Compassion and calm in weight loss

Hello ladies and welcome to the podcast.

So this brings us to our third episode in the feelings range. So initially we talked about curiosity and weight loss. Then we talked about being committed and today we're going to be talking about the emotions of being compassionate and calm. Okay. So let's start off with compassion.

So what is compassion? When I looked this up, the definition was to recognize the suffering of others and then take action to help. So I love this because It makes me think about, okay, so what is self-compassion. And my definition based on this definition that we just heard about is where you are causing your own suffering and realizing that, and then taking action to help yourself.

So this isn't coming from shame or blame, but from a place of taking responsibility, that if I am feeling compassionate to myself, , this is a feeling that I am feeling based on a thought that I've been thinking, because remember whenever we're feeling anything, it's because of a thought that we've been thinking.

And so if I have created this emotion and I am creating my own suffering, then I can very easily. Unco it right. I dunno if that's the word, but you know what I mean? So the actual definition of self-compassion is when you're extending compassion to one's self in instances of perceived inadequacy failure or general suffering.

So this really helps in the weight loss journey, because it's one of the most useful emotions in weight loss, because you will eat off. . I mean, this is just normal. You're human. You will eat off plan. Even if you plan perfectly, you will overeat sometimes because you are human. You are gonna overeat.

Sometimes if binging is an issue for you, you will binge now. And again, but the work that we do in the group coaching program, the work that we do on working on your own self will help you binge less than you would have done previously and work on the root causes of why this is happen. , this will take you being compassionate to yourself during this time.

And this is in contrast to what most of my clients usually do. They usually beat themselves up. They usually tell themselves that they're doing it wrong. They usually convince themselves that it's not working for them, but that's where the compassion comes. that's where we get to decide.

Actually I can either beat myself up or I can be compassionate to myself, which one do I want to choose? And that's where putting it into the think feel act cycle can really help. So if you want to think about the feeling of compassion, what is the thought that will help you feel compassionate? And then when you're feeling compassionate, what you're gonna end up.

And then contrast that to when you are taking actions of berating yourself, what emotion is fueling those actions, it may be guilt. What is the thought that's leading you to feel guilty? Right? So you can really like dive into this in your own self coaching by looking at, okay, what am I thinking, feeling and doing?

How is that contrasting to when I'm actually using the emotion of compassion and self-compassion right. . So when we are using compassion, this is coupled with allowing ourselves not to be perfect. So many of my clients initially come in and think that they're doing it wrong when their weight loss isn't at the speed that they had kind of just made up in their brains.

The, the speed that they had decided was correct in their. And the speed of weight loss is usually based on other diets that they've done in the past other diets that were often restrictive, where they felt deprived. And the reason why my clients are trying coaching is because they may have lost the weight, but they gained all their weight back and more.

So when you are basing the weight you are losing now, On how fast you lost it. When you were doing something unrealistic, then that's just not fair on you. And you're just gonna be fighting or losing battle because with life coaching it isn't a lose weight. Quick scheme. it is the answer to finding your reasons for not losing weight and getting to that root cause so that you can deal with it and allow the weight to be released.

Initially the mental weight will be released and then your body will just release the weight on your body too, because you won't need to eat to make yourself feel better. You'll get to the real reason why you are using food to make yourself feel better. So in the program, because you get to plan your own.

You lose weight in a way that fits in with your lifestyle, you lose weight in a way that you would be happy to eat for the rest of your life. And so that is what makes it sustainable for you. Right? So going back to the self-compassion one way of really diving into this is thinking of someone that you love uncondition.

so that could be a child. It could be a partner. It could be a parent, a friend. How would you respond to them if they came to you and they just told you about the last overeat that they had. So think maybe it's your best friend, for example, how would you respond to them? Would you say, you know what? You are a failure, you'll never achieve anything, all you do is start a diet and then never finish them. You're just a failure. Or would you say, Hey, it's completely fine. Don't worry about it. Would you say, you know what? Let's figure it out.

Would you say, okay, let's find out what's going on here. How can we help you? Or would you say, you know what, of course you can do this.

You may even shake your friend and, and remind her to believe in, he. you might just say it's okay that you don't believe in yourself, but this is what you need. You might say of course you over it. It's normal, but now what do you wanna do about it? You may say, do you wanna beat yourself up and be mean to yourself or do you wanna be kind and take the next best thought and action.

