Hello. My friends. Welcome back to the podcast this week. Today I want to talk about a super fun topic, , are you ready? I wanna talk about when you doubt yourself. And all jokes aside, this is very, very important to acknowledge when it comes to eating healthy, losing weight, making the permanent changes you want to make with food and body doubting yourself is something that is going to come up and I don’t care what your past experience has been.
If you have struggled to eat healthy and lose weight, you will not be exempt from this. You will have doubt come up for you before you get started on your journey and along the way and after you have created the result, after you have learned to eat naturally healthy and lose weight, there will even then be some doubt that will need to be unlearned. And this is a process that none of us can skip to go from our current food struggles to becoming a naturally healthy eater for life.
So my goal here in this episode is to normalize this. If this is coming up for you to give you some perspective with it so you can feel like you are on solid ground when it does come up for you. And I want you to know what to do with this doubt. So it is not preventing you from making the changes with food and body that you want, and here’s what you can expect to put it boldly.
You’re just not going to have trust in yourself in the beginning of your healthy eating journey, and I want you to expect that this will be the case. This doesn’t mean that anything has gone wrong. You will just not have full trust in yourself to make the changes you want to make. And really this means that you’re going to doubt your abilities to eat healthy and lose weight long term.
Because when you have failed to eat healthy and lose weight in the past, whether that means you restricted food, went through vigorous diet protocols or weight loss programs, if you have failed to get the results you want and you have put an effort, this is to be expected because your brain uses past evidence to determine what it believes about you. Now, I want that to really sink in. Your brain will always use past evidence to determine what it believes.
Now nothing has gone wrong if you doubt your abilities to eat healthy or you don’t have trust in yourself to follow through with those actions. Sometimes we tend to make our doubt very personal and will think that having those feelings mean that something has legitimately gone wrong or that it means something about us. And this is when I really offer you to make the experience of doubt less personal.
And I know sometimes this can sound strange because we’re not robots. We are flesh and blood humans, which means we are emotional beings. But the emotion of doubt comes from a part of your brain that runs like a computer and based on all of the input and data it’s gotten over the years, it just simply believes that you cannot trust yourself, that you do not have the ability to eat healthy and lose weight long term.
It’s a computer. So that is what the math from the past has added up to. That is it nothing is personal about having this doubtful experience of your goals. So I always want to offer that peace of mind first. We have to normalize the doubt that we have as nothing but our primitive brain telling us what to expect in our future. It’s just telling you that what you can expect in your future is to fail, and that’s okay.
Doubt is not a problem. Every single person that has learned to eat healthy and to lose weight long term has experienced doubt. Every single one of my clients who has lost the weight and become a naturally healthy eater has had doubt. The only time when doubt becomes an actual problem is when you use this emotion as a reason to keep yourself stuck. Now so doubt cannot keep you stuck.
It’s you thinking that your doubt is a problem that will keep you stuck because here’s where doubt actually comes from. It just comes from your thoughts. It’s those thoughts that come from that computer brain that based on all of the data it’s gotten, thinks this isn’t possible for you because of your past, you will not create the results you want. You will will not eat healthy and lose the weight. You can’t trust yourself. That’s just what that brain thinks and it’s going to offer it to you.
It’s a sentence in your head that produces a vibration in your body that is quite uncomfortable, but that’s it. What happens is we’ll see this thought in our mind and notice this emotional experience and we’ll think it means something terrible. What happens is we will believe the doubt. We’ll think of course it’s not possible for me. Of course I can’t trust myself to make these changes. Of course I’m not capable.
And then we’ll proceed to list all of the evidence why, and we’ll engage with that doubtful experience and ruminate in it. What I wanna offer you here is that is optional and we all start from the same place. Every single person that has become a naturally healthy eater, whether it’s through my process or another process, has had a doubt. And the decision they made that may be different from where you’re at now is they just chose not to believe it or they chose not to react from it.
Because here are the most common reactions I see to this doubt specif when it comes to eating healthy and losing weight long term. If you believe the doubt, the first thing you may do is you’ll wait for the most ideal life circumstances to get started with these changes. So you will just prolong the transformation that you wanna make. This means you’ll convince yourself that you need more time set aside to do this work, that you need more energy and you just don’t have the capacity energetically right now to do this work.
You’ll think you need more resources, more focus, more X, Y, Z. You will come up with compelling reasons why this work can wait and why it’s not a good time for you to create these changes. This is all a way for your brain to avoid experiencing the doubt that’s coming up for you.
Your excuses for not doing this work will always outrun the uncomfortable feeling of doubt that exists within you. It is a lot easier emotionally for us to think, I don’t have time to do this work to eat healthy, to lose weight than it is to acknowledge. I don’t think it’s possible for me. See that difference? One example I see a lot, and this came up for me in the past, is the reason I don’t have time to do this right now.
