I can't stay committed to a weight loss plan!

All right, looks like we are live on Facebook. Captions are picking up my audio, and we have one person watching. Love it. All right. Last week I had so much— so many technical issues. So hey, hey, hey. So this is Jennifer Live. I am Jennifer Dent-Brown, and this is when I go live to answer a question or a challenge that comes to me from one of you, from a podcast listener, from someone on the email list, from— um, I get them in my DMs all the time. So I started like getting all these messages, all of these comments or questions. Hey Nicole! Hey Naisha! And I recognize like I need one place where I can answer the questions. So what I've been doing, Jennifer, like once a week or once every other week, I come onto my Facebook page and I also post this on my YouTube channel. So y'all go follow me on YouTube if you're on YouTube, and I will answer one question. So I want to get straight to the question and straight to the answer, because speaking of YouTube, this is— y'all are going to find this funny, but I find myself when I'm looking on YouTube At a video, I always look to see how long the video is, and if it's like longer than 5 minutes or something, I'm just like not super interested in. I will not watch it. So I want to be cognizant of your time and get right to the nitty-gritty. All right, my name is Jennifer Dent-Brown. I am a life and weight loss coach, and today we're talking about commitment and staying committed to a plan, your weight loss plan. I help women learn how to stop dieting forever. So if you believe that dieting is your only way to lose weight, you're going to find that my process is a lot different, and it's a lot more comfortable. So the question that I received was, I can't stay committed with my plan, and she also said she just has trouble being consistent. Consistent with following her plan. So here's why this happens, and it's very, very, very common. The reason why we have problems following our plan, the reason why we have problems staying committed to our plan, is because we have too many 1.0 thoughts that are rolling around in our head. And for my Lux Lifers who've been rocking with me for a while, listen to the podcast, or who are in my program, Y'all know what the 1.0 thoughts are, right? That is your infant brain, your brain right now, and it's 1.0 version. In order for you to get to your goal weight, you've got to develop your 2.0 brain so you can develop and create the habits of your 2.0 self. So my Lux Lifers who are in the Stop Dieting Forever program and who go through the boot camp, y'all know you start You come to me with your 1.0 thinking and your 1.0 brain, and when we— then you decide what your 2.0 self looks like, and the work is getting from 1.0 to 2.0. Okay, so when you have trouble staying committed and consistent to following your plan, the problem is you have too many unchecked 1.0 thoughts. And the 1.0 thoughts may sound like this: oh, I can lose weight later. I can start again on Monday. I want to eat this thing right now because I want it. I don't feel like eating what I've already planned. And here's one that came from the group coaching session we had on Tuesday. Well, I didn't have sugar in my coffee this morning, so it's going to be OK if I drink this soda right now, right? I notice when your brain starts bargaining with itself and you start saying, well, I didn't do this, so I can do this now. Right? Those are all very infant 1.0 thoughts. And the example that I gave my client who was struggling with the sugar, she's a grandmother, and I said, if your granddaughter who is under the age of 5, if she came to you and she was like, "Grandmom, I want to have this chocolate bar for breakfast," you would be like, "No, honey, you're going to eat the eggs or whatever I fix for you for breakfast." Right? Her thought of like, ooh, grandma, I'm going to have this chocolate bar for breakfast, is her infant 1.0 thinking. Right? And so grandma checked the thought of her granddaughter. So y'all need to learn how to do this for yourself. You are responsible for your weight loss goal. And so when you allow these 1.0 thoughts to keep rolling around in your head, and you allow the bargaining to happen every time you create a plan, of course it's going to be hard for you to stay consistent. Of course it's going to be hard for you to commit to your weight loss goal. OK? So here's the solution to this problem. First of all, you've got to learn to expect the 1.0 thoughts. That's it. You've gotta expect them. First of all, you've got to learn to be aware of them. That's the first thing we cover in the boot camp in week 1, is identifying when these 1.0 thoughts happen. Because what happens is we have these bad habits and we just— they just happen to us. We don't know why we're doing it. So in the first week of the boot camp, I teach the boot campers how to identify why they're doing what they're doing. And that is identifying the 1.0 thoughts, right? Those thoughts like, oh, I want what I want what I want now. I don't feel like following this plan. I don't wanna eat the salad. I'd much rather have the pizza. The bargaining, right? I didn't have sugar this morning, so I'm gonna have the soda now, right? All of those 1.0 thoughts are not going to yield you the weight loss result that you want. So how can you learn to expect the thoughts, right? If they're like on autopilot and you're not aware of them, what is one way that you can learn to expect the thoughts? Great question. So glad you asked. In the morning— so this is part of the process that I teach is we— I teach y'all how to self-coach, right? And literally self-coaching is just writing, looking at your brain on paper, right? Shining a flashlight on what's going on in there so you can be really clear and see what you're thinking is, what your feelings are, and how that is contributing to your current weight results. So in the morning, every day, what I teach in my process is that we spend some time doing this, shining the flashlight on our brain. Now, in the mornings, most of us feel motivated, right? We're like, ooh, fresh new day. You're feeling good about what's ahead. And so you have all these, especially on Mondays, right? You