weight loss

How to deal with emotional eating during weight loss? 150 150 admin

How to deal with emotional eating during weight loss?

When you’re trying to eat healthier to lose weight, different emotions can surface that you’ve been pushing down. When they’re brought up to the surface you can choose to deal with those emotions by going THROUGH them and not resisting rather than avoiding them because they’re unpleasant.

When I was eating in a way that my body responded well too (plant-based) I could definitely tell the difference emotionally. Normally, my emotions would be all over the place but as I became more aligned with healthy eating, I noticed my emotions becoming more stable and even-keel overall, but there would be times different emotions hit me hard. It might have been extreme sadness, or depression or loneliness, or even rage. Those times, I was instructed to call someone and talk it through, or write it down and get it “up and out” so I don’t get stuck in the same cycle of repetitive thinking and feeling.

Identify Your Triggers

I was fortunate enough to join a 12-step program for food addiction, so I worked through a lot of my triggers with my sponsor. Every day I talk to her and tell her what came up and we worked through the triggers one by one. In return, I would be a listening ear to help others through their emotions.

We actually had a phrase called HALTS that helped us identify the common emotional triggers. HALTS stands for Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired, Stressed. Granted hungry is not strictly an emotion, it’s a condition, but it was by far my strongest trigger. Eating at regular intervals was important because the worst time to decide what to eat is when you’re hungry.

Be like an observer throughout your day and take inventory. When do you go to junk foods? When do you eat unconsciously? What do you do when emotions that are deemed as “negative” surface (like anger, sadness, loneliness, apathy, etc)?

Find Help/Support

If you’re having problems with this, consider seeking help. It’s one of the big three (health, wealth, and relationships) that play a big part in determining the quality of your life. Get whatever help you need to suffice whether it be a therapist, registered dietitian, joining a 12-step program, one-on-one coach. Reach out for help and take charge of your well-being.

Counterintuitive Solutions 150 150 admin

Counterintuitive Solutions

Over the years I’ve come across many counterintuitive solutions.  These solutions when I seek help from other people who have overcome the same problem and get out of my own thinking or I let go of finding the answer completely and move on to something else and then the answer just shows up.  When I find these answers they hit me like a ton of bricks and leave me stunned…like this ?

Here are the solutions I’ve found.

Weight Loss

I remember wanting to learn how to lose weight and just failing by focusing on weight loss.  Eventually, I just let go of the whole idea of trying to lose weight and I started focusing on health.  That’s when I found out about my food group and cut out sugar and flour and they actually taught me how to eat in a way where I could eat normal foods, was way happier, and kept losing weight in a way that felt effortless.

Intuitively I was overweight, so it made sense to focus on weight loss…that led me astray.  Focusing on health was way more effective and ironically resulted in me losing the most weight I’ve ever lost.

Money and Work

I remember wanting to learn how to earn a lot of money.  I wanted it sooo bad I was willing to take shitty jobs sacrifice everything else, work long hours of overtime.  It didn’t help.  My expenses rose to the level of my earnings and I was living paycheck to paycheck.  Eventually, I decided I would stop chasing money and accept the freedom I had.  It brought me face to face with the question – what would I do if I had all the money in the world.  I would write and work on music, so I really put tons of hours into writing and working on music, and my bank account is as big as it’s ever been.

When I was broke, it made sense to focus on getting a job and earning money.  Writing and sharing with people was my way of volunteering.  It brought about more flow socially and connected me with more people and it was pretty damn rewarding.  More rewarding than any check I ever got from a shitty job, and I think it was all because I didn’t chase money.

Social Circle

In the back of my mind, I would always see people who had big social circle and wonder how it happened for them.  AND…how were people so interested in them.

Eventually, I realized that one great way to attract others is not need others – to be content with yourself.  Do the things you want to do and find interesting.  Follow your own curiosities.  Accomplish the things you want to accomplish.  Have fun.  Stop beating yourself up over the past and learn to be happy with yourself.  Forgive yourself for bad time and money investments.  Practice self care and treat yourself well.  Respect and enforce your boundaries and strive to meet your needs.  That way you relate to others without neediness.  You won’t need anything from others.  People can feel that, and it’s attractive.

Intuitively, when I wanted a bigger social circle I thought that there was something I needed to do “out there”.  I needed to meet more people.  I needed to get out of the house more.  Those things are great, but if you do those things you will have far greater rewards and results if you can learn to be content and happy with yourself first.

The Big Three

It’s been said that these are the big three in personal development.  If you can get health, wealth, and relationships all working in-sync, then you’ll feel that flow of life and things will lean towards spiraling upwards.

Accomplishing Big Things

When I read Atomic Habits, it made me appreciate the small things.  Small habits over time can lead to big accomplishments or big bombs that you have to deal with later.

