Reflecting and Planning On 2026

2026. It is September 2026, and it's the perfect time to look back on the year and see what's worked for you and what hasn't, and prepare for the next 4 months so that you're going into 2027 with some momentum. You do not want to enter 2027 and have to restart. All right, that's all the secret, because so often people kind of let go of the whole end of the year, the next 4 months. And then they got to start January from a standing still position, and it doesn't work well. So what really helps, before we even get into the specifics of it, is take one step back and realize that your weight has a lot more to do with what you do consistently. So most dieters are looking at starting their plan and then measuring how quickly they're losing the weight, and they're really fixated on whatever their plan says, whether it's restricting calories, not eating for 16 hours, cutting out carbs, whatever it may be. It becomes about day one, do the thing perfectly and watch the weight come off. But that's a very short-term focus. And one of the things I love about a conversation like this about reflecting and planning on the year is that we're extending the time period in our minds. Dieting has caused us to think about weight loss in tiny little short time frames of days and weeks that we're sticking to the plan. But if we really want to affect our weight, we got to take a step back and look at the big picture. What ultimately is affecting your weight is your habitual behaviors, what you're routinely eating. And so we want to use September to look back at the year and say, okay, what were my goals when I started off? What was going on and what was my expectations and what worked and what didn't work? More importantly, I had this intention, I had this plan, I was expecting to do this. I did it for a week and then I haven't thought about it since. Okay, so if that happened to you, fine. We just want to recognize what happened and we want to start moving forward. That's the big difference. Most dieters, again, they kind of start from here, get up to here, stop doing it, come back down to here. Got to start again, starting from here, up to here, come back down to here. And what ends up happening is they never get any real progress because they're always starting from scratch to some degree. They're always going right back to where they were. So that's the big difference. We don't want to do that. We want to keep every year get better and better and better so that we look back at January and we say, okay, what were my goals in January? How did it go? Why did it go that way? Knowing that, what can I do now in September to set myself up so that when the next January rolls around, I'm able to set more refined and successful goals and strategies for myself? Yeah. And in this way, we start from here and we get up to here, and then maybe we come down to here. So this rises up. The next thing you know, we do it some more and we come down to here, but this rises up. That's the secret. We can't just look at like we're always the same and let's go into our diet, see how far we can get, because we never get that far. Because you can't just be in one mode forever. You can't just be in perfect eating, perfect exercising, perfect lifestyle mode. It's ups and downs. It's, it's a combination of everything when you're living life. So we need to take a step back and look at the patterns that are really impacting your weight. And when you start to reflect on your actual year, you start to get more accurate information. What was going on? What was your goal at the beginning of the year? Now, when you look back at it, was that a good goal? Was that a good strategy to achieve it? Meaning, was the goal something you really care about? Something you can actually achieve? The strategies you were using, did they fit you? Did they fit your lifestyle? Did they work for you? Why did the strategies continue when you got to your goal, or why did you stop and stop doing it? Both are really valuable pieces of information so that now if we set a goal now, right, instead of waiting till January to set a goal, what if you set a goal in September? Right, that I want to get to January, have some momentum. And now all of a sudden you can start to think of the next 3, 4 months as getting to that January thing where you can set those New Year's goals again. But let's really maximize the value of the next 4 months. Now, one other thing that's kind of implicit in what I'm talking about here is that different months have different kind of rhythms and flows and energy and challenges. Okay, so a lot of times I think people really set themselves up for failure because they set their goals in January. Well, your weight loss goals in January are a lot harder to achieve than they are now, because January, for a lot of people, it's after the holidays. Um, you're tired, you're spent, you're exhausted, the weather's cold, it's darker out. Winter's a harder time typically to kind of get ourselves going. So when you start to do this process more than just January, I think you give yourself more opportunity to succeed. And if you do it in September, what happens is now you