99. Learning to Let Go to Move Forward

Sometimes the hardest part of change isn’t what we do—it’s what we’re finally willing to let go of.

As summer winds down, this is the perfect moment to talk about the baggage that keeps us stuck in old patterns. In this episode, Dr. Stacy Heimburger shares why holding onto diet rules, past failures, and body hang-ups makes weight loss harder than it has to be—and what you can do to finally release them.

You’ll learn:
✨ Why old diet rules (like “good vs. bad foods”) sabotage progress
✨ How past failures sneak into your self-talk and shape your future
✨ Why waiting for a “goal weight” before you feel confident never works
✨ What your brain has to do with holding onto the familiar, even when it hurts
✨ A simple journal prompt and one tiny action you can try this week to lighten your load

This episode is your invitation to set something down, so you can finally move forward with freedom.

💡 Want to take the next step in breaking free from old patterns? Check out my End Emotional Eating Vault here → https://www.sugarfreemd.com/vault

Free 2-Pound Plan Call!
Want to jump start your weight loss? Schedule a free call where Dr. Stacy Heimburger will work with you to create a personalized plan to lose 2 pounds in one week, factoring in your unique circumstances, challenges, and aspirations. Schedule now! www.sugarfreemd.com/2pound

This episode was produced by The Podcast Teacher: www.ThePodcastTeacher.com.

Transcript

Hey everybody, welcome back to the podcast. I'm Dr. Stacey Heimberger and this is Weight Loss Made Simple. I want to talk about something today that can feel really uncomfortable in real life, and it's about this concept of letting go.

Because sometimes the hardest part about changing something or wanting to start something new isn’t actually about what we’re doing. It’s not our action steps to move forward. It’s actually what we’re willing to set down and let go and sort of free ourselves from. The hardest part of making progress is not about adding more willpower or finding more motivation or deciphering the perfect plan.

It’s about letting go of the old stories, the old rules, the old patterns. Those are what are keeping us stuck. Okay, so that’s a pretty important concept and it’s easy to say but sometimes harder to do in real life. But this episode is coming at the end of summer, and it feels like the perfect moment. The last couple of episodes have been about setting new routines and transitioning, and so I think this is the perfect add-on to that little series.

This idea of letting go—letting go of the past, letting go of that baggage. And so I’m going to walk you through three categories, or three of the most common types of baggage that I see most of us carry around. And then we’ll talk about why it’s so hard to let go. And then I’ll give you, of course, some practical tools and tips on how to move forward.

So this is a warmup—this is episode 99. Next week will be episode 100. I’m going to share some things on that episode that I think you’re really going to enjoy. So make sure you come back for that one too.

Alright, baggage number one. Let’s be real. Most of us are not just carrying around a little extra physical weight. There is a lot of emotional and mental weight that we carry around.

And this idea of our old diet rules, I think, is the hardest one to let go—or the heaviest one, if you want to put it that way. These old diet rules are very heavy, and they’re so patterned and ingrained. Lots of us have been on diets for most of our lives, right? And diets are full of rules and restriction.

And then it gets us into this idea of being good or bad. Okay—food is not good or bad. There is no morality to your pizza, okay? You eating pizza does not make you a good person or a bad person. When we have dieted for years and years and years, and we have all these old rules, it is hard to let that go.

We need to let go of that. Food is just food. I teach a good-better-best system, because when we think of food as bad, and we have these diet rules that encourage that, it actually encourages us to binge eat or overeat. And this idea that it’s “bad” or “sexy” or that we’re being rebellious when we eat something we “shouldn’t eat,” right?

So if we can start to let go of those rules and just know that food is food, okay? It solves hunger. The problem it solves is hunger. It is something we need to eat for fuel, okay? And we either eat for fuel, for feelings, or for flavor. And there’s nothing wrong with any of those things.

So these old diet rules—what is good, what is bad, how many carbs, how much we should eat, and the idea that if I just keep track I can be perfect—it is so heavy to carry all of that around.

When I started eating differently, and when I decided to try to give up sugar just to feel less hungry, I ate bacon every morning. And there are lots of diets that will say, “Bacon’s the best,” or, “Bacon’s bad, bacon’s horrible, bacon causes heart disease.” Right? There are so many labels people like to put on bacon—good or bad. And we do that with every food.

All of these diets have a tendency to contradict each other, and then it’s confusing, and then we get overwhelmed, and then we just don’t want to do any of it. So the first baggage I’m asking you to let go of is all these old diet rules. Just set them free, okay?

The second heaviest baggage, or the second weight I want you to let go of, is past failure.

There are all of these statements we make about ourselves—which are just thoughts, by the way—sentences in our heads about our ability to lose weight that we don’t even always hear ourselves saying. Things like, “I always quit when it gets hard,” “I’m good up until dinner,” “I can stick to something for this amount of time,” “My people are just big,” “I’ll never lose my butt,” “I’ll never be less than a size 12.”

There are all of these stories we tell ourselves, and the ones about our weight and anytime we’ve attempted to lose weight in the past can really be so detrimental when we’re trying to start something new.

