Are your surroundings helping or hindering your weight loss journey today? We dive into how detoxing your environment, from social media to your closet, can be a game changer in your wellness journey. Welcome to today's episode. Today, I want to talk about how we might need to clean up our environment a little bit and how this will help us in our weight loss journey. I think this is important because it's something we don't think about very often. Sometimes in the news, we talk about the effects of social media, usually talking about teenagers or preteens, but it has an effect on us as well.
If we are constantly looking at Instagram feeds and reels of perfect-looking people with what society tells us is perfect, if we look at that all day long, every day, week in, week out, we're constantly giving ourselves the message that how we are is wrong. That's just not okay. If all of our magazines are about weight loss and exercise, if all our content is about how we should change, you see where I'm going here? It's a constant barrage of information telling us that how we are right now is wrong, that we are not okay, and that we need to do all these things to be right. I think this can absolutely trigger some diet trauma that we've talked about. I know for a fact it triggers negative self-talk.
And negative self-talk, let me help you visualize it like this: If you are standing in a boxing ring and every mean thing you say to yourself is a punch in the face, and all day long, you are looking at things telling you you're wrong, which makes you think mean things about yourself, you're punching yourself in the face all day long. Now, do you think our inner self, our inner voice, likes that? She likes to lay up in her cave, eating snacks and taking a nap. She's going to make you eat food. The urges, the food chatter will be so high by the time you get home. And all it is is a desperate attempt by your inner self to get you to stop punching yourself in the face. So, you can see why I think it's important to clean up our environment.
If you've ever just rearranged furniture in a room, you can imagine the relief of removing all this stuff that makes you feel bad about yourself. Imagine what a different day it would be. So, where do we start? I'm going to get into the closet in a minute, but I want to talk about social media, our cookbooks, and our magazines. I think this is an amazing place to start. It's the end of the year, and we need to start making room for our new life in 2024.
Social media might be harder, but I think the cookbooks and the magazines should be easy. Go through them, talk about diet, exercise, weight loss, this trick, that trick. Unless it's something you feel very compelled to keep, I encourage you to get rid of it. Put it on the book, put it on the group. Maybe somebody would love that as a holiday present. What a nice thing you could do to give that all to someone else to get it out of your house.
Your social media, I have mixed feelings about cultivating an echo chamber in our social media feed. So, this is different than people saying something we don't agree with, and we unfollow them. Okay, that I have mixed feelings about. But if it is a feed that does not give you any joy, that does not make you feel good about yourself, that is not teaching you something, that is not expanding you or helping you evolve as a person, just silence them for a month. Okay, I would love for you to unfollow them, but if that feels too stressful, maybe we just silence them for a month or so, stop looking at it. I feel so compelled to take an entire break from social media. I'm a fan. I'm with you, social media. See how that feels.
When we follow people in social media that promote unrealistic body standards, we are going to feel bad about our bodies because the messaging is their bodies are correct, and our bodies are wrong. And I just don't see how that's good for us. There's no upside there. I don't believe in, "Oh, I'll strive for that. It will give me motivation." I don't think that's true. Negative influence does not spur us to do what we need to do to lose weight. We have to lose weight from loving ourselves and self-care, and being mindful. Mindfulness and self-care, two things that I teach. Beating yourself into submission, tough love, does not work. I'm telling you, it does not work. So, following people that make us feel bad about ourselves and this very backward idea that that will motivate us is incorrect. I've run that model with my clients dozens and dozens of times. Our thoughts, our feelings motivate our actions, and negative feelings about ourselves are never going to motivate us to do the actions we need to do to be a healthier, happier person. It just doesn't work that way.
Okay, we've talked about detoxing our social media. Let's move on to our kitchen space a little bit. Really, minimize what's in there and what's out. What if it was a really calming place when we walked in? Do you think that would make it easier to make a nice meal for yourself? I know that my kitchen is cluttered, which happens often with children and a husband. When my kitchen is cluttered, I don't really want to take the time to make a nice meal. I do find those are the times that I am thinking of grabbing something on the go. We can have that if my kitchen table is not able to be used because it's so full of junk, we're not going to sit down and have a nice meal. The kids are going to be on tray tables in front of the TV or my husband and I are going to eat while we're standing up, all things that I totally disagree with and are not good long-term.
