(Please note this is just a transcript of the podcast episode - I have not edited for errors :) )

 

Hi, welcome to Episode Two of the mom life weight loss podcast. In today's episode, I will be talking about pressure, the pressure to lose weight and where it comes from. Then I'll focus a bit on how society and pressure play a role in our view of weight loss and body image. Next, I'll talk a bit about mindset and how having a good mindset is important for supporting you in your weight loss journey. Make sure you stick around until the end of the episode, because I'll be sharing my tip of the episode, it's going to help you envision your best self, so don't miss it.

 

Ah, the pressure, there is so much pressure as a mom, as a woman, as a way from society in general, aside from that general mom life pressure that I feel on a day to day basis, and probably I'm assuming that you do as well, I would say that as women, we also tend to face this societal pressure, pressure to look a certain way, wear certain clothes, etc, etc. So I'm not going to get into the nitty gritty of all of the psychology of why society like this way, and why do we feel this way. But it's more just that I want to talk about the fact that there is this pressure, and we acknowledge that it is part of VR, and that it is a part of our weight loss journey. So it's important to say, you know, there is a real pressure, we feel it, everybody feels that you know, even from young kids up to adults, and that it does play a role in how we view ourselves and how our relationship with food is and how our relationship with setting goals and losing weight all of us together.

 

I do think that there's starting to be a better outlook. Now within society, we're more aware of this pressure and you know, changing the narrative in a more positive way. So I do think that we are moving in the right direction. So that's good for us and for our little ones.

 

Next kind of pressure is that seasonal pressure, right? So if you live somewhere like I do, where there are, I find that there is a whole pressure surrounding. So right now it's spring, right? Don't be Mother Nature got the memo, because it's not getting warmer out. But that summer is coming eventually. And so there's this pressure that we feel that we better get in shape, get our beach body, ready for the summertime lose the weight so that swimsuits go into the water or the pool or the beach and that version of yourself for the summertime. And then the Summer ends and we move into what we would call, you know, sweater weather. And it's like giving permission to that gain weight again, because we can hide it under our sweaters and our big jackets. But don't forget that you know, then you're going to go on that trip down south. And so you better lose the weight again. And then there's the holidays and all the eating that goes along with that. And it's like, you know, we're given permission again to gain weight over the holidays. But then it's a new year and you have to be at the EU and set resolutions to lose weight. And it kind of feels like we're on this hamster wheel, ever changing. pressure to look a certain way that goes along with all that type of pressure is ourselves.

 

You know, we are our own worst critic. And I think that we are the hardest on ourselves and how important that we acknowledge that that is a pressure from within. That does and it's related a little bit to what we grew up with, you know, what was our food environment as a child and a teenager, young adult, how was body shape were we discussed in our household or not discussed for that matter? Your personal story is that I grew up in a fairly healthy, balanced household had the family meals together very, very often. Fields, fruits, vegetables I helped in the kitchen, I think that I had a pretty good education, balanced background in terms of how to build a healthy meal and live a healthy and have a good relationship with food. Although I will say that, you know, my mom was always on a diet and trying to lose weight. And so that mindset did, you know, come into our household, and definitely, I was aware of it. And it did play a role in you know, my relationship with food as an adult and who I am today. So it's important that we look back on, you know, where did we come from, so that we can look at where we're at now, and how we make changes within that. And that that is a pressure that we feel as well. And you know what, maybe you don't feel this pressure that I'm talking about you kind of like Laura, like, I don't know what you're talking. I don't think any of these things, and great, that is perfect, that's exactly what we want. But maybe you do feel this pressure, and you're sort of nodding along with me as I'm going along. And you're sort of saying yeah, you know, that is how I think and that is how I feel. And so both are okay. And it's important that we just recognise that it is going to play a role in your journey, and setting goals. And you know, how you make new habits, and you know, what affects you.

 

And that's why I talked about in Episode One, identifying the difference between extrinsic and intrinsic motivators, because we don't want to only have extrinsic motivators. So, for example, it's okay if you do want to get your beach body, and you want to lose weight and go to the beach and feel competent. But that can't be the only reason. So that's why I had the action item. Your goal for the episode was to identify what is the motivator that's making you want to make changes making you want to lose weight and and making sure that it's not these pressures that I'm talking about, actually, also, internal motivation, outside of these pressures that we do feel. So next, I'm going to talk a little bit about body image. And this sort of relates to the society pressure that we feel, and what our relationship with body image is, and to the importance of having the right mindset to be setting positive, achievable walls. Just to start off, when we talk about weight loss, and we think about diet culture and the weight loss industry.

