Have you ever wondered how you can want something so bad and tell yourself you’re going to do the work but repeatedly fail to do it?
Have you ever wondered why you can feel super-motivated but still make choices that keep you from reaching your goals?
Have you ever wondered why you can want to lose weight and improve your body but still struggle with consistency & self-discipline.
Uh huh. Me too. That was the story of my life.
For years, I wanted for it without working for it. I mean, I’d work for it sometimes. But I’d fall for any and every reason to indulge, make an excuse or claim an exception.
I obsessed about weight loss, read every diet book, knew every last tip & trick but struggled with consistency, motivation & self discipline.
Fortunately, I learned some powerful lessons that changed everything & I lost almost 150 lbs. After struggling with yo-yo dieting for my entire life, these lessons completely stopped the struggle & transformed everything in my life.
(Want some daily motivation? Grab my Motivation Mixtape of Motivational Audio messages!)
Alright, no more holding back. Here are a few of the key lessons I learned:
Your body will work to create the vision your mind has given it.
If you declare that you are fat, if you declare that you aren’t motivated, if you declare that you’re an emotional eater, your body will work to create those visions. This isn’t woo-woo new age stuff. It’s true. If you want to change your body, you’ve got to change your mind (and I’ll teach you how I did this for myself in Tuesday’s masterclass! I know, it’s not always easy to make this switch but it’s 100% possible and won’t take as long as you might think!)
Obstacles will arise. When they arise, change your direction, not your decision.
Sure, you might have to course correct along the way, but do NOT quit in response to obstacles. Adjust, take a detour, change the game plan, but never, ever change your decision.
You can be “solution-conscious” (always looking for a way to make it work, always searching for a solution to a problem) or you can be “problem-conscious” (always making excuses and seeing the obstacles in the path). You can’t be both. You must train yourself to seek solutions. You will always get what you look for.
Happiness comes from progress, not pleasure.
Think about how you feel after a binge. Awful, right? Think about how you feel when you’re beating yourself up for self-sabotaging. It feels terrible. We look at food as this source of pleasure, but the reality is, over-indulging feels terrible.
We have to work on asking ourselves, “How will I feel if I make this choice?”
Very few people wake up the morning after over-indulging or binging and think, “I’m so glad I did that” yet choosing your goals is never regretted in the morning!
While those are a few of the important lessons that helped me overcome my decades long pattern of self-sabotage, there’s a whole lot more. I feel very confident that if you make this free motivation masterclass a priority, it will help you:
Resist temptation
Accelerate your fat loss
Feel less deprived
Generate momentum & motivation
Here’s one more thing I’ve learned (this is something I learned from Zig Ziglar): 100% of the people who don’t take the first step won’t take the second.
Let’s talk about your goals. How’s it going? Or, maybe, WTF happened?
Is there a gap between what you said you were going to do and what you’ve actually been doing?
Are you finding that you make excuses & exceptions on the regular?
You’re not alone.
But let’s not let the year slip away feeling like we could have done more or tried harder. Let’s assess the situation and get real about how we can get the results we want. That’s what today is all about.
In today’s episode we’re talking about how to break out of the cycle of setting intentions and not doing the work. Unfortunately, we take the approach of “same pond, same frog” and end up wondering, “WTF happened?” The intentions were there, the motivation was there when we set the intentions, but same pond, same frog, nothing new to see here.
The notion of “same pond, same frog” basically means that we don’t change ourselves and we don’t change our environment but try to change the outcome. It doesn’t work.
I want to teach you, in this episode, how to set yourself up for the situation of either:
Same pond, new frog OR
New pond, new frog
You must change YOURSELF if you want to change your results.
We cannot focus on the external only. When we focus on eating differently or exercising differently, those are external foci.
Our external results are reflective of our internal results. Change must start inside.
To be successful in achieving our goals, we must strengthen the following mental muscles:
Motivation
Consistency
Self-discipline
In this episode I detail these 5 keys to creating new results & becoming a new frog.
Start small
Keep your word
Challenge yourself
Be positive
Seek feedback from failures
Episode Quotables:
You find the answers in your practice, not in your perfection (and not in your planning)
If it were possible to overcome this challenge, what would it take? Whatever that is, can I do it one time?
We must train our mental muscles over time & under stress
Let’s try something new! I’m going to be kicking off a monthly series on the podcast – you can consider it the Primal Potential Book Club! We’re starting with Always Hungry by Dr. David Ludwig.
I read a ton. I’ve always got a couple of books going. Each month, maybe even a couple of times a month, I want to share with you the best books I’ve read, the most interesting things I’ve learned and how I’ve changed my fat loss approach (if at all) based on those books.
