Ep 19 - Why You Shouldn’t Focus on Weight Loss (& What to Focus on Instead!)

June 13,2024

I know firsthand how hard it can be to deal with the weight gain side effect of binge eating.

Yet every time I tried to lose weight, I would end up overeating & gaining!

Why does this happen?

What should you focus on instead of the number on the scale then?

Today I cover…

• What weight can and can’t tell you

• Why focusing on weight loss is doing more harm than good

• 3 things that are actually useful to focus on

  Hello, confident eaters. It is summer. Are you enjoying your time? I sure am. But with summer comes along the goal of weight loss. This is what we have been taught for so many years by diet culture is that as summer comes around, We better get to focusing on weight loss, but maybe this is the wrong focus to have, and maybe it doesn't even work.

So before you start to declare your summer weight loss goals. Please listen to this podcast first. Now, before we dive in.

I first want to say I get what it's like to be at a weight that you don't want to be like. I know what it's like to be in a body that doesn't feel like it's yours to be stuck with eating habits you don't want.

When I was binge-eating I was about 25 pounds heavier than I am now. So I am not saying that it is not normal or it is not okay to have this goal of weight loss, but when we hyper focus on it, we can usually lose sight of what's truly important.

So we're going to talk about what to do in stat, because for me in my journey, Every time I made this intentional effort that I was going to try to lose weight. Pretty much soon after that I would start gaining weight, which was so ironic because like, all I wanted to do was cut out a few carbs and start exercising more yet what ended up happening is I would just end up binge eating and going all out because I felt so restricted because I felt so deprived because I didn't really understand my brain and what was going on. So my weight loss attempts were always very ineffective. And maybe you have noticed the same thing where when you start to put this intentional effort on weight loss, for some crazy reason that we're gonna talk about today, you actually end up gaining more weight.

So here is why focusing on weight loss is probably doing you more harm than good. First, the only thing that the scale can factually tell you is your gravitational pull on the earth.

It's not telling you anything about how healthy you are, fit you are and shape you are, how good you look, what your eating habits are like. It doesn't paint the whole picture. It is only giving you one very small data point. Even if you use one of those fancy machines that measures your body fat, it's still not showing you how you lost that weight. Which you better be looking at instead of just obsessing over the results, if you ever want to create that result again. Most people, they just step on the scale and they say, Ooh, I've lost weight or I've lost fat. And then they move on with their life without thinking about how they even might've created that result in the first place. So you need to make sure you're knowing the thoughts, feelings, and actions that led to that result, which a body percentage calculator can not tell you. It also, doesn't tell you if those results are sustainable.

So if you crash dieted to lose fat for a friend's wedding, you might put it all back on. It's not permanent, unless you're going to keep doing exactly what you were doing to lose that fat in the first place.

Most of you also have a very unreasonable expectation around the scale. We're taught by diet, culture and media that weight loss can happen fast and that if it's not happening fast and linearly, Then you're doing something wrong. So you see these headlines that are like lose seven pounds in seven days, or drop three dress sizes and three weeks, like crazy stuff that is truly not sustainable. But then that's what the expectation you have for yourself is.

So when you step on the scale and you see that you only lost a pound or you haven't lost weight, and it's been five days, you feel discouraged and unmotivated and hopeless because it wasn't what you thought it would be. And when you're feeling this way, you might want to give up, you might end up eating because you say there's no points. I'm not making any progress. Nothing is changing. It's happening too slow. I'm in patient and then you eat and you're just furthering the cycle of weight gain.

You also might be in the category where even if you do lose weight, you still eat anyways, because you're excited because you're celebrating. Woo. Go me. I have stuck to it my diet and I have now lost weight. And now I can go celebrate and I'll eat more. And that makes you still gain weight.

If you have this big weight loss expectation in your head. You may start to resort, to drastic measures to give you those drastic results. So if you have your friend's wedding coming up, you're going to a family reunion. You're going to vacation on the beach or going on a cruise. If that's you this summer lucky you, I am jealous. But if you have something that's coming up like that, And your focus is on weight loss. Chances are, if you're not seeing results, you're going to really start to get extreme and dramatic about the things you're doing.

But the truth about weight loss is slow is sustainable. The faster you lose weight, the fastest, probably going to come back on.

