Category Archives: Mind Management

When I wrote this post a year ago, I’d been thinking a lot about why so many women are resistant to investing a significant amount of money in coaching. We spend lots of money on other things. In my own house, I spend most of the money on a day-to-day basis on food, clothes, and supplies. We spend large amounts of money on cars and housing. But when it comes to investing in ourselves, we find reasons why we can’t afford it. Even when women know that coaching is THE thing that will help them solve the weight problem, they hesitate to invest. Why?

So while you’re answering that question, this week I want to reveal the hidden financial costs of NOT moving forward to solve the weight problem with a permanent solution like coaching. It’s costing you more than you think…

Welcome back! It’s good to be back together here to talk about what matters to us. We’re evaluating the costs of NOT losing the weight we want to lose.  It took me a loooong time – decades, really – to get to the point where I was ready to get myself out of misery and lose the weight for good. All that time, frustrated, critical, sad, fed up, and hopeless, spent on a problem I wasn’t solving!

We looked at the time we spent on NOT solving our weight problem last week. And I meant what I said – you haven’t wasted it. All your experiences can be used as leverage to be successful this time in getting to your goal and staying there. Now, we want to move forward and get that weight off! Counting the costs of NOT moving can help our motivation not to waste any more of our precious resources and get this thing done!

This week, we’re going to talk about money.

Sounds easy, right?

It’s more than you think.

First, we’ll do the easy part. This is the best way to get started and exactly how I help my clients gain momentum. We start with what’s easy to do and gain momentum before we tackle the tough stuff! So, the direct costs of NOT losing weight are all the things you’ve spent money on in the past in the name of weight loss. What powder, meal plan, pill, supplement, or prepared meals have you bought to lose weight? Remember the plastic shorts to put on to work out to make you sweat more and lose weight faster? How about Slim Fast? Other meal replacement bars and such? Work out equipment? How much money would you estimate you’ve spent on solving your weight problem? That’s a real question – see if you can make an estimate!

Now – I’d have no problem with spending money on any of this if it worked. But there’s still a huge multi-billion-dollar-a-year diet/supplement/fitness industry because the products don’t work, at least not long term. Your goal isn’t to drop ten pounds to fit into a dress for an event – you want to get this weight off for good and get off the roller coaster of dieting and yo-yo-ing up and down the scale!

All that money you’ve spent – those are direct costs of your weight loss attempts. But there are indirect costs too. The hidden costs of NOT losing weight might be costing you even more money than you’ve spent directly. How many times have you bought clothes you didn’t really want because you had to change sizes? Ever find yourself buying stuff off of Facebook/Amazon/take your pick because you’re frustrated about your weight and you get a little boost from buying something? How much money have you spent on random stuff because you were in emotional pain about your weight? Can you calculate that number?

You get to choose how you spend your resources. Your money goes where you decide and you can use it unconsciously or intentionally. Wouldn’t it feel good to know that your money is going exactly where you want to solve what you want?

It might be that until now, you didn’t know that your barrier to permanent weight loss was your own brain. You may just have learned that the way you think needs reprogramming to get to permanent weight loss. That’s ok! You keep learning and training that brain and you will change it!

If you already have decided that this work is for you but you want to move with more purpose and intention than you can alone, I can help you. If you’re ready to invest in coaching to get your brain and body where you want it, email me at drandreachristianparks@gmail.com and let’s set up a free consultation to get you started! But don’t wait – right now my coaching capacity for this class of clients is almost full. If you don’t want to wait until I open up for my next group, get in here and get my last spot!

See you next week!

Here’s your video help for the week!

I wrote this original post a year ago. Think back – where were you in your life a year ago? Where did you plan to be now? It might have been a project you wanted to be finished or a certain number of pounds you wanted gone. Now for the hard question: Did you work really hard to achieve the goal and not get there yet, or has time passed without you making the moves to get it done?

Sometimes reaching our goals take longer than we expect. But often we don’t make progress because we don’t move. And time passes anyway. So let’s look at what we can do to make sure we don’t waste our most precious commodity: Time…

Welcome back! We’re counting the costs of NOT moving toward our goal of permanent weight loss. Every decision we make has a cost. If we decide to redecorate our living room, we spend our money buying new furniture. If we start a workout regimen, we spend our sweat equity to move our bodies. 