I think it’s human nature to want to go to big accomplishments quickly.  We want to be able to play and sing the beautiful song we hear right after we hear it.  We want to have the great bodies we see others have instantly.  We want to have success in our careers overnight.

Intuitively I want to jump right into having and accomplishing big things, but ironically they come from the small recurring habits over time.

Are there any counterintuitive solutions that have blown your mind?

The Benefits of a Clean Diet 150 150 admin

The Benefits of a Clean Diet

I have come to accept the fact that some people will never know the benefits of cleaning up their diet ( ie. eating way more vegetables / eating a plant-based diet and cutting out the sugar and flour).  When I decided to clean up my diet, my weight went down all on its own with very little exercise which led to me breathing better and not snoring, my skin cleared up, I had hella more energy, the dark thoughts disappeared that I didn’t even realize I was having, my joint pain disappeared, I wanted to connect with people and nature more.  I also seemed to get more powerful recommendations for dates.

Of course, these benefits listed above had secondary benefits, so it was like a domino effect.  SInce my weight went down it was easier to shop for clothes, to get better sleep and to exercise the few times I did.  I suddenly understood why people liked running.  I hated running while I was fat because of all the pain from putting the weight on the joints, but had a pretty good time when I was a smaller size.

Since I had more energy I started working on an Amazon-based business on the side.  Usually I would have spent that time eating or addicted in some distraction.

Since I was breathing better, my singing and speaking was better.

Since I was connecting with people more, life just started to get easier and more flowing.

This whole process was like a blossoming.  I want everyone who is willing to experience as many of the wonderful results of eating a clean, plant-based diet.

 

Regaining Weight Back 150 150 admin

Regaining Weight Back

If I’m going to say anything about weight loss, I have to address this.

If you’re in this place, I feel for you.  No really…as I’m writing this on February 23, 2020 I literally know how you feel because I’ve gained the weight I lost back plus more.

Know that the most important thing is acceptance.  Full acceptance of your body as it is.  Keep pushing.  Keep adjusting.  It’s very easy to get down on yourself and spiral down even more if you don’t grab this by the horns.  This is not over until you’re gone!

Also, don’t go into “poor me”.  Think about the other people who will benefit from your struggles and successes.  Think about the other people that will hear your story and the ripples it will create.  Someone told me…after seeing me gain all my weight back that “your mess will become your message”. She just might be right :).

I care about you and I want the best quality of life for you, and I can’t help but to double down on the fact that a normal-sized body or one that is physically strong and fit will be better.  Keep working!

Fat Does Not Equal Lazy 150 150 admin

Fat Does Not Equal Lazy

Boy boy boy will society put this on you.  I’ve heard people say “When people see you as fat, they automatically assume you’re lazy or undisciplined.  That’s just how it is”.  That’s not true.  If society thinks this, society is wrong.

While I was in the middle of losing 120 pounds, i thought to myself…”all those years of beating myself up thinking I was undisciplined and lazy is NOT true.”  It just isn’t.  All I did was eat 3 meals in different time zones of the day…eat more vegetables…eliminate sugar and flour products and connect with other like-minded individuals regularly.  I just took different actions.  As I was in the midst of shedding all this weight, I would ask myself…”am I less lazy now than I was?”  no!  but I do have hella more energy!  So there was less “down” time trying to recover from meals.  It was more ignorance on what to do and what exactly to eat and when to eat it than laziness or lack of discipline.  I maybe worked out 5 times during that 120 pound weight loss – which shattered another myth I had been sold- exercise does not equal weight loss!

I can’t control what society thinks as a whole, but I can raise awareness – especially to those who are currently beating themselves up for no reason.  For most people, you don’t have to go crazy in the gym, or even set foot in a gym to be a weight that is considered normal for your body.

Telling yourself you’re lazy isn’t going to help you anyway.  It’s a form of beating yourself up.  If you FEEL lazy it’s better to determine what you’d rather feel instead.  Motivated?  Excited?  Happy?  Peaceful?  Energized?  Light?

A Better Lens

A better lens that was way more effective for me and directly resulted in me losing 120 lbs was looking at the problem through the lens of addiction – to look at the foods I was eating and find what emotions I was trying to eat over.  I had to work on feeling those emotions.  Have you ever heard “You have to feel it to heal it!”?  Yeah…it’s corny to me, but true.

There are also other addictions.  Instead of eating excess junk food the addiction could be excessively playing video games, or addictively smoking…or drinking…or *insert addictive behavior here*.  What much of the world sees as lazy could be looked at as feeding addictions that allow us to avoid feeling feelings and moving through them to our own detriment.

How to lose weight if I can’t stop eating 150 150 admin

How to lose weight if I can’t stop eating

A big insight I realized was…WHAT I was eating was waaaay more important than how much I was eating.

