Category Archives: Help Getting It Done

Welcome back! It’s a new month and we are starting a new series – time to fire up your weight loss plan! I’m glad you’re here, staying committed to your goal and getting the support you need to be successful. If you were here for last month’s Fresh Start series, how is it going with taking out the mind trash, focusing, making your plan, and getting accountable? Are you seeing yourself grow in each area, little by little? If so, great – you’re getting closer to your permanent weight loss goal! If you aren’t seeing growth or if you just got here, take a little time and go back over the posts or YouTube videos from the past few weeks. They’ll help you get on track!

This month we are focusing on hunger. Yep, I heard all the groans! I know – everyone wants the weight to fall off, but we don’t want to be hungry as it happens. We think weight loss without hunger is attainable because even the big weight loss plans advertise it – buy our plan and you can lose weight without being hungry! Three meals and snacks throughout the day and you never have to feel hungry as you watch the weight fall off!

How’s that worked for you in the past?

Right – it doesn’t. At least, it only works while you follow their packaged food plan or the exact calorie-restricted regimen, which you promptly toss out the window as soon as you finish the program, at which point you watch with dismay as all the weight you lost comes back (usually with some extra!).

You need a plan you can live with forever. You need a reliable signal for when it’s time to eat, and when that signal is not there, it’s not time for food.

Yup, that’s hunger!

Who knows better than the designer how their design is made to function? I’ve studied the body for decades through medical school, residency, lifestyle medicine training, holistic nutrition training, and the one thing I know: The body is more complex than any human (doctor, scientist, nutritionist, or trainer) understands. The signal we have for when to eat is hunger. Our problem is that we don’t follow it. We don’t like it. We learn to eat in response to other signals (fatigue, stress, boredom) and we get out of touch with the one that matters.

Let’s address the biggest reason why you don’t want to get hungry. It’s uncomfortable! The sensation of hunger from the stomach is supposed to get your attention, so it doesn’t feel great. Actually, it’s not that bad, but once we decide we don’t like the feeling and we want to avoid it, the fear of hunger makes it bigger than the physical sensation actually is.

Besides, I’m not asking you to fast or bypass your hunger.

Hunger is THE signal to eat. You just want to be sure it’s actual physical hunger. If you eat because you’re physically hungry, you will lose weight. We’re going to spend the next few weeks working on how to do it and trouble shooting challenges that come with learning to wait for hunger, but for this next week, all I want you to focus on is using hunger as your only signal to eat. Nothing else. Not mealtimes or because the kids are eating, or to help you feel better after a stressful day at work – only because you are physically hungry.

It might seem like that’s not enough to be successful at weight loss and you want to get this show on the road! Here’s the thing – the more you give yourself to work on at once, the more you dilute your focus. When you focus on one thing, you can get really good at it! So even though it seems easy, just spend this week working on eating only when you’re hungry. It can be more challenging than you think, especially if you’re like most of us who eat for lots of reasons other than hunger! Besides, it’s just 7 days to the next challenge – see you in a week!

You can do this! Keep taking one step toward your goal and you’ll make it. I’m here if you need support – make comments or ask questions below and I’ll help. If you really want more individual support and are ready for the accountability and attention of a coach, email me at drandreachristianparks@gmail.com, and let’s set up your one-hour free consultation. We can get you to your goal!

Here’s your video help for the week!

We’ve made it to week four of this series and the end of the first month of the year! The time is flying by and we are moving right along. How’s it going for you? How have you been doing with taking out that mind trash, focusing, and making YOUR plan?

If you missed the last few weeks of help, no problem! You can go back and read the posts or watch the YouTube videos – you can always catch up!

This week, we’re going to put some fire to your plan – it’s time to get accountable! Now, don’t get scared – I’m going to offer you some suggestions on how to do this easily so you can get the support you need and keep working on your plan without adding a lot of time to your already super busy life.

Ideally, we could be accountable to ourselves – we could be complete mind ninjas and catch it before we slip off our plan and hijack our weight loss success. This is the work I do with my clients – I teach them how to see the sabotaging thoughts and use their own minds to ensure success. But in the beginning, my clients use me for accountability. Meeting with me gives them the support of walking with someone toward the goal – and it helps!

But you don’t have to work with me to create accountability for yourself. There are other easy ways to do it. Often, we don’t create accountability because when we do, we feel exposed. On the hook. Responsible to do what we say without any mistakes.

