What I'd Do If I Wanted To Lose Weight Without Doing More

If you have been trying every practice, every modality, every supplement, every medication, every new thing to feel better, to lose the weight, but you're more exhausted than when you started, you need to hear this. The problem is not that you have not added enough. The problem is that you have added too much. Today I want to talk about how you can change your life not by piling on But by taking away. Now, there is a truth almost no one in the wellness space is telling you: bad habits always overcome the hack. Bad habits are going to win every time. And most of us have been so busy hacking that we never stopped to remove what was quietly destroying us in the background. I'm Dr. Ashley Lucas. I'm a PhD nutritionist and registered dietitian. I'm the owner and founder of PhD Weight Loss, where to date we have helped over 13,500 people collectively drop more than 480,000 pounds. What I have watched over more than a decade of clinical work is this: real change never comes from what you add. It comes from what you have the courage to take away. The healing space, the wellness world, the mindfulness industry, all of it has been telling you the same thing for so many years. You need to add breathwork, add cold plunges, add the sauna, add another modality, add another supplement, add another practitioner, add another practice, another program, another book, another Of course. Add, add, add. What most people aren't talking about is that every addition is another whisper to your body and your nervous system that you are broken and you need fixing. A person who is chasing the next fix is never going to feel healed enough. They're not going to feel whole. They're going to feel like there's always something missing. There's always something to fix. Real change is not addition. It is subtraction. You do not need to do more. You need less. You need to remove what is not serving you and trust that the you underneath everything you have been adding to is already whole. You are already whole. Now, a coach of mine that I worked with about 4 years ago, he called it success through subtraction. And he was talking about this as it pertains to business. So you can look at this in relation to your health and wellness. But you can also look at it in all different areas of your life. One of the most important ideas that I want to pass on to you today is that to change your life, you have to remove the things that destroy you because they have the most power over you. It's not as sexy as the next hack, but it's the only thing that actually works. Okay, so step 1 is see what you have been adding. The first step is always awareness to anything. Simply notice what you've been adding. Don't judge it, just see it. You've been doing it because your brain wants you to survive, so it's, it's not a personality flaw. But what practices have you been doing because you think you should be doing them? What supplements are you taking because someone on the internet told you they would fix you? What content are you consuming that leaves you feeling behind instead of better about yourself? What conversations do you have on repeat that circle the same anxieties? Get honest with yourself. Write it out. See it plainly. You can't subtract what you have not first seen, so we need to see it all. And I think you're going to be shocked around how much you are carrying that you never chose to carry, right? It just accumulated over time. Step 2: Build systems for less, not for more. Most people know they should stop adding things. They just can't stop themselves. Remember that this isn't a weakness, like I mentioned before. This is your nervous system that has trained— it has learned that adding equals safety. So what we're going to do to prevent that is to build systems. So for me, for example, this is my reverse alarm. I really, really love staying up late. It's my only alone time in the day, but I know my body needs sleep. And staying up is not serving me, especially when I need to get up early for the kids. So I set a reverse alarm and it goes off at 8:45. When it goes off, I know that I need to start winding down. I need to have walked the dogs or be like almost home from walking the dogs. And I do this and I set this alarm and I start winding down not because I feel like it, like I'm getting more of my energy then. But because the system, the reverse alarm tells me to. My husband Doug is the same way with food. He knows that if he does not prep on Sundays or if I don't prep for him, he's gonna graze on whatever is easy. Those easy foods aren't gonna give his body what he needs. Easy foods are the protein bars in the pantry, the processed foods, the foods that maybe are quick and convenient but don't have the nutrition or the amount of protein that he knows that he needs. So He preps or I prep for the family, not because we love prepping, but because the system removes the decision. Build the systems you need. What are the systems that you need? It could be food prep, boundaries, planning, right? Not for what to add, but for what to remove. Let's use an example. Maybe there's a few days of the week where you go grab fast food. There could be a better habit than that. Systems make Subtraction sustainable because they take the decision out of the moment when your willpower is lowest. Step 3, sort what you do from fear versus care. Now, this is where it might get a little bit tricky at the beginning, but I want you to take your list from step 1 and go through each item and ask one question. Am I doing this from fear, or am I doing this from care and from nourishment for my body? Fear sounds like this. I need to do this or something bad will happen. I need to fix myself. I'm behind. Something's wrong with my body. This will finally be the answer. This is it. This will fix me. If I stop doing this, everything will fall apart. Care sounds different. Sounds like, this serves me. My body wants this. My spirit is fed by this. I would do this even if it was not fashionable to do so. Anything on your list that comes from fear can go. Not because it's even bad, but because it comes from the