Today I was talking with a client who hired me to help him with health 6 months ago. He hasn’t lost any weight but he hired me again for another 6 months.
Why the hell would he do that?
Well the truth was that he was coming from a defeated place when we started. He didn’t know his values or his value. He had a career that he enjoyed but felt stale. He wasn’t having authentic and open experiences with his wife and he was unhappy with how he handled stress with parenting a very intelligent 10 year old son.
When we started trying to work on meal timing, movement, macronutrient balance, food quality, etc, nothing gained traction.
Why?
Because he had bigger places to grow in his life before he could shrink his waist.
I called this out and after some resistance, he dropped the health related goals for working on his relationship with his wife, his personal value system, his ability to communicate, his parenting and processing of negative thinking.
We got to work. And he showed up like a badass. He dropped into his emotions, he learned to slow down, he became a better communicator, he started asking for what he wanted, he pursued a career change that helped him feel more alive, and he finally took back some personal time to spend with friends and on hobbies.
He moved out of a lot of his typical nice guy BS and into being a more bold, loving and authentic guy.
So now, after 6 months of coaching. We are ready to get after it again on his health. Now he can come from a place of personal power.
If you are still reading, you are probably thinking “Joe…when the HECK are you going to tell me what not to do if I want to lose weight and get healthy?” Chill out man…I’m doing that right now!
Today we had a session and he had emailed me his plan to get healthy over the next few months. He realized that his primary challenge was around food. That at the end of the day nothing would matter if he didn’t step into food planning, preparing and cooking for himself again.
Because he had done such great work with me for the past few months, HE TOLD ME…
“I can’t keep trying to motivate myself to do meal planning from shame. I have to find a way to move towards pride in my actions, as a celebration of my own agency.”
My internal response… “FUCK YES. HE’S GETTING IT!!!”
My actual response. “Great so what are the positive ways you will view your meal planning as a celebration of your agency? How can you move towards pride instead of shame!?!?!”
We spent the next few minutes going through his responses. They were better than they were a while back, but still in some negative framing. So I helped him create an excited version of internal motivation. Here is one example.
“I’m bored with my current food choices” was converted into “I get to try new things and get excited for what I actually enjoy as an adult. I get to have a new outlet for creativity and curiosity. I can learn to build excitement for healthy cuisine.”
THIS! Is how you align your desire to get healthy with a strategy that will work.
Allow me to be abundantly clear here. The one thing you can do to make sure that you won’t lose weight or get healthy…
Create motivations from “should’s”, “supposed tos”, “what my doctor told me”, “because I’m a fat ass”, “I look like a slob”, “I need to stop eating like a child”… and of course “I HAVE TO LOSE WEIGHT!”
When people choose to go on a weight loss diet, they are statistically 98% likely to fail. So forget the shameful, negative framing for why you need to get healthy. You don’t NEED to get healthy. People can live very happy lives eating Doritos and watching netflix all day.
Do you WANT to get healthy? Do you DESIRE positive change because GOD DAMN IT YOU ARE WORTH LIVING A LONG HAPPY LIFE!?!?!. If you can reach this point of motivation, then take action. If you can’t then don’t even think of trying to get healthy.
If you want to learn how to reframe your views of yourself, challenge your current thinking, take consistent action and actually create change in your life, reach out.
It’s your turn!