Category Archives: Help Getting It Done

Hello, beautiful! I’m so glad you’re here!

For the past few months we’ve been looking at weight loss success stories and weight loss myths, and I thought that now it’s time to get into the keys to weight loss success. Most of us have lost weight on a diet and know the frustration of regaining weight after the diet is over. We also know the agony of always having to be on a diet. What’s the point of being on a diet if the weight comes right back afterward? So diets are not the answer. In this series, we are going to get into what IS. Stay with me as I teach the keys to permanent weight loss…

Welcome to the beginning of our new series, How To Know If You’re Ready To Lose Weight. Now, if you’ve been following me, you may be thinking, what? That’s what we’re doing, right? I’m a weight loss coach and these blogs have been about weight loss mindset and finding permanent weight loss, so of course, that’s what you’re here for! Actually, not always.

Why? I’ve spent a lot of years working with women and helping them solve different problems in their lives. Sometimes we’re in a place where we’ve identified a problem, we want it fixed, we are sure that we want the issue handled, we’re not actually ready to do what it takes to solve it. There is often a space between when we figure out what the problem is and when we’re truly ready to deal with it. Sometimes, the work and commitment that we need to deal with the issue aren’t quite there yet.

When it comes to weight loss it’s the same thing. You may have spent years trying different diets, jumping in and out of gym memberships, bouncing around different areas of your closet depending on what size you are that season. You might even be so frustrated by your weight that you’ve considered drastic measures like surgery.  Even that doesn’t mean you’re ready to work on permanent weight loss.

How do I know? You know too – let me show you. You’ve seen people who’ve gotten fed up and desperate enough to have weight loss surgery (not just talk about it – actually have the surgery done). Many of them initially lose weight and then gain much of it back. Many never get down to their goal weight or even to a weight that puts them near a normal BMI. I’ve had many consultations with women who want desperately to lose weight, but when it comes to making the decision to commit to themselves, they stop short.

What stops them? Sometimes it’s being stuck in diet mentality, thinking that what they really need is to just find the one magical eating plan that will work for them, as if there is a combination or code or series of lottery numbers that will cause the weight to come off once they find them. Sometimes it’s not being ready to prioritize this goal because of all the other important things in their life. This work just isn’t important enough to make the space. Sometimes it’s hesitating to invest in themselves – they’re not ready to bet on their success. That looks like not being ready to invest the time or the money it might take to get what they need to be successful. I’ve had women tell me the most compelling stories of their reasons for weight loss stop short at investing in a coaching program even when they want help and believe coaching will help them.

So no, not everyone is ready to commit to doing whatever it takes to lose their weight! And that’s ok. You don’t have to lose weight. You are worthy and lovable no matter what the number on the scale!

 You might realize you’re not quite there yet. But you want to be! Over the next few weeks, I want to share with you a few of the most powerful reasons I had when I decided to finally lose my weight almost 15 years ago. I hope that showing you what mindset was needed for permanent weight loss will help you find yours!

Now, some of you are already there. You know exactly why you want to lose your weight and you’ve got a list of strong whys to keep you going. But you also know that you need help, accountability, guidance, and maybe more than a little mind reprogramming to make this the last time you need to lose the weight. If you’re ready to invest in a coach to make your weight loss plan successful, I’m here to help! email me at drandreachristianparks@gmail.com and let’s set up a consultation. You don’t have to do this alone!

Here’s your video help for the week!

Weight loss can be hard. We put in a lot of effort to eat the “right” foods and craft the perfect plan, but inevitably we make mistakes. And when we do, we think that if we just had more willpower, we could stay on the plan and get to our goal. 

But willpower isn’t what we need. Let me show you how to use your brain to help you lose weight without any more willpower than you already have…

Most of us know the weight loss journey’s ups and downs. Feels like being trapped on an elevator – we want to get off on the ground floor, but we can’t seem to get off before the doors close and we go back up again!

I battled during the years before I lost my weight. It was a constant slog of trying to find the “right” diet, struggling to not want to eat “junk” food”, watching the scale with dread, and hating myself when I actually got on it. There were the doughnuts I couldn’t say no to and the pizza I’d never leave in the box. I figured I was just weak around food and the key was to stay out of the breakroom or kitchen, to put all the food out of sight where it couldn’t trigger me to start eating.

Even when I avoided the food, it would still call me from the pantry or kitchen or breakroom. My mind was on the food, and it didn’t really matter that it wasn’t in front of me. I needed more willpower – I needed to be strong to resist the temptation of the food!

What I wish I had known back then was this: Willpower is like a muscle and it fatigues. Maybe I wouldn’t have felt so worthless every time I gave in to a cookie after trying so hard not to eat it. You can grow your willpower muscle, but even at its strongest, you can still wear it out. Every time you think even the simplest thought about food when you’re not hungry and use willpower to resist it, you chip away at your willpower reserves. Little innocent thoughts like, “That looks delicious!” will start to deplete your willpower. After dozens (or hundreds!) of thoughts like this, resisting the temptation just wears your willpower out completely.

So how do you resist temptation?

By eliminating it in your mind.