This is accountability without grace.

This is like high-pressure sales tactics – it feels icky. And we don’t like it, so we don’t do it. We think if we get accountable to someone else, we might fail. We might look stupid. We may feel embarrassed. And we want to avoid this at all costs, so we don’t create the accountability we really need for our own success.

We need grace.

Be kind to yourself. It’s ok to make mistakes along this journey. In fact, I’ve never met anyone ever who woke up one day and just decided to lose weight and did it perfectly from that day forward, thank you and amen. So why would you be any different than anyone else along this journey? Yes, you are special and unique, but you’re also human and need compassion and grace. Part of the journey is learning to give that to yourself.

Now we’re ready for some accountability! Let me share a few ways you can create accountability within your own journey toward successful weight loss.

Buddy Up

Do you have a friend who wants to lose weight too? Perfect – get on a plan of sharing your weight loss progress. Maybe you talk once a week during your commute and discuss your wins and challenges. Email each other or text if that’s better for your schedule. But be open – share your current weight for the week. Talk about when you stepped off of your plan. Share when you were on track and it seemed like your weight didn’t change (happens all the time and we give up too soon!). Share with someone who can love and support and walk with you!

Build Community

Right here on this blog, there are a group of like-minded women who want to lose their weight. Comment at the end of the blood. Watch the YoutTube videos and comment there. Support each other! I’m here too – I’ll respond to questions and offer my suggestions and encouragement as well. Use any other tools at your disposal too – FB groups, IG groups, Twitter hashtags. You might have noticed that I put hashtags like #weightlossmindset on my posts – these can help you find people who are also doing the work. Community is powerful – that’s how we connect and thrive!

Get A Coach

If you want to add fuel to your plan, put something on the line. When clients sign up with me, the level of commitment it takes to sign up to work with me is part of the reason for the consistent success my clients create. When they decide that they are ready to invest in themselves and set aside the time, money, and effort it takes to work with me, they’ve already begun to guarantee the weight loss will happen. I watch it happen over and over again and it inspires me (and them!) every time. If you are ready for that level of commitment and support – I’m here!

You CAN do this! Keep taking out the mind trash, focus, work YOUR plan, and get accountable – you’re making it happen, step by step. I’m getting the weight loss course ready, so keep watching for that if you’re interested in signing up. And if you want to work with me one-on-one before I shift over to serving my class taking the course, email me at drandreachristianparks@gmail.com and let’s get your consultation in! Once the course launches, I will stop taking private clients – I want to make sure all my students get as much of me as they need!

Here’s your video help for the week!

Welcome back to week three of Fresh Start! We’re getting our new year started off right – it’s time to take advantage of this restart and make your weight loss success happen this year. In the last two episodes, we talked about taking out the mind trash and getting your focus right, so if you missed it, go back and catch up!

What are we talking about this week? You need a plan to follow, a way to craft your success with eating. So how do you get a plan that you know will work for you? Maybe a google search or talk to friends about what they’ve done to lose weight? Join the office group on the keto diet for comradery and support? You could do any of those, and you’d likely lose weight – for a while. But most diets are designed to be temporary. They work as long as you work them. But once you’ve lost the weight and stopped the diet, the weight comes right back. Every time.

Why? Because you didn’t make a permanent change – you just did a temporary diet. You stepped out of your life and normal living to stick to a diet for a particular length of time. Ever eaten a boring salad while your whole family eats tacos? That’s designed NOT to last. Your diet didn’t teach you how to eat for the rest of YOUR life. And you definitely didn’t learn how to think like a naturally thin person about food and eating.

You have to make YOUR plan.

No, you don’t have to invent the next perfect diet to create your plan. But only you can craft a plan that fits your life. Do you love your morning coffee? Great – have that on your plan. Is breakfast not for you? Excellent – let lunch be your first meal of the day. Do you like to have a snack for lunch and eat a hearty dinner? Perfect. Write your plan to include almonds and an apple for lunch and a dinner you know will taste good and serve your body.

The point is, don’t create a plan that can’t be sustained. If you hate cooking and work outside of the home and won’t have time to cook anyway, don’t design a plan that requires you to cook every night of the week. You won’t do it! If you have little kids to cook for and you don’t want to be a short-order cook, decide how you can cook once for everyone AND still take care of your food needs. You know what you can do and what you can’t or WON’T do.

