Creating Consistency for Sustainable Weight Loss

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Full Episode Transcript:

Creating Consistency for Sustainable Weight Loss

Hey there, let’s talk weight loss today, but my favorite kind of weight loss, sustainable weight loss.

Sustainable because you’ve built new habits that make it so much easier to manage your weight. How you build new habits and even break bad habits is through consistency.

So today, I’m going to help you with creating consistency for sustainable weight loss. First by understanding what exactly consistency is and what it is not.

Also, the many benefits of consistency in your weight loss journey. Plus, what you need to do or how you actually create consistency. It’s not complicated, I promise.

Of course, you read and hear everywhere that consistency is key. But, you likely already know that. The struggle is creating it. So this podcast episode will help you with that.

And when I’m working with clients, we create consistency with everything that we possibly can. It is all about breaking habits and building new habits. So, I use consistency in any way possible to develop that skill in my clients.

That way, they can feel confident that the changes they make and the weight they’ve lost while we’re working together actually stays off. It’s easy to keep those changes.

With weight loss especially, you hear so many times about people losing weight and then gaining a portion or all of it back. That’s frustrating, right?

This is frustrating because you worked hard to lose the weight. It also makes it seem impossible for you to keep it off. But, I want you to be open to the idea that it’s not only possible, but it’s extremely doable with the right strategy and mindset.

OK, so to create a habit, you need consistency of course. The things that you’re doing need to be frequent, and done in the same time, place, or situation. When you combine all that, then you can break a habit or create a habit.

What consistency isn’t, is perfection. Life happens right, and everything isn’t happening perfectly. Our days don’t go perfectly as planned. Our weeks don’t go perfectly as planned.

So sometimes some circumstances get thrown in there and maybe you’re not able to be as consistent as you’d like. That does not mean that you failed.

When we get into that perfectionist mentality, anything short of perfection equates to failure. This is not good. And it’s not true either. You just need to continue on.

If you think that consistency means being perfect, you’ll be more likely to just stop if it’s not. Because you’ll feel an emotion that makes you stop doing the actions you need to do to lose weight.

If you think of each action as a step in the right direction, regardless of how well you did it, you will keep making progress.

This promotes a more positive emotion, which will then help you to continue in the right direction.

You now know what consistency is and is not. I want to tell you about some benefits of creating consistency for weight loss. These are in no particular order.

Well, except for this first one. This first one I believe is the number one benefit to creating consistency for sustainable weight loss. That is the things that you’re doing and the ways that you’re thinking become part of who you are.

I always tell clients that the weight loss results are great, but who they become in the process is the best part. The skills developed and changes made promote growth. They do so in many areas of your life.

How you think about food, eating, your body, yourself changes in a positive way. How you feel changes in a positive way. And of course, the behaviors themselves are different. They get even easier as you go. All this together creates sustainable weight loss. It also brings other results in your life. It’s actually very holistic.

And so that consistency over time makes these new behaviors and results a part of who you are. And if it’s part of who you are, that means it’s easy to maintain.

Another benefit of consistency for weight loss is that everything becomes easier. So the more frequently you do something, the easier it becomes.

That helps to build confidence in the process. And it makes the process so much more enjoyable and easy to fit into your lifestyle currently.

Also, as I mentioned before, consistency helps to build habits. So of course this is another big benefit of creating that consistency for weight loss.

This is all part of why it becomes who you are. You no longer have to think hard about things and put as much effort in.

And the benefit of new habits is that your brain actually saves energy when it has created a habit. So this allows you to use that saved energy for other things in your life.

That’s actually the whole reason why our brains have the capability of forming habits. Our brains are motivated by saving energy. Building habits is a great way for our brains to do this.

Our brains do this by noticing when you’re doing something often and in the same time, place, or circumstance. It creates a pathway for this activity.

The more you do this activity at the same time, place, or circumstance, the faster this neural pathway gets. It is strengthened in the process. That’s when it starts to become a true habit. And that’s when the energy starts to be saved.

Creating that consistency for sustainable weight loss has another benefit: less decision making. So another energy saver. You end up doing the thing and there’s no mental chatter.

You get used to packing the same healthy lunch every work day. You no longer have to decide what to eat for lunch at work. It’s just already done.

I’m telling you this has saved so much mental energy for me. Every day for lunch, Paul and I have salads with some sort of protein on top. So we may vary the toppings, but we know that we’re having salad Monday through Friday.

