268. Jody’s Rules for Weight Loss

I’m Jody Moore and this is Better Than Happy episode 268: Jody’s Rules for Weight Loss.

Welcome to Better Than Happy. I’m your host, Jody Moore. I’m a mother to four children. I’m a huge Taylor Swift fan, and I’m a Master Certified Life Coach. I’m here to teach you how to manage your brain and manage your emotions so that you can create a life that’s even better than happy. Are you ready? Let’s go.

Hello everybody, welcome to episode 268. I’ve been getting tons of questions from you guys about the status of my weight loss journey because I am very vocal and open with you about that, especially those of you in Be Bold. I’m showing all the behind the scenes stuff, and some of you are losing weight with me. I talk about it just all the time because it’s my big impossible goal right now. I recommend that you always have an impossible goal. I like to always have one because I like to push myself, stretch myself and evolve myself.

And so weight loss is the thing for me right now. So I wanted to do a podcast episode because I created some rules for myself. Now, I’m not a lover of rules. I have a rebel tendency according to Gretchen Rubin’s assessment of tendencies, if you will. And I don’t like people to tell me what to do. I don’t even like to tell myself what to do. I like to rebel against what I tell myself to do.

So these aren’t your typical weight loss rules, these aren’t the kinds of rules that I think you’re going to dislike. Most of them are rules that I love that are making my weight loss journey so much more fun for me.

So just give it a chance and if you’re not interested in losing weight, my guess is you’ll be able to apply these rules to any goal that you have. You’ll be able to tweak them a little bit so that they fit with your goals, any of them that you like. But I think it’s actually important for you to create your own set of rules as well, borrow from wherever you want to. All of these I have borrowed from other people.

But part of what makes us successful at a goal is that we take ownership of the goal and we have intentionality behind trying to achieve the goal, and maybe you call them rules or maybe you don’t. I think you’ll see in a minute why I call them rules.

Now, before I get into them I have 10 I’m going to share with you. But I do want to be very transparent that I am working with Brad Jensen of Key Nutrition. I am one of his clients and he is just an amazing human being. I am so appreciative, not only of his nutrition, of knowledge, but he is so generous and abundant, and there’s just so many things about him that I love and appreciate. And so I have just really enjoyed working with him.

So if you want to learn more from my nutrition coach, his name is Brad Jensen and you can go to the Key Nutrition podcast or his Instagram page, The Sober Bodybuilder, or Key Nutrition website and work with him or one of his coaches. Anyway, Brad is guiding me. I am counting macros as I think that’s the correct way to say it. I basically set a goal for myself that Brad helps me to determine each week of how many calories I’m going to shoot to eat each day and what will those calories be made up of when it comes to proteins, fats and carbohydrates.

Then I try to also make good choices about what kinds of proteins, what kind of fats, what kind of carbohydrates. But I’ll get into some of the rules in just a minute. But I’m basically following the strategy of counting macros. I’m drinking lots of water, I’m getting lots of sleep and I’m moving my body more. Shocking, right? Not shocking at all. I mean I’m eating a little bit less and I’m eating a little bit better. And I’m moving my body more, that’s it, that’s what I’m doing.

So when people are like, “How are you losing weight, what are you doing?” Well, the short answer is I’m eating less and moving my body more. But that’s not really what we want to know, that’s not the hard part, we all know that, we eat a little less, we eat a little better and we move a little more, we’re going to lose some weight. The hard part is how are you getting yourself to do that?

How are you dealing with all the discomfort when you don’t eat the junk food that you want to eat or when you don’t overeat and you want to? How are you dealing with all that comes with doing those things? How are you dealing with the lack of desire to exercise and doing it anyway? That’s the real question, that’s what we really need to know. It’s not rocket science how to lose weight. So that’s where my 10 rules come in. These 10 rules are the reason that I’m able to do it, that I’m able to stick to my macros, drink lots of water, get lots of sleep and move my body more.

So let’s get into it. Rule number one, I set this rule for myself at the very beginning. And in fact I wasn’t able to follow this rule for a while and so I didn’t move forward until I could follow the rule. And the rule is it has to be fun or we don’t do it. That’s it. I tried the other way, I tried punishing myself and suffering my way to weight loss and I was able to lose weight. It just was miserable and terrible and then I didn’t maintain that because I didn’t want to feel miserable and terrible all the time.

