This can be a tough time of year for weight loss – the excitement of the New Year resolution has faded, spring fever is in full effect, and we’re often both excited for summer and dreading it because we still haven’t gotten the weight off. Who wants to get into cute summer strappy tanks and shorts when you don’t feel good in your body? Sometimes you just want winter to last so you can stay in your sweats indefinitely.

But you can feel good in your body as you make progress. Getting back on track will make you feel better immediately. I’m remixing my Fresh Start series – sometimes we just need to start again to make progress. If you missed this series the first time, you get a second chance!

 

Welcome back to week 2 of Fresh Start! We’re going to get into the nitty-gritty of making your weight loss plans for this year stick. We don’t want to start strong and then fall off – we want to finish strong too!

After taking out the mind trash (that was last week – check it out if you missed it!), we want to build our plan to carry us through to our goal. What do we need next to be successful?

 

FOCUS.

 

Sounds good, right? Focus is a good thing. But it’s not a tool we use well to lose weight. Let me explain.

Here’s what most people do. Something sets you off – suddenly you can’t fit into a favorite pair of pants or your doctor says your blood pressure is up a little and maybe you need meds. Or maybe you’re planning your spring break vacation and you go swimsuit shopping (ugh!). Whatever it is, you’re done. This weight has got to come off, like yesterday. So you decide that you’re going to start exercising, no more junk food, and meal prepping and planning is going to become part of your daily life, no matter what it takes. The weight has to go!

It’s the same thing we do with New Year weight loss planning. We’re going to create the ideal plan and stick to it. We’re smart, right? We know all the right things to do, so all we have to do is make our plan and do it. But for some reason, by March of the New Year the plan is gone and so is the weight loss.

There are really good reasons for this – and they come from your brain.

 

 

First, your brain does NOT like change. Anything new is interpreted as a threat by your brain. It doesn’t want you to do something risky – the known is safer. So when you ask it to change lots of things at once, even though you know they’re good things, your brain resists. It’s not trying to get in your way, it’s just trying to protect you. So if you plan to go vegan, exercise 4 days a week, and dust off your gym membership, your brain gets overwhelmed and fatigued and poops out. It’s hard to maintain that kind of momentum!

 

The other thing that blocks us also comes from our brains. We think weight loss has to be complicated to be successful. So our high-achieving minds create a plan that has to be implemented on top of a life that’s already full of work demands, relationship work, and kid needs. We figure that we’re smart and strong and we can figure it out! But it’s exhausting and not sustainable.

So keep it focused and simple. Focus on your food – 80-90% of weight loss success is from what you put in (or DON’T put in) your mouth. Do you like to exercise? Good – use it for your stress relief and keep it nurturing and easy. But if you don’t love exercise and you’re just doing it to lose weight, I give you permission to quit. Don’t do it at all. If you have to use your brainpower to stay on track, use it to focus on your eating plan. Decide on the one change you’re going to make and work that plan. Want to extend your fasting window and make your breakfast at 11 am? Perfect. Just do that. How about going from 3 meals a day to two? Excellent. What about stopping snacks and just eating your meals when you’re hungry? That’ll work too! The point is to change one thing at a time and make sure that it’s easy before you add something else to the plan.

 

Right now your brain might be screaming at you, “That’s not enough! It won’t work!” You think you have to do it all to be successful. We doctors taught you that you have to diet and exercise to lose weight, so you can thank us for that faulty programming.

If you want to be a woman who lives at your ideal weight easily and is strong and healthy, exercising almost daily, who meditates and prays and studies your bible daily, you’re going to have to create her. You’ll be more successful if you don’t try to do it all in one day. Wouldn’t it be better to make one change at a time and add to it than to try to do it all together and find it too hard to continue? If you get good at one simple change at a time, you will create what you want instead of starting over from scratch in a few months when the complicated plan is too heavy to carry. Pick the one thing you think is too easy to do and do that. You will ensure your own success!

 

You can do this! If you’ve been thinking that this is the year that you are going to invest in yourself with coaching, I still have space for a few private clients. Schedule your consultation on my calendar and let’s get you started!

 

Here’s your video help for the week!