EP. 118 How to Create Consistency

Hey, hey, LuxeLifer! The doors are open for enrollment into Stop Dieting Forever, your lifestyle membership, starting today, Wednesday, September 7th through Friday, September 9th. Listen, summer is officially over in the United States and it's time to get back to normal. But instead of going back to the way things have been for, say, every September, in the past, why not take this opportunity to learn how to create a new normal for yourself that prioritizes your permanent weight loss? Join Stop Dieting Forever now and you'll be in place to attend the live orientation and 90-day planning session with me on Monday, September 12th. Go to jenniferdent.com/stopdietingforever for more details and to join. The kids are back in school now. They're back on their regular routine. Why not put some time aside for yourself to get that weight off? I can't wait to work with you. Oh, and when you join, a portion of your payment will be donated to Philabundance Food Bank. You're listening to the Stop Dieting Forever podcast with Jennifer Dent-Brown, Episode 118. What if it were possible to achieve your goal weight and stay there permanently without dieting? Welcome to the Stop Dieting Forever podcast, where you will discover the key components that most diets won't tell you because they want you to keep coming back. Not here. This is your last stop on the weight loss struggle bus. I am your host, Jennifer Dent-Brown, life and weight loss coach, and I am going to show you how to stop dieting forever. Let's jump into today's episode. Hey, LuxeLifer, it is time to talk to your coach, me, your certified life and weight loss coach, Jennifer Dent-Brown from JenniferDent.com. Where I teach you how to create consistency. Now, I know you're going to learn a lot from this episode, so I want you to share this episode with a friend. Just text them the link to this episode and tell them you want to work on becoming more consistent together. So in this episode, I'm going to teach you exactly how to create consistency in 4 steps. And why am I talking about consistency? Because so many of y'all email me and tell me that you're struggling with consistency. You believe that that's your biggest obstacle to losing weight, that you believe it's like your biggest problem. And when I think about inconsistency— and I, I was very inconsistent with weight loss for a very long time— inconsistency looks like starting a weight loss plan and then for whatever reason you quit. So see if this sounds familiar. You start a new weight loss plan, right? And you're super excited and you are gung-ho about your new smaller body that you're about to create. I remember that I used to look for the Beachbody infomercials on TV on Saturdays because I always found the before and after interviews so inspiring. So you look at this like, oh, I'm going to do this thing because I'm going to look like them when I finish, right? So you're all excited about this new smaller body that you're about to create. And so you do all the things. You buy the plan, you print the plan out, you buy the groceries, you buy the book, you post in the group about how excited you are to begin. You start liking everybody's post. You decide what stores you're going to shop in when you lose the weight, and you decide what you're going to wear when you reach your goal. And so for a few weeks, like, you are all in. You are doing the darn thing, and your motivation is at like 100%. But gradually, you begin to do less. It just creeps up on you. Like, slowly you begin— you start skipping days of following the plan. And that group, that community that you were participating in every day, you now just visit occasionally, just drop in and see what's happening. And you start putting in like a half-ass effort just so you can say, okay, I did do something today. But before you know it, you're doing less and less and less until you realize that you are back at square one. And you try to get yourself motivated again with the thought of like, okay, all right, I'm going to start again on Monday. But when Monday morning rolls around, you wake up and you're just not feeling it. So what do you do? You don't keep your commitment that you've made to yourself to start again on Monday. If this is what you've been doing when it comes to weight loss, I imagine that you might be doing the same thing in other areas of your life where you have a goal that you want to achieve. Because how you do one thing is how will you do everything. Your lack of consistency can be super frustrating and painful at times. I know because I have been there. And you're just like, why can't I just be like the person who just is healthy, who just does what she's supposed to do. Here's the thing. Your consistency is the key to achieving your forever weight and staying there. But somehow, you keep messing up. And the only thing you're consistent with is starting something and then quitting before you achieve the goal. Yeah, I know. That may be a little painful