Without question, one of the best books I’ve read recently is Always Hungry by Dr. David Ludwig. In today’s episode I’m sharing the most powerful lessons in the book and my thoughts on his “Always Hungry Solution” that he argues (quite well) will conquer cravings, retrain your fat cells and help you lose weight permanently.
In today’s episode I’m sharing what I feel are the most powerful & high-impact points made by Dr. Ludwig in his new book. I share my commentary and what changes I made based on this great read (as well as how my body responded). Definitely take a listen to the full episode but here are the highlights of what I share from the book.
We don’t get fat because we overeat. We overeat because we’re getting fat.
What? Huh? Of course we get fat because we overeat. No. We overeat, he argues, not because of the volume of food we eat but because of the type of food we eat.The type of food we eat creates a hormonal condition that makes us 2 things: hungry and fat.It makes our fat cells greedy. They suck up more than their fair share of the nutrients we eat. The body responds by triggering hunger & cravings. We eat more. We overeat because of the hormonal conditions created by the type of food we eat.Dr. Ludwig uses a couple of great examples to help explain this notion that we overeat because we’re getting fat, not the other way around.Think of a teenage boy during puberty. Do we say he’s growing because he’s eating so much? No! We say he’s eating so much because he’s growing. The hormonal conditions in his body are increasing his appetite. His appetite isn’t creating the hormonal conditions that make him grow.The same is true in pregnancy. Do we say that a pregnant woman’s belly is growing because she is eating so much? No! She is eating so much because her baby is growing. The hormonal conditions in her body increases her appetite.This, he argues, (strongly, in my opinion) is what happens with obesity. Here’s what Dr. Ludwig explains in Always Hungry: The food choices we make when our diet is filled with processed foods, grains, wheats and oats send insulin production into overdrive. Insulin is a fuel delivery hormone (if you need an overview on insulin, check out this episode).This chronic, overstimulation of insulin essentially fertilizes your fat cells. Your fat cells become greedy because they are overstimulated. They suck up more than their fair share of the nutrients you consume.Well, what happens if the fat cells are taking more than their fair share of the nutrients you consume?The body misses out. The rest of your body doesn’t get the fuel it needs, even if you’re eating it! How does the body respond? Hunger & cravings to stimulate you to feed it and by lowering your metabolic rate to conserve fuel because it’s not getting enough (even though it is).
It’s not a matter of having too many calories in the in the body, it’s too few in the right place.
We can reprogram our fat cells to release stored calories Our food choices are responsible for programming our fat cells to take up too much fuel. Therefore, by changing our food choices, we can reprogram our fat cells to release stored calories. We do this in two ways (that I go into in more detail in this episode). We do this by choosing foods that don’t overstimulate insulin production/release and that control (and minimize) inflammation.
Dieting is not the answer.
Cutting back on calories will cause weight loss in the short term, but it programs your body to work against you. There’s a better way. Dr. Ludwig uses the example of taking an ice bath in response to a fever. Yes, a fever is reflective of too much heat in the body so you could reason that sitting in an ice bath would bring your body temperature down. And it will, in the short term. However, the body will compensate by making you shiver and trigger vaso-constriction to conserve heat, so it’s not a long term approach.We see this all the time with dieting. Sure, it might lead to short term weight loss but the body will fight against you by lowering metabolic rate, increasing hunger and triggering cravings.Dieting is a short term strategy that has been repeatedly proven to deliver, at best, short term results. We have to work with the body, not against it.
It’s not about calories.Even when you keep calories constant, you can significantly impact the number of calories you burn at rest by changing where your calories come from.In Always Hungry, Dr. Ludwig shares some of his clinical research where two groups of individuals received the same exact number of calories per day, but with different ratios of carbohydrate and fat.The individuals on the higher fat, lower carb diet burned 325 more calories per day at rest than the individuals consuming the exact same number of calories but on a lower fat, higher carb approach.It’s not about the number of calories you consume as much as it is about the signals they send to your body.
Your fat cells reach a critical threshold where they begin to emit stress signals to your body.Your body’s primary objective is survival. It will always operate from a “survival first” perspective. The two most significant threats to your body are starvation & infection.Your body fat is protective against starvation. It is the fuel reserve for your body. More or less, it ensures your protection against starvation. For that reason, your immune system (prevention from infection) and your body fat are very closely linked.Your white blood cells (whose job it is to protect against infection) patrol your body fat. They do so because your body fat would be the holy grail feast site of a potential infection.Unfortunately, your fat cells become stressed when they’re taxed and over-fed. They begin to emit stress signals to which your body responds.Those white blood cells call in reinforcements from the rest of your body (preventing infection fighting elsewhere) and your body begins to attack itself. This is the onset of auto-immune disease and other inflammatory conditions including heart disease.