What does it cost us NOT to move forward?

Seems like the cost would be pretty small. If you’re not doing anything, how pricey can it be? Turns out, the hidden costs are higher than you’d think. This week I want to focus on one of my favorite non-renewable resources:

Time.

Now, your time is valuable. Since we don’t live in a Back To The Future situation, we only get to go one direction in time, and that’s forward. Once time has gone, it’s not coming back. You can’t earn more time! Spending it is the price you pay for anything you do.

We don’t get going on our goal because we don’t want to waste our time working on something that might not work out. Sometimes we think that we don’t have enough time to do what we need to do to be successful. 

Neither of these statements is true.

These are just thoughts.

Let me show you.

If you’re like most people on the weight loss journey, you’ve invested a lot of your resources in getting to the goal. You’ve already done a lot! You’ve bought supplements and programs and workout gear, all without the success you want. You might be feeling weary and hopeless, wondering if weight loss is even possible for you. Maybe doing nothing would at least save money.

Even if you give up on losing weight, you’re spending your time on your weight anyway.

If you want to be in a different body, you’re thinking about your weight. Every time you grimace at yourself in the mirror, berating yourself for how much weight you’ve gained, you’re spending time. When you agonize over what to wear because nothing fits the way you want, you’re spending time. When you comb the web for the latest and greatest new weight loss program, you’re spending time. Even when you’re calculating the time it would take to meal prep or shop or order food on a diet plan and decide NOT to do it because you don’t have time, you’re spending time.

You have the same amount of time as everyone else. We all get the same 24 hours a day. You get to decide how you spend it!

Let me say this: None of the time you’ve invested so far on getting to your weight loss goal is wasted. You have learned a lot about yourself, what works and what doesn’t. You have precious intelligence gathered that you can leverage for your future success, even if you don’t know how to use it yet. You’ve spent countless hours and mental energy on this effort – you’ve been building the framework for the success you want to achieve!

Here’s my recommendation: If you’re going to spend the time on getting to your weight loss goal anyway, do it in a way that supports you through the process. Be kind, be gentle, be compassionate as you find your way. Get help if you need it! But use your precious resource of time intentionally so you can celebrate how you’ve spent it instead of fostering regret. You can choose how to spend your time!

You can do this! But if you’re not sure how to use the resources you’ve gathered over the years and you can’t figure out how to spend your time on weight loss in a way that serves your goal, you’re not alone. But you don’t have to do this alone – I’m here to help! If you’re ready to invest in getting what you want, email me at drandreachristianparks@gmail.com, and let’s set up your free consultation. Let’s go!

Here’s your video help for the week!

This week we’re going to revisit the topic of emotional eating. There’s a lot out there about solving the problem of emotional eating and finding ways to stop eating our emotions. I have a slightly different take on emotional eating – I think you can use emotional eating to help you lose weight! Let’s talk about how…

Welcome – I’m glad you’re here! This week we’re going to talk about a topic that gets us deep into the root of our weight loss journey: Emotional eating.

We’re not born with an emotional eating problem. As babies, we eat for fuel. Our tummies growl with hunger, we cry, and we get fed. It works!

But then we learn that when we do something that an adult likes, we get candy. When a special occasion happens, special foods are prepared and served. Cakes are decorated and eaten on birthdays, cookies are baked because mommy loves us, and a team win is celebrated with a trip out for ice cream.

We learn to eat emotionally.

We are taught that food is the solution to so much more than hunger – it solves boredom, worry, stress, fatigue, and anxiety. Food is for entertainment, reward, and comfort. We learn that some foods are “comfort” foods like mac and cheese, some are fun foods (chips, candy, popsicles), and some foods are “good” but not fun (like veggies). Somewhere along the journey to becoming overweight, we realize that we’re eating for reasons that use food to solve problems other than hunger. We label it “emotional eating” and think that we’ll never lose weight if we don’t stop it.

Emotional eating isn’t a problem.

In fact, it’s not what’s causing you to be overweight.

Right now, you’re saying, “Wait, isn’t emotional eating a bad thing? Didn’t you just say that emotional eating is why I have a weight problem?”

