In this post, I´m going to talk about the main mistakes you do while answering the question of why you are not losing weight.
But first, I wanted to let you know, that you can finally end the search for the “perfect diet” and lose the extra weight for good without feeling restricted by taking the Healthy Habits for Permanent Weight Loss course.
Reason 1. Searching for the “perfect diet”
Ok, let´s talk about diets (to prove to you that you don´t need a diet 😊)
The thing is, you can lose weight with any diet. The food part of weight loss is actually simple, even though everyone thinks they need to find the perfect diet that will solve all their weight problems. I used to believe that too.
But the more important thing is what´s going on inside your head. But let´s not get ahead of ourselves.
Let´s have a look at the popular health-based diets:
What´s common in popular diets?
As you can see in the intersection of the Venn diagram, there are a few common things between these health-focused diets.
They all promote eating:
- mostly whole foods
- lots of vegetables
- enough protein
- mindfully.
These are the only things you need to pay attention to if you want to lose weight, be healthy, and have a lot of energy. In addition to this, if you want to eat like a caveman or not eat meat at all or avoid all fats or pour olive oil on everything, it´s your decision (you don´t need to do any of that by the way).
Of course, you can also lose weight by counting calories or macros or controlling your eating window with intermittent fasting. The question is how sustainable they are. How long can you count every bite you eat before going crazy or giving up?
What I teach in this course is to start with the basics I listed above in the diagram, put your lab coat or detective hat on, treat eating as a game or experiment, gather data, and based on the outcome tweak your diet according to your food preferences, metabolism, age, lifestyle and other factors until you reach your goal. You don´t need to follow other people´s rules, you can decide what works for you. You are the boss, you are the authority. I´m only here to teach you how to become the boss.
But food is usually not the problem
The problem is that people usually can´t stick to anything long enough to gather sufficient data.
Let´s say Susie has decided to cut out sugar and flour and she started to lose weight. But then she heard about macro-counting and thought that would be better because she could eat anything she wanted just had to count the macronutrients. She started this protocol and she realized that although it´s fun to eat the same foods as everyone else, it became really stressful having to measure everything she eats. She started to have anxiety about every bite she had and eating outside the house became impossible (unless she wanted to take her scale with her and measure everything).
But she is a clever woman, she likes to learn about new things so she kept researching and trying new diets in the hope of finding the “perfect diet”. Of course, all of the diets had some aspects that weren´t easy, so she couldn´t stick to them. She starts to doubt that there is a diet that would work for her. She feels frustrated that nothing works.
What´s the real problem? Why are you not losing weight?
Reason 2. Commitment
You can see, the problem is not the food, but to actually commit to doing something, learning to stick to your new habits, and be able to evaluate the outcome of your new habits as a scientist or a detective. Gathering data, evaluating it, removing emotions from the process, and based on the outcome keep going or changing direction, instead of just hopping from one diet to another.
I teach you how to do this in the course. There is a whole module about keeping commitments and learning to stick to your habits. This is essential for long-term results. What´s the point of losing weight if you gain it back all the time.
Reason 3. Cravings
But let´s say you can keep your commitments and you have a sensible eating plan. Why are you still not losing weight? The two other things that can derail you from your weight loss plan are not being able to manage carvings and deal with emotions without eating. No matter how good is your eating plan and how many good habits you have if you keep overeating because you crave certain foods. You restrict certain foods so you crave them even more (we always want what we can´t have, it´s human nature) and when you can´t resist anymore you eat them in large quantities to make up for all the lost and future opportunities. Because tomorrow you are going to start your diet again. This is also a topic of the course and I teach you how to manage your cravings.
Reason 4. Emotional eating
But no matter how well you manage your cravings if you need to eat every time someone hurts you, or you are stressed, tired, sad, lonely, or even happy. Emotional and stress eating is another important topic of the course because learning to deal with your intense emotions without eating can be really challenging for some of us.
Meditation to help you feel your feelings
I’ve made a meditation to help you sit with your feelings when you have the urge to overeat. Listen to this meditation often and you’ll learn how to process your feelings. You’ll be presently surprised to find that you won’t need to eat to suppress or numb them anymore.
After a while, you won’t need to listen to this meditation. Feeling your feelings becomes automatic and you will be free from emotional eating triggered by negative feelings. You’ll start eating your feelings much less often.
You can learn how to find what you are really hungry for and break free from emotional eating and binge eating from this workbook titled: How to stop eating your feeling.
These were my answers to the question of why you are not losing weight.
Don´t forget to have a look at the Healthy Habits for Permanent Weight Loss course to finally end the search for the “perfect diet” and lose the extra weight for good without feeling deprived.
