Keep Losing Weight No Matter What Life Throws At You

Hey, LuxeLifer. Welcome to the Stop Dieting Forever podcast. I'm so happy that you're here. I am happy, period, because it is 80 degrees outside, y'all, in Philadelphia in April. Like, what a blessing. I just spent 30 minutes outside standing in the grass grounding with my bare feet. Took Nola out. Nola's my pup. And the reason why I'm doing this grounding is because your girl injured herself. About 2 weeks ago, I was working out and I went to my class at Train and Nourish, which I love their classes, strength training classes. And I think it was the sandbag squats. I'm not really sure exactly what exercise it was. And I just was like regularly sore the rest of the day. Went to bed that night, woke up, it was Easter Sunday. I woke up and I could not stand up straight. I could not walk straight. It was pretty bad. So that was over 2 weeks ago and I have been unable to work out. I've been unable to walk straight for the first week. I couldn't even walk upright. I am feeling much better. So I've been to one doctor, we're doing one protocol and hopefully that will work. We'll see after tomorrow. But I've also been doing grounding and And since it's been nice since the weather has been— or earthing, as some people call it— since the weather has been nice, but it's really tapping into the energy of the earth to decrease the inflammation in your body. Everyone should do it. There is a documentary called Earthing. I will put the link in the show notes. My husband and I watched it last night and it was really, really fascinating, although we have some cultural thoughts about this, which I will share for a private podcast somewhere. But it was a really interesting healing modality. And so if you're not— if you're not— if you don't know about grounding or, or earthing, that is a great place to start. It's also a book, so I'll put the link in the show notes. But today I want to talk to you about how to keep losing weight when life gets lifey, like you got to— you have an injury like I do. So I coach my clients through this all the time. It's very easy to follow a plan, follow a weight loss plan, follow a diet when life is good. Everything is like irie, right? The— you're on a schedule and you don't have any other things and you can consistently do the same thing every single day. Like, that's easy. But as soon as life gets lifey and you can't follow that same schedule, that's when the problems come. And that's when usually most people, they give up. They figure, oh, I can't do it. I just like, I can't figure this out. My schedule is a mess. I don't have time. I don't have time to spend the time doing all the things. So I actually had a client who had a very similar situation. She was— when we first started working together, she came to me, she was in the boot camp as a bootcamper, and she attended the boot camp for 30 days. And at that time, she was not working full-time. She was on, I guess, leave, taking care of the kids. And so she had more time in her day. To focus on doing the work. But then she ended up going back to work and back to a very high-stress job. And all of a sudden it was like, oh my goodness, I don't know what to do. I can't spend all the time that I was spending before, and now I just— I can't do anything, right? And so she started to gain the weight back, and she came back to me as a private client. This happens to everyone, y'all. As we experience this thing called life, which is a beautiful gift that we have been given, it can make sticking to your weight loss plan difficult. Your kids get sick, you get sick, you get injured like I've been injured and sidelined for the past 2 weeks. You may experience the death of a loved one. You may have to move residences, pack up your family. And move to a different state. You might get a new job where you have different hours, um, or maybe you get a promotion and you have different, different hours and different responsibilities. Maybe you have to begin to travel more for work. Um, I literally have one client, she travels all over the globe, like everywhere. She's been to places that I have never even heard of, and we had to like go on the, on, on the map and Google like Where is this? Beautiful, beautiful locations. And she's, you know, loves her job, but it offers a set of challenges, right? Another set of challenges when life gets like these, that you reach a certain age and your hormones are shifting and your hormones don't tell you ahead of time like, hey, your adrenals are about to crash, warning light, warning light. They don't tell you that. They don't tell you ahead of time that, your estrogen is dominant. Estrogen levels are getting too high. They don't tell you that, right? You just start to experience different symptoms. Life gets lifey. And again, it's so easy to follow that weight loss plan when everything is great. Your schedule is good, kids are on schedule, spouse is on schedule, work is calm. But when the storms of life hit, what are you going to do? What are you going to do? A traditional diet is not going to teach you what to do when the storm hits. My dad, who is a retired Baptist preacher, he was the pastor of a fairly large church outside of Philadelphia for 36 years, y'all. And he always used to say, life is about either you're going into a storm you're either in the storm or you're coming out of the storm. So no matter where you are, there's some storm brewing around you, right? Whether you just like leave it behind you or there's one in front of you or you're in the middle of it, there is no perfect utopia schedule day where you can be like, oh, this is perfect. This is a perfect opportunity for me to just work on my weight and work on myself. If that were the case, well, if that were the case, then nobody would be losing weight, right? Because there's always— life is always going to get lifey. That is one thing that is guaranteed. So the problem again comes for, for you all when you don't know how to manage life storms and focus on your emotional and physical wellness. So the solution to weight loss isn't just to focus on losing weight, going to the gym, and going for your morning walk, and drinking your protein shakes when, like, life is