5 Crucial Weight Loss Habits

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Full Episode Transcript:

5 Crucial Weight Loss Habits

Hello my ladies, welcome to the podcast. Let’s talk weight loss habits today. I have five for you that I think are crucial if you want to have healthy and effective weight loss that lasts longer than a couple of months.

Because you deserve to have weight loss that is something you’re easily able to sustain, and reap the benefits of for the rest of your life. I am not about going on quick diets to drop 20 pounds in two weeks.

If you know me, I am all about helping you develop habits, especially eating habits, that will end up benefiting you for life. In numerous different ways. Weight loss of course being one of them if that is your goal when it comes to getting control of your eating habits.

So first, I’m going to start with the most obvious one which is going to be getting control of eating habits, because of course that’s what this podcast show is all about. However, weight loss is more than just eating habits. As you will soon find out.

And definitely stay until the very end for this one because the 5th of these most crucial weight loss habits is really the one you have to develop in order to be able to implement the others I’m saving it for the end, because that’s just fun. I’ll be totally transparent here, I want you to listen to the entire episode, so that you understand what’s needed for weight loss and why and can actually get results.

Alright, so of course if you want to lose weight you need to be deliberate about what you are consuming, right? Weight loss in its most simplest form comes down to how many calories you are consuming, meaning how many calories are going in from food and drink versus how many calories you are burning.

So of course, you want to be in control of the food and drinks that you are consuming. That means, breaking out of any eating or even drinking habit cycles that you don’t feel in control of. Also, it means building some new ones that are more likely to help you reach your weight loss goals.

For example, you’re going to want to get out of any sort of overeating habits. You’re also going to want to get control of emotional eating if that is something that you find yourself doing often.

Remember, a habit is something that you have been doing so frequently in the same context meaning time, place or circumstance, that you do it automatically, without even really thinking about it.

So the goal here is to be intentional or deliberate about what you are consuming, rather than having that automaticity involved in habits be what is in control. When you have a habit, what happens is neural pathways have formed in your brain to make the behavior automatic and happen very quickly without even really thinking about it.

So to help get control of that, you have to weaken those neural pathways that have already formed and also you can form and strengthen any new neural pathways that you would like for healthier eating habits.

That’s my area of expertise.

When you get control of those eating habits, meaning weaken those neural pathways of the “bad” eating habits, and build new neural pathways for healthier eating habits, it’s easy to lose weight and maintain it, because your new eating habits are just what you do. It’s part of who you are. It’s your new identity.

You’re no longer someone who overeats every day, or eats a lot of sugar in response to stress, frustration, or worry. You are now someone who feeds her body really well, understands when she is full, doesn’t experience strong cravings that make her act upon those cravings, etc.

If you don’t get control of eating habits and you’re trying to lose weight, it’s going to be very difficult to maintain any weight loss. Also, what commonly occurs, is people will continue with their eating habits that were contributing to the weight gain in the first place and think that they just need to exercise it all off.

It takes a lot of time and a lot of energy to exercise bad eating habits away. You would be running miles and miles a day. Trust me, I’ve already been through this myself.

In my 20s, I did not have great eating habits and I was running a lot, and still gaining weight. It just doesn’t work very well. You have to change your eating habits. You also have to do some of the things that I still have yet to discuss in this episode.

All right, so the next of the five crucial weight loss habits is you must drink water. You can’t just drink caffeinated beverages. There’s lots of reasons why you shouldn’t be doing this. One of which is that caffeine dehydrates you. So, you feel like you’re drinking fluids, however you’re ending up dehydrated, because caffeine inhibits the anti-diuretic hormone.

That means, how much and how often you urinate is dysregulated. This causes you to urinate more fluids out than you should be. Leaving the rest of your body with a lack of fluid.

You also want to be drinking water over any sort of fruit juice or soda or other sugary beverage, because if you’re trying to lose weight, and you’re drinking fluids with calories, it’s just going to be harder.

Now why do you want to be drinking plenty of water in the first place? How does that help you lose weight? Well, I’ll tell you. Without water, your body cannot properly metabolize stored fat or metabolize carbohydrates. So that means the carbohydrates don’t get burned and used as energy, and the stored fat stays stored.

