Welcome back to the podcast. I am very excited to be talking to you today about another one of our thought errors, but this time about our beliefs about our ability to lose weight as well as this sort of peer pressure I want to eat however everyone else is eating. So, a lot of times, we'll feel pressure to eat like everyone else despite our weight loss goals, so I wanna talk about this a little bit, how this can impact us, and maybe some thought switches that might be useful.
This idea, I want to eat like everyone else, I know that I’ve run into this in some sort of social situation, so I’ll either be going out with girlfriends for dinner or I’ll be out on a date with my husband or some other group dining event, right? And there’s lots of ways that we can plan ahead for these things, but we might have a little "woe is me," a little compared despair when we look at what everyone else is eating compared to what we’re eating. So, if I’ve ordered a salad, I’ve looked at the menu ahead of time, I’ve decided that’s what I want, or I’ve ordered the burger no bun, and then the person next to me is eating nachos, which are one of my favorite foods, right? So someone’s eating nachos next to me, and I might have a little "woe is me," like I wanna be able to eat that too, how come they get to eat it, right? And this almost scarcity mentality about how come I don’t get that too, right? How come I don’t get to do that, how come I don’t get to eat that way?
So I wanna call this out for a number of reasons. Number one, we have no idea what’s going on for that other person. We have no idea if they haven’t eaten for a week and this is the first time they’re eating, maybe they fasted all day, maybe they’ve worked that into their meal plan somehow, right? Like I’m a big proponent of planning ahead. Maybe they knew this dinner was coming and they planned ahead accordingly and they’ve planned to have nachos. Maybe it’s their exception meal for the week, maybe they just don’t care and they’re just eating whatever they want, they’re not really worried about their health, there’s lots of unknowns that we have a tendency when we’ve got some food chatter going on and maybe feeling a little deprived to think we’re exactly like everyone else, so if they’re eating nachos I should get to as well, it’s just a false thought, it’s a false belief, because they’re not like us. We honestly have no idea what’s going on for them, and we don’t need to know. Their journey of their wellness and their food choices have nothing to do with ours, just like ours have nothing to do with theirs. On a side note, there is a shocking number of Americans that are overweight or obese at this point, like way more than 50%, so if that’s the circulated thought in our head, I should just be able to eat whatever everyone else is eating, we don’t really want that to be true either, okay? Everyone else is eating more than they need for their body. The majority of people are overweight, which means they are eating more than their body needs to function well, so we don’t want to eat like everyone else, it’s a false thought, it’s not real. When we really stop and question it, we can know that’s not the case. We not only don’t want to eat more than our body needs, if we’re trying to lose weight, we might be trying to eat just a little bit less than our body needs so that our body has to go talk to little chef, go to the freezer section, and get some of that fat storage, that stored energy, and start to eat that off of our body, right? To go, if you didn’t hear that episode about Chef, I encourage you to come back and listen to it, but we basically have immediate energy and stored energy, our fat stored energy. So if we are trying to deplete our stores and get rid of some fat, we might need to actually eat a little bit less than our body needs, give it a little bit less immediate energy to make it go and get some stored energy. Our body doesn’t always like to do that because it’s much more exciting to get fresh food, but it is a way to start depleting our fat stores, is to force our body to go get energy from there. So everyone else, everyone else, by the majority of people are eating more than they need. We are trying to lose weight, so we don’t even want to eat just what we need. We want to eat a little bit less than what we need in this moment so that our body goes and taps energy from our storage. So when that comes up, when you’re in a group eating situation, this isn’t fair, how come they get to eat it and I don’t, everyone else gets to eat it, I want you to immediately hear that in your brain and to stop doing that, because when you really think about these thoughts, it’s not true, we don’t want to eat whatever everyone else is eating, we don’t want to eat how they are, we don’t want to eat the way the majority of people are. Not only that, let’s say the person we’re envious of their meal is at a healthy weight, we have no idea what their plan for this meal was, we have no idea the steps they took to plan for this meal, again, might have done who knows what, it might be their exception meal, this might be the meal where they’re kind of letting it go and they know they want a high-calorie meal or more than they need, and they want to do that once this month and we’re catching them, and our brain wants to tell us that every day, I’m telling you that’s not true, so let’s talk about some other general false thoughts