This is the work I do with my clients. Every plan is different because every life is different. And while I won’t tell anyone what they should eat, I do help my clients craft a plan that fits their life. A plan that can be sustained is one that can be successful. You can always tweak the plan if you want to level up in the future. But as long as you can make small changes that result in incremental weight loss, you can keep losing weight until you get to your goal AND stay there!

You can do this! Create that plan and work it – you’ll get there. If you keep yo-yo-ing from diet to diet, you know you will keep regaining the weight. If you do nothing, at best you’ll stay the weight you’re at now. So get started on what will work for you!

Now, I know some of you are waiting for my digital weight loss course – it’s coming! A quick word to those of you who really want the one-on-one attention and accountability of a personal coach: Once the course is launched, I won’t be taking solo clients so that I can focus on bringing my class the attention and excellence they also deserve. So if you want to work with me, don’t wait! Make your consultation appointment by emailing me at drandreachristianparks@gmail.com and I will set aside an hour just for you. Let’s get you what you want!

Here’s your video help for the week!

Welcome back to week 2 of Fresh Start! We’re going to get into the nitty-gritty of making your weight loss plans for this year stick. We don’t want to start strong and peter out – we want to finish strong too!

After taking out the mind trash (that was last week – check it out if you missed it!), we want to build our plan to carry us through to our goal. What do we need next to be successful?

FOCUS.

Sounds good, right? Focus is a good thing. But it’s not a tool we use well to lose weight. Let me explain.

Here’s what most people do. Something sets you off – suddenly you can’t fit into a favorite pair of pants or your doctor says your blood pressure is up a little and maybe you need meds. Or maybe you’re planning your winter vacation and you go swimsuit shopping (ugh!). Whatever it is, you’re done. This weight has got to come off, like yesterday. So you decide that you’re going to start exercising, no more junk food, and meal prepping and planning is going to become part of your daily life, no matter what it takes. The weight has to go!

It’s the same thing we do with New Year weight loss planning. We’re going to create the ideal plan and stick to it. We’re smart, right? We know all the right things to do, so all we have to do is make our plan and do it. But for some reason, by March of the new year the plan is gone and so is the weight loss.

There are really good reasons for this – and they come from your brain.

First, your brain does NOT like change. Anything new is interpreted as a threat by your brain. It doesn’t want you to do something risky – the known is safer. So when you ask it to change lots of things at once, even though you know they’re good things, your brain resists. It’s not trying to get in your way, it’s just trying to protect you. So if you plan to go vegan, exercise 4 days a week, and dust off your gym membership, your brain gets overwhelmed and fatigued and poops out. It’s hard to maintain that kind of momentum!

The other thing that blocks us also comes from our brain. We think weight loss has to be complicated to be successful. So our high-achieving minds create a plan that has to be implemented on top of a life that’s already full of work demands, relationship work, and kid needs. We figure that we’re smart and strong and we can figure it out! But it’s exhausting and not sustainable.

So keep it focused and simple. Focus on your food – 80-90% on weight loss success is from what you put in (or DON’T put in) your mouth. Do you like to exercise? Good – use it for your stress relief and keep it nurturing and easy. But if you don’t love exercise and you’re just doing it to lose weight, I give you permission to quit. Don’t do it at all. If you have to use your brainpower to stay on track, use it to focus on your eating plan. Decide on the one change you’re going to make and work that plan. Want to extend your fasting window and make your breakfast at 11 am? Perfect. Just do that. How about going from 3 meals a day to two? Excellent. What about stopping snacks and just eating your meals when you’re hungry? That’ll work too! The point is to change one thing at a time and make sure that’s easy before you add something else to the plan.

Right now your brain might be screaming at you, “That’s not enough! It won’t work!” You think you have to do it all to be successful. If you want to be a woman who lives at your ideal weight easily and is strong and healthy, exercising almost daily, who meditates and prays and studies your bible daily, you’re going to create her. You’ll be more successful if you don’t try to do it all in one day. Wouldn’t it be better to make one change at a time and add to it than to try to do it all together and find it too hard to continue? If you get good at one simple change at a time, you will create what you want instead of starting over from scratch in a few months when the complicated plan is too heavy to carry. Pick the one thing you think is too easy to do and do that. You will ensure your own success!

