Hello, my friends, welcome back to the podcast this week. So in today’s episode, I want to offer a different type of episode where I give you some success fuel. And what I mean by that is just to give you that boost of perspective or awareness you need to. really get some momentum going in your journey towards naturally healthy eating and permanent weight loss.

And today I want to talk about the motivation to start this work and what you can expect when it comes to motivation in losing weight for the last time. I’m going to share how motivation works, what it looks like for my clients who achieve this result, so you can get a good look at where you’re starting from now.

But before we get into today’s episode, make I need to just shout out the women who are in Own Your Eating Habits right now. And I want to also point out that if you want to really remove your food struggles for life, become someone who eats naturally healthy and lose weight for the last time, [00:01:00] you want to get inside Own Your Eating Habits.

So Own Your Eating Habits is my exclusive coaching program for high achieving women who want to achieve those results. We give you a process, we come together as a group, and we help you build these skills week by week. And the most important thing to know is that eating healthy naturally does not happen when you perfect a certain diet, or when you prep and plan everything.

It’s a skill that anyone can build and learn. And when you build that skill of naturally healthy eating, that’s when you’re going to lose the weight permanently. And the results women are creating for themselves right now in the program are foundational and unique to each woman who is on that journey.

So just this week, our ladies are losing weight. Even when they’re on vacations abroad with their family, they are losing weight despite moments of failure, even when they’re overeating, because the skills we teach are so foundational that your body will respond instantly. Even when you’re not perfect, we also have women [00:02:00] who are going through really individual seasons of change with their bodies, whether that’s hormonally or emotionally.

And they’re learning that weight loss can still be achieved even during the tough times. And we also have a bunch of women who, of course, are healing years of unwanted stress and stomach pain. And this is just this week, y’all, and we’re not even at the end of the week. So a fact that really cannot be

sugar coated is that when you delay this result in your life, you are delaying a completely different experience of being a human and being in your body. By far the most common feedback we receive from this program is, I wish I did this sooner. So I do not want you to miss out on the results that are available to you.

Doors are open to own your eating habits. July 5th. So make sure if you want to join us in that July cohort that you start preparing for enrollment. Now you can go to catrentus. com forward slash coaching to get all the details and make sure [00:03:00] you don’t wait to reserve your spot when those doors open because spots are limited.

So we kick off as a group on July 25th at 12 PM Eastern, and I cannot wait to be y’all’s coach and support you in your transformation. Okay, so let’s get back into today’s topic all about motivation and what that motivation to start this work looks like, realistically. For so many of you, when you come to me and you want to eat healthy naturally and lose weight for the last time, how You’ve experienced weight loss is all or nothing where in order for weight loss to occur you have to put your life on hold and go full throttle and Really exert a ton of emotional energy.

And so this is when y’all will stop going out to eat. You’ll stop socializing. You feel like you need to cook your meals every night a certain way. Maybe you’ll spend a ton of money on health foods. So you feel perfectly set up for the week. You feel like you really have to have [00:04:00] these ideal circumstances to succeed with weight loss and you exert a ton of focus and energy.

And then what happens is life comes in and you’ll be doing pretty well, But then things get busy and you feel like you can’t stay on track with the way you were in the beginning. So this, means essentially you have the motivation to really perfect your approach in the early stages.

And then when life starts coming in, you lose that motivation. And then it just doesn’t look as quote unquote ideal. So then you end up feeling disappointed, maybe even ashamed, where you feel like that you cannot sustainably get back on track with weight loss in the way you were

with the busyness of your life. And where many of you feel stuck is you’ve noticed this pattern. So you’ve noticed this motivation cycle where you’ll be really motivated in the beginning of your weight loss journey to have everything in place. Life comes in, you lose the motivation, and then you end up feeling worse off because you’re like, why can’t I just make this [00:05:00] work and be disciplined enough and have the willpower, which leaves you with feeling like you can’t create this result now because you genuinely believe that that all version of healthy eating and weight loss is what’s necessary.

So in other words, you think you need to plan and prep and track and not socialize, cook all the meals and spend all that money on health foods.

