You’re only nervous about getting lost if you don’t have a plan.

In this episode, we will discuss why I hate the saying “falling off of the wagon” when it comes to maintaining your health, diet, and weight loss goals. Life has many twists and turns, and we are only human. By expanding our mindset from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset, we can always find out way back to our weight loss track no matter what we encounter in our journey. I will share ways to think about weight loss that will expand the way we think about our health goals in order to put you on the positive track towards your successful diet, weight loss, and healthy lifestyle!

If you like what you heard today, please go to Apple Podcasts and leave a review. The more reviews we receive, the more women will learn about the podcast and learn from these lessons. If you know someone who is struggling with food, send them a link to the podcast and maybe they can find something here they haven’t heard before!

Listen to the Full Episode:

What You’ll Learn in this Episode:

Why do I hate “falling off of the wagon” and the negativity it brings to our weight loss goals?
What questions should you ask yourself about your life in order to get your health journey back on track?
What is a “growth mindset” and how can we foster this to achieve successful weight loss goals?
What is one of my favorite FREE Coursera courses to take and why?

Featured on the Show:

Review “Simple Meal Planning” on Episode 31 to reinforce planning strategies for healthy lifestyles!
Review how to use a food journal in order to maximize and reflect on your weight loss and dietary goals.
Check out the FREE online Coursera course, “Learning How to Learn” and begin growing your own mind, today!
If you have any questions or ideas for upcoming episodes, send me an email at pat@beauprecoaching.com
If you like what you heard today, please head to Apple Podcasts and leave a review.
Join me in my closed Facebook group – It's Never Too Late to Lose Weight.

Full Episode Transcript:

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Full Episode Transcript

With Your Host

Pat Beaupre Becker

You are listening to It's Never Too Late to Lose Weight, a podcast with Pat Beaupre Becker, Episode 36.

Welcome to It's Never Too Late to Lose Weight, a podcast for women approaching 60 who have been successful at everything but reaching their weight loss goals. Tune in each week for tools and strategies to help you lose weight, create a strong body, and support a healthy mind. Here's your host, certified weight and life coach, Pat Beaupre Becker.

Hello, my dears. Welcome. Ooh, I'm very excited about today because I'm going to head in to San Francisco a little bit later on and celebrate my very, very good friend. She's turning 70, and as you know, I mean how does it happen so fast? How do we get to be 70 years old in the blink of an eye? But, I'm certainly looking forward to lots of laughs, and good conversations, and walks, and hugs today. I'm really excited. This friendship really fills me.

Today, I want to talk to you about getting on track. I know you've heard the term, I've fallen off the wagon or I'm off track, but I never liked the phrase falling off the wagon when it comes to diets and weight loss or exercise because this image of falling off a wagon kind of seems painful and pretty much out of date. I drum up this vision of this creaky old wagon from the wild west, right? Really uncomfortable. It's being driven by somebody else other than me. Pretty bumpy. It's not a very contemporary mode of getting from one point to another. I don't want to get on that wagon. But, I do like the phrase getting on track.

I remember when I was growing up in Brooklyn, I lived on a street where the bus had to turn and often the electric wires would disengage on the turn. The bus driver would have to get out and put the wheels or put this thing back on the track. That seemed like a genuine pain in the butt, but you know, it was really part of the driver's day. I mean, I don't know what he made it mean, but it didn't seem like he was annoyed by it. He didn't make it mean he did anything wrong or curse the wires. He just got out of the bus, fixed it, put it back on track, and get on his way. And that's what we expected. The bus would come. It would get off track. He would put it on track and be on his way.

I like the vision of a track because it provides guidance. I think that is why I really appreciate my own track. Because if I get disengaged, if I get discombobulated, I can always just get back on that track and I know it's going to take me where I want to go. Sometimes it's smoothly from one point to the next. Sometimes it's fast. Sometimes it's slow. Sometimes it's erratic. But, I know that it's always going to get me to my destination once I'm on that track. Now, if you've gotten off track, we all do, right? I made if you engage with work, or family, or even if you breathe, you're going to have many distractions that could take you off track of new healthy habits.

I was recently listening to a podcast with Tim Ferriss. You know, he's like the king of doing everything to peak performance, and he was talking about getting off track. He had not been sticking to his healthy diet and exercise. But you know what he said? "Because that's no big deal because I know what works. I just have to get back on track." So, today I want to use this vision with you of building a track. Let's look at or consider building your track that's going to be your guide to stop over eating, to weight loss, and to living a more healthy lifestyle.

I think it's really important to start at where you live. What is the world that you live in? Are you happy in this world or are you unhappy? I think it all starts with our mind, right? Because our mind creates our world. What is your mind think most of the time? Is it critical? Is it complaining? Do you have a growth mindset or a fixed mindset? Now, I am hoping that you have a growth mindset where you know that you will develop, you can grow your brain, you can create new habits with effort because that's what I'm pushing here, a growth mindset.

