172: What People Aren’t Saying About Weight Loss

172: What People Aren’t Saying About Weight Loss

The vast majority of conversations about weight loss are about diet & exercise. I get it. Makes sense.

But here’s the problem: the real problem, for most people, isn’t about food.

It’s not. I know, I didn’t believe it either, for most of my life.

Doesn’t make it not true.

In today’s episode I’m explaining that most people overeat, binge or lack moderation & self-control because of some other issue not related to food.

Overeating & weight gain are merely symptoms of a different problem.

We keep eating because the food doesn’t meet the true need we have.

Please, don’t miss today’s episode.

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What People Aren’t Saying About Weight Loss (That You Need To Know)

Until you identify what you’re truly hunger for, you’ll continue to overindulge.

Until you understand the weight you’re carrying, the weight you lose is not truly lost.

Food is only the solution for you when your hunger is for food.

Work to identify what you’re seeking when you turn to food:

  • Peace?
  • Quiet?
  • Gratification?
  • Silence?
  • Emptiness?

Identify the areas in your life that are triggering this need for escape or fulfillment and work on THOSE areas first and foremost.

If you need help tackling these issues, please look into Breaking Barriers and reach out to me if you have questions!

Resources

Breaking Barriers – Overcoming Emotional Eating & Self-Limiting Beliefs

What Is Breaking Barriers? 

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172: What People Aren’t Saying About Weight Loss

171: Non Scale Victories You Should Measure

When trying to lose weight, most people focus on just that – weight. The number on the scale. Not only do I think tends to backfire for most people, it’s also an accurate representation of what we’re really after (fat loss) and it often prevents us from focusing on all the other wins – non scale victories we have every day and typically overlook.

In today’s episode I’ll certainly share my thoughts on effective and ineffective ways to measure fat loss and overall progress, but I want to focus on non scale victories.

We’ll talk about which, if any, you should begin to measure (and how) as well as the tremendous benefit they have in your journey.

Here’s my 10,000 ft view of non-scale victories: they are one of the most powerful ways to overcome all-or-nothing thinking.

You definitely want to listen to this episode if you struggle with the scale or with all-or-nothing thinking about weight loss.

Before we get started, don’t forget the free 31-day food journaling challenge! I explain the challenge in this episode and you can download your free journal by clicking the pink button below.

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Non Scale Victories You Should Measure

When we fall into the trap of all-or-nothing thinking, we fixate on something that we aren’t proud of, a choice that was less than perfect, and, due to our imperfection, we count the day as wasted. Next thing we know, one average choice has triggered 10 awful choices.

At the root of all-or-nothing thinking is a focus on what wasn’t perfect or ideal. This is the absolute opposite of non scale victories.

When we practice monitoring & celebrating non scale victories, we’re focusing on what is going right. We’re looking for progress beyond the scale and we’re focusing on the improvements in mindset, moderation, health, energy, fitness and anything in between.

Naturally, we focus less on what wasn’t right and more on what was right.

Plus, we begin to prove to ourselves that progress doesn’t require perfect and we clearly see that all-or-nothing thinking is counter productive.

There are all kinds of non-scale victories. In today’s episode I’m talking about many different categories of non-scale victories and how you can measure them.

Health (blood sugar, hemoglobin A1C, cholesterol, triglycerides, migraines, etc)

Hormonal biofeedback (sleep, energy, cravings, hunger, mood, menstrual cycle regularity)

Fitness (strength, endurance, consistency, speed)

Mindset (attitude, negativity, perspective, motivation, consistency, grace, patience)

Choices (frequency of binges, bouncing back more quickly)

You don’t want to miss this full episode to hear about how, why & how often you should evaluate these non-scale victories and what the focus will do for your results & your motivation.

Resources

E-Course Carb Strategies for Fat Loss

How To Track Without Counting Calories

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172: What People Aren’t Saying About Weight Loss

170: 3 Ways to Improve Your Carbohydrate Tolerance

Months ago I shared a quiz to help people identify whether or not they are “carbohydrate sensitive”. The vast majority of people are. Fortunately, you can absolutely, positively improve your carbohydrate tolerance.

You are probably carb sensitive if you’re one of those people who feels like you gain weight at the mere sight of carbs. Or if you struggle with cravings & weight loss seems SO hard.

Many people feel like being carb intolerant or highly carb sensitive is just their lot in life but it doesn’t have to be.

In today’s episode I will introduce you to 3 specific strategies you can begin to implement today to improve your carbohydrate tolerance.

When you improve your carbohydrate tolerance, fat loss becomes easier, energy increases, cravings decrease, health improves and so much more!

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3 Ways To Improve Your Carbohydrate Tolerance

In today’s episode I’m taking a deep dive into food, exercise & lifestyle strategies that will improve your carbohydrate tolerance, improve your insulin sensitivity and make weight loss much easier.

The three strategies include:

  • Adjusting the quantity, quality and timing of your carbohydrate consumption
  • Exercising more
  • Reducing stress

When it comes to achieving these goals of accelerating fat loss & increasing energy while decreasing cravings, we have to understand the role of muscle tissue in carb metabolism and insulin sensitivity.