It's so easy for us to respond to someone that we love from that love and compass. , but what would it be like if we were able to offer that same love and compassion to ourselves, what would it be like if we could respond in that exact same way and unconditionally love ourselves and unconditionally be compassionate to ourselves.

So fun. Right? Even if we use 10% of the compassion that we offer other people to ourselves, it would drastically change everything. So we're not aiming for rainbows and daisies. We're aiming for, okay. How can I be compassionate enough to myself so that I can actually do something about it rather than beat myself up and stay in that spiral?

Right. So what this may take is getting the facts of the situation and separating them out from the story that you're Telling yourself about what happened. So I'll give you an example. One story may be I messed up completely. I ate off protocol versus I plan to eat winter party in Curry, and I ate three picture parties, carry rice, and a slice of cake.

One is the story. Like I messed up completely when I ate off protocol. And the other one is, this is what I ate. It just takes out the drama from it. Then you can decide, what do I want to think about those facts when you are separating out the facts and the story, you can see that what happened was literally you planned to eat one chapatti and curry.

You had two extra chapattis, some rice and a slice of cake. Now, do you wanna beat yourself up about that? Or do you want to normalize that yes, you are gonna over eat. Sometimes it's completely normal. You're human and this is what I now want to do about it, because what we normally do is we normally beat ourselves up and then that makes us feel, guilty or upset.

And then we don't like those emotions either. So we tend to eat to buffer them out as well. And so then we just get stuck in this spiral. But if you normalize it and be like, yeah, you know what, I'm gonna overeat. Sometimes it's not a big deal, then it is just so much easier because then you can just think, okay, what do I want to do now?

I used this in my binge eating because I used to feel so guilty that I used to binge eat. And I was like, oh my gosh, I'm a weight loss coach. And I'm a doctor and I'm still binge eating. Sometimes it's really embarrassing. I shouldn't tell my people that this is the case. Cuz then they won't think that I know what I'm talking about.

And I had all of this story and I realized that no, actually I could just tell myself, you know what, you've been binging for a long. it's okay that you binge now. And again, you are probably gonna binge now. And again, it's not a problem because it doesn't mean anything about you. And it's important for you to tell other people this so that if they are experiencing the same thing, they don't make it mean that there's something wrong with them either.

So it's important for you to share. so I was like, oh my gosh, it changed my perspective completely because I went from not thinking that I was doing the right thing, that I was, I was a failure to, you know what, it's okay that I'm doing this and I want to talk about it so I can empower other people.

So I normalized it and I thought, okay, what is the next best response? When I normalize, of course, you're gonna do this. My next best response was okay, I'm gonna, write a post about this so that this will help someone. Okay. Let's think of some other examples. So one of my clients recently said to me, I let myself go on holiday.

So when we're separating out the thoughts and the facts here, firstly, what I asked her was, is that really true? And when I asked her that she said, well, no, I did do intermittent fasting. And I fostered for 14 hours instead of 16 hours. I gained one kilogram. And last time I went on holiday, I gained seven kilograms and I ate three meals instead of two meals.

and I focused a lot on my hunger and just ate when I was actually physically hungry. So when I actually just questioned her on, is that really true, then? All of this came out. So when you are having a thought that is making you feel bad, you can just ask yourself, is that true? like, is that really, really true?

Because when she asked herself, she came up with all of this evidence to the contrary. So it may be as simple as just asking yourself, is that really true? When you dive into it? In this example, she far from let herself go when she went on holiday. So that was just the story that her brain was creating.

So what we did was we neutralized. We calmed her brain down. We normalized that. Yeah. Okay. You know, you're on holiday and if you did want to fast for slightly less time, you get to choose what you wanna do. Then we brought her brain to looking at how can I treat myself with compassion here? So she was like, oh my gosh.

I fasted for 14 hours even when I was on holiday. And I only gained one kilo when I would normally gain seven. And yeah, I focused a lot more on my hunger even while I was on holiday. That is a huge win for me. Yes. I did gain some weight and yes, I did fast a little bit less, but I'm gonna have compassion for myself and, and be like, yeah, of course, it's completely fine.