So with that growth mindset, where do you want to be in six months? Where do you want your track to take you? Let's say you drew a picture of yourself in six months, right? Achieving your weight loss and your healthy lifestyle goals. What would you look like? What would you see? Now, for me, I have a goal to work out with my trainer three times a week and continue to build lean muscle.

So, what are you looking to achieve in the next six months? Let's say you want to lose 25 pounds or maybe with better numbers in your blood work or your blood pressure. How do we get from here to there? We build a track with the knowledge and information we have about what it takes to lose 25 pounds and to get your blood pressure at its peak. Now, I know it's not a great big mystery, but it may be a mystery to your brain as how to stay on the track, right? This is where neuroscience has shined a light on why it's difficult to change your habits. You have created these link synapses in your brain, and those neurons have been firing together as you have been going about living your old patterns, and we know that neurons that fire together wire together. Knowing this gives us a method to follow, to learn new things. We must create new neural pathways and continue learning new things, growth mindset, never giving up because it feels uncomfortable. As a matter of fact, we know it will feel uncomfortable, but we're in it for the long haul. I mean, what else do you have to do with your time?

Now, losing those 25 pounds will require that you eat differently. Maybe more of some things and less of others. For most of us it means less junk food and more vegetables or salad. Again, that growth mindset includes exercising and figuring out what makes you happy in moments in your day because it means not only expecting it to be hard, but also looking around and taking the sites in along the way, right? The track is taking you to your destination, but the travel to your destination is you living your life, so you need to look up from your phone, right? Don't miss the view around you as you are approaching your destination.

Can you see that you really can't get to where you want to go without a plan? Without a destination goal, you're lost. You're stuck. But with a plan, passion, and persistence, and lots of love and kindness sprinkled in, you can glide along your track and get to your destination. I know this for sure.

So, let's talk about building your track and it's really important to me that we make it sustainable, especially when it comes to food and exercise. I mean, I remember my 20s, and 30s, and even some of my 40s, I would go on and off diets all the time. Some of these methods were extreme, right? Fasting to lose weight, cigarette and coffee diet, the liquid diet. But, I'm pretty sure that if you're in your 50s, 60s, and 70s and you listening to me on this podcast, those methods are no longer working because they're not sustainable and there's such a heavy cost to them. I mean, even if you can stick to a liquid diet for three months, if you are not at the same time learning how to eat foods that you can manage for the rest of your life, you stop drinking that liquid diet and you're going to gain all that weight right back. I know I have seen it over and over again, and I'm sure you have, too, if not experienced it yourself.

Now we have to acknowledge the times are different, right? Not only are we older and our metabolisms may be slower and our habits are well worn, but we also know that we can learn how to learn. We can learn what foods are good for our body. So, let's break it down into tracks that will build upon each other. We'll make it again sustainable when it comes to food and exercise. Let's start with the destination track, like why do you want to be healthy? Why do you even want to get on this track? Well, generally I know that from my clients, they feel better when they're on track for a couple of weeks, but is important to know where is the track going. Is it a place you're drawn to? Are the views enriching and colorful? Are you stimulating your mind? Focus on what you want in your life. Now, there's the saying in food recovery circles that says, "When you make your food black and white, you can live your life in color." This is the whole goal, living our life in color, providing nutrients and good sleep to our body and stimulation and purpose to our minds. So, what is your destination track?

Then, we have the food track. Now from the many diets out there, I can tell you that most of them agree that eating more whole foods, real foods, including a more plant-based diet, you pretty much can't go wrong. Now, keeping your food simple is the strength of your track, in my opinion. You can listen to prior episodes on how to create a food plan and to build out this track in particular with that plan. Remember, eating this kind of food really is basically has been discovered to be an anticancer diet, an anti diabetes diet, and even an anti Alzheimer's Diet, and an anti inflammation diet. So, learn about food and its impact on your health. Don't just take it from me.

Next we'll have the skill track. Okay. Learning the skill of what it takes to stay on track or to get right back on track. This is a new skill, right? Because it requires new neural connections which will happen over time. So, what skills in your plan are you weak in? Do you hate to shop? Do you give up really easily? Is being bored a problem because you don't have any fun things that you do? There's a job called process improvement, and I know I love that phrase, right? Imagine having a job that's process improvement, which is basically you go in, you look at a process, you see where it's not working, and you helped to design it to make it work better.

So, I want you to see your whole weight loss journey as a process that you're in control of. And when it isn't working, you look at how can I improve it? Again, we have to have that growth mindset, right? Which you have already committed to. You have to acknowledge and figure out what skills you need to develop and then go about deliberately practicing them, and the skill, as I said, of getting back on track, of not making it mean there's something wrong with you. Everyone gets off track, you just get back on it.

