Transcribed:

Hi everyone. And welcome to episode 10 of take control with Whitney Wells. In this episode, we're going to talk about weight loss. We're gonna talk about my weight loss journey over the past two months. I have lost 17 pounds in the past two months, which is great; it's fun and awesome and I feel healthy. But what is even better is that I have gained a stronger relationship with myself.

Now I've received some questions about what I did to lose weight and how I did it. I thought I would answer some of those and dive into my journey, what I did, how I approached it and what the past two months have looked like. I want to share my recent weight loss journey, mainly because it really has worked. It really does work.

I want to start off by saying that I'm not a nutritionist. I'm not a doctor. I am a certified life coach and a certified weight coach. I'm going to share what has worked for me, but this may not be right for you. It may not work for you. I'm just going to let you know my tools, my secrets and what worked for me. Feel free to use it, but I'm not saying it's going to work for everybody.

So over the years, I've tried many different things to lose weight. Now I'm not saying that I'm overweight. I never really have been overweight, but I have fluctuated with my weight. I have gone up and down since my mid twenties, I'll gain 10 pounds or15 pounds and lose that and gain some back; kind of all over the place. I've done low carb diets, South beach diet and high protein diets. I've eaten small meals throughout the day. And I've always worked out a lot. I've always been very into fitness. Some of the stuff that I have done in the past, it has worked. I have lost weight, but it was never long lasting. It was never sustainable. And I find that this is true for many people. They try a diet, they try a way to lose weight and it works. And then they gain it back. It's not long lasting. It's not sustainable.

But what I have learned since becoming a weight coach and a life coach makes so much sense. It is long lasting and it is sustainable. It's that little part that's missing with all the other diets. Now, my favorite part of all of this, of my whole journey and the reason for it being long lasting is the strong relationship that I have built with myself. The mind management is the aspect that is missing with all these other diets and plans.

Here is the math of it all. What I actually did to lose the weight. The actions that I took, or the actions that I didn't take; my plan that I followed. You can write this down: No flour, no sugar, no alcohol. And I did intermittent fasting. That's what I actually did. Those are the things I did over these past two months. Now I'm going to get into why those things work.

I'm just going to focus on the main hormone. There are a number of hormones that play a factor into all of this, but the main one is insulin. Insulin is your fat storage hormone. So when we eat often, or when we eat a lot in large quantities or have high concentrated foods, our insulin is in fat storage mode. So what that means is we store the fat, we store the fat on our body. Now it's doing its job, which is good. It's keeping us alive, but we're storing the fat. And nowadays, we're often eating larger quantities and higher concentrated foods. So many people are gaining weight from this.

To lose weight, we want our insulin to be low. We want our insulin to be low so we can use the fat on our body as the fuel. We want to essentially have a meal off of our body. So when we become fat adapted, by using the fat on our body as fuel and we lose weight. Instead of storing fat with our insulin being high, when it's in fat storage mode. We lose the fat on our bodies. We use it for fuel when our insulin is low, that's how you lose weight.

For me, I keep my insulin low with no flour, no sugar, no alcohol. That's the concentrated foods aspect of it. And then I eat lunch and dinner instead of eating small meals often throughout the day. So that's the intermittent fasting. So I'm eating less often. I'm cutting out breakfast to give my body a chance for the insulin to go down and I can use the fat on my body as fuel.

Small meals often keeps your insulin high, because you are always eating, which is what we don't want. Intermittent fasting is simply extending the fast you are already doing when you are sleeping. All I'm doing is cutting out breakfast. I eat between the hours of 12 and 8 or 1 and 9. I eat lunch and I dinner. For lunch and dinner, I eat lots of veggies, protein, fat, sometimes rice and potatoes, things of that sort. I have fruit and I have nuts sometimes around lunch and dinner.

Now this protocol works for me. This is what works for me. This is how I lost weight. But if you make a protocol, you want to figure out what works for you. You might need to eat more often or less. You figure out what works for you.

The main part of this weight loss plan is the mind management. You can follow these steps, the math of it all, what to eat, when to eat, how often. And that's all great. That's what a lot of these other plans have. But the mind management aspect is how you keep it off. This is what makes the plan long lasting. And how do you do that? What do I mean by mind management? Mind management is essentially managing your urges. Instead of using willpower, we allow the urge to be there. Now I'm going to get into this.

So often, you know, you're given a plan, right? So you have things to eat things, not to eat, maybe when to eat them. And then you'll have an urge for a food that's not on this plan. And you'll use that willpower: "Oh, I can't eat it. I'm not going to eat it." You'll fight against it. You'll resist it. You'll avoid it. And eventually that will come back up. You can't use willpower forever.

Let's say you have an urge for food that isn't on your protocol; isn't on your plan. Let's say I wanted to eat cookies, for instance. Now it has flour and sugar in it, so it's not on my protocol. My urge for it is a feeling. It's a feeling in my body and all feelings come from our thoughts. So for an example, I'll have a thought, maybe it just as simple as "I want a cookie". Some other ones that are very common are "I deserve that" or "it won't matter". Now, these thoughts that I have, "I want a cookie. I deserve that. And it won't matter". These thoughts are what create the urge feeling in my body.

There are four ways that you can handle your feelings. You can react to them. You can resist them, avoid them, or allow them. When you eat the thing, so if I ate the cookie, it would be reacting to my urge. And when you react to an urge, you are reinforcing that urge or desire for that food. When we avoid or resist the urge, the feeling, you're using willpower. As I mentioned earlier, when you're using that willpower, and white knuckling it to fight against that feeling, it will run out. That's why so many of those other plans don't work. Willpower is not long lasting.