for some of you. I have been there and I have done that. But what I'm saying is only triggering to you if you see this as a problem. If you've been beating yourself up for being inconsistent, I want you to stop it. Listen to me, it can get better. You can learn to create consistency. It's just a skill that you've got to learn how to create for yourself. Your consistency muscle will get stronger and stronger and stronger when you learn why inconsistency seems so much easier for you. And here's what I tell all of my clients all of the time. Awareness is the first step to transformation. You becoming aware of the reasons why you have the habits that you have and the reason why you do the things that you do is the first step to you achieving your forever weight. When you know better, you do better, right? It was Maya Angelou who said that quote. I'm about to tell you why you struggle with consistency, and then I'm going to teach you what you can do to create more consistency when it comes to weight loss. So let's answer the big question: why are you struggling to be consistent? Here's the answer. Because you're focused on the outcome instead of the process. You are more focused on your goal than you are following the process, learning the process. Did you hear me? You get that? Do you understand the words that are coming out of my mouth? Your weight loss goal is important for sure, but our natural tendency is to become fixated on the goal fixated on that goal number, fixated on like, when I reach that goal, we're so fixated on it, it can actually work against us. Because even though we have our compelling reason of why we want to lose the weight, which is great, when we focus on that, we discount the effort and the focus that it takes to achieve the goal over a long period of time. We like to just focus on the end results. But we don't know how to deal with the sneaky self-sabotaging thoughts that are swirling around the deep depths of our brains. And when I talk about the sneaky self-sabotaging thoughts, y'all know when I talk about the SSSTs. Here's one. Like, you know this is going to end up just like all those other diets. Here's another sneaky self-sabotaging thought. You know you cannot lose weight and keep it off, right? You know you want to eat more than what's on this plan, and that cake is sitting downstairs waiting for you to put a fork in it. Here's the one that sabotaged me for a long time. You know you'll never be able to stick with this. Yes, we want to just gloss over those ugly thoughts because we want to act like, well, that's not me saying that to myself. We want to act like we're not thinking them. But they're there. That's why we call them sneaky self-sabotaging thoughts. They are definitely there. Old programming, default beliefs that you've never addressed, probably because you don't know how to address them. And so what do you do? You ignore them. You don't look for the sneaky self-sabotaging thoughts. You just want to focus on, oh, when I get to that goal, ooh, everything is going to be great. Ooh, when I see that goal weight on the scale, everything is going to be fabulous. And you're hoping that those sneaky self-sabotaging thoughts, those like that are just like swirling around the deep depths of your brain, you're hoping they're just going to go away if you can just be more consistent, right? If you could just get to the gym every day like you're supposed to, all the sneaky self-sabotaging thoughts are going to go away. But Here's the thing, y'all. These sneaky self-sabotaging thoughts are what is killing your consistency. They pop up at the time where you should be eating that salad, when you should be heading to the gym, when you should be getting in the bed for a good night's sleep. And the result is— like, when they pop up, the result that happens is that we skip over the salad and we decide to eat the broccoli cheddar soup and chipotle chicken avocado melt from Panera instead. The unmanaged sneaky self-sabotaging thought results in us telling ourselves, mm, I think my hip is bothering me a little bit. I don't feel like working out today. I'm going to go tomorrow. Those unaddressed sneaky self-sabotaging thoughts result in us staying up late once again to watch one more episode of whatever instead of getting our butts into bed because we know that that we'll have a much better day, a much easier time waking up in the morning when we have a full night of rest. So without a plan or a process in place to help you deal with these sneaky self-sabotaging thoughts, you will continue to struggle. You will continue to struggle to remain consistent with any weight loss plan. So if that is like making you sad, I want to just tell you it's going to be okay. I got you. I got you. This is why I baked consistency into the Stop Dieting Forever process, because I saw so many of my clients struggling with, yes, I know what to do, but I just can't seem to do it all the time. Because that was my story for so long. That's why I was a complete yo-yo