have these like grandiose plans. Plans of like how you're gonna be perfect during the week or perfect during the day. So in the morning, when you're feeling motivated— and look, if you're not feeling motivated, what you can also do is what I tell my people, is like, listen to a podcast. Just tune into the Stop Dieting Forever podcast and listen to one to get yourself motivated. Um, did y'all listen to the podcast this week? It was really good. It was about prioritizing yourself without Feeling guilty, listen to a podcast, or for my people in the program, listen to a group coaching call, right, to get yourself motivated, to get to, to connect with your 2.0 self at the beginning of the day. So when you're clear-headed and you can set the intention of like, okay, look, I know my 1.0 brain is going to kick in somewhere around 2 o'clock in the afternoon, that's when it usually kicks in. I am going to be prepared for it. It's like putting on your armor before you go into war. You're just being intentional about checking yourself, and you're getting into the habit of expecting the 1.0 thoughts to come. That's it. So the more that you can do this consistently every morning when you're spending your time doing your self-coaching, when you're spending time looking at your thoughts, Guess what's happening? You're getting really good at becoming the observer of your own brain. When you can become the observer of your own brain, you understand that these thoughts that you think are just things are happening to you, like, oh no, these are caused by thoughts, sentences in my head. And you get really good at separating truth from emotion. Hey, truth from emotion, because let's face it, y'all, we are emotional eaters. And so when your bratty brain is like, oh, I don't feel like eating what I have already planned on my meal plan, I really just want to go get Chipotle real quick, that is probably coming from some type of And when you become the observer of your brain and you get really good at seeing the thoughts, you can be like, oh, what's happening right now? What, what am I feeling? What is driving this sudden urge to go get Chipotle instead of eating what I planned to eat 2 days ago? Okay, I like to think about— use this example. So if you guys like turn on I can't think of the channel, like MSNBC, where they have like the stock ticker going across the bottom of the page, right? If you're looking at the financials, if you just watch the stock ticker going across the bottom of the screen, you can just watch it, right? And you can see what's happening all across the globe financially. The thoughts in your brain are kind of the same, right? As you become the observer of your brain, you kind of just start seeing the thoughts appear almost like disconnected from you as a person. You almost kind of like watch them go like, oh, there's that thought again. Oh, of course I'm like, I don't want to eat this, because that's my 1.0 thought coming. Of course I feel like I don't want to do what I've already committed to doing, because that's my 1.0 thought. But because you're— you've already set the intention, we're already expecting these thoughts, you can connect faster to your 2.0 self. You can connect faster to your compelling reason and your identity statement and say, you know what, my 2.0 self is deciding to eat this lovely salmon salad. My 2.0 self is like, you know what, I didn't have sugar in my coffee this morning. And you know what, I'm not going to drink the sugar in this soda today either. Right? That's how you create consistency with following your plan. That's how you create commitment in following your plan. Okay, so one of the things that I love to do, and I teach this in my process, is called belief journaling. And for those of you who are in the, in the program now, we've never done this before, I want to encourage you to do this. So one of the things I love to do, especially if you have an event coming up, or you're worried about like social eating, or something big is happening, or you're going to be around a lot of food, I love to take myself to the place of like after it's done. How do I want to feel leaving the event? How I want to feel walking away from the table? How do I want to feel? What am I thinking about myself when I go to sleep that night? So I love to use a belief journaling exercise for the day and just fast forward and take myself to the place of like, when it's over, this is what I'm thinking and this is how I'm feeling. Okay, I love to like tap into the emotion of feeling accomplished. So it's a very, very— and I— oh, here's the other thing, I could play with music. So it's like, I feel it in my soul, I feel it like the vibration. Of taking myself where I have achieved my goal. I have— I'm already feeling accomplished before it's even happened, right? So doing this every single day helps you connect even further to your 2.0 self. So again, this is the work that happens within the Stop Dieting Forever process. You come to me with your 1.0 brain because your 1.0 brain has created the weight that you don't want. And we decide what your 2.0 self looks like, and the work in the middle is bridging the gap between your 1.0 self and your 2.0 self. Okay, so when you've reached your 2.0 self, you've reached your forever weight and you've lost weight permanently. All right, if you want to know more information, go to jenniferdent.com. The next, uh, opportunity to learn my Stop Dieting Forever process is occurring in August. So you can go to jenniferdent.com/bootcamp, put your name on the advanced notification list, and you will know when registration opens on August 8th. But you also want to make sure you're on my email list so you get advanced notifications of when I'm going live on this page. All right, I think I will be live next week. If not, it will be the week after. But if you're on my page or on my email list you will know, and you can always come back and watch these replays. All right, y'all, if you have a question for me, just send it to me via email, jennifer@jenniferdent.com, or a challenge you're struggling with, and I will address it here on Jennifer Live. See y'all later. Bye. You too, Nicole. Have a great day and have a good meeting.