Actually, no. I said that when you eat to solve emotions instead of hunger, you will eat more than you need and gain weight. This is a uniquely human problem. You don’t see birds binging on the bugs they eat or cows eating grass until they’re too full to stand up. Animals eat for hunger only. But as humans, we eat for pleasure and flavor as well. We prepare and arrange and decorate food – eating is more than satisfying hunger for us.

All eating is emotional eating.

The question really is: What emotion is generating the food choice you’re making? When you buy fresh veggies and leafy greens at the farmer’s market, prepare a lovely salad with homemade dressing, and grill your squash and peppers, why did you do all that? You may feel deserving of a meal full of foods that fuel your body. You might feel committed to your food plan. You may feel loving toward yourself and want to give yourself the gift of a whole foods meal. You might choose to bypass snacking on popcorn while you write emails because you know that you want to eat only when you’re hungry and you know you use the popcorn to distract you from feeling the boredom of writing more emails.

You get to choose emotions that serve your plan for weight loss.

The only question is how you generate the emotions that serve your weight loss plans instead of sabotaging them. The key is in your mind! What you think creates your emotions, which get you the results you want. Is it hard to create emotions that keep you on track for your weight loss goals? No, but it does take practice. And just like any good student in training, you’ll get there faster/easier/better with a coach. If you know that what you need is a coach to help you sort out what’s keeping you from your weight loss success, I can help! Email me at drandreachristianparks@gmail.com and set up a consultation. I have one spot left for private clients while my Weight Loss for Black Professionals course is in session – it might be your spot. Let’s get moving toward your goal!

Isn’t it frustrating when you know what you need to do to lose weight and yet you can’t seem to just do it? Well, weight loss isn’t a Nike commercial. Your brain is much more complex than that! But there is a simple reason you keep eating in a way that doesn’t support your weight loss goal even when you “know better”. And it’s not because you don’t have enough willpower or because you’re addicted to sugar or because you’re too busy. It’s not because you don’t have the right diet or enough information. Let’s talk about what’s holding you back…

Are you ready for another glimpse into the secret workings of your mind? This week, I want to share with you a key to why you do the things you do, even when they end up being against your higher goals. You know how sometimes you do things that make you question later, “Why did I do that?” I’m going to help you see why you keep doing that thing and what you can do to catch yourself next time!

Your brain is an amazing and complex organ. It runs your bodily functions while helping you make decisions and run your life. Your mind learns quickly how to do things with efficiency and is great at automating tasks that you practice. Walking is a good example – not something you have to give conscious thought to anymore! But that tendency toward efficiency can work against you when you want to do something new, like change your way of eating or create something new. Then your brain tries to resist the change because it takes a lot of energy, so your default practiced thinking is what you fall back on. Your mind likes to keep doing what it knows will work!

But there’s another big reason you fall into old patterns: Your thoughts produce your feelings. Your brain remembers feelings and records them. Everything that you do is because of how you think it will make you feel.

Did you catch that?

You do what you do because of how you think it will make you feel. For example, you correct your kids because (your thought) you think that a good mom trains her kids how to behave well. You think that if you do this, you will feel accomplished (like a good mom!). Or you might decide that your work schedule is crazy stressful and the doughnuts in the breakroom are calling your name. You deserve a doughnut to reward yourself for handling all the stress (your thought). You think that you’ll feel good by eating the doughnut. The brain supports this thinking for two reasons. One is because you’ve used food as a solution for stress so often that eating is linked to stress relief in your brain. And two, eating sugar and starch actually does reward the brain with a little happy hormone called dopamine, so momentarily you do feel better. Your brain conveniently “forgets” the long-term effect of eating food you don’t need, which is the scale going up or your clothes not fitting well.

This is where coaching comes in. Those thoughts and suggestions and projections from your brain are what we examine in coaching. We question the thoughts and look at them to see what you’re creating when you agree with those thoughts. If you’re making choices that cause you to eat when you’re not physically hungry, you’re doing it to make yourself feel better or to avoid feeling something unpleasant. If what you want is to lose weight, then you have to stop eating for reasons other than hunger, which is challenging when your default thinking prompts you to eat to feel better! But when we question the default thinking with coaching, that’s what allows you to change what you do. Instead of being driven by the feeling you think food will produce, you’ll choose to act in a way that supports your higher goal. Achieving your goal always feels better for longer than eating the food!

