Thought Habits and Your Results

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• 5 Crucial Weight Loss Habits
• Why Willpower Fails
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Full Episode Transcript:

Thought Habits and Your Results

Hi there, welcome to the podcast. I created this entire podcast show to change your future, but this episode on thought habits and your results, is the episode that is a must-listen and will potentially make the most impact on your future going forward.

As a coach, thought habits are one of my most favorite things to talk about because it is life changing. Thought habits are just thoughts that you have been thinking so frequently that they have become habitual. Just like actions can become habits, thoughts can also become habits.

In this episode, you’ll see how thoughts cause your results ultimately. You’ll also see how if you’ve been having certain thought habits, you’re of course going to be stuck with certain results.

Before I dive in, I want to invite you to the free workshop I’m hosting via zoom on Weight Loss Mindset on February 28th at 7:00 PM Eastern Time. More specifically the mindset that is absolutely crucial to getting the weight loss results that you truly desire.

After listening to this episode, you’ll get a little bit of a taste of how your thought habits, your mindset, affects your results. This workshop will really dive in to more of the thought habits (mindset) needed specifically for weight loss results.

If you cannot make the workshop live, as long as you’re signed up, you will get the replay emailed to you the very next morning. But, you have to watch it within two to three days, because I will be setting the replay link to expire. The reason why I’m doing this, is because this helps you to do the action you intended to do. To watch the replay.

If you know that it’s going to disappear, you will be more likely to NOT put off watching it. I don’t want you to put it off watching it, because it will help you lose weight. It’s the piece you’re missing. It’s not just about the actions. It’s about your thoughts, your mindset.

To sign up, you’ll see the link on the episode page. Or you can visit https://katemjohnston.com/workshop

Alright, if you feel like you have been doing all the things to try to get the results you want, whether that be weight loss results or just quitting or decreasing your sugar intake, getting control of emotional eating, whatever it may be, what I explain to you in this episode will shift everything for you.

As an eating habit and weight loss coach, I know that one of your biggest problems as far as why you haven’t been getting the results you truly want, is that you’re trying to just control your actions.

For example, you’re trying to eat less food, eat less sugar, look at food labels and make healthier choices. You’re trying to eat more vegetables and chicken breast. You’re trying to eat less takeout or drink less soda. Notice how these are all actions. They’re all verbs, right? Eat less, look at food labels, drink less, eat more, etc.

Of course you do these things, but why does it feel so hard to just do the things you know will get you the results you want? Because of how you feel. It’s easy to do these things when you feel motivated. When you feel compelled. When you feel in the mood. When you feel inspired. When you feel disciplined. But are you feeling these things most of the time? So that you make healthy decisions most of the time that will bring you closer to your goals?

It’s hard to feel all these feelings that drive the actions you want to be taking when there are outside factors. Outside factors like your work schedule, your social schedule, other people, a long day at work, the weather, seeing tempting foods.

So if you’re having a hard time with sticking to the actions that you need to be taking to get the results you want, I completely get it. There are a lot of outside factors that affect how you feel.

But, what I’m going to share with you in this episode is that you have more control over how you feel than you think. And these outside factors aren’t really what are affecting how you feel. new line this is great news because those outside factors don’t actually have a direct effect on your results.

You might believe that they do. They really don’t though. You can be influenced by outside factors, but you still have full control over how you feel, what you do, and the results that you experience, because you have a human brain. And that human brain allows you to think.

Your thoughts about the outside factors generate the feelings or emotions in your body.

Said differently, something occurs in the outside world and you then have a thought about that, which generates a feeling or emotion in your body. Feelings or emotions, I use those terms interchangeably, are what determine our actions, reactions, or inactions. Then of course, your actions, reactions or inactions result in something.

So, if we’re talking about weight loss, the result would either be that you lose weight, stay the same, or gain weight. Those three results are dependent on your actions, reactions or inactions. Your actions, reactions, or inactions depend upon how you feel, which is a result of what you’re thinking.

Now, I just want to point out that feelings and sensations are different. So, for example, a cold sensation from being outside in the cold is not generated from your thoughts. It’s generated from the environment being cold.

You can have a thought about the cold, so how you’re perceiving that cold environment, which could certainly cause a feeling or emotion in your body, but your thoughts are not causing the sensation of it being cold.

So bringing it back to thought habits and your results, whatever you’ve been in the habit of thinking that is causing you to feel a certain way in your body, meaning feeling a certain emotion, will drive your actions, reactions, or inactions, determining your results.

For example, when I was working as an orthopedic trauma physician assistant, my work hours and environment were my outside factors. Just like I mentioned earlier, you have outside factors that you then have thoughts about.

At the time, I was always feeling stressed, which led to eating lots of bread, pasta, crackers, pretzels, all those refined, ultra-processed grains that can cause weight gain.

Knowing what I know now that the work hours and work environment were not causing my stress, that my thoughts about the work hours and environment were causing my stress, I can immediately identify what those thoughts were, and they were the true cause of my stress.  