So what we want to do, we want to do the fourth option, which is allow the urge. And when I say allow the urge, it's allowing that feeling to be there. You want to process that feeling. A feeling is just a vibration in your body. So it's allowing that feeling to be within your body. Allow the feeling of the urge to be there without reacting to it, by eating the thing. So if we take the cookie example, I would allow the urge, feel that feeling and not eat the cookie. That's the key part. You're managing your urges. You're managing your mind.

Allowing urges is allowing a feeling as we talked about. This is also a meta skill that you can use and apply in all the areas of your life. So when you're having a feeling, it's the same as having an urge, you can process that feeling all the way through. There are two benefits to allowing urges. One, you're not eating the thing, so you lose the weight. And then two, you're developing this meta skill. You're developing this skill that you can use forever. So beneficial!

Following this plan, this protocol of no flour, no sugar, no alcohol and intermittent fasting. This is my plan that I followed. And then also allowing my urges. So I'm allowing my feelings. Those are the two aspects and how I lost weight. But it has been so much more than just that. It has been so much more than just losing weight.

Yes, you get the benefit of the weight loss, which is great, super fun. I feel healthy. But the most beneficial part of all of this and the most important aspect to me is the relationship that I have built with myself. When you follow through with your plan, you honor yourself.

Let's take a closer look at this. You create this plan. You're deciding what you're going to eat, when you're going to eat it, how often and what you want in your protocol. You're creating this plan for yourself. And then the next day, you're going to follow that plan. When you follow that plan, that your past self made for you, when you follow that protocol of eating certain things and not eating certain things at certain times, you're honoring your past self. You're building that trust within yourself. You're strengthening that relationship with yourself by honoring your protocol or your plan. And then you honor your future self because you had these goals that your future self wants to meet. So, you're honoring your future self's goals. You honor the plan you have for your future self and who you want to be by living into that. By becoming that person, you're building a strong relationship of trust with yourself.

And then by processing those urges, you connect with your feelings. You connect with yourself and you develop this knowledge of yourself. You get to know yourself better. You create this meta skill of allowing feelings; of allowing urges and feelings to be within your body, to move towards them and not try and push them away. You're willing to feel those uncomfortable feelings and not react to them. So my relationship with myself is the main and best outcome out of all of this, my weight loss is my byproduct. Super fun. I'm really happy that I lost the weight, but it's just the byproduct. It's really nice and awesome. And I feel great. But the main thing that came out of this is my strengthened relationship. I can't stress that enough.

I also wanted to add that I did work out over these two months. I love to work out. I find it enjoyable. I've always loved to work out. But what I have noticed, is that it's not necessary for weight loss. Which kind of blows my mind. Now I've always been really into sports, really into working out. I've played sports throughout my life: soccer, basketball lacrosse. Into my early thirties, I played soccer. I always work out. I work out every day. I run my dog five days a week. I run sprints up the hill, right outside my house. I do high intensity interval training workouts. I have a rowing machine. I use that. I have a treadmill. I use that. Lots of weights. I do different challenges, such as a burpee challenges. I just enjoy fitness. I enjoy working out.

I always have known what is said about weight loss, where it's 80 to 90% of what you eat is how you lose weight. And then the 10 or 20% is the working out. Now I knew this and I believed it, but I still deep down believe that I could work out my way to losing weight. I could work out hard enough to lose the weight. And I did. I worked out very hard. But the reason why I say "working out is not necessary to lose weight", working out, isn't the main part for weight loss, and I fully believe that now, is because I did the workouts. I did. I did hard workouts. I ate healthy sometimes not super healthy others, you know, normal eating. And I did this for a month and a half before I went on this two month weight loss journey. I was working out very hard and I didn't lose weight. I just stayed the same.

Then I started this eating plan, this mind management plan. And I still worked out, but so much less. I run my dog each morning, it's two and a half miles roughly. And I do that five days a week. And then I'll lift weights with some cardio in it one to two times a week. So I'm working out considerably less than I was doing. And I did my protocol of no flour, no sugar, no alcohol and intermittent fasting. And I lost 17 pounds, compared to none when I was working out super hard.

What I say to do is workout because you love it. Work out to stay healthy. Workout, to stay strong. But if you want to lose weight, take control of your eating. Take control of your eating protocol, your eating plan, what you're putting into your body. Workout because you love it. Workout to stay healthy. Workout, to be strong. As I said, eat to lose weight.

I took control of my eating and I lost 17 pounds. And as I said, that is super fun. And I feel so healthy, which is great. But ultimately it's not the things that I did that got this result, but the mind work to move towards my future self, honor my past self and connect with my current self. That's what got me to where I am. My relationship with myself is what got me to move forward and is what makes this way of life sustainable.

It is both propelling me, my relationship with myself is both propelling me forward, and it has given me the best result. It has given me my strengthened relationship with myself. You can have a strong relationship with yourself too. You can develop skills of allowing urges, and feelings that you can apply to your life forever. You can honor your past self by following a protocol or a plan that you've set for yourself. And then you can live into your future self by being, and doing what he or she would do, how he or she would live. You can lose weight and reach your goals while loving yourself. I highly recommend it.

So yes, I have lost weight, but my strengthened relationship was by far the best outcome. Thank you so much for listening and I'll see you next time.