Eating to solve stress, fatigue, boredom, and frustration are all ways that our brain has learned to cope with unpleasant emotions. If you know that when you feel stressed you can eat chips and get away from the stress for a few minutes, your brain will offer that as a solution, even though rationally you know that chips don’t really solve your stress and make the scale go up when you eat them. But it’s an efficient solution, and your brain is all about efficiency! Coaching helps you to see your patterns and find ways to change them to support yourself. It’s incredible how having a coach to help you see your mind shifts the way you make decisions.

You can rewire your brain! With practice and consistency, you will be successful. But if you’re finding that you keep bumping up against the same obstacles and you want help, I’m here for you. Registration for the Weight Loss for Black Professionals is closed for now – we’re in the middle of class! But I can coach one more private client while I’m taking care of my students in the course. Email me at drandreachristianparks@gmail.com and set up a free consultation to get that last spot – coaching will help you reach your goal!

Here’s your video help for the week – here’s more detail on your thoughts and feelings!

Since I just launched my weight loss course, Weight Loss for Black Professionals, I thought we should go back and look at what weight loss coaching can really help you achieve. Not everyone knows what a weight loss coach does – it’s not like a health coach or a personal trainer or a nutritionist. A weight loss coach is like gasoline on your weight loss efforts. Let’s look more closely at what coaching does to help you achieve your weight loss goal… 

Welcome! Whether it’s your first time here or you’ve been reading my posts for years, I’m glad you’re here today. Recently there’s been a lot of discussion around coaching, so I’ve been talking to more people about what I do in weight loss coaching with my clients. There’ve been a lot of questions – how does it work? Do you help me choose a diet that’s right for me? Why is coaching helpful for weight loss?

It’s fun for me to talk about because I love to coach! I also know how crucial managing the mind around any decision is, and weight loss is no exception. We get the concept of a coach in sports: An elite athlete needs a coach to be trained to achieve their potential in their discipline. CEOs hire business coaches to help them make the best high-level decisions for their companies.

A coach helps you reach your goal.

Weight loss is no different. When you set forth a goal to lose 20 pounds, you can’t just decide one day and wake up the next having achieved it. You know that. You’ll need to sustain your efforts over time and be consistent to get the weight to come off of your body. That’s where a coach helps – you’ll want to stop, give up, quit, cheat, or self-sabotage and your coach will help you stay on track to your goal! But weight loss coaching isn’t about having a cheerleader or just someone to help remind you of your goal.

It’s having someone outside of you who can help you see your mind.

This is the key to good coaching and where I begin with each of my clients. In order to make progress toward a goal, we have to be able to see our thoughts about what we are trying to achieve. When clients want to lose weight, they have lots of thoughts about what they have to do (how should I eat? exercise? starve? be uncomfortable?). The thoughts are what trigger the actions we take, so we have to be able to see what we’re thinking. A good coach shows you your thoughts and helps you see how they are producing your current results.

I love the spiritual truth behind managing your thoughts – this is why it works! 2 Corinthians 10:5 says we are to take every thought captive and make them obedient to Christ. Most of us aren’t even aware of most of our thoughts, much let taking charge of them. So this is where coaching starts: We begin with awareness. The first step is learning to see the thoughts that trigger our actions. In the beginning, we aren’t trying to change our thoughts or take new actions – just be aware of them. Actively changing your thoughts and taking new actions comes later, but you can’t move ahead without awareness. So how do we become aware?

We practice being the observer.

The observer is you watching your mind. It’s recognizing that you are not the thoughts you think and that your mind is not in charge of you. Your brain will offer up many thoughts and you get to decide if you agree or disagree with those thoughts. We think our brain is the boss, but it’s really just an efficient secretary. It keeps the thoughts in very efficient files, so we don’t have to think about most things. Most of what we do is automated: We tie out shoes, walk around, pour a glass of water with ease. When we eat, we do it because of default reasoning in our minds. For example, we eat because it’s lunchtime, or because someone brought doughnuts to the office, or we’re bored or stressed or tired or frustrated, or because we want to make ourselves feel better. None of those reasons are because the body is hungry and needs fuel.