So, in this episode, I really want to give you a clear picture on where motivation comes from, what you can expect with motivation, and what permanent weight loss will actually look like in terms of the energy you need to give towards it. Because here’s what happens, and this is where it starts. You will feel motivation in the beginning of a healthy eating and weight loss journey.

And this is likely how it started in the past as well, with past dieting approaches or maybe weight loss protocols you followed. So you feel motivated at the beginning. And here’s actually where that motivation comes from. It’s because you’re having the belief that this will be the time when you [00:06:00] finally get it all right.

Okay. So maybe this isn’t the actual sentence that’s occurring in your brain, but it’s the theme of it. It’s some notion that this is finally the time when you’re going to have your stuff together, you’re going to get it all right, and you’re going to indefinitely follow through with some version of healthy eating that you have in your mind.

So this is what fuels you in the beginning. It’s the concept of you’re finally going to get it all right. And it feels like you’re finally going to prove something to yourself about yourself. Now as the coach, I see women coming into my program with this mindset and we guide you through it. Having coached hundreds of women to this result, I’m there to help you know what to expect.

And as the coach, I know. for you to get to where you want to go, you’re not going to get it all right. But in the beginning, you might be motivated by that concept because you are attached to what the performance or your progress looks like, which is you being attached to getting it right. I want you to [00:07:00] think about what your sentence is that motivates you.

So I’m going to get it all right. I’m going to follow through. This is the time when it’s all going to work out. What actually are you expecting from yourself in that moment? So what expectations do you have for yourself on what your progress should look like? For most of you, it’s going to be the self imposed rules of

I’m going to eat these types of foods. I’m going to cook meals every day. I’m going to track my meals. I’m never going to eat above this certain food metric.

It’s placing self imposed rules on

your progress. that you believe you need to do perfectly in order to see weight loss success. So that’s the initial motivation, right? I’m going to get it all right. And then what happens is life happens. So

you’re not going to be perfect. There are going to be moments where you do not prep your foods, or you do not follow through on a plan. You do not have the healthiest options available. You end up overeating. Whatever it is, The stuff is gonna [00:08:00] occur, and then you’re gonna have the thought, Oh gosh, I’m not getting it all right like I planned.

We’re back where we started. This isn’t working. You’re gonna have all the judgments and shame, because now you have broken the initial motivation. which was to get it all right. Now, notice this has nothing to do with the weight loss. This has nothing to do with the outcome you’re trying to achieve. This is about your performance.

And the problem here is when you’re motivated by good performance, that motivation is always going to come crashing down when you’re in a weight loss journey because you’re not always going to get it all right. Naturally healthy eating and permanent weight loss is skill building, which means it requires you to fail really, really well.

And so when life comes up, you come across these setbacks and you’re adapting to the skills that you’re learning.

You’re going to feel shame and disappointment because you’re not getting it all right. And what my clients tend to tell me is it starts getting messier than they originally anticipated. And they really feel like this is a [00:09:00] problem because it’s breaking their initial motivation of they have to do the right things.

Now here’s where a lot of you get stuck is when progress starts to look messy because they’re not always getting it all right. They will think, oh, the problem must be that I need to get my life together in order to lose weight. So I need to get back on track. This is where a lot of us go because we still think that the goal needs to be getting it all right.

So we’ll try and solve our external environment so we can get it all Rather than accepting that life will always be messy and we need a manner of healthy eating and weight loss that adapts to that. You do not need ideal circumstances to eat healthy and lose weight in a way that is sustainable.

You will need ideal circumstances in your life to be perfect and get it all right. And that is never going to be available to you indefinitely.

If the motivation you have is to get it all right in order to lose weight, you’re always going to feel disappointed because there’s [00:10:00] only so long when you can get it all right. before you quote unquote fall off track. Now, the work that needs to be done here is you will need to mourn the loss of perfect performance.

So you can participate in the trial and error necessary to create lasting weight loss. So what tends to happen is Clients come in with all the motivation and they’re like, I’m finally going to get it right. This is the time which we all will have. And then they start progressing in the skill building, which includes some failures and some setbacks.

Now, nothing’s gone wrong. And as the coach, I know this, the results are right on track for what we want. But they have a lot of thoughts about this because their perception of getting it all right is not happening. So then what happens is they spend more energy and focus trying to solve for getting it all right than the weight loss.