There are 2 primary issues at play.

  1. We have to make sure there is room within our muscle glycogen stores. If they are always full, that will reduce carb tolerance and increase carb spillover into the fat tissue.
  2. We can increase the number and sensitivity of glucose transporters in the muscle tissue.

We need our muscle tissue to be more responsive to insulin. We can make this happen.

This responsiveness is related, in part, to glucose transporters. They live in our muscle tissue and are the doorways through which glucose enters the muscle tissue. 

When we have more glucose transporters, our muscle tissue is more responsive and efficient to glucose.

In some people, there just aren’t that many doorways. They also might not be very responsive. The factors we need to consider are: how many are there & how responsive are they?

When the glucose transporters (doorways) aren’t responsive or there aren’t that many of them, it’s like a pile-up outside the door.

That results in blood sugar & insulin staying elevated for longer which impairs fat loss.

Imagine you have a people trying to get into a building. What are the factors in making sure that the people get in quickly?

 

  1. How many people are there?
  2. How many doorways are there?
  3. How easy are those doors to get through?

Your glucose transporters are the same way.

Do you want a huge traffic jam of sugar, hanging out in the blood, keeping insulin elevated while waiting to get into the muscle tissue? No! You want to clear it fast.

Your ability to do so depends on:

  1. How much sugar there is (how much you ate and what type of carb)
  2. How many glucose transporters there are in your muscle tissue
  3. How sensitive they are

Today’s episode explains how you can control #1 while improving #s 2 and 3!

Resources

E-Course Carb Strategies for Fat Loss

How To Track Without Counting Calories

Episode 058: Understanding Fat Loss & The Insulin Effect

The Golden Rules of Carbs & Fat Loss

Carb Timing & Fat Loss

Carb Spillover & Fat Loss

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What Is Breaking Barriers?

I get a lot of questions about my e-course, Breaking Barriers. I figured I’d make life easier for you & for me by telling you a bit more about it & answering the most common questions you guys have been asking.

After battling my weight for my entire life, after focusing on diet & exercise as the solution to my weight problem for decades, I realized that my lack of success was due in large part to the fact that food and fitness wasn’t my problem.

Don’t get me wrong – I was overeating. I needed to both eat less and move more.

However, it was my mental & emotional baggage & barriers that were preventing me from consistently making good food choices.

I share all the time on the podcast that if I lined up 100 overweight people, all 100 would be able to identify at least one nutritional change they could make to help them lose weight. The problem isn’t that we don’t know what to do, the problem is that we aren’t consistently doing it.

Guess what? That means that the solution requires that you address the emotional baggage and mental barriers.

It requires that we focus more on why we eat than on what we eat.

That’s what Breaking Barriers is all about.

I know how frustrating it can be to want to lose weight & physically transform but continuously make choices that are entirely contrary to that goal.

I used to ask myself all the time,

What is wrong with me?

Why can’t I be consistent?

Why am I sabotaging myself?

Really, I created Breaking Barriers for myself. I created it to identify & overcome all the many ways and reasons I was getting in my own way and preventing my own success.

What is Breaking Barriers?

Breaking Barriers is a self-guided e-course that helps you identify & overcome your destructive patterns keeping you from reaching your goals.

It focuses primarily on self-limiting beliefs, fear of missing out, all-or-nothing thinking, emotional eating and self-sabotage.

From the perspective of someone who has been there, who has overcome these barriers & helped others do the same, Breaking Barriers gently shows you how to find your own solutions & put them into consistent practice.

Breaking Barriers isn’t just information. In December 2015, I recreated the course with a focus on application. I didn’t want to just give you information and leave you on your own to figure out how to apply it to your own life & implement it into your days.

I created worksheets and guides to help you take the information you learn and apply it into your own life.

I created tools to make it easier to bridge the gap between information & implementation.

Lastly, Breaking Barriers is about generating motivation & momentum. I understand that desire is a huge part of success and desire must be created & cultivated on good days and bad.

Breaking Barriers contains motivators while also teaching you how to generate motivation from within.

It’s is about what most other weight loss programs totally overlook – the real reason you’re struggling to lose weight – the barriers in your mind.

What will it teach me?

Weight loss without Breaking Barriers, for many people, is like driving on the highway with your parking brake on.

You’re trying hard, the car is working hard but you’re not really getting anywhere. Plus, you’re doing some damage to your car along the way!

When we approach weight loss with a primary focus on food & exercise, ignoring the factors contributing to the on again/off again cycle, self-sabotage, doubt, fear of missing out, emotional eating & binging, we essentially have our mental parking brake on.

We’re working hard but not really getting anywhere.

Breaking Barriers helps you identify what that parking brake is, for you, and helps you release it.

Will Breaking Barriers help me lose weight?

Yes. Just like releasing the parking brake in your car helps you accelerate with far more ease, releasing your mental and emotional parking brakes allows your progress to accelerate with far more ease.

Breaking Barriers is not about specific nutrition strategies for fat loss (that’s what the carbohydrate strategies for fat loss course is all about) but it will help you increase consistency & motivation while decreasing excuse-making, binge eating, self-sabotage & emotional eating.