wrong place, and your nervous system is going to know that, and it's not going to allow your body to rest. Nothing built from fear will hold long term. It's going to burn you out, or it will make you feel like a failure when you can't maintain it, or it's just going to stop working, or it's just going to keep your body on hypervigilance, and it's not going to have the outcome that you'd like it to. Now, this kind of clarity—seeing what serves and what does not—is exactly what we do at PhD Weight Loss. We are not going to hand. You another program to add on top of everything you're already trying. We're going to help you see what has not been working, remove it, remove all the bad habits, and rebuild your body around what your specific system needs. No more hacks, no medications, not another fix, just a different way of relating to your body altogether. So you are empowered to create transformation and you're not dependent on anything outside of just You. If something like this is of interest to you, go to myphdweightloss.com, or if you're watching this on YouTube, click the link in the description and one of our nutritionists will get on the phone with you and you will start there to learn more. Step number 4, do the hard thing. Subtraction can be a lot harder than addition. It's a lot easier to add another supplement, to add another practice, to add another modality than it is to sit with the discomfort of doing Less. Doing less feels like doing nothing, and doing nothing feels dangerous when you've been trained to believe that busy equals worthy. But here is the other truth. Confidence does not come from ease. Confidence comes from doing the hard thing over and over and over again. Confidence comes from not taking the path of least resistance. The magic in life comes from the challenges you meet and the failures you get up from. Not from the shortcuts. When you do the hard things in the short term, your life becomes easier over time. When you do what is easy in the short term, your life becomes harder over time. It's your choice. Subtraction is the hard thing right now for a lot of us, and the freedom on the other side of it is worth every uncomfortable minute, I promise you. Now here's what I want you to walk away with. The wellness world has trained you to come at your body from fear. Fear that you are broken. Fear that you are behind. Fear that if you stop chasing the next fix, everything will fall apart. Fear that you just need to fix, that there's something wrong with you. A body approached from fear will always be asking for more, more practices, more supplements, more work. It has to, because fear cannot be satisfied. There is always another thing to add, another way you are not enough. Come at your body from compassion and acceptance instead, from the choice to steward the one body that you have been given for this lifetime, which means feeding it what serves. Saying no to certain foods is not a form of deprivation. It is a form of self-respect, you guys. Keeping your body from what it does not want— it might mean sometimes saying no to the wine at dinner, saying no to the bread basket, saying no to the chips. Sometimes it means doing less rather than more, saying no to the weekend outing because you really need to stay home and just do nothing and give your nervous system a break. This also means trusting that the you underneath everything you have been adding was never broken. You do not need another fix. You need to stop treating yourself as something to fix. So here's what to do this week. Pick 3 things to subtract, just 3, and commit to the subtraction not for a lifetime, just for the next 7 days, and see what happens. So 1, subtract 1 belief that is not serving you anymore. Pick a belief that you have been carrying about yourself that is not serving you. I'm behind, I'm broken, I'm not good enough, I need more work, I have to be productive to be worthy. Whatever that is, recognize that it's a glitch in the system and just set that belief down for a week. And when it comes up, just be like, hey, I see you, and don't be reactive to it. Number 2, subtract one habit that no longer serves you. So it could be after-dinner snacking, like the one thing you know you need to change. In the second week of our program at PhD Weight Loss, we ask every client, what is one habit you know you need to change? You know it in your heart of hearts. Ask your body and it will tell you. It could be drinking wine every night. It could be watching TV late. It could be scrolling social media. It could be doing something for someone else when you really should be taking time for yourself. And then number 3, let's subtract one food that doesn't support your body, and you probably know it. Maybe it is the 3 PM super sweet Starbucks drink. It could be the energy drink that you drink in the morning because you haven't gotten enough sleep. So one food or one even product, it could be one supplement that you're just, you've been doing from a feeling of obligation, but not from care. Take it off the list this week. See if your body misses that supplement. My guess is that it will not. You know, if you stop drinking all the stimulants, then you're going to realize that you need to sleep. Now, these might seem like little things, but remember, little hinges swing big doors. So you're going to start here, these 3 things. I want to know what your 3 things are. Let's hold each other accountable. Drop your 3 things in the comments below if you're watching this on YouTube. Now, if you want to keep focusing on this topic, I have another great episode for you. It's called 7 Signs Your Body Is Trying to Tell You Something Important. And it pairs really well with what we've just talked about today. So click here right on the screen to find that next video if you're watching it on YouTube. If this episode landed for you, please subscribe so you don't miss the next video. Tell me in the comments if you're watching this on YouTube what you're subtracting this week. Remember, you've got to step up to make the change. Lead with your heart, train your mind, and listen to what your body already knows. I'll see you next time.