Here’s the key: Your mind makes every feeling you have. So if you feel tempted to eat something off your plan, or to eat when you’re not hungry, you are creating that feeling of temptation with your thinking. If you think “I want that cookie” twenty times, you feel tempted to eat the cookie. But if you realize that your brain is creating your desire with its thoughts, you can choose other thoughts. You can go ninja on your brain and catch the thought creating your feeling of temptation. Then you can remember that the thought “I want that cookie” is easy, your brain is offering you the practiced thought, and you can choose a different thought instead. Your true desire is to lose the weight, right? You really want to see the scale go down more than that cookie. Besides, that cookie is from a supermarket and won’t taste that good. It’s not like it’s homemade and even if it was, would it be worth feeling like trash after you eat it, knowing you could have left it on the plate instead?

You get to choose a different thought. You get to practice the new thought. You can generate whatever emotion you need to feel great about leaving the cookie behind and you don’t need willpower to do it.

You just need a new thought and practice.

You don’t have to resist a feeling of commitment to your plan. If you feel committed instead of tempted, willpower doesn’t come into play. Commitment comes from practicing a thought like “I choose to eat to fuel my body”, or “I only eat when I’m physically hungry”, or “I stick to my plan from a love for myself”. Whatever thought you choose that generated that feeling of commitment, that’s the one you practice when you see the cookie. If you don’t feel tempted, you won’t eat it.

No willpower needed!

Yep, it’s simple. But I know it’s not easy. But we get to choose our hard, and whether it’s doing the work to lose the weight or continuing to stay overweight, both are hard. Hard is ok – we can do hard things! But sometimes having help to get through the hard is really useful. If you want help, I’m here for you. Email me at drandreachristianparks@gmail.com and we can set up a mini-coaching session. I’ll get you started on your weight loss transformation and we can make plans to work together to go the rest of the way!

Here’s your video help for the week!

Does fasting help or hurt weight loss? What’s the right way to fast? What if I don’t even want to fast because it’s so uncomfortable? Let’s answer all these and more in this week’s post…

Fasting. It’s the “new” thing and it seems like everyone has an opinion about it. It used to be that the common advice was to eat every few hours to stimulate the metabolism, and if you went too long between eating occasions that your metabolism would grind to a halt and you’d be doomed to gain weight forever. Ok, I’m being dramatic. But isn’t it interesting how the philosophies behind weight loss can totally contradict each other and still be so popular?

Fasting is in now. And folks either love it or hate it. Some swear that it’s the thing that made weight loss work for them, while others say it made no difference. There’s another group who refuses to try it at all –  waiting an extended period of time to eat is too hard, too intimidating, too painful to try.  Hangry, anyone?

Whether you love it or hate it, fasting isn’t new. As a spiritual practice, fasting has been around forever. Even as a normal eating pattern, in the 1950s most people didn’t eat after 6 pm dinner to 7 am breakfast (a 13 hour fast). That’s even where the word “breakfast” comes from.

I used to be terrified of fasting. Every time there was a mention of fasting – in the bible, at church, in popular media for weight loss, I resisted the idea. That resistance came from my fear of hunger. I spent most of my life trying to avoid hunger, so much so that when I started looking for hunger to lose weight the sensation was unfamiliar. Still, my mind thought it was something to stay away from. So when I finally allowed hunger to be the reason to eat and I started losing weight, it was a complete overhaul of my thinking around food and all the other reasons I’d learned to eat.

Fasting is a direct challenge to those thoughts. If you want to know what your brain thinks about food, stop eating and tune in. You’ll be able to watch your brain do gymnastics to try to get you to eat! Even more than 14 years after losing my weight, I can still see some of the old patterns of thinking around food come up when I fast. Let me tell you a story…

Recently I got an email that the church was going to fast on a particular day. Now, I read the email and decided that it was something I wanted to participate in, so I planned to join the fast. It was only one day and the fast from dinner the night before to dinner the day of the fast. I was in the office seeing patients that day, so I packed my water bottle and headed in.

Now, in my office, I have snacks for “emergencies” in my desk drawer. I have Kind bars and small squares of caffeinated chocolates and a container of organic roasted cashews that my nurse gave me for Doctor’s Day. Since I rarely have a food “emergency” the snacks usually just sit there and I give them away if one of my nurses or colleagues is hungry.

It was a busy day as usual. You’d think that I wouldn’t have much time to worry about the fast – but my brain was very busy thinking about the food I’d already decided not to eat. Every time I came back from seeing a few patients to sit at my desk and chart, my brain would suggest that I eat something. A couple of cashews, a square of chocolate, something. But here’s the kicker: I wasn’t actually hungry. The vast majority of the time that my brain offered me a snack as a solution, it wasn’t for hunger. It was to solve irritation, or boredom, or as a reward or a break. I could be sitting down for two minutes to close a chart and my brain would suggest a snack. Once I realized that my mouth was dry because of the mask and what I needed was water – but my brain suggested a snack for that too. It was fascinating to watch how many times my brain would offer food as an option to solve problems that weren’t hunger. Of course, as the day went on, I had more episodes of actual hunger, but most of the time I thought of eating wasn’t related to being hungry. Fasting was a great tool to see my mind!