can also make the goals you're setting for yourself 3 or 4 months, which is a shorter goal frame, and you can start to customize the goals you set now and the strategies you're going to use to September, October, November, December. Now that's a different set of months than January through April, right? They're both 4 months, but they're totally different contexts. And so you might be able to achieve more. Yeah. in September to December than you can January to April. You don't know until you try it, right? But that's the idea, that we're going to do this more. We're going to look back and understand what worked, what didn't work, and how we can make it better. And we're going to set goals for the next 3, 4 months that are more accurate, that are based on the wisdom and the knowledge of what we did in January and/or June, right? Again, you can set goals multiple times a year, by the way. And program yourself, then we often talk about having a new month's resolution. The more resolutions you set for yourself, the more goals, the more often you do it, typically the better. Okay, so I want you to relax for one second, and I want you to just imagine that you're looking back over the year, you're looking back over the last 8 months, and I want you to relax while you do this. I want you to relax your stomach, relax your chest, relax your shoulders. Relax your face and your jaw. Connect to your breathing, right? Slow your breathing down, and you don't have to take deep breaths necessarily, but take fuller, deeper breaths than you were taking. And just connect to your breath. Keep your body relaxed. Look back over the year, the last eight months, and you can celebrate any successes that you've achieved. But what's even more important is to recognize the goals or. Um, things you'd set out for yourself that you didn't stick with. And I want you to calmly and relaxedly notice those. And I want you to ask yourself the question, if I went back in time, what would I have done a little differently? And usually the answer is not, I would have just done that, I would have tried harder. That's kind of a cop-out sometimes. Usually the more valuable answer is that I would have set a different goal. Maybe I would have set a smaller goal for myself. What if you'd set a smaller goal for yourself in January? And what if it was easier to have stuck with it? And what if you stuck with it all the way until now? What difference would that have made? Kind of a fun road to kind of travel a little bit. And now we take whatever learnings— and again, you can take a lot more time doing this on your own— but now we want to look forward to the next 4 months. And I want you to imagine yourself living the next 4 months In a relaxed, calm way where you're grounded, centered, present, and imagine yourself moving through the next four months, holidays included. When you're more relaxed, you're more calm, you're more motivated, consistently improving what you're doing, how you're eating, how you're living, how you're thinking, and imagine yourself moving into the new year lighter. Your weight lower, more energized, more calm and grounded, more optimistic and hopeful, excited that you're going to continue the path that you've been walking. So it's not this ending of one year and starting of a brand new lifestyle, but instead it's just a bridge that you cross over into very familiar territory. So you get rid of this idea that you're just going to magically change all at once and instead start to prepare yourself to change over time and forever, always getting better for the rest of your life. And tell me that doesn't feel a lot better. So this is an example of a new way of thinking where we are able to absorb the mistakes and the problems and use them for our own good as we keep improving and getting better with each and every step forward. Okay, and if you want to go deeper into this way of thinking, you can click the link in my bio, you can go to programyourselfthin.com, or you can type mind, M-I-N-D, into the chat if you're on Facebook, and it'll automatically send you the link to go get the hypnosis session. But again, I give you a bunch of free stuff, and that is really something that's going to help you move forward with your weight loss in a unique and I think ultimately most effective way. That you can imagine. So go check that out. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them. Joanne says thank you. You're welcome, Joanne. It's my pleasure. I'm here every Monday through Friday, usually around noon Eastern. I start a little late on Tuesdays, but the rest of the days I'm usually here a lot, a lot earlier, at noon. Usually start at noon, right o'clock. Um, and yeah, but if you have any questions, feel free to ask them. I genuinely love your content so much. Thank you so much, CeCe. That really means a lot to me. That's why I do it. Okay, so again, if you don't know, there's tons of videos I make, short-form videos. If you want to get into my world again, you can click the link in my bio, go to programmingyourselfthin.com, or comment mind, M-I-N-D, in the comment window if you're on Facebook, and I'll send you that link because I've got a lot of content