[00:00:00] [00:00:10] Hello, welcome to the podcast. It [00:00:20] is just Maggie again, and I'm excited to chat with you. We're about six days into the new year. How's it going? I, [00:00:30] I've, I've been thinking about it a lot because, you know, I have so much history Starting new things and so I want to just speak to this isn't what I'm talking about today, but [00:00:40] just speak to if you started something and you were feeling really good about it and that excitement has kind of faded a little bit [00:00:50] and you're starting to question, I thought this was easy.

[00:00:52] I thought that I got this. I thought things were going to be different. And if it's already kicking in, maybe it'll be a little bit more delayed. Maybe it won't happen at all. But [00:01:00] if you are starting to feel like, dang, I already major, major air quotes screwed it up. I really want you to just take a moment to be compassionate with yourself to get curious [00:01:10] about what is working and what isn't working and how do you course correct right now to what you're wanting to create.

[00:01:19] [00:01:20] I, there were some decisions I didn't make until January 3rd. I really liked that because I, like for example, and I'll get into this because I, I have been wanting so badly to [00:01:30] do a podcast about the scale so badly and I need to get all my, I need to get all my thoughts organized and in front of me on the third [00:01:40] day.

[00:01:40] of January, I decided I was going to do a scale free 2023. So I didn't make that decision on January 1st, but I didn't weigh myself on January 1st either. [00:01:50] But like decisions that I made that weren't made on January 1st, exactly what I was going to do. Like I like to delay some of my decisions because it helps with that brain drama [00:02:00] that's just like if I don't do it on January 5th, and every day for the rest of my life, then I'm a failure.

[00:02:07] And so yeah. It's okay if you [00:02:10] haven't done exactly what you said you were going to do. I had, I set a goal to start meditating, which I explained to my clients in Vibe Club, that it's a goal that I set every [00:02:20] single year. It's something I've never been successful with. And so yesterday I was like, I, I don't know if I did it yesterday.

[00:02:28] And that would have been on the [00:02:30] third. So I look up my habit tracker, which I'm so glad that I have, and guess what? I didn't mark an X on that day either for yesterday. And then I'm like, oh my gosh, I [00:02:40] didn't do it. Like by the third day, I had already not done it. Now I didn't judge myself for that. I just thought, okay.

[00:02:45] Yeah. that's not a big deal. I'm glad that I know, but isn't it so interesting that I forgot [00:02:50] that I forgot to do it. But then I went to my aura ring, and my aura ring, I did the meditation within aura, so it tracks it, and I did do it. Building habits is not [00:03:00] easy. You are going to miss days. You are going to do the thing you said you were going to stop doing, and you're also, maybe you have a brain like mine, [00:03:10] where you're I forgot, I completely forgot that I did it.

[00:03:12] I didn't mark it in my habit tracker, but, so I would have counted that as a day that I didn't do it, except for Aura Ring showed me I did do it. [00:03:20] It's not a super clean, delightful process when you're creating habits. It's messy. And it's messy because you're, you're doing something, you're trying to take this [00:03:30] action that is not well practiced, is not a subconscious thing.

[00:03:34] And you have to exert a really good amount of effort. brain juice to get it done and to track it [00:03:40] and to remember to do it. And that's why I love starting with really small habits. So if you're feeling disappointed in yourself, if you're feeling like, Oh dang, I really thought that this was going to be [00:03:50] different because we do fall into that.

[00:03:52] It's okay if it's not, and it's not really supposed to be like, it's not really supposed to be completely [00:04:00] different in a day in four days because you watched them videos because you heard a podcast. That's just not how habit creation works. Okay. So, my invitation to you is to be [00:04:10] compassionate instead of judgmental about where you're at so far and really ask yourself, is this working?

[00:04:16] Is this what I want to do? Is this what I foresee [00:04:20] myself doing for a really long time? And let that guide what you do next. The least helpful thing that you can do is judge yourself and beat yourself up and tell yourself that you [00:04:30] already failed and maybe you'll start next Monday. or next month or next year.

