Hello, my friends. Welcome back to the podcast this week. I cannot believe it is already August. So my style is to prepare for the fall season, starting around like the end of July. I get very, very excited and I’m a really big fan of the fall seasons and seasons in general, even though I live in Florida, which I understand is very cliche and cheesy, but I am in fact, cliche and cheesy a lot of the time.
And I’m okay with it. I have a bag in my closet with fall decorations that I’ve already hunted down mostly from home goods. So I am just very excited. Fall to me, feels like a new beginning in a sense. So that’s kind of the transition I’m in. And I know many of you are preparing for this transition as well. So for some of you, it’s back to school season for my teachers and my moms things pick back up.
And speaking of this, I wanted to check in because a number of you have reached out asking about coaching with me in the fall, because for many of us, this is when we feel a bit more motivated to change our habits and get into a routine. But where many of you seem to be feeling in conflict is you worry about having your schedule pick back up. So you won’t have as much time or focus to devote, to making these changes with food and body.
And here’s what I want you to know for those of you who really do want to create this change permanently. Now you want this work to be done and you want to solve this problem. You don’t want to base your decision with making these changes on wanting a routine or on time, because you want to be able to eat healthy and create the results with your body that you want without, depending on, on a perfect routine or without, depending on having enough time.
And that’s not something that really will ever happen for many of us, if we’re being really real with ourselves, inevitably, there will be moments when routine goes out the window and we never seem to quite have enough time. And the point is we want to be able to make these changes permanently with food and body, no matter what the circumstances of our lives are. So you want to be able to create permanent change when a routine isn’t available, you want to be able to create permanent change when it feels like you don’t have enough time.
So my advice is, if you are feeling this motivation of the upcoming fall season, then my advice would always be to use that to your advantage. Motivation can be very useful when we take advantage of it in the right way. What we want to keep in mind is we don’t want to let the concept of having a perfect routine or having enough time discourage us from making these changes now, because you can make the changes you want with food and body permanently, without the perfect circumstances, you don’t have to have a perfect routine.
You do not have to have quote unquote enough time. In fact, it’s necessary that you don’t wait until those circumstances are ideal to make these changes because that’s how you build stability and self trust. With these changes, you must learn how to create them when life kind of gets in the way of it, and this is 100% available, this is what I help women do. So if you are ready to make this change and you have that motivation available to you, I’m ready for you.
If it’s a good fit. So you can learn more and apply for coaching. If that interests you at cat renters.com/coaching. All right, so today I want to talk about measures of success because it’s very important that you evaluate your progress along the way towards your food and body goals, but there is a useful way to evaluate progress. And there are non-useful ways.
And what I find is most of us are measuring progress and success with food and body in non-useful ways. So today I really want to talk about the most non-useful way to measure progress with food and body. And it’s going to surprise many of you . And then from there, I’m not going to leave you hanging. I’m going to talk about how you can measure success in a way that actually does serve you. And it keeps you motivated along the way where you see progress being made.
No matter what. So what I wanna start with is the least useful measure of success. I see when it comes to food or body, and here’s what I want you to know. It may be a bit of a shocker. your weight is not the most accurate measure of success. Now I wanna give a major disclaimer, here.
We want to acknowledge that this can be a result you want and that you are working towards. That is not up for debate. I think sometimes when I tell some of you to detach yourself from a weight goal, you think what I’m saying is that you need to give up your want and your desire for the weight loss. That’s not what I’m saying. Your wants are untouchable. As far as I’m concerned, they are valid and we want to protect them. But we want to always determine what is the best, most useful way for us to achieve that want in a way where we’re not getting discouraged and we’re not having to move through that resistance along the way and measuring your weight or the number of pounds you see on a scale can be the most non-useful way to measure success.
And the reason is that there are layers of results that need to happen before permanent sustainable weight loss even becomes possible for you.
It’s a result that occurs only when other measures of success are met. And also it’s important to acknowledge that weight loss. Isn’t the result that you personally have complete control over because weight loss is a byproduct result that occurs when you are honoring your body, your emotions, your nervous system, your needs with food. Those are the things you have control over weight loss is a byproduct of how you treat yourself with food and body.
So it turns out your body is what has ultimate control over weight loss, physiologically all of the energy you spend, trying to micromanage your weight will cause you to work against the natural processes of your body because your body has the most control over weight loss. So your time focus and energy is better spent on measures of success that you can put both hands on and control no matter what, which includes all of the ways you take action with food, how you make eating decisions, what leads to your body releasing weight?