I give to people. And in the best ways, it's life-changing, and in the worst case, you just move on. No harm, no foul. That's why I like to give a lot of stuff away for free. So you can kind of see if this resonates with you, if this is a good fit for you. What's up, Dandy? Dandy says, I was craving the lime tortilla. I had about 3, then started taking deep breaths and grabbed a water. I don't buy them, but I know they are here. Yep, it really works. Yes, again, Dandy is highlighting something that's so important to remember and so surprising every time you remember it and it works. But yes, grounding yourself in the moment is probably one of the most effective techniques that exist out there for making better choices. And I think a lot of people don't realize this or think about it. Most people tend to think that the way forward with making better choices is just forcing yourself to make a better choice, you know, just, just do it, just do it. But it's like that trying to force yourself, um, really kind of has a limit to it, you know. And, uh, what I like to talk about is what happens when you can't force yourself anymore, when What do you do then? And most people have gotten to that point at some point and don't know what to do, right? And that's where most diets end is when you know you know what you're supposed to do. You know you're not supposed to eat till noon. You know you're not supposed to eat carbs, but you can't stop yourself. There's some party that's compelling you to do it, and you don't know how to deal with it. And that's a big part of what I talk about because I think learning how to program your mind is probably the most effective way to actually influence your behaviors so that. You're able to do the things that you actually want to do and the things that really support you. But in my opinion, it all starts with relaxing, relaxing, breathing. It's not just a feel-good technique either, by the way. Yes, I am a yoga instructor, and yes, there's lots of reasons why it's valuable, but I'm coming at you as the value of relaxing and breathing is that your brain works better. I'm coming at straight neuroscience-wise so that if you relax and calm down, you tend to connect to more of your internal resources, your ability to think clearly, creatively, your ability to connect to your executive functioning, which helps you make better choices that you know you should make. Because there's a difference between knowing something and being able to get yourself to do it. And I think the bridge between them is— the first step anyways is calming down and relaxing. And being able to center and ground yourself, because from that place again, you just think differently. You're almost a different version of yourself, and you know this, right? You know in your life when you've been calm and grounded versus when you've been stressed and panicked, um, there you're two different people. Same brain in your head, but you're thinking very different thoughts. So this is an important piece because dieting makes it seem that just knowing what to do is enough. It's not. you need to be able to regulate and run this machine here so that it does the things you want it to do, um, in a way that feels relatively comfortable. Um, Malika— I'm not sure if I'm saying that right— Malisha, what do you think about fast eating? I eat my food in like 3 minutes. Um, sad face at the end of that. Uh, yeah, I mean, I don't think it's fast eating. Okay, here's the thing. In a technical sense, fasting doesn't matter. Okay, let me tell you what I mean. If I put you in gym jail, okay, where I control your food, if I give you the same amount of calories you typically eat and you eat them in 2 seconds, it's not going to matter. It doesn't matter if you eat those calories in 2 minutes or if you eat those calories in 2 hours. Your weight's going to be the same. But in the real world, where you eat fast, what ends up happening is you eat so fast that before your body has the— before it's getting the signal that we've had enough food, because there is a delay there, that is true. You know, people say it's 15 minutes. Yeah, that's a pretty accurate ballpark. Now, it's different for different people, but the point remains that when you eat fast, Before your body has the opportunity, because being full, feeling hungry is a multi-step process. It's not one thing, you know. So, so for example, you know, when you start eating, there's obviously the chewing. That's part of when your body is measuring how much food and calories we're eating. There's your stomach stretching. Stretch receptors are a big part because that triggers hormonal releases that trigger your body and mind to know that we've had enough. There's the emptying of the food from your stomach into your intestines, going into your gut, and there's that process which starts to signal to your brain and body we've had enough. So if you eat really, really fast, you're getting way ahead of that process, and you're making it a lot harder typically. So in the real world, you're going to eat fast, and you're going to be eating a lot more calories than you need. So that's what I think about eating fast: that in the real