And this is what I wanna do going forward. So after we coached, she was able to decide that her next best thought feeling and action were I'm getting right back on protocol, which made her feel committed. And when she felt committed, she was able to Jump right back on protocol, but also anticipate what the obstacles are gonna come up.

So some of the obstacles that she thought about were I'm gonna feel hungrier because I've been eating, a lot more food than I normally would. So my body signals are gonna have changed a little bit. So I'm just gonna, anticipate that I'm gonna feel hungrier and pay attention to my hunger signals more.

some of the other obstacles were that she's gonna get more urge. So she made an urge protocol for herself where she was, literally going to follow her urge protocol. When she got an urge, she was gonna ask herself, what am I really seeking in this moment? And then do the thing that is gonna help her create the emotion that she wanted.

So if she wanted to rest, how could she create relaxation and rest for herself without eating? So she said, okay, I'm gonna go lie down for a bit. I'm going to just, breathe. I'm gonna go for a walk. I'm gonna leave the area. There was so many things that she had put in her plan that was gonna help her achieve what she actually wanted.

Right? So this tool of being compassionate is going to really help you with this, not beating yourself. With allowing yourself to be where you are in your journey and to just calm down your brain, because at the end of the day, your brain is going to freak out. It's going to think, oh my gosh, there's something going wrong.

I need to do something about it. So you want to bring that calm into your brain. Your brain is one gonna wanna freak out. So how can you feel calm on this journey? You may just remind yourself of your. You may say, Hey, I know that I want to do X, Y, and Z beat myself up and all of that, but I know that that's just my brain freaking out and actually I'm actually safe right now.

I'm okay. Nothing's gone wrong. You might just put your hand on your heart and be like, you know what? I know my brain is so used to freaking out right now because whenever I felt this emotion, I, I thought that I needed to escape it, but you know what? It's okay to feel guilty sometimes it's okay to feel sad.

Sometimes it's okay to feel stressed or overwhelmed or bored, whatever it emotion it is that you're running away from. If you create safety to actually feel that emotion, then you will feel much calmer in your weight loss. another way of creating calm is to notice the obstacles that are gonna come up.

Notice the areas in your weight loss that you normally stress out in, that you normally freak out in and create a specific protocol for that. So for example, a lot of my clients struggle with overeating in the evenings. So we have a specific overeating. so one of my clients said, oh, I normally put the kids to bed.

And that's when I tend to overeat because I think, oh, I can finally relax now. So we made a plan specifically for the evenings, so she was talking about how she wanted to relax. So how could she relax without eating. So she would go for a bath. Sometimes she would do some breathing exercises. She would just move her body.

So when she was like, just walking, it helped release some of that excess energy that was leading her to have that restlessness in her urge. So how can you create that calm for you? You want to think about what is the thing that is gonna help me calm my brain. another thing that helps calm the brain down is anticipating what obstacles may come up for you.

This is an amazing tool in any area of your life. So if you struggled with being late to places, you may want to create a plan for that. For example, for me, I noticed that I would, not feel calm when I was wanting to go to a place, cuz I would always be late. So I realized. to create the feeling of calm.

I would want to have a protocol that would help me. So I would anticipate what the obstacles are gonna come up. The obstacles are, I'm gonna think it's gonna take one hour and actually it'll take two. So what I'm gonna do then is I'm gonna allocate two hours on my calendar. I'm gonna wake up earlier than I think I'm gonna need to wake up because things will always take longer.

So that was part of my planning in advance. That was part of my anticipating what obstacles would come up and making a specific plan for that, that really helps with the feeling of calm because when you are then in the situation, you are able to use your brain to solve any new problems, because you've already thought of what main problems may come up.

This is really useful for when you are going out to eat, because that's often a place where a lot of my clients feel stressed because they tend to overeat when they go out. So we anticipate what are the obstacles that are gonna come up and solve for them ahead of time. And so then when they are there, if any new obstacles come up, they've got all of that brain space to solve those obstacles, but from a calm place, because they're not like constantly putting out fires and solving for so many problems.

Right. Because they've already thought about this ahead of time. So that is how you feel compassionate and calm on your weight loss journey. Okay. Lovely ladies. I will see you next week. Take care. Bye.