Welcome to Day 3 of Support for Sticking to your Weight Loss Plan. (FB LIVE 5:30pm Pacific)

If you have been a yo yo dieter over the years and don’t believe you can stick to a plan, you are in the right place.  If you are like I used to be or like many clients when they first come to me, you may have started a diet, maybe even lost 2, 3 or 30 pounds, then you just can’t stick to it, give up and gain it all back again. 

Stick around because these 14 days are going to give you life coaching strategies and weight loss tips to help you succeed in sticking to your plan.  My program is different in that I integrate the latest brain science that gives us insight into how our brains tick.  What we think is important. What we eat is important. Biological processes are predictable.  We are learning to hack our biology and psychology to achieve success.

Day 1, you created your Plan – I offered you 12 points to address in any successful Plan.  Day 2, you discovered your WHY.  WHY would you choose to select a salad and vegetables instead of the rich and sugary BBQ wings?  What is your compelling reason to lose weight.  Have you thought about your WHY?  If so you have it written down so you can see it each day! 

DAY 3 we are talking about setting goals and creating daily habits.  Once again, I look to the scientists who study the brain.  It is researched that writing down a goal or an intention sets your brain up to achieve that goal more often than not writing it down. 

Further research shows that more important to achieving goals is setting a process for getting there.  This is why my clients have great outcomes.  We have a way forward and a practice to follow, a methodology to stick to your plan. 

Write out your PLAN, write down your GOAL, then you write out your WHY. Next, you want to create processes that become routine. Most jobs require that you do routine processes, but most of us forget to apply them to our personal lives!

Some of you think of routine as evil and others of you think of routine as lifesaving.  If you think about your current life and results, all the habits you currently have result in your present circumstances. Like it or not, your brain prefers to expend as little energy as it needs, and that results in lots of unconscious habits --driving, shopping, dressing, bathing, eating….

Further research indicates that people who kept a food diary were able to double the weight loss of those who did not.  Support for weight loss was also an indicator of success. 

We are once again relying our role as CEO of our life – using the evolved part of our brain, the pre-frontal cortex, to plan in advance. 

Plan to eat tomorrow what you already have on hand today.  Write down your planned meals.  This is more evidence and support for your brain. Shop for the next 4-5 days instead of just shopping for today.  Cook extra veggies and protein to have on hand in case you get home late or want to go to a movie and get out the door quickly.

While the initial process of change might be experienced as a disruption, eventually as you repeat these actions each day, your brain will look to follow.  When your life becomes stressful (we will address stress in the upcoming days) you just turn to your plan and have fewer decisions to make, resulting in less stress.

Your new habit is to write stuff down and to hold yourself to your plan.

Brilliant thing is that even going off plan is a lesson.  Everything is learning.  Your mindset is crucial to success.

This is what we learn from life coaching.  How you think about your life has the most influence on your mood, your sympathetic and parasympathetic systems and your gene expression and most importantly your behavior.

What all that means is your thoughts create your feelings and your feeling will provide motivation to do or not do what you want.

We keep track of our goal, our plan, our why, our meals and ultimately our results. 

Creating a pattern each day is what will create a new habit.  Research shows it takes from 18 to 254 days – averaging 66 days -- to create a new habit. 

With the methodology I teach, we are learning a long-term solution.  Maybe it is easier when you start out at 52 years old!  My goal for you is to arrive at your goal weight with all the good habits in place. 

When weight loss is achieved, we just upgrade our goal.  Perhaps it is better health through running a 5K.  perhaps it is getting more skill for your job.  It could be learning anew dance step just for joy. 

You will learn in the process of sticking to your weight loss plan, that you can do anything when you create and follow a process and manage your thinking about it all.

TIP for the Day:  Salad Dressings

Processed food include a whole arsenal of fats, salts, sugars, fake flavors and colors to make store bought salad dressings have appeal. Watch how to read labels and choose the best dressing for your weight loss goals.