Do you really want weight loss?

Over the years of learning more about nutrition, and overcoming my poor relationship with food. I have learned some really valuable lessons. The most impactful one has been:

“ If you don't appreciate your body for what it does now, what makes you think you'll appreciate a smaller one”

Look I get it, you want to lose a few lbs or lose a few inches of body fat. I'm not here to judge you for that. That is your goal and I don't know your internal struggles. What I do know is smaller ≠ better.

You might think that you'll be happy when you reach that arbitrary goal. Maybe you will be, maybe you won't. All I can say is that most people are not. There is always more they want to lose. And that often leads to unsustainable extremes which land them in a constant state of struggle and frustration while never truly reaching their goals or finding that elusive happiness they were chasing.

From my experience, always chasing the smallest version of yourself is a one-way ticket to burning out. You will continue to chase being thinner/smaller which means you need to continue to reduce your calories. The reduction in calories has a positive ROI for a certain % reduction or for a certain time period. At a certain point, you will end up doing more harm than good by continually reducing calories.

I call this “starvation mode”. Where your brain doesn't comprehend that you have more than enough food less than 20ft away. Your brain will start to have your body store all new foods as body fat, for survival.  I haven't even touched on how little energy you will have or working out or trying to lift. That's a whole different conversation for another day

This is something that I dig into with my 1:1 clients. I want to know why they are chasing this number on a scale or why they are chasing a certain pant size. Is it just a number or is there a reason behind this number? Most of the time that number or pant size is tied to a time when they felt more confident in their body. I have one client who wants to fit into jeans she bought before COVID. I have another who wants to be able to wear a button-down his partner got him for work a few years ago. 

By understanding the true reason for your desired weight loss. You can remove emotion from the process. Removing emotion allows you to see the end goal much clearer. You won't have to ride the highs of seeing progress but you also won't have to ride the lows of feeling like you are stuck. Those times of feeling like you are stuck, are when you make a rash decision and try to slash your calories to “make progress faster”. This is only going to hurt you in the long run, as i already stated above. 

Take the time, to dig into your why. Remove as much emotion from the process as possible, set a realistic timeline, and just trust the process.

PS: the nutrition webinar about pre and post-workout nutrition was so much fun! I talked a lot about how your nutrition will impact your ability to recover and prepare you for a great workout tomorrow. if you weren't able to make it. Reply here and let me know if you want the replay! 

Dont forget to call your mom

-Mike