So in fact my other coach, Brooke Castillo, one of my many coaches that I have, she’s the one who said to me at one point, “You need to just stop with all this food stuff, nutrition and trying to lose weight because you are not having any fun.” And those of you who know me know that I like to have fun. I can have fun at almost anything. And I was not having fun. I was full of emotion, and drama, and suffering, and highs and lows. She’s like, “Just stop.” And I didn’t know if she meant just stop for like a month, she didn’t really tell me that and I didn’t ask her.

I just stopped and I didn’t start again for over two years, it took me a couple of years to get to the point where I started wrapping my head around it could be fun, it’s possible that it could be fun. And I’m not willing to do it if I can’t have fun along the way. So it has to be fun or I don’t do it. And when I notice myself slipping into the pain and suffering, and the drama, and all the other stuff I go, “Whoa, remember, we’re only doing this because we want to evolve ourselves to the next version of us.”

But we don’t have to do that, we could just not do any of this and we’re not going to suffer our way there. Don’t confuse fun with easy, don’t confuse fun with indulgent, or unconsciousness around food. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m willing for it to be hard but I know I can have fun doing challenging things. I do it all the time in my business. I do it in other ways, I know I could apply it to food, so that’s my number one rule, it has to be fun.

Number two, we’re not waiting around to feel good. I’m not going to wait until I lose weight to love my body. I’m not going to wait until the scale goes down to congratulate myself and be proud of myself. There is no reason to wait for any of that and it doesn’t really work very well. Why would we want to delay feeling proud of ourselves, loving our bodies, appreciating our bodies, feeling confident, all of that, feeling attractive, that is not about the size of your body, you guys I promise you. It’s about the way you’re thinking about yourself, so I’m not waiting around to feel good.

I’m doing all of the work right now to love my body and feel good about myself, and it requires work, don’t get me wrong. It’s not like just a given, but I work at it daily. I literally every day practice loving my body, practice appreciating my body, practicing kind things to myself and practice being confident. And I’ve been practicing it long enough that I’m pretty darned good at it now, it doesn’t require as much effort. Number two, do not wait around to feel good, feel good right now.

Okay, rule number three, and this might seem like a random rule for you, but to me this is a rule that serves me very well. And it’s a rule that I only came up with a little ways into my nutrition journey, and it’s this. No hot French fries or day old cake. Now let me tell you what I mean. I eat all the food still. I still eat my favorite foods I just eat less of them. I’m more conscious when I’m eating them.

And so no hot French fries has to do with one day I decided to have some fries with my, whatever I was eating, my lunch. I was probably picking up McDonald’s for my kids or something, and I grabbed some fries for me. And I went to put a French fry into my mouth and it was so hot, it was burning my tongue, burning my mouth, I had to hurry and swallow it as fast as I could so that my mouth didn’t keep on getting burnt.

And I realized that is no way to eat French fries, because if I’m going to eat French fries, I want to enjoy it, I want to savor it. I want to keep it in my mouth as long as possible because that’s the good part. It’s the part that is the most enjoyable is, tasting the fry. And if I just swallow it down because it’s so hot I can’t keep it in my mouth then I just missed out. So I don’t eat French fries that are steaming hot, I wait till they cool off enough then I can really enjoy them.

And the same with baked goods, again, any of you who have known me for very long know that I love cake, and cookies, and donuts and all the baked goods. Those are my most favorite treat, even more than French fries.

But in my brain all of those things were so amazing and it wasn’t until I slowed everything down and really tasted it, and really sat with it and was conscious and slow, and tasted each bite that I realized that baked goods aren’t always that amazing. You know when they’re really good? The day you bake them, when they’re fresh, a fresh baked cookie or a fresh baked slice of cake really is pretty amazing, the first couple of bites anyway. But by the second day I would say the awesomeness of it goes down at least half. That’s not worth it to me.

So it’s not a rule like I’m not allowed to have these, it’s just not worth it, alright. That’s what we have to think about when it comes to food, I know eating chocolate cake is going to have a negative impact on my body, not just on my weight. It’s going to send my blood sugar through the roof. It’s going to make me crave cake even more the next day so it’s going to be even harder for me not to eat it. It has a lot of negative effects. It also has some positive effects which is the taste of the cake, and the enjoyment of it, and the dopamine hit I get from it.

So I’m just weighing out more consciously now the costs and the benefits. And the cost of day old cake is not nearly worth it. Sometimes a fresh piece of cake, yes, so that’s why I have rule number three, no hot French fries or day old cake.