Does this make sense? And we’re not saying that observing weight and the metrics of weight isn’t allowed, we’re not banning that what I want you to see here is how that just may not be the most useful measure of success for you to actually get the results you want. And we want to define the measures of success that feel the least resistant to you and allow you to make progress in the most effective way. And focusing on weight as the measure of success is why people get understandably, very frustrated and discouraged on their journey because they’re measuring progress in the most unstable way.
And along your journey with food and body, you want to feel in control. You want to feel like the actions you are taking are moving you forward, which means you want to provide yourself evidence along the way that what you’re doing is working.
And here’s the thing about depending on weight for that feeling is weight naturally fluctuates my friends. I feel like we all need to hear this. Especially as women, we get into trouble. When we change a lot of things, as soon as the scale goes up or when the scale doesn’t move, we get into trouble. When we make that mean, that moment mean that something is going wrong because your body is who determines when it’s time to release the weight permanently, your body always knows when releasing weight will be in best service of you.
And it knows way better than we do. Your weight can fluctuate. Your weight can plateau for a bit and things can still be working. Weight loss is a healing process, especially when we have fought our body to lose weight for so many years. So let’s normalize this a bit. That weight fluctuates along the way to the results we want.
And I think where other methods get into a bit of trouble is that if your weight isn’t going down, then other methods don’t present, you measures of success that you can look at and evaluate. So it just means that you’ll assume that something’s not working or you’re doing something wrong, or you’re not doing enough. If your weight is fluctuating, which means what will tend to do is further restrict food or over exercise to force the weight, to keep going down.
I really want you to see that there is nothing inherently negative about focusing on weight or weight, loss or pounds. We just want to allow you to feel the most stable and in control on your journey. And the way that’s gonna do that is not singularly focusing on weight because weight naturally fluctuates towards the results you want. So you will need to base progress on factors other than just weight loss.
And in my practice, we actually do acknowledge weight loss as a goal. If the client wants it, because once again, what you want is of utmost importance. Those things are untouchable, but that’s not the measure of progress that we use to determine what’s working ultimately, and what’s not working. If you measure progress only on weight loss, you are not going to learn the intricacies of what makes you tick with food, your eating habits, or your body.
You don’t get the opportunity to become the expert of yourself and really solve the root of the problem because your lens is way too narrow. You’re only looking at one small aspect of these results and weight loss is like the tippy tip of that pyramid in terms of the results you create. So there are so many layers of things that need to be established before permanent weight loss inevitably happens for you.
And those are the things we want to measure, which we’ll talk about. The other thing I want to offer you is that there are a million ways to get the results you want with food and body. There are an endless amount of ways. You can eat ways. You can shed weight ways. You can treat your body. And we always want to find the way that works for you. So I’m gonna use an analogy here, cuz y’all know.
I love my analogies. Want you to think about that? There’s an endless amount of number combinations that equals 100, right? You can think about that and being attached to weight loss in a specific timeframe as the metric of success is like needing all of the numbers to be an exact combination that equals 100. So you’re not figuring out what number combinations work best for you to equal 100.
You are not looking at the cause. You just assume that there’s a specific number combination that needs to happen to equal 100. And you’re very attached to it. We want you to find your number combinations that equal 100, that makes the most sense for you. And there are so many things that contribute towards the weight loss result you want, or the 100 that don’t even have to do with measuring your weight.
And some of you might be like, what, how will I lose weight? If I’m not measuring weight and looking at it through that lens, you do this by solving for what inevitably creates weight loss. Over time, you do this by solving for what numbers will add up to 100. So we’re not staring at the 100 and forcing that number into place. We’re getting in the equation and figuring out what combination of numbers most easily brings you to 100 inevitably in a way that’s really accessible.
Does this make sense? , I’m hoping this analogy works here. You want to choose measures of success that you have the most clear and direct control over the measures of success that you feel like you can put both hands on evaluate clearly and move forward with weight is primarily under control by your body who determines when you will lose weight is your body. Your body is the one who has to release the weight because your body knows best physiologically.
So it’s not that we want to ignore our progress with weight, but we want you to focus on the measures of success that you can put both hands on. So you feel like you’re driving that car to the destination. So how you’re going to choose these measures of success or how you’re going to choose the combination of numbers that you focus on to reach 100.
This process will be highly individual to you. And this is what happens inside of my coaching container. Each client has a customized set of numbers that equals 100 or in other words, they have measures of success that they focus on that makes the most sense for them and where their progress lies. This solves the deepest roots of their eating habits. So they inevitably get that result.