So, these are just two small examples. If your kitchen table has space for you to sit and eat, how much nicer mealtime. How much more mindful can you be about your meal if your kitchen is clean and there's space to cook? How much more mindful can you be about cooking a real meal? And there are tons of ways you can do this online. My friend Becky is a coach, and she does organizing for boss ladies. So, I'm going to make sure her information is in the show notes for you. She does very simple one-space-at-a-time cleanup recommendations to help organize.
Now, I wanted to get into our closet and our beauty routine in the morning. I want you to imagine this scenario. We get out of the shower, we slap some lotion on, maybe we go into our closet. We have not cultivated our closet, so probably, we have clothes of varying sizes. If we have been on diets and weight loss has been a priority for us, there are probably all different sizes of clothes. I know when I gained weight, I certainly wasn't buying nice clothes. Tell me if this sounds familiar: "I don't want to spend a lot of money on my clothes until I'm on the size that I want to be, so I'll just get this cheap thing because it fits, with no care in the world. If it looks nice, feels nice, no show, I'll just wear it." The closet has not been cultivated. We try on different outfits, maybe too small, too tight, some fit, don't look that great. Do you think you're feeling about yourself by the time you get dressed and stand in front of the mirror? How much time do you think you're going to spend on your hair and makeup when you've just made yourself feel like crap in your closet? A lot.
Instead of walking into the world and starting your day feeling positive, having taken time for yourself, we've already punched ourselves in the face, I don't know, 20 times before we even start the day. We're already feeling down about ourselves before we even start the day. That is not a way that we want to start our day. So, we've been saying things to ourselves. We've been practicing our affirmations together in the shower. We lovingly put some lotion on. We go to our closet that has been cultivated. Maybe there's not a lot in there, but what's in there fits, and it looks nice, and we like it, so we easily put on an outfit that looks nice. We feel good in the mirror. We say something nice to ourselves. We're doing our hair and makeup. Pretty good, feeling pretty cute. We start our day, a very different experience. It's going to have for the entire rest of the day after that environment detox. Your closet, these things make a difference in how you start your day and how you go through the day, the messaging you get. And if you are like most people and you're on social media at the end of the day, it makes a difference in how you end your day.
This is self-care at its finest. We lose weight by being nice to ourselves. We do not lose weight by being mean to ourselves. It does not work. So, if you beat yourself up all morning, nothing fits, slap on makeup, throw your hair up wet, not feeling cute when you walk out, spend the whole day with all of your messaging telling you that you're not good enough, come home, your house is not detoxed, you don't feel like making dinner, and your cluttered kitchen, you can't even sit down and have a meal on your cluttered table. Then you get on social media for another hour or two of it telling you that you're wrong and bad. That day does not give us thoughts and feelings that are going to keep us motivated to do nice things for ourselves like make a food plan.
Only you can change that. Go to your closet, find one thing that doesn't fit or that you don't like, give it away. Find one cookbook, give it away. Unfollow one person on social media. Clean part of your kitchen table. This will make a difference. You will feel better, and feeling better is what we want. This is self-care. Self-care is one of the keys to losing weight.
I've got a quick reminder before we wrap it up. If you're fed up with all these diets demanding counting every calorie, buying a whole new pantry of food, and not taking into account the fact that you're busy and tight on time, if that's you, I invite you to check out my small group coaching program. We're starting this January, but right now, I'm doing an early bird enrollment just until December 31 with all kinds of fun bonuses. So, if you want to start the new year with a weight loss plan that is not only simple but will fit your hectic schedule, then let's just chat. My contact info is in the notes. I know that we can make a weight loss plan that is simple and effective together. Until next time, bye.