We also do the same thing for breakfast. Breakfast is easier for most people to stay consistent with. But for us, there’s no mental chatter about what we’re going to have for breakfast or lunch. Or what we feel like.

Because if you’re truly hungry, you’re not hemming and hawing about what you feel like eating. You just want something to eat.

And then the last benefit that I wanted to talk about is that with consistency, you get better data.

So think of it like this. In a sense, you’re like a scientist and you are collecting data along the way in your weight loss journey. You’re seeing what works for you, what doesn’t.

If you’re doing something very infrequently, you’re not going to be getting much data. If you’re doing something consistently, you’re going to be getting a lot of data. If you’re getting a lot of data, then you’re going to have a more accurate conclusion from that data.

If you make changes, they’re much more likely to create more results for you.

Alright, so now we’re going to dive into what you need for consistency. So here are some things that have been determined to be crucial, and I’ve added in a couple that I also think are crucial.

So first, you’re going to need to determine your deepest reasons why you want to lose weight. This is your motivation. It will help when things get tough or challenges come up.

So ask yourself why you want to lose weight, and what impact that will have on you, other areas of your life, your loved ones. And also ask yourself why that means so much to you.

Next, you’re going to make a plan. You’re going to decide ahead of time what changes you’re going to make, when, how often, things like that. Get as specific as possible.

Remember, the more you practice something, the easier it gets. Plus, it’s more likely to become a habit.

When you’re considering your plan, it is important (especially in the beginning) to make sure that those changes are doable for you. And you feel like the frequency is doable.

If it’s not, it will be harder for you to follow through, potentially leading to you giving up.

Now this next important one is to embrace discomfort. At times, you’ll have your plan. But then, someone at work orders pizza. You’ll be tempted to have it instead of your lunch.

But think of your plan as your commitment to yourself. You’re teaching yourself to follow through on your intentions. Follow through on your commitment to yourself and your goals.

To do that, sometimes it’s going to feel uncomfortable. But always wanting to be comfortable and avoiding discomfort cause overeating. They lead to weight gain.

Think about it, if we only ate secondary to being hungry, we likely wouldn’t have issues managing our weight.

But often we eat for emotions and to stay comfortable. We also want the pleasure from the dopamine hit from food. We can get so in the habit of doing these things, that we don’t even realize that we’re doing them sometimes.

For me, the only time in my life that I was heavier than I wanted to be, was when I was eating due to emotions and to just try to get through a day.

At the time I didn’t even realize I was doing that. I just thought that I was eating food because my body needed it. I was misinterpreting desire to escape my emotions with true hunger.

So once you start embracing some discomfort, it’s going to be much easier for you to lose weight. Part of embracing discomfort is actually learning how to process your emotions, instead of avoiding them.

This is a big part of what I do. I help clients with emotional eating and eating just due to desire rather than hunger. I help them figure out if they’re eating due to true hunger or not. Then we address the other reasons.

If you need help changing your eating habits, I can assist you. I can help you break bad eating habits, develop healthier ones, and lose weight in a manageable way. We can discuss your challenges, and I will provide solutions during a free consultation.

I can show you how achievable your goals are. Often, our thoughts hold us back, and we need to consider new ideas. You can schedule a consultation through the link in the episode description or on my website: https://katemjohnston.com/consult.

The last requirement for consistency in weight loss is to reward yourself. You must also celebrate wins.

Our brains need some sort of reward to keep doing behaviors. This is actually why we can develop bad eating habits.

So let’s take candy for example. If you’re feeling sad one day, and you decide to have some candy, the sugar in that candy releases a lot of dopamine. Dopamine gives you pleasure. That is the reward.

Your brain thinks that it should continue eating the candy, especially if you’re feeling sad, because it got such a huge reward from it.

So for the positive changes that you’re making, you definitely want to reward yourself in some way, but not with food.

It can just be a mental celebration so that you feel good. It can be with something like putting a sticker on the calendar. It can be something like using a really nice face mask or going for a bike ride.

Whatever feels good to you that’s not food. And that’s not something that you typically do on a daily basis anyway.

OK, so that’s what I have for you on creating consistency for sustainable weight loss. If you need to go back and listen to this last part again to write down the steps, then do so.

It’s easier to follow through on something if it’s written down on paper. It’s way better than trying to keep it in your head. Especially when other things are going to be on your mind today.

And if you want help with eating habits and weight loss, I can help you with coaching. To see exactly how it can help you, book a free consultation with me. Find the link in the episode description or on my website https://katemjohnston.com/consult.

Take care, thanks for listening and I’ll talk with you next week.