You can do this! The course is coming, but if you’ve been thinking that this is the year that you are going to invest in yourself with coaching, I’m still taking a very few private clients. Don’t wait – once the course launches I will be focused on serving my class and won’t be able to take new clients. Email me at drandreachristianparks@gmail.com and let’s get your consultation scheduled!

Here’s your video help for the week!

Happy New Year! I love the newness and promise of a new year. It may be an arbitrary date on the calendar, but I love the notion that we get a chance to start over, to create something new, the hope of the good things that are coming!

How did you finish the year with your weight? Are you where you wanted to be? The beauty of the New Year is that we get to start fresh and create what we want. So no matter how the last year ended, we can begin. This month we’re going to be creating that fresh start, intentionally setting up to make this the year that the weight problem is solved for good! But first…

We have to take out the trash.

You know how when you want to sit down to journal or make a vision board (or do anything creative), you have to clear a space to work? This is the same thing, but it’s clearing out junk in your mind. You can’t sit in your chair if there’s a pile of laundry on top! You also can’t move forward if your mind is full of junky thinking.

So what is mind trash? It’s thoughts that get you nowhere except tired and defeated. When I asked you how the last year went for your weight goal, you may have thought, “I still haven’t lost my weight. It’s just impossible. I don’t know why I can’t do this. I’m so overwhelmed and busy. Maybe weight loss just isn’t possible for me.”

These thoughts are the trash.

When you have these kinds of thoughts cluttering up your mind, you don’t create anything. These thoughts produce fatigue, sluggishness, lack of motivation, defeat and overwhelm. None of these emotions allow you to move forward and create what you want. They just clutter your mind and slow you down!

So how do we take out the trash?

First, you slow down enough to listen to your mind. What are the thoughts humming in the background? It’s useful to sit quietly and listen to your brain after you ask yourself what you think about your weight. Then write it all down – this is how you capture the thoughts. Then recognize that they’re there, and show them the door. They aren’t helping you move forward – they’re just getting in your way!

The thoughts may keep coming back. But you get to choose if you will listen to them. Instead, you can decide that it is possible for you to lose weight. You can decide that you are capable of figuring this out. You can decide what you need to solve your weight problem and get going to make it happen!

You choose your thoughts. You can listen to the ones running in the background and feel unmotivated and tired, or you can get aware of them and instead choose thoughts that keep your weight loss moving! Your brain is not the boss – you are!

You can do this! Take out the mind trash and get ready – we’re building on the clear space you’re creating. See you next week when we start intentionally creating what you need to successfully lose the weight!

Now, I have exciting news – my digital weight loss course is complete! I will be launching it soon, so watch out for it! Once I launch the course, I will have a class of people working together to lose weight with my support. It’s going to be amazing! But when I have my class started, I will have limited capacity to take one-on-one coaching clients, so if that’s something you’ve been thinking about but just haven’t emailed me to get started, don’t wait – I’d hate for you to miss your chance to work with me individually if that’s what you want! Email me at drandreachristianparks@gmail.com at let’s get your consultation in before the course launches. See you soon!

Here’s your video help for the week!

Hello and welcome back! I’m so glad you’re here. We are fast approaching Christmas and all the party foods and sugary treats are everywhere. We want to lose weight for the holidays but how is it even possible with all the foods that are so hard to resist showing up all over the place?

It’s ok – I got you!

Let’s figure out the problem first. We walk into the breakroom at work and there’s a plate of homemade assorted cookies on the table, still warm and ready to eat. Or your office sends out candied nuts as a gift to your house. Girl, the treats just walked right in your door! Then you walk through the store to grab a few essentials and the pretty Christmasy candy arrangements are so cute – your buy some as gifts and maybe keep just one for yourself. What about those decorated sugar cookies at the grocery store? Let’s just pick a box up for the kids – they can have some Christmas sugar even if you can’t, right? Except you find yourself eating some once they’re in bed!

What is this bizarre power that foods have over us? We’ve all said things like “Girl, I’m the cookie monster. I just can’t say no to a good cookie!” Or “Cupcakes are my kryptonite.”.  Even better, “Those wings were calling my name!”

Except they weren’t.

I’ll tell you how I know for sure that the food has no power. First and foremost, food doesn’t care about you at all. It was prepared by someone and it just sits there. It’s not tempting you or calling your name. Food is an inanimate object that has no feelings or motivations in any way.

Your thoughts are what gives the food the power.

