The Soft Skills Of Weight Loss

Hey, everyone. Welcome to today's program Yourself thin podcast. Today we're talking about the soft skills of weight loss. Something I think it's never talked about when it comes to losing weight. Everyone is so focused on the. The hard skills, right? The calories, the controlling, the macros, the exercising, the plans, right? The very nuts and bolts, black and white pieces of weight loss. But at the end of the day, in my opinion, it all comes down to the soft skills. What do I mean by that? I mean the ability to manage your mindset, your thoughts, how to influence your feelings, right? How you feel moment to moment. The ability to start to recognize your beliefs, what you believe about yourself, which ones empower you, which ones limit you. The ability to set your environment up so that you are more likely to make the right choice, right? How to manage your energy levels so that you're more likely to make the right choice. And it's these soft skills, in my opinion, that are the ones that are never, ever taught to you. And I find them ultimately most responsible for either your success or failure. Again, it's not enough just to have this black and white plan given to you. And I think that's such a big mistake dieters make. They always think, well, just tell me what to do and I'll do it. And it's like, how can you say that at this point? You have tried to lose weight so many times following a plan, and it hasn't worked. That. How can you still believe that all you need is a plan and then you'll just do it? It really is, again, those soft skills. Are you able to stay motivated? Are you able to kind of keep nudging your thoughts in a more positive, optimistic direction so that you feel like you can succeed, so that you can feel like you can keep it up when you struggle, when you have a bad day, do you have the ability to kind of sit with that and nudge yourself in the right direction? Again, most people do not because you never learn that, you know, program yourself. Then we follow the goal weight pyramid. I mean, really, it's a focus on soft skills, right? We're focusing on the mindset lifestyle and the soft skill eating components, right? So again, just to draw out what I believe the soft skills are in detail, right? So the motivation level it is, or the mindset level, it's motivation, self image, right? Habits, how to run habits more effectively and strategically. Your emotions, how to manage your emotions, how to think like a thin, healthy person, literally, how to influence your thoughts and how to maintain, again, not just to Maintain your weight loss, but how to maintain your path so that you can even start to lose weight? You know, I think people think maintenance, they go, well, I'll do that when I get to my goal weight. Well, how about maintaining from day one, day two, week one to week two, Right. You need to have those skills as well. Those are the soft skills of mindset. Then there's lifestyle. The soft skills of lifestyle, it's not just about, tell me how much water to drink, you know, tell me how much sleep I need. There's always the soft skill side of everything. So I could sit here and tell you, oh, eight glasses of water every day, that's what you need to drink. And then do you have the ability to take that information and turn it into behavior though? Right? If I tell you you need eight hours of sleep a day. Right. Do you know how to get eight hours of sleep? Right. There's a difference between saying, I know I need to get eight hours of sleep and being able to actually increase your sleep. So you're getting eight hours. And again, most, once, once you're past the here, you need eight hours of sleep. Then we move into the soft skills. Can you get yourself to go to bed earlier? Can you get yourself to fall asleep? Do you know how to go back to sleep if you wake up? You know, and again, it's always soft skills that I feel like the most lacking with people. Right? So when it comes to the soft skills of lifestyle, specifically, we'll go through sleep, hydration, relaxation, breathing, nourishment, movement, meditation, and gratitude. And we figure out not just what to do in those areas, the hard skills of it, but also the soft skills of how to get yourself to do it. And then finally there's the eating component of it and, and program yourself down, Just give you an eating plan. Go ahead, follow it. Instead, we figure out what's going to work for you through the soft skills of learning how to eat like a thin, healthy person, which I believe go through the phases of awareness, structuring your eating, and then optimizing that structure over and over and over again. And of course, you know, I could tell you what to eat, but the ability to actually start eating that way consistently is that soft skill piece that most people never learn. And I think once you understand this, that you've never, ever learned how to develop the soft skills of weight loss, that it should be inspiring for you. So I don't want you to discourage, oh, my God, I got to learn all that now. I don't want you to Feel that way because I think once you realize you've never learned or focused on any of the soft skills of weight loss, that once you recognize that, then you can start to focus on it. And as you start to develop these soft skills, it is transformative because most likely you've never focused on these. So when we first start working on something brand new, we tend to make pretty rapid progress. So as you start to pay attention to the soft skills of your mindset, of your lifestyle, of your eating in a way that works for you, again, it becomes transformative. And a lot of times you get real profound benefits right away because you've never worked on this, you know. So I hope this helps you out. And if you want to go deeper into this whole way of thinking, please click the link in my bio and go get the free hypnosis session that I give you. It's called the New Thin Me and it is a weight loss kickstart session. And so I think that if you are struggling with your weight and you've never tried hypnosis, you really ought to give this a shot. I am one of the highest paid hypnotists on the planet and I made this specially for you to help you get started with your weight loss and kind of kickstart it, right? Get you going with it. And if you have any questions, feel free to ask them. Any questions are welcome. They don't have to be about program yourself then, or hypnosis or anything about that. I help people with all kinds of weight issues. I have been doing this for over 20 years and I've done over 6,000 private weight loss sessions. So I have worked with pretty much every kind of diet.