[00:04:35] That is the way that we actually sabotage ourself. You don't sabotage yourself by [00:04:40] missing doing the habit that you wanted to do. That's not how you sabotage yourself. You sabotage yourself by using not doing the habit you said you were going to do as a reason to beat [00:04:50] yourself up. Tell yourself you're a loser, that you're never going to get this.

[00:04:53] I guess 2023 isn't your year. You got it wrong again. You're destined to be a failure. That conversation is what's going [00:05:00] to lead to you. to self sabotage. Let's be realistic, okay? You either did the thing or you didn't do the thing. That's the fact. Anything beyond that is just drama, okay? [00:05:10] Okay, again, not related, a little bit related to what I'm going to talk about today, but I wanted to talk a little bit about planning.

[00:05:17] Now, people have lots of [00:05:20] feelings about planning, and I get it because we have a diet brain that really likes to take one thing and say, that thing looks like this other thing. [00:05:30] And maybe this other thing was something that was like, really hard for you, was really a struggle, reminds you of diet, reminds your body of restriction, reminds your brain of [00:05:40] suffering, and you're like, no, if I write down what I'm going to eat for the day, that's a diet, or that's restrictive, or that [00:05:50] isn't spontaneous enough for me.

[00:05:52] You're going to have all these default thoughts about planning. And the best thing to do when it comes to planning is try to separate it from your diet [00:06:00] brain. Because again, if you see planning through your diet brain, you will treat planning like a diet. Because you'll be planning with diet rules, diet mentality.

[00:06:09] [00:06:10] All of these spoken and unspoken beliefs that you have about what you're allowed to plan, what you're not allowed to plan, what is good to eat, what is bad to eat. And so for a lot of people, they really worry about how it's [00:06:20] going to trigger all or nothing mentality and diet thinking and restriction. And so I want to get, I just want to give a little bit more clarity to that.

[00:06:29] How [00:06:30] I teach planning, obviously not like going into super depth, but helping you get a better understanding of the way that. I teach planning to help with weight loss [00:06:40] in a way that's not diety. It's not in an attempt to eat as little as possible and skip whatever food you can go without and [00:06:50] try to limit, restrict, reduce aggressively.

[00:06:54] That is not how I teach planning. That's not how I use planning, and that's not how I want you to use planning either. So [00:07:00] I tried to lose weight many times throughout my life. I'm sure you can relate to that. Many times. Never, ever successful. Like, I don't even feel like I was ever [00:07:10] successful at losing five pounds on purpose, through a diet.

[00:07:16] It just, it was never, it was never successful. There had to be like extreme [00:07:20] restriction, doing it very unhealthily. eating way too little and it makes sense why my body was so resistant to losing weight because it didn't want to be on a diet. So the reason [00:07:30] why it was really hard for me was because my decisions were all over the place.

[00:07:34] Now, my decisions are already all over the place because of the type of brain that I have because of my [00:07:40] ADHD. But when I was trying to lose weight without a real concrete plan or planning or being intentional, it made it really, really hard. [00:07:50] dare I say, damn near impossible for me to lose weight. And that's because the lack of planning led to almost all of my decisions being very [00:08:00] unintentional choices.

[00:08:01] So we aren't overweight because we plan our food. We're not overweight because we're like, this is what I'm going to eat today. I'm going to be intentional with this. [00:08:10] I'm going to listen to my body. Like, that's not what creates the weight. that overweight. We're overweight because of all the unintentional and emotional eating that we do.

[00:08:18] Planning helps create an [00:08:20] intention with your eating. Now, I think some people see it as planning gives me control. It gives me this thing to [00:08:30] like focus on so intently and I'm in charge and using it in a way that's way more of a an intention to [00:08:40] control versus be intentional with the choices that I'm making.

[00:08:46] Planning helps create that intention. It's [00:08:50] not so that you can control everything and use it from a deity place. It's so that you can make choices on purpose instead of [00:09:00] making all your decisions from a reactive place, from an emotional place, from a decisions on the fly place. It also helps with food freedom.[00:09:10]

[00:09:10] The way I have experienced that and seen in my clients is that it gets you in the habit of writing down and planning the foods that you have restricted. You see that you're [00:09:20] intentional with including all kinds of foods in your plan instead of impulsively eating them. eating them, which is how most of us eat bad foods.