So when we say things like, “I never stick to a plan for longer than six weeks,” or, “Every time I lose weight, I gain it back plus some,” we say those things like they are fact. But they’re not—they’re just a story. Just a sentence in our head.

And the way our brain works is when we have these thoughts and we say these sentences in our heads, we then have feelings about them, which drive our actions. And those actions are always going to reinforce that thought.

So when we have thoughts like, “I always gain the weight back,” we are putting that into the universe. Like we are going to make that happen, because we keep telling ourselves these lies about our abilities or about what we did in the past. We interpret them as personality traits, character flaws, or just facts. And they’re really not. They’re interpretations of events that happened in the past.

And the past has no bearing on what we do in the future. It does not matter what diets we’ve done in the past. If you are listening to me, you are trying something new today, okay? And new is totally different. What we do from this point forward can be completely different than anything we’ve done in the past. The past does not dictate our future results.

So really watch these old diet stories, all of these things we interpret as facts, all of these past events that we are making somehow 100% predictive of our future—because that’s just not how it works.

Alright, the third one is our body hang-ups.

You know I get really worked up about this one, because it’s so sneaky. We’ve usually been saying such mean things to ourselves about our bodies that we don’t even realize we’re doing it. And we have this misconception that we will magically like our body when the scale hits a certain number. And it’s just not going to happen.

That’s this arrival mentality—“When I get there, things will magically be better.” But confetti doesn’t fly from your ceiling when you step on the scale and hit your goal weight. If your goal is 140 and you hated your body at 141, one pound is not going to magically make you like your body.

When we say these things to ourselves and carry this body shaming with us through our weight loss, it just saps your confidence.

And confidence, by the way, is a feeling that we can generate with our thoughts. We can build confidence right now, no matter what the scale says. And then when we’re confident at 141, when the scale does hit 140, we feel confident—but it’s not the scale. It’s the work we did in our minds. It’s the mindset shift we made to feel confident at our goal weight.

So body hang-ups—we have got to let that go. It’s like a sneaky little saboteur that we do not want anywhere with us.

So let’s talk about why we need to let go and why it’s so important.

The shame that comes from those three pieces of baggage—diet rules, fear of failure, and body shaming—sets us up for failure. It reinforces perfectionism, this idea that I have to do it 100% right. And it can really derail us if one thing goes wrong during the day. And life is going to go wrong during the day. Life never goes the way we think it’s going to go.

When we’re carrying all that baggage, and then life happens and we don’t do things perfectly, it’s so easy to give up. So easy to say, “I’ll just start again tomorrow.”

But when we can let go of that and start being more open to progress, to baby steps, to consistency instead of perfection—we set ourselves up for so much more success.

Let me tell you something about your brain. Your brain is literally wired to cling to the familiar. Change feels hard because of this. Familiar—even if it’s painful—is the “known.” And our brain does not like the unknown. It is so afraid of what we don’t know that it will stay in a painful known situation.

So even if it sucks, familiar feels safer than unfamiliar. That’s why people stay in jobs they hate, in relationships that are not serving them, or go back to the same diets that didn’t work before. Because the known, even if it’s awful, feels more comfortable than the unknown.

So yes, change is difficult. Our brain hates change. But there’s a reason we hang on to all that baggage—it’s familiar. And even though it’s painful, we know it.

One of my coaches used to say it’s like sitting on a nail. It hurts, but at least you know what’s going to happen. Getting rid of that nail, standing up, moving to a new chair—that’s unfamiliar. That’s scary. But growth is on the other side of discomfort.

So think of letting go like cleaning out a closet. Sometimes it gets worse before it gets better. And it doesn’t just take one time. Letting go is not a one-time event. Especially when these are things we’ve been telling ourselves over and over for years. It’s going to take practice.

And when you try to let this stuff go and it comes back up, that does not mean anything has gone wrong. It just means it takes practice. Anything worth having is worth practicing.

So how can we start letting go?

Here’s something tangible: get out a pen and paper, or open the notes app on your phone, and ask yourself: What am I carrying right now that is not serving me?

Don’t overthink it. Just five minutes. Write it down. You’ll be surprised what comes out when you put pen to paper. Just thinking it is not the same. We have to write it down.

Then, pick one small action. Look at the three common categories—diet rules, past failures, body hang-ups. Choose one thing to let go of this week.

Maybe you stop labeling foods as good or bad. Maybe you catch yourself when you repeat old failure stories and swap them for something more helpful, like, “This time I’m trying something different.” Maybe you say one kind thing about your body.

It doesn’t have to be dramatic, but each little bit we release creates momentum. Momentum is like a big wheel—you’ve got to push it to get it moving. And all this baggage is like bricks in front of the wheel. We’ve got to move the bricks so momentum can start.

So write down one thing to let go of. Then, choose one tactical action this week to reinforce it.

Letting go is not weakness—it’s strength. It is just as important as whatever plan, protocol, or workout you’re doing. Because if you don’t let go, it’s literally weighing you down. Not just mentally and emotionally, but physically too.

Okay, friends—please share this with someone who needs it, and make sure you tune in next week for our big Episode 100. And thank you so much for listening. Bye.