by Rita Black
Love yourself enough in the moment to say “no” to the impulse. You are doing yourself a huge favor by setting yourself free from the cravings, the food-sneaking behavior, and the guilt after you eat it. Just walk on by. Have you passed the ice cream aisle yet? Phew!
“Whenever I am in the grocery store and I see something tempting, I now hear that song ,“Walk on By” and take a Shift Breath and keep walking. I never regret not purchasing those things I have the impulse to grab off the shelf. The more I walk on by, the easier it is to do again and again.” Reema Y. (Released 16 pounds, maintaining for 18 months.)
Stimulus-proofing your environments is a very powerful strategy. You will be amazed at how much easier weight management is when your environments are free of the trigger foods that cause you problems.
I am not saying that you have to remove all the unhealthy foods or treats from your house. I am sure there are many foods that do not hook you. I know that I can have bags of potato chips sitting in my cupboard for months, and I couldn’t care less. Chips don’t do it for me, so they don’t need to leave my house. However, it’s a different issue altogether when you are talking candy corn and gumdrops! Those sugary candies are a trigger food for me. I know if I have one, I have to eat the whole bag. So guess what? They don’t come in my house. If they do, my family is under orders not to let me know. What my mind doesn’t know about won’t stimulate it.
2-Creating Loving Boundaries with Your Trigger Foods
Life is long, and there will be times when you want to indulge in a pleasurable treat, including your trigger foods. How do you set your mind up for success when having that treat? Make a rule with your Inner Coach ahead of time about when and how much of a treat you are going to enjoy. That treat is not an option at any other time. I call this strategy “creating a loving boundary.”
Alain Dagher, PhD, a neurologist at Montreal’s Neurological Institute, conducted a study on expectation and brain activity with regard to smoking. He measured the brain activity of smokers who were kept from smoking for four hours. One group was told that after four hours they could smoke; the other group was told they needed to continue to abstain from smoking for six more hours. The smokers who expected the cigarette after four hours began to show high levels of arousal, the closer their time to smoke came.
The others smokers, who did not expect a cigarette, showed no arousal. When the brain knows that a reward or treat will not be forthcoming, it puts its attention elsewhere. Once you make a decision about something, and you are clear about that boundary, it helps your mind say “no” easily.
Here’s how to do it step by step.
Identify the trigger food. This should be easy; it’s the one you can’t stop eating!
Think of what a single serving would be both in amount and calories. Make sure it allows you to stay within your Calorie Budget for Weight Release.
Think of an environment in which it might be safe to eat a single serving. This environment is one that you have not had a stimulus control issue in.
Create a limit on how often you might enjoy you trigger food in this setting. Creating a limit keeps you from overindulging or abusing the boundary.
For example, say your trigger food is ice cream. If you can’t stop eating the ice cream until the carton is empty, our stimulus control strategy would be to keep ice cream out of your house. But what if you want to be able to enjoy its creamy goodness every once in a while? You can create a new loving boundary with ice cream.
For example, a loving boundary for ice cream might be “Once a week I can have a scoop of my favorite at the ice cream parlor.”
You are giving yourself something you enjoy but in a moderate and measured way outside your environment. You can even look up the ice cream calories online and see that one scoop of rocky road is 170 calories. You can make it work calorically for you on the day you’re having it, too. You have the ice cream but still remain within your Calorie Budget for Weight Release.
My Loving Cake Boundary
Frosting was my drug of choice when I struggled with my weight. At one wedding, I went back for five pieces of wedding cake. Of course, I had to keep face. I didn’t want the server to think that I was an out-of-control cake fiend. I told him that I was bringing the extra slices to others at my table. Little did he know that the others at my table were my Inner Rebel and her wild friends partying on cake deep inside of me!
As I began my journey to weight mastery, I created a powerful loving boundary around cake that works for me still. I tell myself “Cake and frosting for me is not an option unless it’s my birthday or the birthday of anyone in my immediate family.”
This inner rule around cake is a perfect fit for me. For each family member’s birthday I will make a cake and have a wonderful piece with extra icing. In my inner rule system, cake is not an option unless it’s my birthday or my husband’s and children’s birthdays.
Create Your Trigger Food Loving Boundary Exercise
Take a moment to fill in your trigger foods and create a loving boundary
WEIGHT MASTERY SKILL 5 Sum Up: Stimulus Control
Stimulus-proof your environments by removing the trigger foods that tempt you and having healthy choices available. When you are not falling victim to high-calorie foods in your environment, it is much easier to stay consistently on track with weight release.