good, when you're in this what we call out of storm season. The sustainable solution, and the one you want to be learning right now, is learning how to navigate all phases of a storm. Because the storm is, is guaranteed. It's coming whether you're ready for it or not. So instead of waiting around to like let life just slap you upside the head and then you fall down like, oh my gosh, I can't do what I need to do, and just pass me the chips, and everything is so stressful, and that's not a plan, y'all. Your solution to learning how to lose weight no matter what life throws at you is to— it starts with learning how to manage your emotions. Manage your emotions. Inside Stop Dieting Forever, we call this emotional literacy. Most people think like, okay, I just need to follow the plan. I just need to follow this plan, this diet plan that I was doing when my life was great and everything was wonderful and daisies. And I'll just be fine. I'll be fine. But that's where they go wrong, because now you're like, I just got to follow this plan to keep losing weight in the midst of a storm. So you, you're already dealing with the stress of the storm and now you've added on the stress of trying to follow this cookie-cutter diet plan to keep you from gaining weight. That's not going to work. That is not going to work. And if you're an emotional eater like I was, you're going to find a way— your brain is going to find a way to soothe your emotions with food when you're in the storm of life. That's guaranteed, y'all, if you don't know how to manage your emotions. Emotional management is a skill, and when you learn this skill— is what I teach— it allows you to focus on addressing your emotions. And so when you're able to focus on that, it frees up the part in your brain where you're like trying to force yourself to stick to this diet plan. All right, so inside Stop Dieting Forever, which is my group weight loss program, there is an entire set of modules dedicated to overcoming various eating obstacles, like some of the ones that I named up top. We have— I have an entire module. There's like multiple modules, multiple lessons dedicated on how to overcome various eating obstacles. No matter what the eating obstacle is, the core theme in all of these scenarios, it goes back to emotional management. Being aware of how you're feeling instead of shoveling food down your throat to try to change or make yourself feel better. First thing you're going to want to learn how to do is name and claim the emotion. When you're able to say, oh, okay, I'm feeling some type of way, instead of just feeling like, oh my God, I feel terrible, everything is falling apart, I'm so stressed out, instead of just like flailing like all over the place, you're going to learn how to name and claim the emotion, which means identifying the emotion and giving it a name. Just the simple act of doing that, which you can do in 2 minutes, it helps to decrease the intensity. Your nervous system is like, oh, okay, this is where we are right now. Okay. All right. It decreases the intensity, just, just brings it down just a notch. I'm not saying it goes away, but it brings it down just a notch. And from there, you can begin to think a little bit more logically. From, from there, there are like, okay, there's a few different approaches you can take once you've named the emotion and you claimed it. Okay, this is how we're feeling. A couple of different approaches you can take depending on your scenario, depending on your eating obstacle. So you can decide to be okay. This is the first one. You can decide to be okay with not feeling okay for a period of time, which relieves you of the pressure, right? So if you listen to episode 198, Um, when work gets in the way of your weight loss, that's the name of it. I put the link in the show notes, episode 198. I told you about a scenario with one of my clients where she was in an extremely busy season at work. If you know that you're in this stormy season for a period of time and you can say, okay, on this date this situation will be over and done, you can say, all right, I'm okay with not feeling okay for a period of time. I'm okay with being in this season, in this stormy season for this dedicated period of time. So when you're in this stormy season, it's very helpful to have a clear endpoint because once you get— and I'm not saying like while you're working towards the endpoint you're just gonna like eat all the things. No, that's not what I'm saying. But at least you have a clear endpoint of like, okay, in 2 weeks, this, this, these extra hours I'm working at work will be done. Um, in 2 weeks— we are in 48 hours— we will be— actually, I can't think of another, um, you could take that out because I can't think of another example. In 2 weeks, this busy season at work will be over. Okay, so you can plan for that period of time. You can plan, create, modify, or plan for that period of time. When you don't know how long you're going to be in a stormy season, here's what you can ask yourself. Not what you— don't focus on what you can't do, but I want you to focus on what you can do. So going back to my example, for me, I cannot work out. I have not been able to work out. I have— I can't even go for a walk. I tried to walk on the treadmill because I was taken some painkillers and I felt better, and the next day I was like, mm-mm, too soon, too soon. So I can't work out, I can't move my body in that way. But what can I do? Well, I can pay closer attention to what I'm choosing to eat. Now I have to be real with y'all because you're my people, fully transparent here. When the injury first happened, I was so uncomfortable. Oh, I was a miserable child. And I noticed myself having the overwhelming urge to eat most of the day. Not like, you know, periodically throughout the day, but like all day. I literally had to talk back to myself out loud. Jennifer, you're not hungry. Jennifer, you're not hungry. You're just hurting. Jennifer, you're not hungry. You're just in pain, right? I had to soothe my nervous system because my brain was like, I just want something to eat. And I knew it was an emotional eat because I wanted junk. I wanted pizza. I wanted— I wanted cheesesteak. I wanted French fries. I wanted