I need to wait until I have more time in my life. So a lot of the time I’ll hear, I need to wait until my kids are out of school or I need to wait until my husband comes back from his work trip or I need to wait until I don’t have these demands. At work, you really will believe that it is a time issue, for example, and the emotional experience of this for a lot of you is overwhelmed because you are believing I don’t have time for this or for some of you it can show up as frustration.
What’s important to know about this flavor of excuse is that your mind is just more willing to feel overwhelmed or maybe even frustration than the doubt. It’s more willing to ride out the excuses of not having enough time and being in that emotional experience than acknowledging the doubt that you are actually having where you are believing that you are just not capable of creating this result for yourself.
And once again, I want to keep checking in to make sure that we are normalizing this experience for every single human. I mentioned earlier, but there is not one client of mine that did not have doubt in their abilities before they signed up to work with me, not one. And what’s super funny that they often don’t expect, even though I tell them, is after they lose all the weight, they’re eating naturally healthy. They still doubt their abilities even after they have provided themselves that evidence.
And this is just their human brain that hasn’t caught up yet to the external results that they’ve created. It just needs more time for that to decondition itself. So really normalize this experience of doubt. Another reaction I notice us having to doubt is we will come up with reasons for why these changes can wait. So this is very similar to what I just mentioned, but what happens is we justify why losing weight and eating healthy isn’t the most important thing.
We will actively deprioritize it in our lives and we will put other things first. Now, what’s interesting, and if you are my client, you will know this. We teach you how to eat naturally healthy and lose weight without making this the most important thing in your life. You can prioritize your kids, your job, your relationships more than you prioritize eating healthy and losing weight because you can create those results in a way that doesn’t take all of your focus.
That’s actually the goal because when you create the weight loss and you are eating naturally healthy, you don’t want that to take up all of your energy either. So it’s okay if making these changes isn’t your top priority. But it’s interesting because when someone is believing the doubt and they’re reacting to it, I’ll notice that they will come up with a ton of reasons why the changes they want to make with food and body aren’t the most important thing.
They will fight for those reasons and defend those reasons, and that’s when you know that they are avoiding the doubt. As a human, I notice my brain go here as well, and I wanna offer that you check in and notice when your brain goes here, when does your brain want to fight for the reasons for why these changes aren’t available to you? Now, if that is happening, then you are avoiding the doubt that you are actually experiencing.
You’re avoiding the thoughts you are having that belief. I don’t trust myself to eat healthy long term. I’m not capable of losing weight long term, and this is just useful to know. This awareness is such a game changer. If you are believing the doubt, you will also put other people’s needs ahead of your own. So I want to offer you that learning to eat naturally healthy and reaching your ideal weight is a basic human need.
I feel very strongly about this. I think that we tend to see this as a frivolous luxury sometimes, like it’s something that we’re just interested in for the sake of looking better or feeling better, but we really don’t see it for what it is, which is a basic human need. It’s learning how to meet our body’s needs with food and meet our body’s needs with weight so we can better show up to all of the other areas of our lives, right?
It’s a basic human need to learn how to do this, but what will happen if we’re having doubt is we will find ourselves just putting other people’s needs ahead of our own basic needs and we’ll do this so, so easily with my moms. I see this come up a lot with their kids, which of course your kids are the most important thing to you, but similar to the previous example, you’ll notice your brain fighting for those reasons why their needs are more important than yours.
It’s almost like this defensiveness that comes up. And when we’re defending our reasons for not prioritizing these changes, it’s because we’re resisting the doubt that we can actually create them. When you can recognize that happening within yourself, that is such a game changer, you’ll really be able to see what reasons you are having in your mind that are holding you back from these long term changes with food and body you want to make, make another reaction.
I see to the doubt is a very common one, and I know so many of you are guilty of this because I am too, is you will spend more time researching and coming up with plans and less time implementing. I always think it’s really fun when I see both excuses at the same time. So I’ll see the excuse of I don’t have enough time. But then a client also reveals to me that they’re spending a lot of time researching nutritional methods and weight loss protocols and they’re not implementing the actual changes.
And this is a distraction tactic from your mind to avoid the doubt that you are experiencing. For most of us type A women, we love researching, we love learning, we love doing all the things that feel really, really productive without ever actually creating the goal and taking action. This is just a waste of time.
It does not bring you closer to the goal to do more research, and we do this to give us that dopamine hit of feeling like we’re progressing and it’s all just a way to avoid the doubt. So I wanna offer all of you to really see if this is something you have done or maybe you are doing now, it’s totally okay. My brain likes to go towards this too. We just have brains that really love to learn, but sometimes that can work against us when we’re learning and researching to escape a feeling that we’re having such as doubt.