Bringing healthy food into your environments and having them on hand for meals and snacks is another way to ensure your environment is set up to help you succeed.
Create loving mental boundaries around your favorite trigger foods so that you can have them in your life occasionally but in a controlled way. Knowing your trigger foods and creating a masterful relationship with them puts you in charge.
Stimulus control is an important skill not only for releasing weight but also for long-term weight management.
APPRENTICE PAUSE: Have you ever felt protective of someone or something? Perhaps you have cared for a small child or a pet? It is quite an intense feeling, right? Why is it that when it comes to your own self-care and weight, you don’t step in to protect yourself? Now that you understand the skill of stimulus control, you can be your own protector, bringing a new level of self-protection to your life in the way you take care of yourself and the environments you live in.
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Let’s move on to the skill that will allow you to not only deal with the foods in your environment but those living, breathing beings that you share your environments with—Skill 6, Creating and Maintaining Your Weight Mastery Support Team.
CHAPTER 30
WEIGHT MASTERY SKILL 6
Creating And Maintaining Your Weight Mastery Support Team
SKILL 6: Creating Your Weight Mastery Support Team. This is the artful skill of recruiting the people in your life to be cheerleaders, coaches, and advocates for you during your journey to weight mastery.
When you read a weight loss success story, you never hear the person say “I did it alone. No one helped me!” Weight Masters say just the opposite. They acknowledge a coach, mentor, friend, group and/or family member who walked with them, helped them to eat more healthfully, and/or encouraged them along the way.
Fat Thinking And Support
Research shows that people with support double their chances of success. However, many Weight Strugglers have the limiting belief that people can’t, won’t, or don’t support them in their attempts to lose weight. In addition, many Weight Strugglers are hesitant to seek support because of past failures.
I don’t want to draw attention to myself.
I hate to fail publicly.
Nobody will help me. My friends and family think I’m a lost cause.
My friends will try to sabotage me.
I agree. It’s demoralizing to announce to everyone that “I am going on a diet so you bette
r not tempt me and bring your fattening food around me!” and then go off the diet. However, the kind of support I am speaking about involves recruiting the people in your life to play an ongoing part in your journey to Weight Mastery. The more people you have on your team, the better your chances for long-term weight release success.
Thin thinking and support
Every person in your life plays a role in your weight mastery. There are three ways that people influence your efforts:
Some will SUPPORT you and have a positive influence.
Some will SABOTAGE you and have a negative (intentional or unintentional) influence.
Some will be NEUTRAL and have neither a positive or negative influence.
As a Weight Master, you want to have as many people on the side of supporting you as possible. How do you recruit your team? I find the best way to recruit people is to ask. But don’t assume they are going to know what to do. Teach people how to support you and share your visions and goals. When most people feel included as part of an “improvement” project, they feel excited and happy to help.
Janice Shifted Her Office with Support
My client Janice slowly got her whole office recruited in her weight release.
First, just by keeping candies and cookies out of her sight.
Then, by making healthy choices when they ordered lunch.
Finally, she got four coworkers to walk with her at lunchtime.
Janice’s entire office has been transformed. She released about 80 pounds in 24 months. Some of her coworkers released significant weight as well.
“Once I made the decision I was going to master my weight, I also decided to ask for others to help. In the past, I would hide the fact I was on a diet, but I figured, hey, if this is going to last, I have to train my coworkers how to treat me like my future slimmer self. People are happy to help, and it all ended up being a great group project.” Janice J. (80 pounds, maintaining for 1 year)
Your team can support you by:
Keeping food out of sight.
Walking or exercising with you.
Buying food when you don’t have time.
Eating healthy meals with you.
Sharing recipes and ideas for menus.
Bringing fruits and veggies into the office or home.
Choosing restaurants that have healthy options on the menu.
Building Your Support Team
Get out your pen and journal; it’s time to brainstorm and make this important list. The good news is that the person who was usually the most resistant to support you in the past with weight mastery is now already on your team. That person is YOU.
It is quite possible, almost probable, that you got a big, stinking “F” when it came to being a support for yourself in the past. Weight Strugglers are not in the habit of making themselves a priority. When stressed or overwhelmed, their healthy resolve diminishes. Have you heard yourself say “My boss needed me, so I couldn’t take a walk on my break.” Or maybe it was “I felt guilty about exercising when I should be spending time in the afternoon with my kids.”