When we not longer eat because we’re bored, lonely, stressed and emotional – when we no longer use food as a drug or coping mechanism – all of our fat loss efforts become easier & more successful.

What is the format of the course?

Breaking Barriers is a series of audios and videos with downloadable worksheets and tools.

Upon purchase, all the modules are immediately available and you have access to them for 1 year.

How long will it take me to go through the material?

This depends on you. You can binge watch all the videos over the course of a weekend or you can work through one module at a time or one lesson at a time, applying & practicing the strategies before moving on to the next module or lesson.

It’s kind of like asking how long it would take to watch the House of Cards series. Well, how much time do you have? How quickly do you want to consume it?

I recommend taking one lesson at a time and really doing the work instead of just whizzing through without application.

As I’ve shared on the podcast, I go through the Breaking Barriers materials repeatedly (every 4-6 weeks) because it serves as a powerful reminder of the strategies I need to continuously apply to achieve and maintain my goals.

Many of my Breaking Barriers students take the same approach – they go through the course multiple times, learning something new each time.

Is there a community element or Facebook group?

No, and for a very specific reason: your mental & emotional barriers are unique to you. One of the reasons many people aren’t able to overcome these challenges is because they spend more time looking at other people’s progress, journeys, thoughts and ideas and this distracts them from looking inward to identify their own challenges.

They hop on someone else’s bandwagon and take on their strategies or challenges or they waste energy in comparison instead of investing in themselves.

Breaking Barriers is about looking in instead of out. I carefully designed the course to help you do just that.

Ultimately, the answers are within YOU. They are unique to you. Breaking Barriers is all about you, not me and not anyone else in the course.

Are you available to help me if I’m struggling?

Yes, absolutely. I love receiving feedback about what parts of the course are most valuable as well as where people feel stuck. I am always adjusting the modules and tools to make sure they are as high-impact as possible.

I welcome your questions, concerns, suggestions and challenges at any point throughout Breaking Barriers.

How much does it cost?

To access all the videos, tools and audios for 1 year is $197. If you’re trying to decide if $197 is worth it to you or not, I’d encourage you to ask yourself the following question:

Is overcoming emotional eating, binge eating, self-sabotage or negativity worth $197 to me?

There’s no right or wrong answer but that’s how I evaluate financial decisions. Is the value greater than or equal to the price? Only you can answer that question.

I know I’ve said this before but I’ll say it again: I’ve only been a business owner for a couple years but Breaking Barriers is what I am most proud of.

It cuts straight to the core of the real issues behind overeating, poor relationships with food and unhealthy self-image.

I’d love to see you in the course, primarily because I know how amazing life can be when we break down our barriers and pursue our highest potential free from self-sabotage.

To join Breaking Barriers, click here.

172: What People Aren’t Saying About Weight Loss

169: What CAN You Do?

Today is a minisode to help you shift from a focus on all the things beyond your control to all the things squarely within your control.

We’re talking about the difference between having an internal locus of control & an external locus of control.

Essentially, when we focus on things we don’t control like the actions of our family or the things we’ve done in the past, we automatically feel less in control of our choices and more frustrated.

When we acknowledge all those things beyond our control but redirect our focus to all that is within our control, we accelerate our progress while dramatically improving our attitude & confidence.

There is ALWAYS something within your control. In today’s minisode I’ll show you how to redirect some of the most common frustrations to an effective & simple internal locus of control.

Don’t forget: we’re kicking off our journaling challenge on May 1st and I’ve created a free food journal for everyone who is taking the challenge! Click the banner below to get yours!

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Internal Locus of Control & Weight Loss

Locus of control refers to the place or position of control. You can either place control on circumstances and other people or you can own control as coming from your choices & decisions.

What is an internal locus of control?

People with a high internal locus of control believe in their own ability to influence their own choices and circumstances. They believe the impact they have over themselves & their lives is more significant than the influence of others on them. They have a perspective of control, ownership, potential & possibility.

What is an external locus of control?

People with an external locus of control tend to see things as happening to them and being more influenced by others than by themselves.

What is the link between the internal locus of control and weight loss?

Individuals with an internal locus of control related to weight loss tend to take responsibility for their actions & their results and instead of blaming others, they understand that despite what happens to them or around them, they still control their attitude & choices.

How can we shift from an external to an internal locus of control?

Practice redirecting your focus toward answering the question, “What can I do?”

There are many things beyond our control. Focusing on those things isn’t productive.

We can’t control what our spouse says, does or eats.

We can’t control whether or not our friends are supportive.

We can’t change what has happened in the past.

What can we do?

In today’s episode I’ll go through some of the common challenges that represent an external locus of control and share how to switch to an internal locus of control to help accelerate your results and improve your attitude.

Don’t forget! We’re kicking off the 31-day journaling challenge and I’ve even created a FREE food journal for you! You can get your free journal by clicking the link below!

Resources

Breaking Barriers – Overcoming Emotional Eating & Self-Limiting Beliefs

How To Track Without Counting Calories

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