So to get it all right, they’ll think that they need to adjust the circumstances in their life rather than Letting go of needing [00:11:00] perfect performance and just continuing with the trial and error to adapt the changes they want to make to the messiness of their life. Really when clients make this transition, it’s adapting you to this new phase of your life where we lower the stakes on what this result will require from you.

So what happens in the client journey is that at this point they receive this coaching and then they logically understand it. They know that. They need to let go of perfect performance so they can build the skills and do the trial and error to lose weight permanently. But then the question they sometimes ask is, well, then what do I do from here?

Like how do I get myself back on track? How do I get myself back in the place where I’m following through on all the things and I’m planning and prepping in the way that I want to and what I want them to know is that nothing has gone wrong. And there’s nothing to solve for. They just need to keep going because why they’re asking that question is because they’re still attached [00:12:00] to perfect performance.

So they are still trying to solve for the ideal and getting it all right. When you do not accept that you won’t indefinitely get it right, you’ll be stuck in your setbacks and you won’t Move forward from them because you’re going to be more concerned with the fact that there was a setback in the first place Versus moving forward from the setback and implementing what you learn

in your decision making.

When you want to try and force yourself to take action and get back on track, you want to consider have you really accepted that your permanent weight loss and the journey to get there will not look pretty and perfect because you don’t want to take action to try and get it all right. Take action and move forward based on the logical best next step for your weight loss.

Knowing that skill building is going to require experimentation. A lot of you will have the mindset that’s very transactional where you think, if I just take these actions, I [00:13:00] will get it done. I will achieve the result. And that is not accurate with what permanent weight loss requires because to figure out a manner of healthy eating that works for you and your body, it requires experimentation.

It’s trial and error to see what works. What works for one person will not work for you. And this is where dieting gets it wrong. And it keeps you stuck because it proposes that if you do those things in that way, you will have the result. And that’s not how it works. Friends, you need to be willing to experiment, be really resourceful and engage in the trial and error necessary, which means you can’t be motivated.

Bye. Perfect performance and getting it all right and proving something to yourself. Again, motivation comes from thinking, here’s when I get everything right. And for some of you, what’s interesting is you avoid going all in on this result because you know that that motivation is there. And you know that that’s what has led [00:14:00] you to where you’ve been.

So in other words, you know that you’re attached to getting it all right, which has led you to dieting, which has then led to the all or nothing cycle. with healthy eating and weight loss. Now, if this relates to you, this is such great awareness and intuition. If you’re feeling that resistance to starting.

So what I want you to know is we don’t want to prevent you from creating this result now, but that means that I want you to expect that attachment to getting everything right, because that’s normal. And there is not one woman who I have coached who doesn’t have that attachment. And then also, What will be available is a logical decision to build the skills necessary to become a naturally healthy eater so you can lose the weight permanently.

You can be attached to getting it all right while also knowing that you’re willing to engage in the skill building to create this result. Both of those things can exist.

It’s important to know that motivation will always be available in the beginning of any work. [00:15:00] So you’re going to have this quick fix mindset that’s attached to getting it all right and that is okay. You don’t need motivation to keep following through. It’s expected that it’s going to come and it’s going to go.

What I want you to know is that if you feel motivated and attached to perfect performance, that’s expected. And it’s also expected that when you engage in the trial and error, your brain will make it mean that things have gone wrong. But I wanted to give you a really broad overview of what you can expect when it comes to the motivation to start this work.

For a lot of you, you may be in the place where you’re motivated by getting it all right, and you’re ready to jump in, and that’s okay. Come join On Your Eating Habits, be motivated, and we will help you go through all of the human things you need so you can get to the end result. And maybe you’re in the latter camp that I talked about where you feel hesitant to get started because you see the motivation and you know, it doesn’t serve you same thing.

Come on in. We will make sure you get what you need to get where [00:16:00] you want to go with that permanent weight loss. So again, be sure to join us and own your eating habits for that July cohort. You will not want to miss it. You can go to catrentis. com forward slash coaching. I hope this episode was helpful today and I’ll see you in the next one.