If you put a cupcake in front of a person with a true gluten allergy, they wouldn’t agonize over how delicious the moist delicious cake might be. They’d say no thank you and keep it moving. If you have IBS, there are certain food that you would avoid like the plague because they’ll set you off. You don’t want that smoke! No temptation there. Let me give you a personal example. I have a life-threatening allergy to brazil nuts. Fortunately, they don’t show up too often, but if you offer me one I have no problem declining. Doesn’t matter how delicious you say they are, doesn’t matter that they are an excellent source of selenium – I don’t want one. I like to live!

When we have a food that we consider a “trigger” food, it’s because we’ve gotten very good at thinking thoughts about that food that encourage our desire for the food. We think “Oh, that’s going to be delicious”, or “I have to have some of that!” These simple thoughts are so well practiced that we immediately respond to the desire they generate by taking the food. It happens so fast that we think the food has some magical attractive properties. But it doesn’t.

So what do we do? The first thing you usually do is try to resist. Resistance is exhausting and requires tons of energy. Eventually, it wears out. Then you’re tired from resisting AND you ate the cookie! Your goal is to try to slow things down so you can think. Before you take the cookie, wait. Breathe. Remind yourself what you really want for yourself more than the cookie. Then you can direct your brain once you’re back in charge. You can remind it that it can want the cookie, but you’re not going to respond to the urge to eat it. Those thoughts don’t run you – you run this!

The more you can allow the urge to be there but not respond by doing what it says, the faster your brain will stop yelling at you to eat out of control. Your brain is very good at thinking thoughts about the “trigger” food. You get to watch your brain spin out over the food and then settle down when you stay in charge. When you are the boss of your brain, it can offer you suggestions, but you decide what you’ll do. That’s the end of “trigger” foods!

You CAN do this! Losing weight for the holidays isn’t a cute tagline – it is possible! When you manage your mind, your goal happens. This work is what I do with my clients and every one of them is losing weight after years of struggle. I had one client tell me that she was surprised by how much easier coaching was than any diets she had tried before!

If you’re ready to invest in your weight loss goal, if you are ready for focus and accountability unlike anything you’ve ever experienced before, email me at drandreachristianparks@gmail.com, and let’s set up your one-hour free consultation. I’m taking clients for 2022, but the spaces are going fast! If you want to know that you have your plan in place as you begin the year, don’t miss your chance. Let’s get you what you really want!

Here’s your video help for the week!

Welcome back! We’re nearing the end of this series on Losing Weight For The Holidays and it might seem tempting to coast through the last week or so into New Year’s Day. Family is coming and cooking and shopping still isn’t finished and all the wrapping still is waiting for you. Oh yeah, there’s that little thing you have called a job that still needs to be done! It might just be easier to let the weight thing slide for now and pick it up again in the new year…

Don’t do it.

Put yourself forward a couple of weeks and check-in with yourself there. Would you look back at the extra cookies and overfull plates and lack of intention with peace or regret? That’s right – it’ll be regret. But you won’t regret holding a little space for yourself in all the busyness of the season. Everything won’t fall apart if you take care of yourself too!

So let’s get to it! This week I want to talk about “good” and “bad” foods. We all categorize food this way, even if we don’t say it consciously. We talk about certain desserts as “sinful” and “junk” food and other foods that are “good for you. There are two major problems with looking at food this way.

First, what is “good” food? Do we even really know? We think we do. For example, of course, fruit and veggies are good, right? But don’t eat bananas – they’re too high on the glycemic index. And tomatoes are an excellent source of lycopene, so they’re good. But they’re nightshade vegetables, which aren’t good for you, right? It gets confusing really fast!

The problem is two-fold. One, the diet industry has become a machine, churning out diet after diet that promises to be the magic that will cause your weight to fall off if you can just find the right one for you. So you search around like a lock looking for a key, frustrated when you can’t seem to find the one key that will unlock your weight loss.

Second, creating good and bad foods is a setup for our immature brain. It’s not your fault – we all have a part of our brain that acts like a teenager, immediately drawn to the forbidden and ready to break any rule you set. So when you set strict rules around food and make some completely forbidden, your brain rebels and wants them even more! When you’re on a diet and you “can’t” have cake or doughnuts or candy, that’s all your brain wants!

So what do we do?

First, eat food. If you’re doing what I teach and eating only when you’re hungry and stopping when you’re politely full, as long as you eat food you will lose weight. Make it easy – have some green beans and sweet potato, some sliced tomato, and a piece of chicken, and call it good.