 

There's actually a lot of you know, like negativity around saying, weight loss and wanting to lose weight. And I really did actually struggle when I was redesigning my business using these terms within my business and my game for weight loss and we struggled a little bit on it. Should I say it? Should I say something else, because there's a big movement towards shaming women and moms especially to making them feel like they have to lose the weight of their body, your body changes once you had been pregnant and had children and, and not to shame women into feeling like they have to get their pre baby body back and all of that and I completely agree with this. I i'm not saying anything against this movement. But I do want to acknowledge that I did decide to use weight loss and weight loss coach in my business, because that's what I want to help you with and I want to help you to lose weight. And so I did decide to Title I know I need to the podcast for a reason. And I don't think anything's wrong with that. Because as I said in the first episode, I truly believe that yourself. Okay, so now I just want to go through a couple of the different concepts that you see when we talk about body image and the healthy eating world and the weight loss world the weight loss industry that are You know, moving away from just talking about losing weight and diet culture.

 

The first one is called HAES, which stands for healthy at every body size. haze is a concept that challenges the value of promoting weight loss. And argues we're shifting focus to wait. If you're a lot, there's a lot of dietitians who call themselves hate dietitians. I'm not going to go into detail because I don't subscribe to the following this, this way of working with my clients, but I did want to bring it up and talk about it as an option for people. And I'm going to include some links in three different concepts that I talked about in this episode. And you can go and go to my show notes and click on any of the links to read more about each one of the concepts. And so you can grab those links at Laura vermander.com slash podcast, Click on episode two, and you'll see the links for the concept there. So again, hey, is it promotes the shift in focus to weight neutral outcomes, and talks about more just about health behaviours in a general sense.

 

The next one is called intuitive eating. This one is really popular in social media. Like we seen it if you follow any other kind of like dietitians or health care people in social media, it's very, very popular talked about a lot of intuitive eating is used a lot in terminology when making food decisions, etc. But there actually is, you know, an intuitive eating framework. And so what it is, it's a self care framework, which integrates instinct, emotion, and rational thought. And it was created by two dieticians inclusive, evidence based model, and there are 10 principles that at least include rejecting the diet mentality, monitoring your hunger, making peace with food, I'm not going to go through all 10 here because I do not practice intuitive eating in that type of manner with my clients, we do talk about mindful eating, and you know, listening to your body, but I don't actually like teach my clients intuitive eating because it's a whole concept and framework that you know, you can do a training for, in order to work with clients within that. So if you want to learn more about intuitive eating, you can find the link to learn more about it in my show notes.

 

And of course, the last thing I want to cover off is because it's important that we are creating a body positive space for that, and that we're allowing them to grow and live in a space where they feel that they can trust their bodies. So I want to just touch on this because it's important to feel that we can be making healthy choices and setting goals to lose weight, at the same time, creating a healthy environment for our children. To help us create that healthy food environment for children. There is also a concept called division of responsibility. This was developed by Ellen Sattar. She's a dietician. And it is to healthier children to become and remain. So the basis of division of responsibility encourages you as the parent to take leadership with what, when, and where you are feeding your child. And then letting your child determine how much and whether to eat what you have provided them. I've again, linked the website to the division of responsibility meeting in my show notes. And so you can head on over there and read more about it there. If you're interested. This is actually what I do with GE and I do try to practice the division of responsibilities so that I can help them create a healthy relationship with food as they grow. So suffice to say it's a lot to think about. There's lots of different perspectives. And I think going through all these different perspectives helped me come to the conclusion not all of them are valid. Everyone needs something different in order to be their best self. And I truly believe again, I've said it before, but I'll say it again, that you can love yourself and one To lose weight, and have a healthy relationship with and create a healthy environment for your children.

 

So next, let's move on to the importance of mindset in the weight loss industry. And the dieting world actually comes from a negative place. And so I want to spend a little bit of time just talking about how we can flip this concept, so that we are coming at it from a positive mindset. Weight Loss world. dieting typically come from a place of critical and hard on ourselves. It's like you want to fix yourself and self deprecation, we want to design for your resolve. And that is worth it promoted in that industry. Ultimately, you can begin to lose sight, your health, and it doesn't have any of that nice sustainability that I talked about in the previous episode, one of the most important things that I believe you need to have in order to be successful in the long term, you'll probably hear me say, lots and lots as we go through episodes of this podcast. But it's really, you know, to lose weight and keep it off. I think the sustainability factor around food choices and sustainable goals, and weight loss goals is really important in shifting that mindset from the negative to the positive. And that's why, you know, a negative mindset can set you up to lead you to failure. And shifting the mindset isn't just about feeling good. It's about getting the results and the long term results.

 