that our brain tells us. It really is trying to help us, our brain is not bad, but it just has a lot of mechanisms for safety that are not really part of our lives now. This comparing what other people are eating really breaks down to, we don’t want to be singled out because we don’t want to be kicked out of the tribe because that would risk our survival. The reality of the situation, it doesn’t matter in 2024, and nobody’s really looking at what you’re eating. Anyway, nobody cares what you’re eating. They care about what they’re eating. They might have just as much mental drama going on about their dinner as you do, we have no idea. So some general beliefs about ourselves. Let’s talk about what a belief is, a belief is just a thought that we have thought so many times we assume it’s true and we don’t question it at all. And I usually hear people talk about this with sort of their genetic makeup to weight loss. My family has always been big, my family just doesn’t lose weight easily. I just don’t lose weight easily, no matter what I eat, I gain weight, I can barely eat, I still won’t lose weight, right? These are beliefs we have. I think a lot of them as we are around us getting older too, right? Oh, you gain weight after you have babies, you never get back to your pre-baby weight, you gain weight when you go through menopause and there’s no way to take it off, when I’m happy, I gain weight, when I’m happy, I lose weight, when I’m sad, I lose weight, when I’m sad, I gain weight, we have all these rules, these beliefs that we think are really true about us. Oh, my whole family just has big thighs, my whole family can’t lose weight. My whole family gets fat when they get older, these are not true, they are just thoughts. We have thought so many times we stop thinking to question them. Everyone has the ability to lose weight, yes, or some things do we have a genetic predisposition, of course, does that mean we’re doomed and that we have no choice or decision in the matter, absolutely not. More importantly, let’s say, for argument's sake, all these things are true, repeatedly thinking them to yourself while you’re trying to lose weight is not helpful. If you are putting in the work but every day thinking multiple times a day, I just don’t lose weight easily, I just gain weight easily, it’s really hard for me to lose weight, that is not helpful, that is not helping you, that’s not helping motivate you, that’s not helping you keep going, so we need to stop thinking it. Even if you want to argue with me that it’s true, let’s assume it is, it’s not helpful, it is not serving us, it is not getting us to our goal, so we need to stop thinking it. I challenge you to think about this week. Do you think you are OK? What beliefs do you have about yourself? What beliefs do you have about your ability to lose weight, about your body, about what size you can be? And think about how many of those are just things you’ve never questioned, like I just can’t lose weight. I’ll never be less than a size 8, I’ll never be less than a size 10, I’ll never be less than a size 14, whatever it is, think about all these rules that you have about your weight, your body, your ability to lose weight, the size you’re supposed to be, your family genetics, all of it. I want you to think about all of it and start to pick it apart and question it. And if it’s too hard to question it, too hard to convince yourself that it’s not true, you can jump on a call with me and I will help you. Your two-plan, 2-pound plan call, I will help you go through these errors. More importantly, if you don’t wanna jump on a call, just they’re not helping you. These thoughts are not helping you get to your goal, so even if you can’t fight them telling you they are the truth, we can still choose not to listen, we can still choose to think something else, because those thoughts that we are just unable, for some reason, to lose weight are not helpful, we do not need to eat like everybody else. The majority of America is overweight or obese. We don’t need to eat like them, our healthy friends that might be having an indulgence meal, we don’t know, we don’t need to know, they’re not us, we’ve planned our meal ahead of time, it doesn’t matter what anyone else is having, and these beliefs about your ability to lose weight, what size you can be, are garbage, and I want you to question every single one of them or at least tell yourself I don’t need to think those cause they’re not helping me get to my goal. My favorite addition to those thoughts is that might be true but let’s just see, right? I can never be less than a size 12, that might be true, but let me just do the work and see what happens, give yourself that little opening to just try, to just be curious, to just see what happens. All the women in my family just can’t lose weight after they have children, maybe, but I’m gonna do the work and let’s just see what happens. Maybe I can be the one that’s different, who knows, be willing to try, be willing to stop comparing your meals to everyone else’s, eat what feels good for us, and stop believing garbage thoughts about your ability to lose weight or what size your body should be, alright? I can’t wait to talk to you next week. Thanks for listening. If you thought this was helpful, please send it to a friend so we can spread the message. I’m here to make weight loss simple, and this is how we do it until next week, bye.