[00:09:27] And I'm using air quotes, obviously. So [00:09:30] when you're trying to heal your relationship with food, but you don't have this concrete way of sitting down and being like, tonight we are, we are eating pizza. We're going to start with one piece. [00:09:40] We're going to see how we feel. If we're still physically hungry, we're going to get some more pizza.

[00:09:43] If we put two pieces of pizza on our plate and we eat one and we feel like we've had enough and we're done eating. We're going to [00:09:50] put the other one back, or we're going to throw the other piece away. It's this intentionality that you can bring with seeing on paper, I am choosing this. Because if you're [00:10:00] like me, so much of those bad foods that you overate, that you binge ate, that you emotionally ate, those decisions were never made in advance.

[00:10:08] And they weren't ever made in [00:10:10] advance because I can't lose weight eating that food. I can't be healthy eating that food. I can't plan that food. I just can't. [00:10:20] So we never do. We never plan it. And then we don't realize that it's the lack of planning it that's causing the overeating of it. Because the only relationship we have to those [00:10:30] foods is eating them in reaction to a really shitty day.

[00:10:34] Is eating them in reaction to never letting ourselves have them. So the point of planning [00:10:40] is to write it down and to make that decision and to really have your own back with that, that you're choosing this. So that you can stop the cycle of [00:10:50] feeling like a victim to overeating and feeling like you don't have any control and you're always eating that food without any control.

[00:10:59] Everything goes [00:11:00] dark and you're eating those foods instead of saying, hey, if we're going to repair our relationship with these foods. We need to learn how to eat them intentionally. We need to learn how to eat them on purpose. We need to put them on the [00:11:10] plan because that is a different relationship than I've ever had with those foods before.

[00:11:15] I really want you to take a second to evaluate your relationship with the foods you consider [00:11:20] as bad and ask yourself, how do I eat those foods? And what I mean by that is, do I ever eat them believing that I can have them? [00:11:30] Do I eat them only after I have gone two months without letting myself even see them in my house?

[00:11:36] Do I eat them only when I'm on vacation and I'm with other [00:11:40] people and it's on the counter and I've restricted them for so long that I'm overeating them. What is the relationship with how you eat those foods? My guess is it's not a [00:11:50] relationship where you sit down and you say today I am eating Doritos Today I am eating a cinnamon roll and it allows you to let the thinking [00:12:00] come up that fights you on like, you can't plan that, you can't have that, you're not going to lose weight by eating that.

[00:12:05] Letting all that thinking come up and then say, hey, this is the first step toward being more [00:12:10] intentional here. We're planning the food and then of course you have to address the mindset as well, but. That's how I've seen it help me and clients so much with [00:12:20] finding that food freedom because when they eat this food, they're able to say, I planned that, I chose that.

[00:12:27] And most of us aren't choosing intentionally, we're [00:12:30] choosing reactively. Okay? So another way that planning has really helped is that it made me very. aware of all of [00:12:40] the random eating I was doing that wasn't on my plan. I would say that's one of the first things I notice in clients when they start planning is they end up posting in the Facebook group and saying like, I had no [00:12:50] idea how often I was walking into my pantry, you know, between dinner and bedtime.

[00:12:54] I had no idea how much snacking I was doing while I cooked dinner. I had no idea [00:13:00] how much I was eating off of my kids plates. I just wasn't aware of it. And when you have a plan, and remember, that plan is supposed to include enough food. It's supposed to include foods that you [00:13:10] love. It's supposed to include foods that make you feel good and fuel you and that you just enjoy.

[00:13:15] So remember, we're not talking about some crappy ass plan. We're talking about a plan that [00:13:20] is made from love. of to adequately give you the fuel that you need and help you to enjoy foods that you just really enjoy eating. But [00:13:30] when you have that plan, it's so easy to see, okay, I made this plan and it's a juicy plan, but I'm doing all of this other eating and none of this other eating is on that plan.