that comfort food, which I know for me, when I am uncomfortable and sick, that's my go-to. So I knew this wasn't like physical hunger. This was totally emotional. And it was because I was feeling so uncomfortable. So because I knew that this is my trigger and I knew that like this is how my brain works, I use one of my stress busting activities, which is tapping, EFT, Emotional Freedom Technique. I did that for pain multiple times throughout the day. I journaled, I got lots of hugs from my husband, which is oxytocin. I literally would go up to him and like, babe, I need some oxytocin. And he would give me a hug. I rested. I rested. I watched Suits on Netflix. I started watching. I think I'm on season 4 now. It's 8 seasons with Meghan Markle. It's actually a pretty— I didn't want to watch it before, but it's actually a pretty interesting series. And I went to bed early. So instead of asking myself, because I was thinking about the food, like, Jennifer, what do you want to eat? You're in pain. You deserve to have some comfort food. Instead of asking myself that question, I asked myself throughout the day, what do I need most in this moment? It was a lot of rest. Some cases and some days I was like, nope, I'm going to do some work because that was a distraction. And actually, at one point, it was more— sitting in a chair was most comfortable for me than any other position. So I was able to sit at my desk and get some things done. But the pizza craving hung on for days. But I knew eating pizza wasn't going to help with anything. And in fact, eating the ingredients in the pizza would have caused more inflammation in my body. And my goal in helping myself heal myself has been to reduce the amount of inflammation in my body, starting with what I eat. And that's another reason why I've been going outside and doing the grounding, because that also helps with inflammation. So I knew eating pizza was like not going to solve anything at all. So the result of learning the Stop Dieting Forever process, it teaches you how to understand your emotional triggers. So you're not just overcoming them, but when you do overcome them, you're becoming so much more powerful in the process. Y'all, I have never experienced chronic pain in my life like this. I am the epitome of health. I am the epitome of health and wellness. And I've had multiple physical issues this year, like more, more than a little bit, more than I care to experience again. And for every single one of these obstacles, I feel myself getting so much stronger and becoming so much more powerful in creating even more— a more healthier body, a healthier body, right? Creating an optimal— creating my optimal health body. Is that the right word? Optimal? Optimally? Can't think of the right word. My most optimal health. Okay, there we go. So when you learn the Stop Dieting Forever process, again, It's not about like, I'm not teaching you how to check off the list and do these things every single day to eat, to lose weight. I'm helping you understand your specific emotional triggers. Your triggers can be completely different from mine. In fact, on the Club Luxe group coaching call— so Club Luxe is the group that when you reach your forever weight, you are inducted into Club Luxe. And so I have a special group coaching call just for those members once a quarter. And we get on the phone and we coach for 90 minutes. And we were talking about our different eating triggers. And so one person was like, being in pain and being sick is not an emotion. Like, that's when she doesn't want to eat. Whereas for me, I'm like, oh no, when I'm feeling ill or when I don't feel good, like, that is for me, when I want to eat. For her, she said, "Oh, when I'm angry, that's when I want to eat all the things." And I was like, "Oh, that's so fascinating, because when I'm angry, the last thing I do, I'm thinking about food." So you want to understand what your own personal emotional triggers are. I teach you how to do that in Stop Dieting Forever. And again, when you understand, when you have this knowledge about yourself, you become so much more powerful. Every eating obstacle that you overcome will contribute to your new identity as a healthy person. Y'all, traditional diets, they change what you do in the short time. They change, like, your eating habits in the short time, in the short term. They do not change who you are in the long term. Stop Dieting Forever changes who you are as a person. That, that, that healthy person, that inner healthy person, it's like hiding inside of you. We help it blossom, we help it come out. And you can expect to leave behind your weight loss struggle bus identity for a new, a new vibrant, holistically healthier Luxe Life identity. Okay, so there is no obstacle that you cannot overcome once you understand how to deal when life gets lifey, how to follow your process, your process, not like a generic process, follow your process, understanding your emotional triggers when life gets lifey. All right, thanks for tuning in this week to this episode. Be sure to check out the show notes for direct links to all the resources that I mentioned in today's podcast. And yes, Today, Stop Dieting Forever is open for enrollment. If you're listening to this podcast real time, Stop Dieting Forever, the group program, is open for enrollment. It is now a 6-month container where I am working with you to create that new identity so you can achieve your forever weight, your goal, you will be able to, as we do this process, you will be able to lose your first 10 pounds without a diet in the first 30 days. Okay, so I invite you to go to jenniferdant.com/sdf for more information. And if this approach to weight loss is intriguing to you because you're done with the quick fixes, you're done with the short-term you know, lose weight very quickly and you really want to change your identity, you really want to become a healthy person, this is where you start. Stop Dieting Forever is where you start. Okay, I invite you to share this episode with your friends, uh, share your thoughts with me by leaving a 5-star review on your favorite podcast platform. I will be forever grateful for you. All right, y'all, live lux, and I will see you in the next episode.