Second, no forbidden foods. I know, some of you are screaming at me, “What about sugar and flour?! You said these can slow my weight loss – aren’t they evil?”

I did say that, and no, they aren’t evil.

People have been living off of bread for ages, so I don’t think flour is inherently evil. Also, we as people have over-refined real food to make highly processed flour and sugars. These act in our bodies in ways that create results we don’t want. Flour and sugar cause your hunger to increase, promote inflammation and make it harder to lose weight.

Harder, but not impossible.

You can eat bread and cake if you want. But, those foods eaten regularly might not produce the kind of weight loss you want. I recommend thinking of food in two categories: those that serve your goal and those that do not. You can have the ones that don’t serve your goal, but you might not choose them in order to get what you really want. When you think about food this way, you get to keep your power instead of giving it to the food. The food isn’t in control, you are!

So have a slice of pizza if you want. You probably won’t design your eating plan to be based around pizza, but you can choose to add it as a meal on occasion. Is one slice of pizza going to derail your plan? Nope. But snacking on cookies and having an extra drink every night and grabbing a doughnut from the breakroom regularly will. So decide on the food you will eat as a normal practice, and add in the exception food when YOU choose, not when it appears in front of you at work or in the store. You will create the key to the permanent weight loss you’re looking for!

You can lose weight! If you’re loving these concepts but feel like you need help getting them in place in your busy life, I’m here to help. Email me at drandreachristianparks@gmail.com and let’s set up your one-hour free consultation. I’ll help you clarify your vision and get you going toward your permanent weight loss goal!

Here’s your video help for the week!

Hey, friend – welcome back! We’ve gotten through two of the food holidays, Halloween and Thanksgiving and I want to check in with you: How’s it going so far? Are you on your plan, navigating all the pitfalls of holiday treats in the breakroom and Halloween candy lying around and weathering the stress of gifting and wrapping and shipping? Are you sailing right through, watching the scale go down as you still enjoy your holiday season? If so, then get it girl! Keep going!

But maybe your plan hasn’t quite worked out as you wanted so far. The scale has been a little erratic and while you might have had some wins, you’ve had a few setbacks as well. Maybe you gave in to the temptation to eat more than you planned at Thanksgiving and then allowed yourself to eat whatever the rest of the weekend. Or maybe you’ve been feeling pressed about the projected holiday shipping delays and have been stress eating while you online shop.

It’s ok.

Wherever you are, it’s not over! We have another four weeks to get to our goal of losing weight for the holidays. If you’ve lost weight, wonderful – keep going! If you’ve maintained and are disappointed because you haven’t lost any weight, reflect back to the last few years. Did you gain in the past? If you did, celebrate the improvement you’re making already and recommit to your goal. If you’ve gained weight, take a careful look and see if you would have gained more if you hadn’t been making any effort. Maybe you gained more in past holiday seasons. Either way, you can decide right now to double down and move on. If you don’t try, you certainly will fail. So don’t fail in advance – recommit and keep going forward – you can do this!

This week I want to help you plan your approach for the rest of the season. I know, any time I even mention making a plan tons of objections come up. It’ll take too much time, I like to be spontaneous, I’m too busy to plan, planning is no fun. You can add yours – I’ll wait…

But what if I told you that your plan is exactly what ensures your success? Would you be willing to plan if you knew that your plan makes the difference between losing weight consistently or not?

Your plan is the key to your success.

There are two main ways you get to plan. First, you get to plan for an event – a family dinner, party, office gathering, coffee date. The more you can anticipate what it will be like when you get there, the more you can decide in advance what you’ll eat and drink. Even if you don;t know what’s going to be served, you can make your best guess and figure out what you’d like to have. Feel like wings and stuffed mushrooms? Cool – plan to have the amount you think will fill you up to comfortably full and plan to ignore the rest of the buffet. What kind of coffee drink will work on your plan? Great – order that beverage and ignore the pretty pictures of the new frappe of the season. The more you can decide in advance what you’ll do, the less likely you’ll get derailed in the moment when you’re faced with all the choices. Your brain will make the best decision if you make it before you have lots of tempting options. Trust me – it’s how your brain works and there’s nothing wrong with you. So leverage your brain and make a plan before you head out!