[00:13:39] And it [00:13:40] really gives you this clear view of the space between where you are and where you want to go. It's just clarity. And remember, you can't change anything. [00:13:50] If you don't have clarity of what's the problem here, where is the overeating happening? In a coaching call a couple weeks ago, as I was coaching a client, I, I said something like if you're not [00:14:00] able to very easily identify where the overeating is happening, it's going to be so hard to find a solution.

[00:14:06] So when we're like, oh, I don't know it, like, I want you to be able to [00:14:10] say it's always happening at dinner. It's happening every weekend, it's happening when I get off work, like you want to have that information and that information becomes a very [00:14:20] clear, very simple, very easy to see when you are making a plan, a good solid plan that covers all the bases I just talked about [00:14:30] and then also seeing all the times you grabbed something in the break room or you walked into the pantry or you ate the remaining two chicken nuggets off your kid's plate.

[00:14:38] Those, those places just [00:14:40] make it. obvious. And that's what we want. We want it to be obvious so that we know where to start, where to focus. Otherwise, your focus is going to be all over the place. So [00:14:50] here's a good example of that. I used to believe that my weight loss stalled out, like often. Now remember, I had, I did not have a great understanding that [00:15:00] in order to gain weight, I had to be eating more than my body needed.

[00:15:04] In order to maintain weight, I had to be eating the exact same amount of food that maintained the [00:15:10] exact weight that I had. And in order to lose weight, I needed to be eating less than what I had been eating. Not a ton less, just a little bit less. But in the beginning of my [00:15:20] weight loss journey, I saw stalls a lot.

[00:15:21] I believed that I was stalled out often. But when I was stalled out, aka my weight wasn't moving, or it was going up and down five pounds, I never knew what to [00:15:30] change. Because everything I was doing was all over the place. So what would I do? I would change a bunch of things all at once. And then I would have no idea what was helping or hurting.

[00:15:39] It was not [00:15:40] helpful. It made it harder on myself. I don't ask my clients to plan so that they have an extra thing to add to their to do list. The only reason I teach planning the way that I do is [00:15:50] because I see If you leave the drama to the side, I see the way that it helps create clarity and peace in your brain, and it helps you get [00:16:00] clear on what is next.

[00:16:01] What do I actually need to focus on here? Because the way I see people sabotage things is they're doing something specific, and [00:16:10] then when things stop moving or they get frustrated, they throw everything away. everything out and they change plans. They throw everything out and they start a new diet. They throw [00:16:20] everything out at once and then they stall out at that new thing.

[00:16:23] And it's just because we don't need to change everything. We need to change one thing. And if you [00:16:30] don't have a pretty good idea of what's happening from day to day, what you normally plan, how often you normally eat, you know, and even, you know, My clients have a Vibe Club [00:16:40] Planner that allows them to even have the history of choices that they've been making and plans that they've been making so that they can refer back to that.

[00:16:47] It's so that you can get very clear on what's the [00:16:50] next problem to solve here. The worst thing that you can do is throw everything out at once, change all the variables, and then be confused about, [00:17:00] I don't know, what. What helped? I don't know if this is working. I changed all seven things. I'm doing nothing.

[00:17:06] I was doing two weeks ago It's completely different and that keeps you in [00:17:10] the cycle of changing all of the things every two weeks every two months every six months And hopping from one thing to another versus looking at it and being like, oh I don't need to change [00:17:20] everything. It is so clear. I make my plan, but I am always doing extra eating that is not on my plan between three and 7 p.

[00:17:27] m. So instead of having [00:17:30] to figure all of the things out because nothing is working, you have data and a past of planning that allows you to look at that data and say, [00:17:40] I need to solve four weekdays between 3 to 7 p. m. Can you see how much easier and bite sized and [00:17:50] clearer that problem is? Versus, I have no idea what's wrong.