If you want to see what you really think about food, try fasting. You’ll see all the reasons your mind wants to give you to eat because you say no! The mind will keep trying because of the no. If you pay attention, you can see the mind work even when you’re not fasting, but the fast is a powerful tool to take the distraction of eating food away.

Learning to see the mind at work is a practice, especially if you’ve been eating for reasons other than hunger as most of us have learned to do over the years. Untangling all the reasons why we eat and changing the thinking around them takes work, but it can be done! But if you’ve been trying and struggling, you don’t have to do it alone. I’m here to help! If you want me to coach you to master your mind and successfully lose your weight, email me at drandreachristianparks@gmail.com and request a consultation with me. We can conquer your weight battle together!

Here’s your video help for the week!

We don’t like to admit it because we think we should know better, but sometimes we do make self-care=selfish. So how do we dismantle this belief? Let’s get to it…

Welcome to week 4 of the Self Care series! I’m glad you’re here because this thought about self-care is so common! Thinking that self-care is selfish is one of those sneaky background thoughts that we don’t really say out loud. We know self-care is supposed to be important and we kind of accept that it should be part of our lives, while in real life we can’t seem to get it in. There are so many other people in our lives who need things too! Now we feel guilty we’re not doing it AND selfish for trying to do it at all.

This sneaky thought needs reevaluation…

When I realize I have thoughts that cause inner conflict, my first step in evaluation is to question the thought. Is it true? So what about self-care is selfish? We think that if we take time for ourselves that we will be taking away time from someone else who needs us. We think our spouse or husband will have to go without because we did something for us. So we figure that if someone has to go without something they need, then it should be us, not them.

Sometimes this is the best decision. Some needs are that important! The problem comes when this is our default answer to balancing the needs and requests of the people in our lives. I’m convinced that the self-care movement comes from a push-back against this default thinking that we women have adopted.

Yes, I mean women. 

As a society, we are very comfortable with the role of the woman as the caretaker. We play that role at work, at home, and in relationships. We don’t have that same cultural expectation of men, so they don’t play it out. When’s the last time that you heard a man say, “I can’t go out/play ball/go to the gym”? They don’t. They know what they want and need to be the person they are and they plan for it, usually with other people helping to make it possible. And there’s nothing wrong with that. We as women might want to do the same!

So is it true that self-care is selfish? If we allow for it for men, plan for downtime for the kids, and hesitate to load responsibilities on others, then we recognize that taking care of human needs does matter. So caring for yourself isn’t selfish. That’s just a thought we have chosen.

Here’s the main reason I have a problem with the thought that self-care is selfish: It means that while everyone else can have normal human needs, the main caretaker can’t. To me, that lessens the humanity of the caretaker – the mom, grandma, wife, sister, daughter. That’s a whole lot of humans that are expected not to take care of themselves for the sake of others! That seems more like a man-made cultural construct than a godly love of humanity. 

We have value. Each of us has wants and needs and lives and relationships and dreams. To live the full expression of our human life we need to see the value in that life. We see it for other people. We make space and time and provide for others. Why is it so hard to see the value in ourselves?

Besides, who is supposed to take care of you? You raise your kids to become independent and take care of themselves, right? When your daughters are grown up, how do you want them to live? You’re really the only one who is assigned the role of caring for you as an adult. I’m not saying don’t accept help – absolutely accept any help you can get! But who else knows what will best fuel your body, what kind of exercise feels good to you, how much sleep you need, and what is fun for you? We spend so much time taking care of other people and studying and anticipating their needs that sometimes we forget what we even like to do!

You have lots of responsibilities and people to care for. So do I. I’m grateful I have them because otherwise, I’d be alone (and most days I’d rather have them!). But it’s also your responsibility to take care of yourself.  You have to be your own advocate. When you care for yourself, you have more to offer – to yourself, to others, and to the world. When you don’t take care of yourself, you can’t give as much as you have to give. And that’s a loss for us all.

Sometimes it’s hard to get the old thinking out and the new thinking in. What do you want? What do you need? Why haven’t you created it for yourself already? Maybe you need to let some things go so you can get more sleep. Or you might want to change your schedule so you have time to exercise. You might want to learn to meditate to manage your mind and stress. You may want to finally drop 20 pounds and feel better in your body. It might be that you want all of it and have no idea how to make it happen in your super-busy life!

I might be a little biased, but the way to get your life to become what you want it to be is with a coach. Changing your thinking alone is hard, but a coach can help you cut through the noise and find a path to where you want to be. I think having a coach is the ultimate form of self-care because fixing your thinking is the origin of any change you ever have or will ever make! Managing my mind is absolutely how I am able to move my life forward out of confusion and in the direction of my dreams. I want that for you too!

I want to help you get where you want to go! If you want a coach to help you finally get off the weight for good or cut through all the noise in your life to get to your goals, email me at drandreachristianparks@gmail.com, and let’s set up a consultation. You can get to the life you want!

If you have questions or want to talk more about how to change thinking so it works for you instead of against you, comment below and we’ll talk…

Here’s your video help for the week!