At the time, I didn’t realize this though. I didn’t have a coach helping me with this. So, I was left completely on my own, thinking that I had to just try to control my actions when it came to stress eating. And that I just had to change my environment and work hours to feel less stressed.

Certainly, those outside factors can be influential, but they aren’t the direct cause of your feelings. Your thoughts are. And if you’re feeling the same emotion often, there are most likely going to be thought habits going on there. Same or similar thoughts occurring repeatedly, causing that same feeling/emotion. Driving the same eating behaviors or eating habits.

So, for me, at the time, I tried to change my actions, meaning my eating behaviors. I also tried to decrease the stress by changing some outside factors. I made some slow gains, but ultimately I didn’t really make true progress until I started noticing my thought patterns or thought habits and changing them.

Once that happened, the changes were much more noticeable, and so much more rewarding because they were more noticeable. And once you develop the skill of this as far as your eating habits go and any sort of results from that, like weight loss, you can apply this skill to anything.

That’s why thought habits are one of my most favorite things to talk about. When you work with me to help you lose weight and change your eating habits, we’re also working on these thought habits and even just individual thoughts that aren’t necessarily true habits yet, but profoundly affect your results.

So it’s never just about the number on the scale, or the amount of sugar you’re eating, it’s always about your life and the results that you can get in all areas. It’s about lifestyle changes, so that you don’t lose weight just to gain it all back. It’s lifestyle changes that help decrease medical issues down the road. It’s lifestyle changes that help you feel better emotionally. Help you talk to yourself in a much more compassionate way.

Because talking to yourself, your inner dialogue, those are your thoughts, right? If you’re talking to yourself kindly, you’re going to feel a certain way, which will affect your actions, reactions, or inactions, determining your results. That’s what you get out of coaching.

Of course, seeing the number on the scale decreasing, is so fun, and I love experiencing this with my clients. But I also really love when they tell me how much better they’re feeling how it’s affecting them in areas that they never even thought of.

I’m never surprised because I experienced all this myself as well when I did this work. And when I say the word “work”, I don’t mean that it’s effortful work. It’s actually fairly minimal effort, and really more awareness, making small changes, and being consistent. That’s with not just the actions, but also the thought habits.

Okay, so I want to give you some examples of how your thought habits affect your results, so you can really see. I personally love examples, it really helps me to learn, so here they are.

Let’s say that you have some external factors or outside circumstances related to work. You have 10-hour workdays with a 30-minute lunch break. Do you see how this is very factual? If I said that you have 10 hour work days with a 30 minute lunch break, a heavy workload and your boss expects way too much from you, that’s adding in some thoughts, some opinions.

Someone else might not see the workload as heavy and your boss probably doesn’t think that he or she expects way too much from you. These are just some thoughts that added on. You see how when you add those thoughts on, it feels differently in your body. It might feel like stress. It might feel like frustration. Maybe irritation.

These feelings might drive you to eat the candy bar or grab some takeout on the way home and watch a movie instead of going to the gym and making yourself dinner like you intended.

So of course, when you think about your work day in this way over and over and over again, causing thought habits, you’re always going to feel these emotions that are going to drive your actions, reactions, or inactions. Then, you’ll have certain results. Those results probably are not going to be the results that you want if those thoughts are causing negative emotions.

Now, you can have thoughts about the 10 hour work days with a 30 minute lunch break that generate more neutral or positive feelings, that then drive different actions, reactions, or inactions, leading to results that are much more desirable for you.

For example, you could have 10 hour work days with 30 minute lunch breaks and have a thought about that such as “I get so much done at work and provide so much value.” A thought like that is probably not going to generate a feeling of stress or frustration, right? I can tell you for sure it’s not going to. It’s going to generate a feeling such as satisfaction.

Satisfaction is typically not going to lead to actions that are going to sabotage your weight loss efforts. If anything, it will make you feel more energized and motivated to be productive when you get home or to hit the gym like intended or go for a walk after work. You won’t feel the need to make yourself feel better with food.

Can you imagine your results when you have more neutral or positive thought habits about your 10-hour workdays with 30 minute lunch breaks versus more of those negative thoughts?

Now of course, when it comes to eating habit and weight loss results, it’s not just the thoughts that I help you with, but also how to process the emotions that you are experiencing so that they don’t negatively affect your actions. We also work with your specific actions as well.

And we also problem-solve for any circumstances or outside factors that could make it challenging for you. We find the things we can control, that you may not have even realized. I’m great at problem-solving. My husband says I’m like a dog with a bone when it comes to finding solutions.

Alright, so that’s what I have for you today on thought habits and your results. To have more success with weight loss, sign up for the workshop on Weight Loss Mindset on my episode page or at https://katemjohnston.com/workshop. I’ll see you there.

Thanks for listening, and if you liked this episode, check out the related episodes on the episode page for more on weight loss. Take care and I’ll talk with you soon.