[00:17:54] I don't know what to change. It could be all seven of these things, I'm going to change all [00:18:00] seven of those things at once, that keeps you confused. I don't want you confused. You don't have to be confused. Confusion is not necessary for this process and you can help yourself [00:18:10] by creating and following a process that provides that clarity.

[00:18:16] The clarity is provided by the planning. [00:18:20] When I started incorporating planning, I could troubleshoot so much easier. And I want to speak just a tiny bit to my experience with planning, which was that it was a challenge for me to [00:18:30] create that habit. It was, because I would get, I would do it and I would do it for a bit just like I did everything and then I would stop doing it because I would say, you know what, I, I get the point.

[00:18:39] It's in my [00:18:40] head. I know what I'm doing today and without fail, every time I would stop just being intentional with what I was going to do today, what I was going to eat today, [00:18:50] the extracurricular eating would always shoot up. Always. Because it was like, I don't know. I don't really have a plan. I didn't have that structure in place.

[00:18:58] I didn't have that thing to refer back to throughout the [00:19:00] day of like, all right, it's lunchtime. What are we going to eat? So because I didn't have that, the excuses got a little bit louder. The justification eating got more. It increased. Then my weight would stall [00:19:10] out. Then my weight would go up. And I always found that redirecting back to planning instead of throwing everything out and starting something new, it's just like, I was planning.

[00:19:18] It was working. It was helping. I [00:19:20] stopped planning. Now things aren't working and I don't. feel good. I see so many people use that exact scenario to try something completely different. [00:19:30] You do not need something completely different. You need to refocus on the things that you were doing that you stopped doing.

[00:19:37] And obviously that's for people who have [00:19:40] experience with planning. And have stopped doing that for those of you who have never had experience with planning and you haven't started that process look out for [00:19:50] that as you start it, you're going to get to a point where you say, I get the point. I don't think this is helpful.

[00:19:55] This is so restricted. Whatever. All the thinking will come up. But in order to enjoy [00:20:00] planning, you have to have a juicy story for it. And I see the difference between clients who have a juicy story for it and say, this makes things so much easier. I know what I'm doing. I get to [00:20:10] plan foods that I love.

[00:20:11] This makes things easy. And then other people that are like, this is restrictive. I don't want to do this. I never know what the plans are going to be. This [00:20:20] is, what's the point? They have a terrible time. Okay. So remember that for the things you choose to do, I really recommend in order to make them easier, make sure that.

[00:20:29] The [00:20:30] reason why you're doing those things is juicy and it compels you to do it instead of you taking every step and just pushing against this resistance of like, I don't want to do this. Why am I even [00:20:40] even doing this? I'm hoping with this podcast, you'll be able to see some of the other benefits of why it would be helpful for you instead of just another thing on your to do list because I promise you as [00:20:50] someone with an endless to do list, I don't want to give you extra stuff to do.

[00:20:53] And there's a reason why I keep things so simple within my program and within the way that I coach. And it's because It [00:21:00] was the only way it was ever going to work for my brain. It had to be simple. It had to be like six steps that wouldn't be easy but would be simple and I could [00:21:10] also look for the ways that I was making it harder unnecessarily and get those things out of the way so that these habits became very simple.

[00:21:18] and easy. [00:21:20] And planning also helps to lay the groundwork on learning how to listen to your body instead of tracking calories. There are lots of ways to do the same thing. The [00:21:30] way that I advocate for is a way that, like, doesn't require you to be glued to an app and having to measure and pre track and do all that kind of stuff.

[00:21:37] It's another way for you to be intentional [00:21:40] in a way that makes your life easier, that as long as you, like, have a notepad or a napkin that you can Or your planner. You can write down real quick what you're going to be eating breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack, dessert. [00:21:50] Okay, my planning now looks different. I do want to say that I absolutely do not need to plan right now to maintain my weight loss.

[00:21:56] I maybe would need it a [00:22:00] little bit more if I decided to lose more weight, which I have no intention of doing, but I do still plan. So, the reason that I'm planning is for all the other benefits, a lot of them [00:22:10] that I've spoken about in this podcast and a lot more that I go into in Vibe Club, but reducing that decision fatigue and giving my day a direction and my brain a [00:22:20] direction is very, very helpful.