They want or lose the weight. So they inevitably reach 100. So keep that in mind that finding your exact right measures of progress will be a process of exploration. You will need to step into the scientist or detective or expert role to observe what makes you tick in your journey. So here are some things I want to offer.
You keep in mind as you do that, as you figure out what measures of progress will matter most to you.
And the first thing I want to suggest is that you want to choose measures of success or progress that you have the most clear and direct control over. So as I’ve mentioned, right, weight is usually not one of these things because how, and when you release weight is highly determined by your individual body. It has its own timeline and it’s what knows best. So you can think about measures of success that you have the most clear, direct control over that feel the most measurable.
So here are some examples you can consider whether or not you emotionally ate during a meal, eating past fullness or stopping when you’re full eating, when you are hungry or starting a meal, when you feel ravenous, whether or not you felt satisfied in your body from a meal. So these are all general examples of some measures of progress that directly and inevitably can lead to a result with your body that you want.
And these are all in your direct control. And because of this evaluating progress will be so much more accessible to you, which will better allow you to take responsibility for your results. So, first thing, make sure you choose measures of success that you do actually have the most direct control over second is the measures of success must be root cause measures of success.
So as mentioned, weight is a good example of a result based measure of success. So in other words, this is the result you want to create, right? It’s not the root cause of what creates the result. Some of you in the beginning think that the foods you are eating are the root cause of success. And they are a cause of success because of course our food choices do contribute towards weight loss, but the deeper cause that goes even further than that is what’s leading you to make certain food choices in the first place.
What’s driving your food decisions, where your cravings come from, where you feel out of control with food. So we want to make sure you’re measuring progress based on solving for a root cause. Your root causes. Third, you want to measure success in a way that allows for the most emotional safety in the process. So what I mean is that we don’t want to unnecessarily trigger feelings of frustration, disappointment, maybe desperation in the process of making changes with food and body and continuously stepping on the scale for many of you, especially in the beginning will trigger emotional unsafe.
So maybe you’ll see the scale go up slightly one day, or you’ll see you didn’t lose weight in the timeframe that you wanted and your brain will panic and believe something is going very, very wrong. And this is what leads to self sabotaging behaviors, where we disrupt.
What’s actually already working and this is what we don’t want. So if measuring progress based on the scale or number of pounds is highly discouraging and triggering, it’s okay to choose another way until that feels safer. Or you may never decide to do that at all, but you have permission to find measures of success that feel most accessible and stable with your current emotional state.
Next, you want to make sure you choose the measures of success that are the most valuable and relevant to your personal healing. So this is always what I am leading my clients towards when we work together. And one example is that many of my clients will feel very motivated to measure success by numbers and metrics, because of course our type a brains love that stuff and measuring progress based on those things can work for some time.
That’s what most of us have tried, but actually for my clients and definitely myself in the past, we want to focus on the metrics based work because we avoid the emotional work that needs to happen.
So we subconsciously avoid measuring success based on the emotional work that’s available to us. And if this resonates, I specialize in working with perfectionist and type a woman. So if that’s you, you are in the right place. But for many of us who identify as such so much of our work will be and healing our stress patterns, how we digest our emotions, those types of measurements of growth. And for almost every woman, I’ve had the privilege of helping.
This is the core root cause of our eating struggles. So these are the measures of success that are more valuable and relevant to our healing. But I want you to consider this and I want you to find your measures of success that are the most valuable and relevant to you. So on one end, we do want our measures of success to be accessible, but we also don’t want to shy away from the discomfort of acknowledging areas of growth that we have.
So I want you to just consider everything I’ve offered here today, hearing all of this will not immediately solve your food struggles for life. This is important to know this is a process that only comes from when you’re willing to experiment with what works for you and what doesn’t. So here’s what I ultimately would love for you to take away from this episode today. I want you to think if your results with food and body that you wanted were inevitable, no matter what, how would you choose to measure success?
What approach would feel the most freeing, supportive, and accessible to you? So this is just what I want you to consider and think about today. As always everything I offered in today’s episode, these are all just suggestions. My friends, this work is never a one size fits all. That is the diet mentality. And that’s what we’re getting away from here.
These are all just offerings and suggestions to find your way, your manner of healthy eating and weight loss that feels easy, attainable, and sustainable is what we’re looking for. We want it to be available to you right now, no matter what the circumstances of your life are. And as mentioned, if you’re looking for customized support with this to permanently solve for your eating struggles, I am here for you. So I invite you to apply for coaching with me.
If it feels like this type of work could be a perfect fit. All right, thanks again for being here with me today, I will talk to you next week.