Another reason why drinking water can help you lose weight is that it may help to burn more calories while you’re active and at rest according to at least one study.

Also, water increases your energy levels, which helps to motivate you to want to move and exercise. That will help you to burn more calories. And certainly, moving and exercising has lots of other benefits, besides just burning calories.

So how much water should you be drinking a day? For the average-sized female, you should be drinking about eight to ten 8-ounce glasses a day. Make it 10 if it’s hot and you’re sweating a lot, or if you’re exercising and sweating.

Do this every day. To help you get into the habit of doing it, put your water in a brightly colored bottle or a water bottle that is visually appealing to you, and put it in a location that you’re going to see it often.

This acts as a trigger or cue or prompt to do the behavior of drinking the water. Your brain actually needs this to make it more likely that you’ll carry through with the behavior.

Also, I recommend thinking about how that water really benefits your body right after you drink it. Doing this helps to motivate your brain to want to do the behavior of drinking the water again. If your brain sees something positive from the behavior itself, it’ll be more likely to want to continue it, making it more likely to become a habit.

Next on the list for the five crucial weight loss habits is stress relief. So of course, stress relief sounds lovely, right but how is it helpful for weight loss. What happens when you’re stressed, is that you have a release of cortisol. This is a normal biological response that we actually want to occur in stressful situations, because it can help us to survive.

However, lots of the stressful situations these days are not situations that are actually putting us in danger. Also, we tend to be chronically stressed, meaning we are in a state of stress for long periods of time, days in a row. It’s this chronic stress that can lead to weight gain. Studies show it can cause overeating. The chronically high cortisol levels can also cause increased cravings for sweet, salty, and fatty foods. Typically, higher calorie foods.

Stress also is uncomfortable in general so we tend to want to eat more to decrease that discomfort and increase pleasure. Hence, stress eating, which is just one of the many emotions involved in emotional eating. Among career women, it’s a very common one.

So decreasing your overall stress levels so that you’re not chronically stressed, can help you to lose weight. And of course, has other benefits. Who wants to feel chronically stressed all the time?

I remember when I was feeling chronically stressed, I felt like I was about to jump out of my skin all of the time. I got irritated more often. I felt like everything was a bigger deal than it really was. I also wasn’t able to enjoy things as much as I do now, being much less stressed. I still have moments of stress, who doesn’t? But I’m not chronically stressed.

Okay, next up on the list of five crucial weight loss habits, is better sleep habits. There have been lots of studies on the effect of sleep and your body weight, so I’m going to share some data with you.

Several studies show that a lack of sleep and from what I found a lack of sleep was less than 7 hours a night, affects the hunger hormones, ghrelin and leptin. It may increase ghrelin which makes you feel more hungry and it may decrease leptin which makes you feel full. So, you may have more hunger signals and less feelings of satiety or fullness. Ultimately resulting in overeating.

Lack of sleep can increase cravings for sweet and fatty foods. When we work together in 1:1 coaching, I teach you how to not react to cravings that you experience so that overtime the cravings actually decrease and even when they occur, you are easily in control of them and don’t react to them by eating.

However, if you have not learned the skill yet, when you experience cravings you’re going to be much more likely to act upon them and end up eating the sweets and the fatty foods. Certainly not helping with weight loss.

Not that you can never eat these foods again if you are trying to lose weight, that’s not true at all, but you want to be in complete control and not be eating these foods due to random cravings.

So, onto a little data. There was actually an analysis of 20 studies which included at least 300,000 study participants, revealing that the risk of obesity in adults who slept fewer than seven hours a night increased by 41%.

On a side note, you want that sleep to be good quality as well and not be waking up constantly, tossing and turning, and not really getting back to sleep very easily.

What can also happen when you have poor sleep is that it may affect the central nervous system negatively by potentially increasing cortisol, which I had just mentioned earlier as having an effect on your weight.

Interestingly, it’s also suggested that food might also be seen as more rewarding with poor sleep so whenever something is more rewarding, our brains are more likely to do that something. So if your brain is seeing eating a certain food as being more rewarding (because of lack of sleep), you’re going to be more likely to eat that food.