In order to stop eating for reasons other than hunger, your thoughts need reprogramming. If you’ve learned over the years to eat for reasons other than hunger (we all have), then you have to be aware of the thoughts that prompt you to eat. You have to be able to observe your mind. When your brain tells you that a cookie will make you feel better after that hard conversation with your husband, you see that your brain is used to offering a cookie as the solution to stress. You can decide that you will agree with your brain and eat the cookie, or you could choose to remind your brain that you will ultimately not feel better from the cookie and that you really want to watch the scale go down. You can choose to disagree with your brain! The default thoughts can be changed to serve your goal. The process of change is work, but it can be done.

That’s why you need a coach!

You can lose weight and reach your goal. But if you’re finding it hard to do it on your own and know you need a coach to help you change your brain, I’m here to help! Email me at drandreachristianparks@gmail.com and set up a free consultation. It’ll be the first step on your way to permanent, successful weight loss!

Note: I’m only taking one more private client right now. Weight Loss For Black Professionals just started, so I’m helping my class get everything they need from their permanent weight loss course! If you want to work with me, but don’t want to wait for 2023 to get into the course when I launch again, set up your consultation and get this one spot!

Here’s your video help for the week! It’s a double dose!

This is the absolute last day you can get into the Weight Loss for Black Professionals weight loss course in 2022! Once registration closes, I won’t open the course again until 2023. So if you’ve been waiting and considering and you really wanted to make major changes in your body and your relationship with food THIS year, don’t wait – register at this link!

It’s the final week in this series on permanent weight loss – I’m so glad you’re here! It’s time to close this series out, but before you jump in with both feet to make it happen, I want to give you the third thing you must have to get to your goal and stay there.

You’ve got to have a BIG reason.

Now, BIG isn’t an acronym. I actually mean that your reason for losing weight needs to be big, powerful, and compelling. It has to be something that will make you hesitate before you cheat or quit or make excuses for not following your plan. It has to be bigger than some of your ordinary, everyday reasons.  I want to share with you how I found my bigger reason because it helped keep me on track when I would have veered off much sooner without it!

But first…

I want to share the kind of reasons you don’t want to use to motivate yourself.

These reasons are no good because they’re beyond you. You can’t use them as a gauge for success, because you don’t control them. Here’s an example: “I want to lose weight so my kids will be proud of me.” Sounds selfless and noble, sort of. But you can’t use it. First, you have absolutely no control over what emotions your kids feel because they control their emotions. You can’t create their emotions for them. You might be able to influence how they feel, but honestly, it’s just as likely that your kids won’t even notice that you lost weight at all.

Choosing a reason like that is a setup for failure. Your reason needs to be about you. Likewise, reasons like “I want my husband to be proud of me when we go out on a date” or “I want my friends at book club/PTA/church to notice all the effort I’ve made to lose weight and celebrate with me” aren’t going to work either. You’ve got no control over other people’s feelings.

However…

You can choose to become the kind of mom who can run up and down the stairs and keep up with her busy toddler because you’ve got your extra weight off. Or to be the kind of mom who participates in the family kayaking expedition instead of staying behind because you won’t be comfortable fitting your body in a kayak the way it is right now. You may choose to create a stronger, lighter body that you’re proud of because that’s how you want to show up in the world.

When I made the shift to lose weight for good, I found a bigger reason than any other reason on my list. When I thought about my life, the common thread through it all was that God had always been there to help me overcome every obstacle to each accomplishment to achieve every goal. He’d been there to help me become the doctor I wanted to be, to marry the man of my dreams, to give me the children I longed for.

So much of my life was about intellectual and emotional pursuits, and I included God in them. But I left my body out of it. I didn’t connect that God was also the giver of my body with all the beauty and intricacies of its design. Of course God was powerful enough to create me – shouldn’t I trust and follow him as I cared for and fed my body?

My BIG reason for losing weight was to honor God in my eating. This was bigger than me. I was no longer going to grab and eat just because I wanted to, but I would trust the built-in gifts of hunger and fullness from God to guide me. When I didn’t want to stay on my plan or wanted to eat for reasons other than hunger, remembering that I was honoring God made me hesitate before I gave in to myself. Was I going to trust him or not?