I would say I worked with every kind of person, but I have not. My the type of person I work with typically is very similar. Surprisingly, it's almost always an overthinker. Overthinker, Overachieving perfectionist is kind of how I would define the majority of my clients.

But yes, I do focus on the soft skills of weight loss. And I find it fascinating because it's so overlooked. And once you start to develop that, your ability to manage your mindset, your eating, and ultimately your weight improve dramatically. Dramatically.

What's up, Jen? Jen says hi, Jim. What is your favorite Thanksgiving food? Oh, boy. Favorite Thanksgiving food. What do I like? I mean, my brain goes right away to mashed potatoes and gravy. I love that. But I also love the stuffing my wife makes. I think it's so good. So I'm a big stuff into mashed Potato and gravy pop my head first. But I love peas, too. Oh, I love turnips. I love Thanksgiving. I will tell you, it's a funny thing. Let me just tell you a little story because I have been a vegetarian for a pescatarian technically for over 25 years, and people always say, oh, my God, what do you need for Thanksgiving? I say, listen, most that food, Thanksgiving doesn't have any meat in it. I'm gonna give you my grandma sausage gravy or, you know, meat gravies and put meat in stuff. But the majority of Thanksgiving food is all vegetarian, you know, minus the turkey, you know, and so we make like a mushroom gravy and all that stuff. But it's hard for me to pick just one thing. I really am a fan of most of it. I love the piece. Oh, do I like. I like. What's that? That green bean casserole. I'm a big fan of that. Then little crunchy onions on the top. I love that. Oh, I'm excited. My brother hosts Thanksgiving and he has taken up the hobby of making sourdough bread. And he is so good at making sourdough bread. I'm shocked. I could not believe. I went over his house a couple weeks ago and he had this beautiful loaf of bread and I was like, oh, where do you bakery get that from? He goes, I made it. So holy shit. Because I love sourdough bread. So that's another thing. I'm actually looking forward to him for his Thanksgiving this year. I'm sure he's going to make some really good bread, so I'm looking forward to that. So, yeah, that's what comes to mind. Love Thanksgiving food, right? So I love Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is. I love. My brother does it too. I. For so many years, my wife and I did every holiday and it is so wonderful that my brother does Thanksgiving now change the whole day. I love Thanksgiving. It is a fun one. And I will tell you just. Again, it does not matter. I. I don't believe it matters, but for that was moderating Thanksgiving where I didn't stuff myself silly, that that was one of the final kind of successes I had in life. You know what I mean? When it came to my weight. And so I. I find it now, even when I go to Thanksgiving, I will enjoy the hell out of the food. I don't really stress about it. I don't really overeat that much. You know, I kind of. I've come up with strategies and ways of approaching it where I really enjoy myself to the Max. And part of that is I don't stuff myself so silly. I feel I'm gonna blow up or all that there. I don't over drink wine and I don't get shitfaced. Not that I got shitfaced, I didn't. But, um, you know, sometimes I would finish Thanksgiving feeling a little hungover, you know. So, yeah, Jed says it's so great that I can be a goal weight and still look forward to and enjoy Thanksgiving, thanks to you. Oh, thanks, Jen. I appreciate you saying that. I'm really excited for you because to me, that is a great opportunity to realize what we're doing here because. And this, I think this, this is misses a lot of people to program yourself then is that what we're looking to do is get the most pleasure possible out of food. So. So I believe personally I get more enjoyment out of Thanksgiving now than I ever did in my life. And I'm talking about the times I used to stuff myself silly because I think going into Thanksgiving at your goal weight, knowing you're in control of food and being able to eat whatever you want to eat, and even though you say I can eat whatever I want to eat, you eat a moderate amount and leave there feeling pretty good to me, I don't know how you can get more pleasure out of Thanksgiving than that. That's how I think of it anyways. So absolutely, Jen, you can be at your goal weight, look forward to Thanksgiving, overeat on Thanksgiving even, and be totally fine. It's just a day, folks. Now, again, Jen's in a different spot because Jen has a whole structure to her eating and lifestyle. So she could overeat on Thanksgiving and maybe even overeat the whole weekend, even. Maybe just starts the ball rolling. But when Monday comes, she'll fall right back into her structure. I will do the same thing. I will, I will definitely overeat on Thanksgiving. I won't overeat as much as I used to. I won't over drink as much as I used to. But compared to a normal Thursday, I will absolutely eat more than I typically do.