Also, if you stay up late and wake up early, meaning you are getting only a few hours of sleep, because you’re awake for more hours you’re more likely to consume more total calories. You’re not likely to make up for that calorie consumption with calorie expenditure meaning burning of calories.

So typically, the more hours you’re awake for, the more likely you’ll have a calorie surplus, which ends up overtime causing weight gain.

There’s even more I can say about how sleep affects your weight, however I want to get to the last of the five crucial weight loss habits, which I believe is the key to truly reaching your weight loss goals. Of course, besides the eating habits.

Alright so you ready? This one’s actually a fun one. You have to have the belief that you actually can lose weight and can reach even your biggest weight loss goals. Simple as that. I could probably do an entire episode on this, but I’m going to shorten it for the purpose of not going for another hour.

Your belief is what you tell yourself. It’s your thoughts about the possibility and the probability that you’ll reach your goals. Humans love to sit in probability instead of possibility. Probability is past-focused and our brain loves to focus on the past and use it as evidence. It’s safer that way, or so our brain believes. Possibility is future focused. It hasn’t happened yet, therefore our brain doesn’t really have the evidence that it thinks it needs.

Belief means that you don’t need to have that evidence. If you only did things based on past evidence, you would never try new things right? You wouldn’t set new goals and reach those goals. You would just stay stuck. Stuck in the past. Stuck on failures. Stuck on past experiences that could easily go differently this time.

The human brain loves to sort of sabotage a lot of your goals and dreams because it loves to just keep you safe from trying something new. Your brain loves to question you and have doubt. It loves to keep you cozy where you are and keep you doing the things that you’ve been doing, because it’s done a good job of forming those habits.

You may even be in the habit of telling yourself that you can’t really lose the weight that you want to. You may be in the habit of telling yourself that you’ll never change your eating habits. You may be in the habit of telling yourself that every time you try to lose weight, you always gain it back.

These are normal human brain things, so if you don’t want to believe your brain any longer on these things, you don’t have to. Your brain loves to just give you some suggestions that it thinks you should follow, and you don’t have to.

Instead, you can choose new beliefs, new thoughts.

What’s the benefit of that besides it being more enjoyable to have beliefs that you can do something you want to do? It affects your feelings, actions and results. Here’s how.

If you have the belief that you can lose 30 pounds and keep it off, think about that right now, or whatever your weight loss goal is, and really focus on that thought, that belief right now. How does your body feel right now when you hold belief? Do you feel motivated? Do you feel energized? Do you feel courageous? What do you feel?

I guarantee you if you truly have that belief, you will feel an emotion that feels really powerful and drives you to want to do the actions that you need to take to lose the weight. That belief releases you from feeling stuck and frustrated and like it’s not possible. It helps propel you forward by generating that great feeling within you, which then drives the actions that need to be taking to get the weight loss result you want.

The next thing that needs to happen is you need to keep that belief, no matter what. Stay committed to yourself and your goals no matter what. That’s where people will have a little bit of difficulty, which is why it’s very helpful having a coach like me who can help keep you on that belief train, until that belief is a habit and until you’ve reached your goals and have the skills to easily maintain them.

Holding belief is so powerful and it’s such a fun habit to work on because it feels so good. Who doesn’t want to think about their biggest goals and have 100% belief that they’ll achieve them?

The beautiful thing is, once you understand how to create belief and create it anytime you want, you can use that to reach any goal you want, outside of weight loss goals. It can help with any career goals or relationship goals or any other personal or professional goals. It allows you to increase feeling confident.

I’ve used it in my life to not only reach health and body related goals, but also to reach career and business goals. I believe it also helped me to attract my husband, Paul and have the relationship with him that I always wanted with a spouse.

I know you’re ready to lose the weight you really want to and change your life in a way that will have you never looking back and loving the new person that you become.

So sign up for a free consult and you and I will talk about where you’re struggling, where you’d really love to be as far as your weight loss goals and any other goals, and I’ll give you a bit of a “road map” on how we can get you there together.

No matter what you end up deciding, you will leave with a more clear idea of how you can get closer to your goals and I can even give you some tips to help.

Just visit here: https://katemjohnston.com/consult

Take care, thanks for joining in today and I’ll talk with you soon.