3413: Are You Guilty of This Fat Loss Mindset Trap? by Jill Coleman of Jill Fit on Healthy Weight Loss

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[00:01:00] This is Optimal Health Daily. Are you guilty of this fat loss mindset trap by Jill Coleman of Jill Fit.com and I'm Dr. Neal, your very own personal narrator. Happy Saturday and welcome back to another weekend edition of Optimal Health Daily. This is where I read to you from some of the best health and fitness blogs on the web and always with a bit of my commentary at the end. And with that, let's get right to the post as we optimize your life.

[00:01:30] Are you guilty of this fat loss mindset trap by Jill Coleman of JillFit.com When I was deep in my cardio days, I lived for Fridays at 5 p.m. I was done with work and workouts for the week. I had worked my tail off at the gym teaching 10 group fitness classes, logging miles and miles on the treadmill, and squeezing in some lame weight workouts between hour-long toning classes. Ah, the weekend.

[00:01:59] What's up, Mexican chips and salsa? Hey there, cookies, pizza, Wendy's, bagels and chips. I lived for the weekend. Not because I had anything particularly exciting to do. More that I lived for what the weekends represented. Relaxation and reward. Bring it on. And didn't I deserve it? Hadn't I been a good little exerciser all week long? Besides, hadn't I burned up thousands of calories during the week? So what if I wanted to eat straight from Friday night to Sunday night, right?

[00:02:28] Well, my workout partner at the time can attest to all the good those weekends did me come Monday morning sprints at 6 a.m., doing penance for eating and drinking everything in sight for 48 hours straight. Was it worth it? Monday morning nauseated me did not think so. But come next Friday night, of course, I would always be ready to roll again. In retrospect, there were three things going on here. First, I had the mindset of work and reward.

[00:02:57] Almost like I was owed the ability to eat and drink anything I wanted because I worked so hard in the gym all week. It's funny because back then, if I had a really tough workout or say taught three 60-minute fitness classes in a row, which was common, I would give myself permission to eat whatever I wanted as if the workout was powerful enough to overcome all the c***y food. I was never making any physique progress because I was constantly killing any chance at it by making poor diet choices.

[00:03:27] Ironically, now the opposite is true. If I hit a hard workout, the last thing I want to do is eat a bunch of c***y food. Besides making me feel gross, it would blunt any gains I had made in the gym and I can't have that happening. Second, I wasn't evaluating my own food choices and instead giving myself permission to eat based on what other people were eating. For example, my partner ate for their size and internally I was thinking, well, they're having it so I can too

[00:03:54] when really, it shouldn't have mattered what anyone else was eating. This is often the case when a bunch of folks go out to eat together. When someone orders a not-so-healthy option, it gives the rest of the folks in the group permission to do the same and join in. It's like saying, well, if we're all going to indulge, it's okay and doesn't count, right? Unfortunately, you are alone with yourself when you wake up with the damage the next morning. It's your journey alone and no matter what your friends order, you need to understand what choices you want to make.

[00:04:23] One plus one does not equal zero. Finally, I was completely exhausted from working out for hours all week. Physically, of course, but also mentally. All I wanted permission to do was relax. Food is fun and fun means I'm relaxing. Also, mental exhaustion simply did not leave any room for willpower. All my mental effort had been used up watching the minutes on the treadmill tick down.

[00:04:51] Also, the long-duration cardio was actually making me hungrier and increased my cravings. So much so that the sheer willpower I used during the week to keep them at bay was on its last legs come Friday night, at which point it was game on. Come Friday, all I wanted was permission to relax with food. I see now that this is more of a habit than anything and that there are plenty of other ways to relax that don't involve eating till my heart's content.

[00:05:18] We tend to associate the weekend with relaxation and being able to relax on our diets, which for many may be okay. However, for others, an all-you-can-eat 48 hours is way too much if physique change is the goal. It certainly was for me. I was stuck looking thin and in pretty good shape. But with this constant puffy, waterlogged look, for someone doing hours and hours of cardio, why didn't I have more cuts and definition? The bottom line is this.

[00:05:47] I am all for relaxing and I can certainly understand the desire to loosen the reins every now and then. In fact, letting loose on the weekends is recommended sometimes to reset and maintain balance. But it is important to do it in a conscious way, knowing the physique consequences. And unfair as it may sound, some people can simply indulge and get away with more than others. I know for me, if I drink wine two nights in a row, I am in trouble.

[00:06:14] While other people can drink multiple glasses every night of the week with no negative physique consequences. Just as I am writing this and discussing with my mom, she tells me, but it's fun. Sometimes you just want to lay around and eat. I get that. And I have done plenty of it. But the end result is always disappointment. It never feels as good as you make it out to be in your head. And then you have no one to blame but yourself. And so continues the cycle of guilt and remorse.

[00:06:43] So, how to end the cycle? My answer is to give yourself preemptive cheats during the week. Not so much cheats as much as giving yourself small tastes of things that satisfy you throughout the week so that by the time Friday comes, you haven't deprived yourself so much that nothing less than an all-out binge will satisfy. Do yourself a favor and take the edge off earlier in the week. A spoonful of peanut butter here, a slice of bacon there, a couple of sugar-free candies, and so on.

[00:07:13] You have mastered this, let's call it moderation, when you get to the weekend and treat it like any other day of the week. You eat on Saturday just like you do on Tuesday. You're eating 90% clean 100% of the time versus 100% Monday through Friday and then 30% on the weekend. The former method will keep you leaner in the long run and help you reach your physique goals over time. Not to mention the weekdays aren't so unbearable. Good luck.

[00:07:44] You just listened to the post titled, Are You Guilty of This Fat Loss Mindset Trap? By Jill Coleman of jillfit.com. And I'll be right back with my commentary. If you're a small business, the right hire can be make or break. Hoping the right people see your job posting isn't the best growth strategy. When the pressure's on and you need the right hire, this is a job for sponsored jobs. Join the 3.3 million employers worldwide that use Indeed to connect with quality talent that

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[00:09:33] And I've talked about many times how actors have shed pounds and have broken the internet because they've changed their bodies so dramatically. They went from normal looking to superhero. And all of this change happened within what seems like six or nine months. It makes us feel like we could do that too. But when you hear them interviewed after the movie was filmed and they can go back to their normal routines, what you'll often hear them say is,

[00:10:01] Oh my gosh, there was no way I could follow that plan for the rest of my life. That superhero physique, the diet I had to follow, the hours of workout time I had to put in, that is not sustainable. And so what they end up doing after the movie has wrapped is they go back to their old eating habits and sometimes they admit to binging on foods they weren't allowed to consume for those six, nine months, year, whatever it took. That's not habit formation.

[00:10:30] That's meeting a goal and then relapsing completely into old behaviors. So when we see actors, they get into really great shape for these movies. That is awesome. It takes a lot of work. But when we think to ourselves, Hey, I could do that too. Yes, you could. But is that going to be a lifestyle for you? Or is it going to be something that's temporary until you reach that goal and then go back to your old habits? I would probably argue that it'll be temporary.

[00:11:00] Instead, as today's author Jill mentioned, let's think long term. Let's think about doing things well consistently over time. We don't have to go extreme one way or the other, but everything in moderation, like we always say. All right, that'll do it for the Saturday episode. I hope you're having a great weekend if you're listening in real time. And I'll be back here tomorrow as usual where your optimal life awaits. Let's think about it.