You don’t have to have MY big reason to get to permanent weight loss. But you do need A big reason. You just have to decide what’s big and compelling enough to keep you on track when you want to quit. Because you WILL want to quit. Sometimes every day. You’ll have to question yourself before you grab the handful of M&Ms, serve yourself seconds, or eat the doughnuts in the breakroom that wasn’t in your plan. All the little cheats and giving up and restarting are undermining your progress! What’s going to compel you to keep going?

Maybe you already have your whole list of whys. And you might even have a BIG reason to lose weight for good. So what’s holding you back? You know you’re ready to do this, but you want some support and accountability. If that’s where you are, register for Weight Loss for Black Professionals. But don’t wait too long – registration is closing today. If you want help, let’s go! You don’t have to do this alone!

Here’s your video help for the week!

It’s August of 2022 already – the year is flying by! How is your weight loss progress going? If you’re not where you want to be, this week’s post and video will help you get clear on where you are and how to move toward your goal intentionally. We’re gonna get honest with ourselves so we can get out of our own way! This week I want to share with you what I HAD to decide before I could lose weight and how you can get there too. Let’s go!

Welcome back! I’m so glad you’re here for the second week of Permanent Weight Loss. Over these few weeks, I’m sharing a few absolute requirements that I had to discover before I lost my weight. I’ve found that my clients have also been successful with weight loss when they’ve found these things, so I want to share them with you so you can lose your weight for the last time too!

But first, a disclaimer…

You might actually not be ready to lose weight. What do I mean, you might not be ready to lose weight? Of course you are, you’re here reading these posts! Not so fast…

Sometimes, you want to lose weight to fit into the dress for the reunion, be beach-ready for the summer, or drop five pounds before your doctor’s check-up. You can absolutely lose that kind of weight. But you know that’s the kind that comes right back, so you’re not really planning to lose weight for good.

That’s not the kind of weight loss I’m talking about. The kind of weight loss I’m talking about is the long game, the one that you keep working until you get to your goal and stay there. It’s the kind that has no timeline and you aren’t in a hurry because you know you’re gonna get there.

You have to decide which one you want. And even though it sounds good to say you’re ready for the long-term, permanent weight loss, sometimes it just isn’t true. You have to tell yourself the truth. Lying to yourself doesn’t do you any good, and it damages your integrity with yourself. If you’re not ready, it’s ok – just be honest and love yourself where you are. You don’t have to lose weight. It really is up to you! When you’re ready, you’ll do it. It is perfectly fine to be where you are in the process. And you’ll have your integrity and self-love intact when you get there.

Once you’ve decided that you are done with diet mentality and that you are committed to making real, lasting changes that you design and own, you’re ready for the next step.

You have to decide that weight loss is a solvable problem.

Some of you don’t quite believe it. You’ve gathered evidence over the years that confirms your thoughts that weight loss (especially permanent weight loss) is impossible. So when I offer you the thought that permanent weight loss is possible for you, you’re not sure it’s true. But to make your weight loss happen, you have to believe that your weight problem can be solved.

I’ll never forget that when I really was ready to lose weight, I was also ready to drop the thought that I couldn’t do it. I’d let myself believe that I couldn’t lose weight for years, that it was too hard, that my life was too busy/stressful/overwhelming to ever be successful at losing weight. That thinking was in the background. I wasn’t even really aware that I was thinking that. When I really decided that I was done and this problem had to be fixed, the next step was to believe that I could do it. So I started gathering evidence that I could solve hard problems. When I looked for proof that I could do it, I decided that if I could accomplish all the other successes in my life and live through the other challenges, then my weight would not be the thing that would defeat me. That shift in mindset was what allowed me to find solutions instead of being unable to see them.

You have to believe that you can solve your weight problem.

I believe you can do it! If you keep at this as you have the other challenges in your life, you’ll solve this one too! But if you want help, I’m here. Registration for the Weight Loss For Black Professionals course is open for a few more days (we start August 15th!)- you can learn more and register here. There’s no weight loss course out there like this one that is built to address your specific needs as a busy professional woman of color  – I’ve looked. So I built one! You don’t have to figure it out alone. Let’s solve this problem for good!