So what sustainable weight loss looks like? Is on average one to two pounds a week. Now this is influenced by so many factors though still. What is your current weight? Are you really tall? Are you really short? How has your metabolism. How old are you?

All of these are factors in how much weight is going to be sustainable for you. So even that, like, we can't even give a true number on what is best for you in your unique body?

If you are losing weight fast, it can have a lot of negative health effects such as muscle loss. And who wants to lose muscle? Like muscle is hard to build. Like you do not want to be losing any of your muscle. Your metabolism can slow down. You might get bone loss in density reduction. Yes. This is something that is real people who lose weight too quickly have weak bones, you might have hormonal issues and creating imbalances within that. Feeling fatigued, exhausted all the time. Not motivated, irritated, angry with everyone around you. This is all what will happen if you lose weight too quickly.

Weight loss is a long term result. It's not something that happens in a few days or a few weeks. It's something that's supposed to be happening over many months and many years instead.

So you are going to have a really hard time staying motivated. If the only result you're looking to takes months or years to create. If that's your only reward is seeing a number on the skill change the day-to-day is going to be such a struggle with you. Because you're not going to have any reason to keep going. If you're not seeing that number on the scale change.

So a big mistake I see people make when creating their eating goals is only going to the longterm. Only looking at what's going to happen in a year from now of consistent action. But we want to look at the today. Right? And what's going to be so amazing about changing your eating habits not right now, not just what's going to happen in the longterm.

Now what I want you to focus on instead of weight loss, that is going to be actually useful to help you stop binge-eating and overeating are these three things.

First you want to start looking for all of your little wins. Now I do not believe that there are such thing as little wins. All of your little wins are big wins. Because as your little wins add up, that is how you get to the big things of stopping binge-eating, stopping overeating, becoming this natural eater.

So give yourself little pats on the back, along the way to stay motivated and encourage. Look for all the little instances that are happening every single day, or you're showing yourself that change is possible, that you're making progress that you're putting in effort because that is what is going to keep you. Making progress and changes along this journey.

And this is something that I have designed my confidence eater program with in mind is I have specific goals and steps and things you can implement to help you celebrate those little wins along the way.

The second thing you want to focus on is your habits. So in my confident eater program, I give you a progress tracker where we track certain habits and how you're doing in key areas.

So you have data without the scale, and this is something you can do for yourself too. Think about what else can you track? What other measures can you look at that have nothing to do with the scale to see how your eating is doing. Now do not count calories. I talk about that in my last podcast episode.

So. What I'm saying, find something to track. This is not chunks tracking, calories or points or macros. Thinking of things like maybe you want to track your sleep time or your sleep quality. If you have a fancy watch. Maybe tracking your digestion. So how bloated are you? Are things running smoothly. Are you getting stomach aches? Are you not? How are your energy levels? All of these things you can look at now, you can also track habits. Like how well am I listening to hunger and fullness? How am I meal prepping? Am I including fruits and vegetables. Am I giving myself delicious foods that also I am stopping at fullness with.

Thinking about all those little habits that you can start to keep track of and celebrate and focus on in step.

Now the third thing you can focus on is your feelings. So both physical feelings and emotional feelings.

Physical feelings is you can focus on. Are you energized? Are you feeling lighter. Are you feeling healthier?

Thinking about these physical things that you feel in your body and using those as gauges of how well you're doing, how are you feeling after a meal? That's another good one to look at.

Then the emotional feelings you can look for is maybe you're feeling guilty for eating things right now, or you're feeling ashamed of how you're currently eating.

If that changes and you start feeling proud of yourself for how you're eating. That is a good thing to focus on. So focusing on these emotional things, Maybe you are tracking food right now, and it's really stressing you out. Maybe you just feel stressed about food in general, because you're thinking about it all day and you are analyzing every single decision if you're being good or if you're being bad. So it's causing a lot of mental fatigue on you.

So thinking about what would it be like to actually have your brain space free and be emotionally happy and feel emotionally lighter. Those are the things that you can look for as far as feelings go. So again, focusing on the little ends, your habits and your feelings, those are the things that are actually going to give you what you want.

That is what is going to make you healthier and happier, and like how you look and feel like you just love your life a lot more than you do now. And whether you lose weight or not, all of those things. Are still going to help you improve your life. You might lose weight when you start focusing on those things anyways, but you're not going to be miserable the whole time you're doing it.

And it's actually going to work. Talk to you next, week.