The second plan you need is to work your day so you are hungry when you get to the meetup. If you’ve been following me for any amount of time, you know that I teach that the only signal you want to respond to with food is hunger. You’re not hungry, you don’t eat. So even if you have a plan for what you’ll eat when you get there, you won’t eat it if you’re not hungry. Then you’re standing around arguing with yourself about wanting to eat and how good the food looks and how it’s not fair that everyone else is eating and then you give in and eat anyway because of all the brain chatter about the food.

So, plan your day to be hungry when you get there. Want to have your main meal at the party? Have your morning coffee and eat a light lunch. What if you get really hungry a couple of hours before the party? Plan to have a piece of fruit so it’ll be gone and you’ll get hungry again when the dinner is served. You get the point – plan for what you want so you can stick to your plan. Then you enjoy your day, enjoy some food at the event, and love the results on the scale the next day!

You CAN do this! It’s simple but not easy. But you can do hard things – you do them all the time! But if you’re ready to invest in yourself at a higher level, if you’re looking for more accountability than you’ve been able to offer yourself, if you’re looking to take care of yourself like you take care of everyone else, I’m here. Email me at drandreachristianparks@gmail.com and let’s set up your one-hour free consultation so you can get the help you need!

Here’s your video help for the week!

Welcome back! We’re officially now in the full swing of the holiday season and you know what that means?

Parties!

This is the time of the year when Christmas and holiday parties abound and this year, there are three whole weekends before Christmas, which means more dates for parties. Depending on where you are and the current climate of the pandemic, you might not have as many parties as usual. Still, some companies are having a holiday soiree and you might have friends who have house parties. How do we attend and enjoy these events and not wreck our plan of losing weight for the holidays?

Now, I find that people fall into two groups when it comes to parties; the extroverts and the introverts.  Depending on which camp you’re part of, the pitfalls can be a little different. So let’s talk about this based on where you are…

First, to my extroverted friends: You love all the parties! You love getting all dressed up and finding a host gift, you look forward to going out and seeing all the people, you thrive in the party atmosphere. The music and people and activity give you life! You’re not worn out by all the festivities – you’re energized! Shoot – you’re probably the host of the party!

Your pitfall in the party atmosphere is a lack of focus. You’ll get excited about seeing people and having conversations and you’ll miss that you’re eating the snacks and treats without paying attention. Lack of attention also comes if you’re drinking at the party – alcohol will make sure you’re not worried about how much you eat! Before you know it, you’ve eaten more than you planned, you’re not sure what you ate, and now you don’t want to go near that scale!

What do you do? More than anything, you need a plan. Whether you know exactly what will be served or not, you can prepare so your brain is ready to do what you know is good for your plan before you get there. In your preparation for the event, make a plan for your eating. Will you have a glass of wine? What hors d’oeuvres are your favorite and how many will you have? Do you plan to have a pie of cake or pie? How will you eat during the day before the party so you can be sure you’re hungry when you get to the food table? If you don’t have a plan, you’ll be tempted to eat everything you see. If you drink too much, you won’t care if you do until tomorrow. So make your plan so you don’t have a food hangover the next day and you can stay on track!

Now to my introverts: you are my people! Your pitfalls can be different because even if you like your friends and music and celebration, you lose energy from all the festivities. All the people and preparation and busyness are draining for you. You might not want to go to the party at all! When you do go, you might not feel comfortable and you might be tempted to eat and snack and drink to give yourself something to do. You’ll eat to take away the humming of anxiety about being out and about when you’d rather be snuggled up in your pjs on the couch with one friend instead of a roomful of people.

All good – you can do this! If you’re going to the party, you also need a plan. You’ll need to decide upfront about whether you’re going to drink because you might have a glass of wine just to have something in your hand, or to take the edge off of your nerves. You’ll fall into mindless eating to keep busy and dull the anxiety about who to talk to next or to ward off your boredom with small talk. Decide in advance what you want to eat and be sure you’re hungry when you do. But you’ll need to include preparation for the people to your plans. Who might be there that you want to talk to? What questions might you ask them to start the conversation? You’ll be tempted to think you’re the only one who feels uncomfortable in the party setting, but you’re not. Look around: The folks sitting down looking intensely at their phones also likely feel like you. They probably don’t have an urgent email or text they need to check right that minute!