If I continued to eat foods with sugar and flour products, it made me want to eat more and more sugar and flour products. It just never ended until I couldn’t fit anymore in my stomach. It felt like I couldn’t control it and I was never satisfied.

However, during the year and a half I went without sugar and flour products, I lost 100+ pounds where I was eating big meals, feeling full, actually feeling satisfied, eating foods I could buy out of pretty much any grocery store that me feel good and were better for my body.

The difference was eliminating sugar and flour and doing all I could to maintain that lifestyle change. The only downside seemed to be social. People, at least here in Texas, can’t seem to wrap their head around eliminating sugar and flour or seeing it as a literal addictive product.

I wondered why I was even introduced to sugar and flour products if they really serve no nutritional value and I could live just fine without them (actually WAAAAY better).

If you feel like you can’t stop eating, I’ve been there. I kept eating because my body was still starving for nutrition instead of the empty calories I was feeding it.

As I would consume all the fast food, bread, grains and sugar products, I bet if my actual body could talk it would say something like “wtf are we supposed to do with this? here he goes again…ok so we’ll just store this as fat because we don’t know when we’re actually going to get a real meal with the amount of vegetables we need up in there.”

How to lose weight without feeling hungry 150 150 admin

How to lose weight without feeling hungry

I went to a 12-step program for food addiction. I believe one reason why it delivered such great results was that it checked off so many boxes for me that other programs I’d tried before didn’t.

  • the food plan consisted of normal food I could buy at pretty any grocery store
  • I didn’t have to count calories
  • It was free…I could let my guard down and really trust because there was no ulterior motive
  • I wasn’t hungry unless I was supposed to be (right before meal time) because the meals were full and satisfying
  • I knew exactly how much to eat because we weighed and measured how much it was
  • It made logical sense
  • The scale kept going down
  • I didn’t have to think about food all the time because it was just 3 meals a day with no snacks
  • It delivered results to me and to anyone I saw that worked the program
  • It addressed emotional eating with H.A.L.T.S. (hungry, angry, lonely, tired, stressed)
  • It helped me be aware of my triggers (my strongest ones from HALTS were hungry and lonely)
  • I ate a lot of food and a lot of veggies. Way more food than normal, but way more nutritious foods also
  • It was based on principles that taught me a lot outside of addiction and eating
  • It relaxed my obsession with food
  • The food tastes good (this was hard to believe, but your taste buds can change!)
  • There was no exercise plan, so if you didn’t exercise and you still kept losing weight, you knew the food was the primary reason why
  • I actually learned how to eat! (this was huge)

I’m thankful I decided to go this route. There are still more problems to solve for me, but this program changed me forever. Once you see that this simple solution actually delivers tremendous results, it’s hard to turn your back on it. It’s like turning your back on the truth. To be struggling with something for 20 years, and have the problem just dissolve month by month from simple habits you put in place feels like ?

How to lose weight when you can’t exercise 150 150 admin

How to lose weight when you can’t exercise

Knowing that I could lose weight without exercising really opened my eyes to what was causing the weight gain and how much of it had to do with nutrition – (A LOT if not all).

It made me wonder why I wasn’t taught this? I feel like…if there’s an instruction manual on the basics of being a human being…how to eat should be somewhere close to the front of this manual – and definitely not left out totally.

It also made me wonder how many people were unaware of how easy it is.

I was going in a complete wrong direction focusing on discipline and beating myself up for not being disciplined. I would try to force things. “I will not eat _____ anymore! I am going to eat healthy this year!” All hype, no results.

I found my answer going social. Like…real in-person meetings with people who had solved this problem. It was the second time I had solved a problem socially.

There are so many benefits to exercise. I’m amping it up this year, so I value it so much. For most, it’s just not necessary for losing fat from your body. This can be solved at the level of nutrition. 3 meals a day. Lots of vegetables per meal (1.5 lbs of veggies a day). Low to no sugar and flour (if you’re me, then no sugar or flour products!). No snacks, but sufficient meals. No late night meals past 7:00PM.

Think habits. Think long term. Think of solving this problem at a habitual level that you do for one day, then repeat.

I’m being pretty vague here, because I don’t want to tell you exactly how I solved it – partially because I’ve gained the weight back after losing it. This has been due to work and career, so I’m learning that. But losing it did show me it’s not as hard as I thought. And I’m also pretty vague because if I tell you exactly, I rob you of the opportunity to solve this problem socially. Talking with many people who have gone further down this journey is so worth it. They can eliminate your sticking points. They can inspire you and get you over your self doubt.

This is so possible for you. Don’t go at it alone. Enlist all the help you can and focus more on health than weight loss. In fact, during this time of losing all this weight, we were only to look at the scale once a month. Weight loss (or weight maintenance if you reach your desired weight) is the by-product of healthy habits. Healthy habits will serve your for a lifetime!

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