Okay, number four, this is again a rule I have set for myself which is I track everything and I try to beat the level daily. Okay, so like I mentioned, I am tracking my calories and my macronutrients each day. And my coach, Brad helps me determine what should the numbers be that I’m shooting for. But what’s tempting I’ve found, eat just a little bit of something and think I don’t need to track that because it was just a little bite. I just had one taste of it. Or I’m just not going to put this in the tracker because I’m kind of embarrassed that I ate that.

In some ways though not tracking it is going to mean that I didn’t eat it and that it’s not having whatever effects it’s having on my body, that’s not true. So I decided, listen, I’m going to track everything and try to beat the level daily. What I mean by beating the level is I use the MyFitnessPal app on my phone, it makes it so easy. People that are complaining about tracking food and writing down everything they eat you really need to take advantage of technology, because it’s literally the simplest thing in the world to track using MyFitnessPal.

And I think of it like playing a game on my phone, that’s the other thing I love about having an app on my phone is it’s no different than logging into my phone and playing Candy Crush or whatever other game you might like playing on your phone. I login my phone, I pop in what I ate.

Now, each day I have the numbers on MyFitnessPal that count for me my calories and my macronutrients. And I’m trying to make all the numbers line up correctly, kind of like Tetris. I’m trying to get the right amount of every macronutrient in and stay within the calorie range and not go too far over or too far under on any of those categories. And still not be starving, and still not feel deprived, and still have a little bit of the fun things I like to eat, and still get all the nutrients that my body needs. That’s the game. Do you see how it can be fun when you think of it like a game?

But even if I’m going to go way over, if I’m not going to beat the level because I’m going to not hit the numbers correctly, I’m going to track it, that is my rule. Because when I meet with my coach, Brad, I want him to have all the accurate information. He needs to know what I ate as we look at how my body’s responding. And if I’m not accurately tracking what I ate he can’t really give me very good advice. So I track everything, I try to beat the level daily, that’s rule number four.

Rule number five, shoot for a 100% but be happy with 80%. So I’m aiming to beat the level, I’m aiming to get as close to a 100% as I can. In other words, coming in right within five or so on every macronutrient level and within a 100 calories plus or minus on my calories. I’m trying to get to a 100%. I’m trying to nail it. That’s the goal. But if I come in at 80%, I’m still celebrating. 80% gets it done most of the time you guys. If I consistently hit those numbers at 80% I’m still going to achieve my weight loss goals.

Now, would it be faster if I hit them at a 100% every day? Yeah. But would that be sustainable? Maybe not. Would the negative that I would create in terms of depravation, or stress, or whatever else, sort of have that diminishing return? Possibly. So I’m still shooting for a 100, some days I get to 95%, sometimes I hit about 90%. But even if I hit 80% I congratulate myself. That was a good day, we’re doing an amazing job, let’s keep going. That’s rule number five; shoot for a 100 but be happy with 80.

Rule number six, no food is off limits. Just try to eat like a lady most of the time. Okay, so to me that’s the way that I think about it that makes the most sense to me. It’s like let’s just try not to eat like a complete a-hole, let’s try not to eat like such a jerk, let’s try not to eat like a toddler. Let’s just try to eat like a lady.

But no food is off limits, if I want to have a treat, or I want to have a sweet, or I want to have French fries, or I want to have fast food, I still do sometimes. But the amount of those things that I used to eat wasn’t really me eating like a lady, a lady eats a little bit of that every now and then. So that’s rule number six for me.

Rule number seven, I am only allowed to enjoy it if I’m going to eat something sort of off plan. So when I say off plan I mean that thing that I’m going to choose to eat, that isn’t really going to give me nutrients for my body, or at least not very many, it’s what I would call junk food or something, sometimes I’m going to choose to eat that stuff. And whether I’m going to go over on my calorie and macro counts of the day or not, if I’m going to eat that I must enjoy it. That is the rule.

I am not allowed to go unconscious and just inhale it really quickly thinking that then maybe I won’t notice that I ate it, or other people won’t notice that I ate it. I’m not allowed to beat myself up and feel guilty and ashamed because I ate it. I’m not allowed to tell myself that I’m weak and I’m never going to get there if I’m going to eat it. I’m only allowed to enjoy it.

Do you know what is required for you to enjoy it? You have to really be with it and be conscious with it. And you have to slow it down and you have to taste every bite. And you have to say things like, “This is delicious. I love eating this right now.” Instead of hurry and just eat it as fast as we can, that’s what I used to do.