You can get through the holiday parties AND lose weight! Anticipate your pitfalls and make plans to help yourself go into the party with your ultimate success in mind. You’ll come out having enjoyed the party without the food hangover and will keep moving toward your goal. That feels better than any food tastes!

I’m open for consultations again! If you want to lock down your space for coaching starting in the New Year, NOW is the time to act. Wouldn’t it be great to know that you have a coach in your corner to help you reach your weight loss goal? I’m here to help you get there! Email me at drandreachristianparks@gmail.com and let’s make sure you have what you need to make your success inevitable!

Here’s your video help for the week!

Welcome to this new week of Losing Weight For The Holidays! We’ve been focused on our goal of doing this holiday season differently so the weight gain hangover from eating our way through the holiday isn’t what we dread going into the New Year. We’ve talked about using food for fuel and honoring our signals for hunger and fullness, and we’ve worked through why holiday food tricks us into overeating.

This week I want to equip you for the actual holiday meal. Thanksgiving is a few days away!

Let’s remember together how the holiday meals went in years gone by. In the past, you’d eat through the day, sampling the pigs-in-a-blanket and crunching on veggie sticks from the veggie tray (it’s ok, because it’s veggies, right?), and tasting all the foods before they were served. By the time the full meal was ready, you weren’t hungry, but you’d pile your plate with everything so you could try it all. You’d have a mini mountain in front of you and even though you were full before the plate was half empty, you’d plow ahead and finish it. Because you can’t waste this special food, right? You’d end up stuffed like a turkey, exhausted and needing a nap, but dragging yourself through the cleanup because every pot and pan in the house was out and needed to be cleaned.

Sounds like fun, right?

This year can be different! You don’t have to experience the holiday meal the same way this year. But in order to make sure you do this a new way, you have to get prepared.

First, it’s not as if you planned to stuff yourself – it’s just what you did. Ever notice that when you get to a special meal like Thanksgiving that despite all your best plans, the plan falls apart in the face of the table of food? You’ve been doing great on your plan and then all of a sudden the holiday meal sets you back two weeks because you ate everything on that table?

The most important thing to know is that there’s nothing wrong with you. The number one reason why holidays trip you up is that they only happen once a year. You get to practice your everyday life every day – but you only experience the holiday once a year, so you’re falling back into old patterns of how you did it in the past. You brain loves efficiency, so you go on autopilot.

Your first tactic to battle the autopilot is to make a plan.

You might be hosting and know all the foods that are being served. Or, you might be going to someone’s house and have a fair idea of what’s being served. Your job is to consider what you know and make a plan for what you’re going to eat when the day comes. Want to be hungry for the big meal? Plan the hours before the meal so you’re hungry. Do you love the cornbread dressing and gravy but couldn’t care less about the turkey? Plan room on your plate for the dressing and leave out the turkey. Have to have the sweet potato pie? Plan to have it first or leave room in your stomach to finish off the meal with the pie without the pain and fatigue from an overfull belly.

Your second trap comes in the form of people. You love your family, but there may be some dynamics you need to navigate when you gather together. The mess in the kitchen, the old arguments, the noise, and the chaos might be challenging. Your autopilot is going to kick in and suggest that you eat to soothe the stress. You’re going to think that the food is the answer to calming your nerves, and this thought is hardly conscious.

Don’t do it!

Food doesn’t solve stress – it’s only food. Food is a distraction and in the moment stops you from feeling the stress, but once it’s gone, the stress comes back AND you’ve overeaten. Food is only fuel, so it only is needed when you’re actually hungry. Cravings, stress, frustration, soothing – eating to solve any of these is what will cause the scale to go up.

What if instead of eating to handle the family dynamics, you decided that this is a once-a-year event where you’re creating new memories? What if you plan to enjoy seeing your cousin and reminisce over the sleeping bag sleepovers you used to have when you were kids? What if you decide to look at your drunk auntie with compassion instead of aggravation? Whatever the situation might bring, you get to decide that you can experience it without needing food to help you through it. You can enjoy your holiday AND enjoy the food AND lose weight!

You can do this! If you know you’re ready to lose the weight for good, but you really want support and accountability, I’m here to help. It’s time to turn this weight problem around! If you’re ready to invest in yourself and get yourself an early Christmas gift, email me at drandreachristianparks@gmail.com and we will set up your one-hour free consultation. Being overweight and living on the diet roller coaster doesn’t have to be your life anymore!

Here’s your video help for the week!