Your body is one of your greatest gifts – contrary to how you may be feeling in it.
In order to use this gift to its fullest potential you have to live your life with it, rather than against it. One of the best ways I know how to do that is to use my big, beautiful, planner-brain to make the best decisions I can for my body and my life.
This happens to be the number one weight loss tool I share with my clients. They decide today what they’re going to eat tomorrow and then do what they said they’d do. The ones who keep the weight off have figured out how to make this a habit.
I think that if you can master this skill, you can do anything.
The business of repeatedly honoring your commitment to yourself without question (or with question, but still doing it anyway!) is training you to take as good of care with yourself as you would with a project, child, or client. You show up and you get it done – even when you’re tired, even when you don’t want to – every time. You’re brain knows it’ll happen, no negotiations necessary.
Once you prove to your own brain that you are willing to put yourself at the top of your own list along with all those other obligations – anything is possible.
The benefit of tackling and doing this with food is that the results of these efforts spill out over your entire life. You can’t help but be more thoughtful with your days and your hours if you’re thinking ahead and planning your meals.
- Where will you be when you usually get hungry?
- Will you be near any restaurants or do you need to swing through a drive-thru and grab something because you don’t have a break all day?
- How do you want to feel at that 3pm meeting and what can you eat (or not eat) for lunch to help create that?
The point is not to plan your best “diet” behavior, the point is to decide in advance and plan for reality. Taking into account the schedule you have, not the one you wish you had or you think you need in order to lose weight or eat “healthy.” Eat real food when you can, cook if you want to, make the best choices you can for the life you have that day.
It will take a few weeks to get comfortable with this, expect that. You may think “I don’t know what they are serving so I can’t plan.” Take your best guess, make the best choices given the situations at hand.
Make the plan, do what you said you’d do, repeat.
Caryn
PS: Next week I’m going to start writing more about exactly what I do with my clients who want to lose weight for good. I want to make sure I’m writing about what you really need and want so I’d love to hear from you in the comments below. What are your top 2 questions or frustrations about losing weight?
Thank you!