So the other thing that’s so amazing about rule number seven, if I’m going to eat junk I have to enjoy it is when you slow it down and you really allow yourself to be present with it, you really do discover that sometimes only the first few bites are enjoyable. And it’s not that amazing anymore and you decide you don’t even really want the rest.

I say sometimes, because other times I’m like, I’m going to eat that whole piece of chocolate cake because every bite is delicious. So there’s times though when you get really still, and you really slow it down, and you really allow yourself to enjoy it. If you’re going to eat it you might as well enjoy it anyway. There’s times when you discover that you actually don’t need the amount that you used to think you needed to feel satiated, feel satisfied.

Okay, number eight, weigh myself daily and use it as a chance to change my brain. I weigh myself every day, the only exception I can think of is if I’m traveling somewhere and I don’t have a scale with me, which I should get a travel scale. But otherwise I weigh myself every day. I weigh myself if I did a really good job the day before and ate and won the level on MyFitnessPal. And I weigh myself if I went way over and ate a bunch of junk I hadn’t planned to eat and totally lost that level.

I still weigh myself every day because I love watching what my brain does. I love working on my brain to understand that the number on the scale is neutral, it really is. And the way my body looks is neutral. And whether my weight goes up or down, this is the amazing part about losing weight, it’s not linear. I can eat totally on plan and eat really healthy foods all within my counts, and be maybe down a little bit or maybe up the next day. Or I could eat chocolate cake before I go to bed and be maybe down the next day and maybe up.

And that’s the part that I think is fascinating to watch in the brain, this isn’t fair, if I eat well I should go down. And if I eat junk it should go up. But the body is just more complicated than that. There’s so many things that affect the scale, so I love just working on managing my brain. I have been using that term a lot.

On Instagram I did some questions in my stories last night and it’s hard because on Instagram I just have a little bit of space to type you something, and I’m trying to be as impactful as I can. But what I kept wanting to say is you need to manage your brain. What I mean by that, it’s the same way I manage my children. I’m like, “No, no, no, you’re not going to hit your brother today,” that’s me managing. “If you choose to hit your brother you’re going to need to go sit in your room because that’s not okay, we don’t hit people in our family.” So that’s me trying to manage my child.

You can do the same thing with your brain, so when you get on the scale and the scale is up and the brain wants to go to self-pity, and drama, or guilt, or shame, or whatever, you get to manage it. Like, no, no, no, we’re not doing that, remember, the scale is neutral, this is all just interesting information to be gathering about your body. Because holy cow, the things I’ve learned about my body as I’ve done this are pretty amazing. I’ve learned that sometimes when I eat more for a period of time and then I go back to cutting calories then suddenly the scale starts dropping a lot.

If I just keep in a calorie deficit sometimes the scale plateaus. So there’s a lot to it, which is why I love having Key Nutrition helping me. But I like to manage my brain around it. Can I not make it mean all the dramatic things that I tend to want to make it mean? I weigh myself every day. It also just gives me more data to be able to work with Brad and so that we can make decisions about what to do, what to try.

Number nine rule for myself, and this is one that’s sometimes still challenging for me. But this is a rule I’m trying to follow, which is to be abundant about food enjoy. Here’s what I mean, again, I didn’t even realize this was a thing or was a problem until about a month ago.

I was talking to Brad; we were trying to decide what should I shoot for with my calories and everything for the week and my macros? And he always asks me about my hunger level and my moods and all that, because we don’t want any of that to be out of control. And I said something like, “I haven’t been really that hungry, I think we can eat less, we could go lower. I’m pretty sure I would be fine with less food.”

And at one point he said to me, “Well, the goal is not to eat as little food as possible. The goal is for you to be able to eat as much food as possible and still maintain and hit your goals.” And I was like, “What did you just say?” Growing up in this country as a woman I always thought that the goal was to eat as little food as possible, which is just so fascinating to watch. I’m like, “Yeah, you’re right, it makes sense that I would want to be able to eat as much food as possible.” Food is where we get nutrients, food is where we get energy, and food can be enjoyable too.

So we want to be able to eat as much as possible, I realized, look at my scarcity mindset versus an abundant mindset. I put joy in there too, because that’s where I go to scarcity sometimes. It’s like well, I’m eating at this restaurant and they have this one thing that I just love and I don’t know when I’ll be back at this restaurant again and so I might not get to eat this thing that I love, so I for sure have to order it.