The last thing I see come up when someone is believing the doubt is they indulge in the doubt and create self pity. So what this means is they will have a thought where they think, I don’t trust myself to make these changes. I don’t think this is really possible for me.
I don’t actually think I’m capable. And they will experience doubt like all of us do, but then they will keep layering and layering and layering additional thoughts that create more doubt until they’re in this pool of self pity and this feels really, really painful. They’re essentially taking their initial doubt and beating themselves over the head with it. And what this does is this creates an emotional wall of pressure between you and the results you want.
If you take the doubt you are having and you swim in it, you have a choice, my friend, you have a choice as to whether you acknowledge the doubt, validate it, and see why it’s there. Or you take your brain’s word for it and you indulge in the doubt and continue to layer thoughts and create a story as to why the doubt is true. It’s the difference between writing the first sentence of a story or creating a novel of it with my clients, I can tell when they’ve created a novel for their doubt versus when someone notices the first sentence of the book, they acknowledge it and then they take action and move forward with that awareness and with allowing that discomfort of the doubt.
It’s funny. I love to read, and this reminds me of when I make a choice as to whether or not I’ll read a book. I place a lot of value on the first sentence. So when I’m browsing books, I’ll turn to that first page and read the first couple of sentences, and I will admit that I have put books back on the shelf based on the first couple of sentences. Maybe it’s a little bit of a reading toxic trait I have. So I’ll probably rethink that now that I’m recording this episode. But that’s kind of how I see it, is it can be useful to read the couple sentences that your brain offers you and then just decide to acknowledge it and allow that emotional experience versus reading the whole book and creating layers and layers of that emotional experience.
You can totally just put that book back on the shelf.
So for my readers out there, hopefully , this analogy works for you. So these are all the most common ways I see someone keeping themselves stuck from the permanent changes they want to make, whether that’s with food, body and weight loss. The really big thing that is important for you to know is doubt is to be expected for any of us. Keeping yourself stuck is optional, and it only happens when you let the doubt win, and that means the solution is you must learn to acknowledge the doubt, acknowledge the thoughts you are having that create doubt emotionally for you.
Do this without using your doubt as a reason to keep yourself stuck. So this means you identify that doubt that’s occurring. You notice the thoughts that are creating the doubt, you observe that feeling, and then you practice allowing that experience because when you practice allowing the doubt to exist, you can begin making decisions that move you forward with your food and body goals.
You can begin taking action rather than avoiding the work coming up with reasons why it can wait. Or for some of us spending more time researching before we take action. A question I always like to offer all of you when you are in these moments worked out, feels really compelling to you. So you’re having a lot of urges to dismiss the work and deprioritize it. I want you to consider what would my future self who eats naturally healthy and maintains her ideal weight with ease?
What would she tell me to do next? And I want you to just sit with that not in a positive, airy fairy way. I want you to just consider the version of yourself as a human who eats naturally healthy, maintains her ideal weight with ease, where this is no longer a problem for her. What would she tell you to do next?
Because in the moment, doubt will for sure tell you to not prioritize these changes, come up with reasons why they can wait and indulge in the self-pity and wait for the most ideal circumstances to get started to move forward with this work. You must know how to address this stout because it will exist in the beginning of your journey to healthy eating and weight loss. It is where every single person starts, and I personally think it really is an uncomfortable rite of passage that we all must move through in order to create the permanent changes we want.
With the women I coach, their self-doubt is always the highest when they’re considering signing up for my program. This is when everything in their head is coming to the surface trying to tell them that making these changes is a horrible idea that it’s going to lead to where they’ve been before.
They can’t trust themselves. They’re not capable. The biggest shift they have is when they acknowledge that doubt, let it exist, and then move forward anyways with the changes they want to make. It is transformational this moment, and this is something you can decide to do now. You can look at your doubt and you can practice moving forward and taking action despite the doubt telling you no.
When you stop making decisions from the doubt you leave behind the version of you who struggles with food, who gets stuck, when you begin making decisions from your future self, this is when you begin guaranteeing that you’ll solve your food and weight struggles permanently, because now you can experience doubt without reacting to it. I want to offer that this is the most foundational skill to making these long term changes permanently for yourself.
If you can stop letting the doubt win, these results are inevitable.
You can learn to eat naturally healthy. You can lose the weight permanently without restricting yourself or without harnessing willpower. You can do it in a way that partners with yourself where when you create the result, eating naturally healthy is just who you are. You’re able to maintain that ideal weight without hustle. This is what I want for you. All right, my friend, I hope this was helpful. Let me know if it was, You can find me on Instagram @Katrentas. I love to connect with all of you there. All right, thanks for being here today. I’ll talk to you next week.