Let's go through a couple of different ways that you can shift your mindset and weight loss approach to a healthier and happier way of starting off rather than coming from that place of being critical on yourself. So we're going to come in and just go through a couple of different tips and things for you to think about when you are setting goals and when you're starting out. So the first tip is to change your goals. I'm going to talk about setting goals in a future episode. So stay tuned for that went through everything in detail. But what I mean by change your goals is that you can have your big over all goal. But then within that people you need to break it down and set small goals. And that's where a lot of people miss that small goal step. And so it's not getting in setting a small goal so you don't feel overwhelmed. And being overwhelmed often leads to that. being overwhelmed often leads to that place of being critical on yourself. So we'll talk about goals in a future episode. So stay tuned for that. And that's one is making sure that you surround yourself with positivity and people who are going to help you along your way and cheer you on as you achieve goals and form new habits. They are separate support systems from anyone else that you might be working with in your weight loss journey. The next week, we're shifting mindset to a more happier and healthier mindset is the Greek word. So we often think, as a rule, and exercise as punishment. And so it's a little bit about changing rewards. They can be food based but also brainstorming some non food based rewards and reframing exercise as a way to feel strong and fit and improve our cardiovascular health rather than you know, we have to go for a run so that we can eat that cookie. The next thing I want you to start doing is talking to yourself like you would have read you know, we are our own worst critic i said earlier we are very hard on ourselves and we often say things to ourselves that we would never say to a friend who was struggling. So we have to kind of flip that script and be our friend. Next I want you to throw out the concept of good foods and bad foods. There is no all this is a big thing for me in our households you know there are no treats and there's no good foods and there's nothing that's bad because As you know, everything can fit into your lifestyle is just you know how often how much of it. And so changing that mentality around labelling foods good and bad can be really helpful in shifting your mindset to have a more positive relationship with food. And the last thing is my favourite focus on the attainable. So, live in real life where things are hard and busy and crazy. And my motto of simplifying your life, focusing on the attainable and simplifying your life buying your life can be something as simplistic as you are shifting your mindset away from trying to do all the things to doing what works for you.

 

So an example of this, you have a goal that you want to eat healthier dinner, but you're really, really struggling to make time in your schedule to cook evenings are really busy, you're picking kids up, you're rushing home. And you're really struggling because you've set the bar really high for yourself that you need to be making, you know, food from scratch and cutting all the vegetables up and pulling them out of your vegetable garden, etc, etc. So let's focus more on the attainable and simplify the goal. And if he needs are really busy, maybe we actually set the goal as that you need to order a healthy meal delivery service, so that you're eating a healthier dinner, but it's working for what works in your real life.

 

This brings me to my tip of the episode, I want you to look at the reasons you are motivated to lose weight that you wrote out last episode. Now. Now, what we're going to do this week is I want you toask you a couple of questions I want you to think about place

 would you feel comfortable and close, sexy and address? Would you have more energy? Would you sleep better? Would you laugh more?  Do you feel more confident?  Are you a better parent, friend, or partner? How would life improve if you changed your lifestyle? What these questions are trying to do is bring you into a mindset envisioning what life looks like, once you've achieved your goals. I like to do this because it's helpful to sort of see that future version of yourself so that you can keep it in mind when things are hard. And you're doing the hard work to get to that version of you know. So just as an example of how this kind of works, is I actually did this when I was reconfiguring my practice. And I envisioned my ideal work day. My ideal work day is that I'm not setting an alarm clock, I'm, you know, waking up when my kids get up. We're having a leisurely breakfast, I'm taking my daughter to preschool, coming home, I'm putting BBF down for a nap. Working during the day when he's napping, and then I'm playing with him during the day. I'm picking my daughter up from preschool, we're doing dinner together as a family. And maybe I'm working a little bit in the evening because I have some of those hours off during the day. And as my kids get older, I see my day changing. So the big thing for me when I was envisioning the ideal workday is that I have loads of flexibility in terms of what I'm doing with my time, I'm in charge. And you know, that means I'm working from home or wherever that might be. Maybe your ideal work day is you're setting an alarm, you're getting up, you're exercising, you're taking your kids to daycare, you're heading into an office where you've got coworkers, you know, when the pandemic is over, you're working nine to five, and then you're leaving your job, you're picking your kids up, you're going home, you guys are having dinner together. You're not thinking about that job at all until the next day again, and maybe that's your ideal workday. So it's just to say that everyone's vision of your best self is different. And so that's why I want you to spend your best self is different.

 

So that's I want you to spend a little bit of time thinking about what does that look like for you? So I'm just gonna run through the questions again, what I want you to do is actually write it down and be specific. Okay? So be specific about what that version of you looks like. Maybe what it looks like for your family. And keep up with those motivators that you for your family and keep it with those motivators that you wrote down with the last episode. So we're just going to run through the questions again one last time. What would life be like if you put in place healthy habits? Would you feel comfortable and close, sexy and address? Do you have more energy, sleep better bathroom. Why do you feel more confident? Are you a better parent, friend or partner? How would life improve if you changed your lifestyle? Okay, so you might be thinking that this is crazy that you listen to two full episodes and not have I talked about food. Don't worry, we're gonna get to it. I do talk about food. But it is important to kind of set that foundation and the mindset around weight loss before we dive into all that diet and culture and talk about and it's more than just eating. I like to do some of this work upfront because it gives you a good foundation for success down the road.

 
So this week, so this week, we talked about society and the pressure it puts on us to lose weight and look a certain way, plus how we put that pressure on ourselves. I went over some concepts about body image and weight loss. And we talked about the importance of having the right mindset for losing weight. Plus, my tip this week is to envision your better life.

That's it. go off, right down, have that vision and see your future best self. 

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Transcribed by https://otter.ai