And I'm okay with that. And then again, it may, the following three days I may eat a little bit more, made a little, you know, a little more stuff than normal. Maybe not, I don't know. But I'm fine with that if I do, you know, because I know Monday's coming around, I'm right back into my normal routine. And so a huge part of programming yourself then is like, because we're all. Or something. Instead of all or nothing. We're always practicing kind of being in the game. And what that means is that even when we get off track, we have an ability to get back on track quickly. We practice that. That's the fundamental piece of the program, behaviorally, is that we. Even when we make mistakes, we use the redo technique to learn from it and kind of get ourselves right back on track quickly. So, again, it's not a day. One day of overeating doesn't mean shit to your weight. One day of overeating is as impactful on your weight as one day of dieting. You know, nothing. It's not gonna do anything. So, again, enjoy it. But again, I think you'll find if you go into that with a mindset that the way you enjoy things given the most is to eat the food, you know, eat more than you normally do, but not to stuff yourself silly stuffing yourself silly kind of. I don't know, I think you start to realize it doesn't feel that great a lot of times. That's what I think. And I know, you know, Thanksgiving really is like the overeating holiday. It's like, that's almost the purpose for a lot of people. It was for me for a long time. So I get it. But, you know, I think that ultimately not being stuffed to the gills is actually more pleasurable. You know what I mean? But, yeah, if anyone's got any questions, feel free to ask them. I see Deb over here says, deb, what are you. What? Do you see a benefit to drinking hot water first thing in the morning before anything else? I'm gonna say, okay. Do you see a benefit to drinking hot water first thing in the morning before anything else? No, I wouldn't think so. I just tend to be skeptical. Oh, I see. I tend to be skeptical of pretty much any kind of hack type thing. And I. I can't imagine what hot water in the morning would do to your body. I'm sure someone has a theory. Okay, But I don't know. Again, I'd build it around you. I would try it out, though. You know, if you think it might work, go ahead and drink some hot water in the morning and see what happens. Maybe all of a sudden you won't be hungry. Maybe it'll reduce your. Your hunger by 50%. I don't know how that would work. I've never heard of that before. But who. Who knows? But then if you take the hot water and nothing's different, then don't do it. Unless you like drinking hot water. But I think when you start to look at things that way, you know, kind of gets you to the solutions quicker, you know. That's an interesting one. Let's look that up real quick. I don't. Any other questions.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask them too. I'm gonna look this one up real quick. I am kind of curious. I've not heard this. Hot water shenanigans.

Does drinking hot water first thing in morning help you lose weight? Let's see.

Does not cause significant weight loss on its own. It's the first thing that pops up, promotes fullness. Yeah, right. I mean, if you drink water, it does help with hunger. Again, if you're, if you're not really hungry, right. If you're kind of emotionally hungry or just kind of like, you know, you're not starving, you've eaten enough, but you're just kind of hungry hungry like, you know, I think water definitely helps because what happens when you drink water, whether it's hot or cold or any liquid really, is that your stomach's gonna expand. And part of what makes you feel full is the stretch receptors in your stomach. Stretching, you know, so definitely drinking water for that sense. You know, expanding your stomach could absolutely support weight loss. I think it's, it's just, it's a little supplement. It's a little helper. It's not going to do all the hard work. It's just, just doing that isn't going to make you lose weight, I don't think. But again, program yourself. Then we look to stack strategies. And I think that's an important piece of things.

You know.

So, yeah, so I use every strategy at my disposal, but I'll try things out. I mean, if I read an article about how great hot water is first thing in the morning, I would try it out and see what happened, you know, see, did it really help me? Is there any benefit of it? And then if there was, I'd continue to do it. If there wasn't. Yeah, move on the next thing. Focus on the thing that does work, you know, But I think that's a good approach to do it because then, you know, we're not just deciding if it works or not based on what someone said. We're deciding based on our own experience with it. And I think that's the attitude, that's the, that's the move forward. Because you just never know. I mean, it's always like that. I mean, It's. Nothing works 100% of the time. So, you know, we really shouldn't Just be like, oh, should I do this? Trying to do that. Just test it out, see how it feels. You know, what's the effect? How does it feel to do it? If it's easy to do, cool. It's not easy to do. Don't do it.

So, yeah, that's what I think about that. All right, quiet group. I got a lot of stuff to do. I'm gonna pop out of here and we got any more questions. If not, I might just cut this short. I gotta go. I'm gonna go take care of something right now, actually. All right, very good. Yeah. If you're not in my world, make sure you click the link in my bio and go get the free hypnosis session I give you. Right? If you're on Facebook, you can go. Just go click the link I put on the top there. But it's a free hypnosis session. It's called the New Thin Me. It's a kickstart weight loss session. I think it's really good and it's free, and I give you a training on top of it. So once you opt in, I give you a free training I made for you. And then I got a bunch of other cool free stuff that's coming down the right. The pike. So if you get on my email list, though, you will get all that stuff. So go check that out. And then if you like this here, I'm usually here Monday through Friday, usually around noon Eastern. A little late today.

But yeah, you can hop on here and ask questions, any. Anything about weight loss. I'm happy to help you out or at least try and attempt to help you out if I can. And if you can't make the live calls and you like listening to. It's also a podcast, so you can search program yourself then on any of the podcast platforms, and it'll pop up and you can listen to whenever you'd like to. So. All right, everyone, have a super duper day, and we'll talk soon. Bye.