dieter. I would start, stop, start, stop, start, stop. And so when I figured out and I began to study why people have certain habits, the psychology of creating healthier habits, I decided— I was like, all right, I need to bake in something into this process that helps my clients create consistency. And so when I did that, it's why my clients now are so successful with weight loss when they follow this process. So creating consistency looks like this. It's 4 things you can do. Number 1, clear, complete, and organize your life so you have more time in your day and more capacity in your brain to focus on creating commitment. I'm going to talk about that in a second, but I teach you how to do this during the first orientation call together when you decide to join Stop Dieting Forever. The second thing you will do, or you can do, to create consistency is to create a compelling identity statement. I talk all about this, what this is, why you need it, and why this is so crucial in episode 112, Change Your Identity to Change Your Weight. That's number 2. Number 3, the third thing you're going to do is create momentum by setting mini goals. These are the goals that will gradually get you to your desired weight. And my new members to Stop Dieting Forever are encouraged to work on their weight loss goal in 6-pound increments. There's like psychology behind that of why that works. And the fourth thing you can do to create consistency is have a daily plan, including weekends. The simple act of planning ahead will train your brain to love consistency. But here's the other thing that I found. So yes, you've got the 4 steps, right? Clearing, completing, and organizing your life, getting your ish together, basically. Number 2, create a compelling identity statement. Number 3, creating momentum by setting these mini goals. Number 4, learning how to have a daily plan, including the weekends, right? 4 things to create consistency. But here's the thing, y'all. Sounds real simple, right? Your brain is going to object every step of the way. Everything that you try to do, your brain's going to be like, nope, we don't want to do that. Nope, we don't want to do that. Nope, nope, nope, right? Those sneaky self-sabotaging thoughts are really going to get wild at that point. So when you get stuck at any one of these steps, members have access to a mini course that I created called Overcoming Resistance. And of course, there are multiple opportunities to be coached when your brain gets stuck inside Stop Dieting Forever lifestyle membership. But even if you don't join, you can still do these 4 steps to begin to create consistency in your routine, in your mindset. So basically, learn these 4 steps, get support, and you are on your way to creating more consistency. And as you're creating more consistency, you're actually learning to love this process as you go instead of hating every minute of it until you reach your goal. Because spoiler alert, when you reach your goal weight, you're going to be excited for all of like 10 minutes, maybe 20. But then real life, your life is still going to be the same. Everything else around you is going to be the same. And your brain is going to want to default to like, well, you're going to gain it back again, right? Those sneaky self-sabotaging thoughts are going to rear their head again. So until you learn how to manage those sneaky self-sabotaging thoughts, they're always going to be there creating sabotage for whatever progress you make. So to inspire you to want to create consistency and really like follow this process, I found a post from a LuxeLifer, and she's now a coach within— inside the program. And she shared with the group this beautiful statement. She says, I am living life in my 140s with focus and ease. And 140s is her weight. So I am living my life in the 140s with focus and ease. I am peacefully productive, and achieve balance in all aspects of my life because I am a woman who knows how to use consistency to pursue all the desires in my heart. I cultivate healthy, loving relationships with myself and others always. Isn't that beautiful? She understands the power of consistency, not just with weight loss, but she said she knows how to use consistency to pursue all the desires in her heart. Once you learn how to create consistency, you understand the formula and the process to lose weight. You can apply that to any other area in your life. That is you creating your luxe life. So come learn how to create consistency and for fun, right? Just for fun. See how many areas in your life that you can apply what you're learning with the weight loss process, just for fun. See, like, where else it works. That's how we roll inside Stop Dieting Forever. You will hear my clients talk about how what they're learning has, like, affected what they're doing at work. It's affected how they're interacting with their spouses. It's affected how— what they're teaching their kids. It's amazing. But here's the thing, and here's what I love. You will join Stop