world, it sets you up to overeat. Because your body feels hungry even though you've got enough food in it, but you haven't waited long enough for your body to get the message. And if you could— now here's— I want to reframe this. So I think it's very important, but I also want you to understand that eating, eating, uh, fast is a thing that probably got installed to you. So there's nature-nurture, right? Um, some people are probably born fast eaters for whatever reason, might be partly genetic. And part of it is almost always nurture as well. You know, you go to school and you got 15 minutes to finish everything. So there's probably a multitude of combination of factors that have caused you to be a fast eater at this point. However, it's important to understand that you can become a slower eater. You need to think of it as a skill, though. And it's a skill that to me is no different than learning how to write with your other hand. It would be hard. It'd be frustrating. It'd be annoying. You'd want to just do what you already knew how to do. You know, automatically, but you could do it if you kept practicing writing with the other hand. Eventually, you're going to internalize it, and that's going to become a habit, and it's going to be something easy for you to do. So again, I understand that eating fast can feel like it's impossible to change. It is not. And once again, I'll go back to the idea that the easiest way to eat slower is to become more relaxed and calm. And I've worked with so many people with this, so I promise you, you can absolutely become a slower eater. And it's probably one of the most important, effective things you could change in order to impact your weight is slowing your eating down. And Program Yourself Thin is built for that because Program Yourself Thin is built to calm you down and relax you, to help you step into the moment, connect to your body and mind, to become more mindful in general so that eating becomes just one more extension of that. So you just begin to eat differently. 'Cause you're just more calm and grounded. And if you train yourself to do that, if you stick with it, yes, I— in most cases, that is gonna dial your calorie consumption down because you're gonna eat slower, and now your body is going to let you know, we've had enough. And now it's gonna be easier to say, I'm good, 'cause you're gonna get that message from your body. But again, a lot of people eat fast, and not only are they eating fast, you can only eat foods that are processed fast. I dare you to eat a big-ass salad fast. You can't. There's just too much chewing involved, you know. So that as well as a way to slow down your eating is to change what you're actually eating. All right, but again, if you want to eat slower, if you want to relax and calm down, one of the best ways is the hypnosis session I give you. Again, if you're on Facebook, you can just type, uh, mind, M-I-N-D, into the comments and, and I'll send that to you. But that's a huge way to change um, the speed at which you, you, uh, eat. And there's a bunch of other benefits to it as well, so that's important. Um, yeah, this says, thank you for your knowledge and time to answer. Yeah, when I eat a carrot, it takes long. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Um, the more whole natural foods you eat, the slower your eating's gonna get. That's the probably the number one strategy. I was talking about relaxing, calming down, but I was talking about that in the context of eating more processed foods. But the overall number one strategy of all Above all else, to eat slower is to eat whole natural foods. They just got a lot more fiber in it. They take a lot more chewing. That slows you down. You don't have to remember anything. You have to be mindful, nothing. Um, so that's probably the best thing. But when you put them both together, now you really have very powerfully manipulated your eating in a comfortable way. So yeah, I would suggest focusing on both of those. Uh, all right, everyone, I gotta get out of here. This was a quick one today. Again, wish I could stay here longer. I'll be here tomorrow at noon. Um, to help you all out. But again, if you, uh, are not in my world, please click the link in my bio. Um, go get the free hypnosis session I give you. It's a really good session. It's called The New Thin Me. It's a kickstart session designed to be experienced and move you forward. I'm really excited. I do have a free course I'm about to give you this week. I'll have it ready for you to go. Um, but if you're on my email list, you'll get, you'll get first dibs at that. I'll let you know this week. Um, yeah, so go check that out. Again, if you're on Facebook, just type Mind into the Uh, comment box and I'll get that to you. And then if you like this, I'm here every Monday through Friday, usually around noon Eastern. Pop in here, ask your questions, let me help you out as much as I can. And if you can't make the live, it's also a podcast, Program Yourself Thin. Uh, Program Yourself Thin on any podcast platform, search it, it'll show up. And, um, yeah, you can listen anytime you want. So, all right everyone, have a super duper day. We'll talk soon. Bye.