Then we have the life track, right? Life happens. We're faced with changing situations that challenge our sense of safety. Maybe you have a diagnosis or someone you love is diagnosed with an illness and our world just seems to tumble upside down. We reach out for comforts we have developed over a lifetime, powerlessness over some parts of your life, right? We're not power. We don't have power over whether someone gets sick, whether we get sick, but it doesn't have to result in powerlessness over ourselves. Emotional eating, maybe part of your history, but you can learn to manage your emotions differently. You have to put this into your guidelines, into your track so when you feel like you want to overeat, over shop, or stay under the covers because you feel so powerless, I want you to look to your self-care track, which we'll talk about next.

The self-care track. What do you do when you're bored? Why do you always want to push away that feeling as soon as it appears? How can you build resilience and allow for 50/50 feelings, right? Fifty good, 50% good, 50% bad. You'll be happy. You'll be sad. You'll be so excited sometimes and then there are times you'll be bored, but including all of this in your life and allowing for it is part of self-care.

Now, what about movement? We need to include movement in our lives. It has been proven scientifically to create more joy, to help us to distress, to keep our bones stronger, and even to help the learning that we're doing sink into our brain. Now, ladies, as you age, you have choices. You can be rigid or flexible, and I'm talking about in your thoughts and in your muscles and in your bones. You can be fearful or you can be intentional. Developing courage and asking yourself to show up for yourself. You can be resentful that you have to make these changes or you can accept them and feel the experience of growth and self-love and self-respect. You can live your life with regrets, wishing you could change or you can live with purpose and just make a daily plan. You can live in isolation or in community, right? You can reach out, clean up some relationships that may have gone stale or finding a place where you can go and meet new friends. You can live in dread of old age or delight in all the freedoms you now have in your thinking and even in your living. That's the self-care track.

Now let's talk about the getting back on track track. I think this is the most crucial of all the skills. If you never give up, you will get to your destination. You can only fail when you give up. When you build your tracks with the values you treasure and set the destination to a place you truly want to get to, then getting back on track will be attractive, and this is where managing your emotions is so critical because the reason you think it's so hard to get back on track is because you hate the way you feel, right? So, educate yourself on your feelings and how they're created.

I think we should make our goals outrageous as long as we're willing to miss the mark and keep going anyway. Remember when you learned how to walk or when your children learned how to walk? If you gave up each time you fell, you'd still be crawling around. But you didn't. You just kept trying because you were driven to achieve walking because you wanted to walk to get around, to get to places.

Remember, your brain has a mind of its own. And if you say to your brain, "I want to be healthy," your brain will likely respond, "Sure, but I'm not giving up my cookies and milk at the end of the day." But, you have to tell your brain, "We have a plan. We have a track to get on. This is why we want to not eat those cookies and milk at the end of the day." You have to challenge and engage your thinking brain and never give up. Did I say that already? Probably more than once, right? But that's why you have the track.

Now, of course I recommend a coach, right? I'm a coach. It's what I do. I love working with my clients and helping them succeed. But, you need to figure out your own way of getting a coach, right? Because everyone gets off track once in a while, but knowing that the track is there and the track is all you need and all you need to do is to get back on it.

Now, I don't need another book, although you wouldn't know that if saw my Amazon account. I don't need another plan. I don't need a new food to be invented or a new drug. I already know what foods work for me because I have lived that plan for long enough to know and to do the process improvements. Your guidelines are all there. When you do the upfront work involved in building your tracks, like we talked about today, then you've already done the heavy lifting, right? Now it's just following the guidelines that you've already put down for yourself. So, I say build your track, get to it, because time is passing, ladies, and let's enjoy every minute of it.

Now I want to go to my favorite things. I don't know if you've ever heard of Coursera, which is a website that actually has all these amazing classes. I am actually currently listening to one called Learning How to Learn: Powerful mental tools to help you master tough subjects. And this is taught online for free. The professors are Dr. Barbara Oakley and Dr. Terrence Sejnowski. These are two brilliant teachers, and the course is fun. I'm really learning a lot more about the brain. A lot of it is review, but it is really fascinating to understand how your brain learns and what techniques might work better for you.

Because remember, all of these skills that you're learning about weight loss, we think it's just something everybody should do and that you should already know how to do, but we have new skills and techniques by understanding our brain, and this class, Learning How to Learn, is a good way to understand more about your brain and its processes. I hope you can sign up for this course and you can actually get a certificate or you can get it for free. So that's my favorite things.

Thank you so much for listening to It's Never Too Late to Lose Weight. We'll see you next week. Bye-bye.

Thanks for listening to this episode of It's Never Too Late to Lose Weight. If you liked what you heard and want more, head over to never2late, that's number two, .info/guide to download your quick-start guide did jumpstart your weight loss plan and begin creating an amazing life you love.