Dieting Forever because you want to lose weight without dieting, right? Raise your hand. That's why you're listening to this podcast right now. You want to lose weight without dieting. You will stay in Stop Dieting Forever because you want to create your healthiest body and your healthiest mind. Yes, yes, yes. That is my mission, y'all. Consistency is key, and this is how you're going to create more of it. So, Colette, play the music. Let us stop and celebrate. I want to take a minute to stop and celebrate brand new LuxeLifer Roberta, who just accepted the 30-day challenge when she joined a few weeks ago. And she has completed all of Phase 1, which is Learn, in 18 days. She accepted the 30-day challenge to finish all of the modules, all of the worksheets, all of the assignments, and she did it in 18 days. We have our transition call tomorrow. So when you finish the Learn phase, you will have a transition call with me and I can't wait to talk to her, to hear her experience. And I'm going to be sending her a Stop Dieting Forever mug to congratulate her on this accomplishment. So now Roberta is going to move into the lose phase. And that's why we're having this transition call, so I can just see where she is and give her some guidance on what she needs to focus on as she moves into lose. But she's going to learn how to create consistency, y'all. Like, round of applause for Roberta. I'm so proud of her. So when you join Stop Dieting Forever, you can follow in Roberta's footsteps and go through LEARN at what I'm going to call Roberta's speed, or you can go at your own pace. There's no time limit whatsoever. You get access to all of the modules when you join, and you can take as much time as you need to learn the process, fast or slow. Either way, you're going to have plenty plenty of support to guide you along your journey. And so the next new member orientation is coming up on Monday, September 12th. And this is not your average, like, sit and watch me, like, this is what you have, this is what you have access to. No, this is not your average new member orientation. As a group, I am setting y'all up for success. We are going to create a 90-day plan to clear, complete, and organize your life so you can take full advantage of the new knowledge you're about to learn. Remember, that was the first step that I said in the 4 steps to create more consistency. When you have too much on your plate already and you're like, oh my God, I got to lose some weight, you're not going to be consistent because you're not going to be able to give yourself the time, the attention, and the focus to learn this new process. So when you join, the first thing you're going to do is create a 90-day plan to clear some space in your life, to complete some tasks that have been like hanging over your head forever, taking up mental energy, to organize some things in your life, to make your days more streamlined so you can have more space, more mental space, more physical energy to focus on this process and learning how to create consistency. So that is orientation, which is happening on Monday, September 12th. Remember, y'all, this is not your typical weight loss program. I'm not telling you like, go run 20 miles a week and go drink a gallon of water every day and go do two 45-minute workouts every day. That's not how you're going to get to your forever weight and keep it off. Yes, you will lose weight doing those things, probably. But are you going to be consistent with that? Are you going to be working out twice a day for 45 minutes for the rest of your life and drinking a gallon of water? Probably not. Probably not. So this is not your typical weight loss program. I'm teaching you how to create your forever weight from the top down, your mindset all the way down. This membership is your catalyst to create your healthiest life, your physical health, and your mental health. Think about it. Learning how to overcome the sneaky self-sabotaging thoughts, think about what that will do for your mental and emotional health. Mm, yes. So if you are ready to step into the holiday season pounds lighter, it is time to get started now. Go to jenniferdent.com/stopdietingforever. I cannot wait to work with you on the inside. Share this episode with your BFF because y'all can create consistency together now. Live Luxe, and I will see you in the next episode. Hey, hey, hey, before you go, I have one more thing for you. If you liked today's episode and want to learn more about the Stop Dieting Forever lifestyle, I have a free weight loss guide for you at jenniferdent.com/stopdietingforever. In it, you'll discover the 4 things you must try before you give up on your weight loss goal. Go to jenniferdent.com/stopdietingforever to request your free copy. What do you have to lose but some weight? Go to jenniferdent.com/stopdietingforever right Now, don't put it off until later. Decide your health is worth the time now. Go to jenniferdent.com/stopdietingforever to discover what you can do to really stop dieting forever.