where the truth comes out.  Clients are overeating because they feel bad and they are using food as a mood altering drug.  So we start talking about why they feel bad.  For many clients they are mad at their husbands, their adult children, or stressed out because of their jobs.  We dive into the thinking that is driving how they are feeling.

3.  This phase kicks in around week 6-8.  The client has dealt with some of their underlying issues, and they are feeling more in control.  We've done some coaching, and identified and broken some of their patterns (seeing patterns is one of my personal superpowers that really helps clients).  Now the clients have cleared the decks and are really ready to begin again in earnest.  This is where the weight loss truly begins.

4.  The next two months the weight comes off at about a pound a week.  Of course free will is a thing and everyone is different, but clients usually lose about 8 pounds during this phase.  That plus a pound or two at the beginning of the program brings their total weight loss for the 4 month initial engagement to 10 pounds, which is enough that they've usually dropped a size, and someone they know has said something to them, so they know they are getting results. 

At this point we usually decide if they want to continue on their own or if we want to continue to work together, but clients can see they have made a change, and they have tools and concepts they can take with them for life.

Ready to get your own results?  Email me at lisa@lisaduke.net and we'll jump on a Zoom to make sure my program is right for you.

 

 

The Motivational Triad & How It Keeps Us Overweight

The Motivational Triad & How It Keeps Us Overweight

Dec 18, 2021

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.

 

 

3 Keys to Weight Loss

3 Keys to Weight Loss

Dec 11, 2021

Look at 3 key areas of life to lose weight.

There are three main areas I suggest clients examine and better understand to lose weight.

1.  Habits.

Are you in the habit of eating every time you pass through the kitchen?  Every time you are in a restaurant?  Every time someone has food on their desk and you pass by?  Start to pay attention to the times we are eating even though we are not hungry, and cut out some of this habit eating.

Some of my clients find breakfast is just a habit – that they aren't hungry, and that they can cut a whole meal out without even noticing.

By starting to pay attention to mindless habit eating and by asking more questions about why we are eating when not hungry, we can start to break a lot of bad habits.

2.  Hormones.

The main hormone I educate my clients on is insulin.

When we have a lot of refined sugar, our blood sugar shoots up, and insulin answers the 911 call.  Our body starts to move sugar out of the blood and into our muscles and liver.  Then it starts to store the excess sugar as fat.

If you are constantly snacking on sugary food (or refined carbohydrates, which quickly break down into sugar), your insulin stays permanently high and you stay stuck in fat storage mode.

By eliminating sugar and refined carbohydrates (factory foods) and by eliminating snacks between meals, your body gets a chance to shift out of fat storage mode and into fat loss mode.

3.  How your mind works.

This is where the coaching really comes into play.  Using tools like The Model, I can help clients get a better understanding of what thoughts and feelings are driving their overeating, which is leading to being overweight. 

Once we stop the mindless habit eating, take breaks between meals to allow the body to actually burn fat, and cut out emotional eating by getting to the root cause of the thoughts and feelings driving emotional eating, clients are able to lose weight without going hungry.

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.

 

What to Do When We Fall Off The Wagon (Actual Text)

What to Do When We Fall Off The Wagon (Actual Text)

Dec 4, 2021

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.

So let’s talk about what happens when we “fall off the wagon” and how to get going again.

First, I think it’s important to note that there is no wagon. This isn’t Oregon Trail, and you are not going to get left behind or die of dysentery. So no worries there.

But seriously, what do we do?

I think the most important thing to realize is that in the moment of awareness you have an opportunity to make a new choice. No one is perfect, and you don’t have to be perfect to lose weight. Just acknowledge that you ate off plan, and then forgive yourself.

Realize that you did the best you could in that moment. Your weight today is a reflection of your best attempts to deal with life up until now with the tools you had. Now, you are learning new tools if you are working with me as a client, such as The Model and allowing emotions, that will help you make different choices going forward.

We often were trained growing up that a good scolding is what you need to get back on track, but there’s actually lots of evidence that you can’t hate yourself to sustainable weight loss. So just let that go.


So my best advice for getting back on the wagon is just to take a moment, take a breath, and reset. Make your plan in writing for the next 24 hours, and make it realistic. Then recommit and move on.

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.