But do you see how that’s coming from scarcity around joy? First of all I might not get to this restaurant again or I might not have this pleasurable opportunity in my life, which this food is going to provide me. That’s all based in scarcity. What if there’s plenty of pleasure available? And maybe it’s in the form of food or maybe not, but there’s lots of ways to find happiness, and joy, and pleasure, and that scarcity place doesn’t serve us.

There’s all this cake and if I don’t eat a big piece it’s going to be gone, that’s scarcity. So what if it is gone? There’s always going to be plenty of food, there’s going to be plenty of joy, there’s even going to be plenty of great food around. What if I just believed that, that I didn’t have to hurry and eat up all the treats, thinking I was going to miss out on something?

Okay, number 10, the final rule, this is again another rule that I heard Brad Jensen say and I decided I love that rule. And it’s a rule that I have to sometimes work on, I’m not always good at, which is be ruthlessly patient. Be ruthlessly patient. We’re all in a hurry to get to our end goal. We think that life will be better once we get there. But when we’re in that hurry we’re not doing rule number two. It means we’re postponing allowing ourselves to feel good, and confident, and love our bodies and ourselves until we lose the weight.

So we’ve got to go back to rule number two, when we’re in a hurry it’s because we think it will be better there than here, but it won’t be better there, it’ll just be different. So be ruthlessly patient, be willing for it to take a long time. What’s the rush? Time’s going to go by whether you lose weight, or stay the same weight, or gain weight, those are our options basically. So why not be patient and let it take as long as necessary.

And I also love the idea that – I think this is the way I heard Brad say it on a podcast or something. He said, “You didn’t get into this mess in 12 weeks, you’re probably not going to get out of it in 12 weeks.” Let’s be kinder to our bodies, let’s be compassionate for them, we put them through so much, first we overeat then we get mad at it when it does exactly what it’s supposed to do, which is take the excess fuel and store it on your body as fat. That’s what your body’s supposed to do.

We should be saying, “Thanks body for storing that fuel because you’re thinking I might need it later and you’re trying to keep me alive. And thanks for when I do cut calories too much or for too long, for down regulating my metabolism thinking there seems like there’s not enough food around, we should hold on to some of this fat so that Jody doesn’t die. Thanks for doing that, body, you are amazing at taking care of me, at keeping me alive. Now I’m going to learn how to work with you, body, which is I’m going to have to be very patient, we’re going to have to go slow.

I’m going to have to really be delicate with my body and teach it that there is plenty of food around. In fact, here, look, today we’re going to eat even more food so you can see there’s plenty of food around. Now, the next day maybe we’re going to cut it back down again and let’s see if you can access some of that fat.” So be ruthlessly patient.

There you go; those are the rules that I am loving, that are helping me have success on my weight loss journey. I started working with Brad a couple of months ago, I’m down 10 pounds. I want to lose at least 10 more. I’m just again trying to be ruthlessly patient. Now, I should say my weight will go down and then it will go up, and then it goes down and then it goes up.

So like I said, it’s not a linear thing, and to me the two and a half or so months I’ve been working with him, really I’m only down 10 pounds, that’s where my brain wants to go. I’m just not doing that. Who cares? Maybe it’s going to take me three years to lose the next 10 pounds. I’m all in, because remember, it has to be fun or we don’t do it. We’re not going to wait around to feel good. We don’t do hot French fries or day old cake anymore, that’s helping. We track everything and try to beat the level daily. We shoot for a 100%, but I’m happy with 80%.

There’s no food that’s off limits. I just try to eat like a lady most of the time. I’m only allowed to enjoy it if I’m going to eat some junk food. I weigh myself daily, I’m abundant about food and joy and I’m ruthlessly patient. Let’s go. Who wants to lose some weight with me? If you do, I highly recommend you get a coach from Key Nutrition and/or ideal if you do both, come into Be Bold where we do coaching on a regular around the mindset piece.

Alright, you guys are amazing. Have a great rest of your day. Thanks for joining me. I’ll see you next time.

Who is your life coach? If you don’t have one I would be so honored to be your coach. I created a virtual coaching program called Be Bold that I want to invite you to join me in. We can address challenges, we can work on goals, and we can do it in so many different ways.

We have group coaching, individual private coaching, and online chats along with hundreds of hours of courses and content that I’ve created just for you. When you’re ready to really take what you’re learning on the podcast to the 10x level, then come check out Be Bold at JodyMoore.com/membership.