We have to eat to reduce inflammation & calm our fat cells so they are willing to release their stored fat.Dr. Ludwig shares how to do this via food choices in his Always Hungry Solution.
The Always Hungry Solution is all about minimizing your body’s insulin response and controlling inflammation via food choices. Of course it emphasizes whole foods with the greatest emphasis on plant-based fats like avocado, extra virgin olive oil and coconut oil followed by non-starchy vegetables and high quality animal proteins.
Phase 1: 2 weeks long. 50% of calories from fat, 25% from carbohydrates (non-starchy veggies and non-tropical fruits) and 25% from protein
Phase 2: Duration of weight loss. 40% of calories from fat, 35% from carbohydrates (non-starchy veggies & fruit) and 25% from protein
Phase 3: Maintenance – finding what makes you feel the best while maintaining results
After reading Always Hungry, I was inspired to make a few changes. Just these tiny changes to my already clean diet improved my sleep, significantly reduced my hunger (and I wasn’t really hungry to begin with) and in just 10 days led to noticeable changes in my lower abdominals.
I spent the last couple weeks going through my email to identify where MOST people are running into the most trouble reaching their goals. The two words that jumped out at me most often were “motivation” and consistency”.
I started thinking about the process of creating consistency and motivation and how I could really help you hone those skills. Ultimately, there’s no food rules or goals that are valuable without recurring consistency & motivation.
In today’s episode I share 3 very specific strategies for creating consistency and motivation. One of them is related to what I’m calling a “Motivation Mixtape”. Definitely listen to the episode, but you can get your “mixtape” files by clicking the not-so-subtle button below.
This minisode is all about creating consistency & motivation. I start by sharing what is known as The Paradox of the Growing Heap or the Sorites Paradox.
It goes like this: If ten coins are not enough to make a man rich, what if you add one coin? What if you add another? Finally, you will have to say that no one can be rich unless one coin can make him so.
When it comes to fat loss, we see our choices as that one, insignificant coin. We justify excuses and exceptions by telling ourselves that this one small choice or action doesn’t matter.
It’s just one cookie.
It’s just drink.
It’s just one day.
But, if we shift our perspective to consider the growing heap, we understand that we have the opportunity to grow our heap or not. We have the opportunity to reinforce good habits or bad.
In an of itself that one choice might not seem significant. But without that one choice, you can’t accumulate the consistency you need for results.
Here’s the challenge I have for you:
Get a large jar
Every time you make a choice that moves you towards you goals, I want you to add one item to the jar. You can use a grain of rice, a dried bean or a coin.
Every time you make a choice that moves you away from your goals, I want you to remove one item for your jar.
Here’s the theory behind that: we humans like to see immediate results. Unfortunately, with health & fat loss, we often have to generate consistency before we’ll ever see results. If we don’t see immediate return on our efforts, we’ll often give up. Then we’re sure to NEVER get there.
This jar will be the visible, tangible representation of your efforts, or lack thereof.
It’s been too long since I’ve done a Q&A episode! Let’s fix that! I get a lot of emails from people who are struggling with lack of momentum and feeling unsure how to get “back on track” after a rough day, week or series of weeks.
In today’s listener Q&A podcast I’m going to share my thoughts on listener questions related to lack of momentum, feeling stuck in a rut and battling cravings.
Don’t forget: if you have questions or you need a bit of encouragement to get moving in the right direction – please don’t hesitate to reach out for help! That’s what I’m here for!
While you’re here, don’t forget to hop on the free VIP email list to get your 100 fat loss meal ideas with over 30 killer recipes!
I’m answering a handful of listener questions on this episode.
Elizabeth, I’m a total mess. I feel out of control. I want to change but I’m continuing to make awful choices. I feel like crap but I don’t know how to stop. I don’t even know where to begin. Can you help?
Calm down and slow your mind. Bring it back to this moment
Track
Consistently implement a fat loss breakfast
I love going out with my friends and having a few (or more than a few) drinks. The problem is that the following day I feel awful and my cravings are out of control. Is this all in my head? Any advice you have would be great!
This is almost entirely physiological
Cravings are often a result of poor blood sugar/insulin management. Alcohol sends our blood sugar for a ride and the instability triggers hunger and cravings
If you’re going to drink, invest time in pre-making the following day’s food. Make it & have it in the fridge so you take the guess work and need for willpower out of the following day
I just don’t have time to eat healthy. My husband is traveling, my kids are involved in so many things, I work full time and I can’t focus enough to make this work. What do you recommend?