Here’s your video help for the week!

Welcome – I’m glad you’re here! This week we are getting into the details of what REALLY matters for permanent weight loss. None of us want to work hard at losing weight to have it come right back! Let’s get into the first key to successful permanent weight loss…

I’m so excited about this week’s post! We’re getting into the real deal around what makes the difference in losing weight for good. There’s so much noise out there around what works for weight loss and it gets confusing, so I want to share what I know about what actually works for permanent weight loss.

For many of us, our weight loss journey has been an up-and-down roller coaster kind of experience. We try diet after diet, finding some success in dropping the pounds, but then we go right on back up the scale when we come off the diet. Let me tell you what had to happen before I was successful in losing weight.

I’d been frustrated by my weight for as long as I could remember, maybe back to the start of puberty. Probably earlier. I’d gotten through college and medical school, started life as a married woman, and had my first baby. When I realized that I was avoiding taking pictures with my baby because I was ashamed of how big I’d gotten, I was angry, frustrated, discouraged, and fed up. This was not going to be my life. It could NOT be that my weight was an obstacle too big to be solved.

I was done.

Like D-O-N-E, done. I wasn’t going to be overweight the rest of my life. I refused to believe that this was my story and I was going to do what I needed to do to change this situation. But how?

I started thinking seriously about how to solve my weight problem for good. No more shiny object syndrome, looking for the next quick fix option to get off the weight. I needed a permanent solution.

One thing was for sure – I was not going to choose some super strict, ratchet diet to live on. I wouldn’t live the rest of my life never being able to have a piece of pizza or slice of birthday cake. No, whatever I did would have to be something I could live with forever. Diets were out.

That’s the first distinction that has to be made. There is no quick-fix diet that will get you to permanent weight loss. The word diet implies temporary, which works against the long-term permanent weight loss you really want. If you want permanent weight loss, you’ve got to choose a way of eating that will be yours for life. It has to be a plan that you design and that you can live with and enjoy your life.

Now let’s be clear: You can choose any style of eating you want for your plan. It might be that you enjoy eating a plant-based style and that you build your plan around that kind of eating. Or you might decide that you feel best with less grain and fewer carbs. You might want to keep seafood but not dairy. Most of us feel better on fewer processed foods. Whatever it is, you have to choose and craft it to fit your life.

I can help you with this. With my lifestyle medicine and holistic nutrition background, we can create any kind of plan you want. But make no mistake, it’s got to be your plan. You get to decide and you own it. You decide where the exceptions fit and when they don’t. No more falling off the plan and then deciding that the diet didn’t work for you – you either work your plan or you don’t.

This is where the permanent weight loss actually happens. When you change your mind from a diet mentality to owning your results, you don’t binge because you had a crazy day at work. You don’t eat a sleeve of Oreos because you’re irritated that your kids have broken yet another expensive thing in the house. Your long-term plan trumps the temporary speed bumps in your day.

Getting to the mindset of permanent weight loss starts with ending diet mentality. It’s not the end of the story, but it’s the beginning. Self-sabotage, mindless eating, triggers – those have to be addressed too.

If you’re feeling like I’m reading your mind right now, that’s because I’ve been there. You can do this – you can get rid of diet mentality and turn off triggers and self-sabotage! If you keep working at this and don’t give up, you will get there. But if you feel like you’re running up against obstacles that you can’t seem to solve on your own, that’s where I can help. Having a coach is like going from walking to driving: Having help to see your patterns and troubleshoot makes your progress so much faster!

If you know you’re ready to get off the weight loss roller coaster, join my private course Weight Loss For Black Professionals! There’s no other program out there designed to meet your unique needs as a busy professional woman of color. This coaching class begins on August 15 and is almost full, so don’t miss your chance to join this exclusive small group. So don’t wait: If you’re ready, we can start working together!

Do you have questions about weight loss coaching? Do you want to chat about the obstacles you’re running into? Have you struggled with diet mentality but don’t know how to get away from it? Comment below and I’ll answer your questions!

Here’s your video help for the week!

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!