[00:22:22] I choose to plan at a time when my brain is online. Where I know the goals that I have, where I know, and my main goal [00:22:30] right now is just how I want to feel. Planning helps me to see that. So instead of keeping it in my brain, where like, I want to feel good. [00:22:40] Okay, what does that look like? My plan would show you what that looks like.

[00:22:45] It would show you what a breakfast for a Maggie that feels good looks like and [00:22:50] what a lunch and what a snack and what a dinner looks like if I want to feel good. My planning shows me that. And because I've had so much practice with it. It's, it's easy and it's [00:23:00] helpful and although I don't need to do it, I choose to continue to do it because of the way that I see the benefits and how it supports me.

[00:23:09] So in [00:23:10] Vibe Club, I teach the specifics of planning. Um, I teach you how to create a protocol, how to make a plan, and then of course the way to tune back into your hunger signals, your enough signals, how [00:23:20] to deal with emotional eating, urges, journaling, thought management. I teach all of that in Vibe Club.

[00:23:25] But in January, my new members, especially in Vibe Club, are focusing on [00:23:30] building the foundation of planning and focusing on how to turn it into a habit. So whether they're new in Vibe Club or they're still building that foundation, they're focusing on planning and then. [00:23:40] the other members are focusing on hunger and enough.

[00:23:42] So there are two different paths. It's not too late to join if you want to join. In fact, let me say something about that. It's not too late to join. [00:23:50] In fact, this is such a good time to join. And I don't care if you hear this when it airs. I don't care if you hear it a week later. I don't care if you hear it two weeks later.

[00:23:57] It is a good time. [00:24:00] I told you I have weird feelings about the first of the year. And, and so if you hear this on January 6th, you know what your brain's going to do? It's going to be like, oh, they started a [00:24:10] challenge in January. On January 1st. It's January 6th. It's too late. Maybe I'll join Vibe Club at the first of next month.

[00:24:15] I want you to notice that thought and I want you to interrupt it. And if you feel called to be in Vibe [00:24:20] Club, I want you to join. Because it means that you resonate with what I talk about on this podcast. It means you feel the pull to do that. It's such a good way to interrupt your brain, pushing back and being like, no, you're too late.

[00:24:29] No, [00:24:30] that's even better. Show your brain you don't need a Monday. You don't need a new year. You don't need a new week to start doing something different [00:24:40] and that you're not going to fall into that trap anymore. And that you can get started on this process and learning what I teach and building a foundation because the foundation that [00:24:50] you build is going to be the most important thing that determines whether you go all the way with this.

[00:24:54] It's going to determine, does this become something that becomes easy for me? Am I willing to be [00:25:00] messy? Am I willing to miss a day? Am I willing to forget to make a plan sometimes? Am I willing to notice at 3pm I didn't make a plan? And instead of when my brain says, well I [00:25:10] guess it's too late, it's already been half the day, why would you make a plan?

[00:25:12] This plan isn't going to work, eat everything you want. That you take the time to hear that conversation and say, no, I didn't make a plan so far [00:25:20] today, but I forgot and I just remembered and I'm going to make that plan now. Your brain is going to tell you, you should have started January 1st. You should have started on Monday.

[00:25:28] You should have made a plan [00:25:30] this morning. You shouldn't have overeaten at lunch. And that's when you get the opportunity to be like, I cannot overeat at my next meal. I can make a plan right [00:25:40] now. I do not need to start on the first of the month. Those are my favorite times to ever make a change. Because they so clearly go against everything that we believe [00:25:50] with our diet brain.

[00:25:51] That there is a right time to do this, that there is a right way to do this, that there, you know, is a rule book here. There isn't a right time to do this. I think the right time to [00:26:00] do it is when you feel like you want to get started. So if you want to join the done dieting habit challenge, it's a great day to do that.

[00:26:06] You can join at vibewithmaggie. com and I will talk to you [00:26:10] next week. Bye guys.

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