It’s time to put you on the top of your support team list. Remember, the boss, the kids, and everyone else suffers when you are unhealthy, feel bad about yourself, and run yourself ragged to meet their needs. Make time for what is most important. Get used to the idea that you are on the top of that list and love it. On the top of the list below, write your name first.
My Support Team Exercise
Give your Inner Coach a moment to think through other key players who can fulfill your team. On the left-hand side of your journal page, create a list called “Support Team Member.” Under it write the people in your life that you want to recruit for your team—starting with your name! To the right of each name, write the specific role you will ask them to play.
Some Support Team Do’s and Don’ts
DO make sure your supporters are reinforcing the Nine Skills you are building rather than pointing to what you are not doing. “Wow, you exercised every day during the week!” versus “I didn’t see you drinking enough water.”
DON’T focus your supporters on your weight change. Sure, an occasional comment is okay, but you want them to help you be healthy and masterful not “skinny.”
DO keep asking for encouragement. Remind your supporters from the start that you want their continual support with the new skills. Often once you release the weight, people believe “you are okay now.” They don’t realize that being a Weight Master is an ongoing pursuit. The early stage of maintenance is not a time for them to bring all the junk back into the house or start offering you cookies, saying “You look great! Have a cookie!” You can even write a list of positive things they can give you compliments about achieving, such as drinking water, avoiding TV or Internet eating, or consuming more vegetables.
I have been maintaining my weight for years, but I still ask my husband and kids to keep certain foods out of sight. Or I ask them for support in helping me have time to exercise. They are happy to do it, because they see it makes such a difference to me.
Case Study: Generous Bob and his Doughnuts
Carla had a difficult situation at work. Bob brought in doughnuts every day and left them out for the staff at the small insurance company where she worked. The problem was that her desk was by the side counter where Bob left the doughnuts. Carla had asked Bob in the past to not buy doughnuts, and Bob said, “But everyone here loves the doughnuts. Just don’t eat them!”
When that attempt failed, Carla asked Bob to keep the doughnuts in his office. “No one can see them in there,” Bob scoffed. “Like I said, practice a little self-control.” But as Carla knew, willpower doesn’t go very far, especially when faced with glazed doughnuts from morning until afternoon, right outside her cubicle.
When Carla began her Shift Weight Mastery Process, she decided to ask Bob for support. She sat down with him in his office and gave him a card. Pleased, he read it. “Thank you for your generosity,” it read.
Carla went on to thank Bob for being such a generous person and told him how nice he was for thinking to bring doughnuts as a way for people to enjoy the day. She went on to explain that she needed his help. The doughnuts really were a distraction for her. She knew he was a generous person and wouldn’t want her to feel distracted, so she had come up with a great idea to honor his generosity even more. She pulled out a nice sign that she had made that read “Bob’s doughnut cupboard. Please enjoy a doughnut from the cupboard below.”
Carla walked Bob out and showed him how the doughnuts went nicely in the cupboard below the counter. People would know they were there because of the sign, but the doughnuts would not be a distraction for her. Bob loved the sign. It gave him credit for his generosity but allowed Carla to overcome her challenge. Many people went on to quietly thank Carla for ridding the office of the tempting doughnuts by keeping them out of sight and out of mind.
“It is so helpful to have a tool to ask people for change in a way that we can both win. In the past, I would eat the resentment I would feel towards people who made me feel powerless. I now feel like I have a voice and am doing much more asking instead of eating!” Carla U. (Released 48 pounds, maintaining for 3 years.)
WEIGHT MASTERY SKILL 6 SUM UP: Building your Support Team
By creating a support team you are creating an external set of motivators and helpers that are committed to your Weight Mastery goals.
Make yourself the leader of your cheerleading squad.
Give others specific roles they can play in supporting you.
Keep reminding your team to support you, and work on shifting the weight saboteurs onto your team as well.
APPRENTICE PAUSE: By engaging the environment skills, you are spreading your scope of mastery not only with your weight but into your outer world as well. When your world is lined up for you
r success not only does our weight and health benefit but so does the rest of your life. Are you beginning to see that weight mastery is really life mastery?
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Good job, and now let’s move on to the Mind Skills.
CHAPTER 31
THE THIRD LEVEL
The Three Mind Skills
You have come so far and are almost done with all Nine Skills! These last three skills will finish construction of your Weight Mastery Home. In many ways, the Mind Skills are the most important of all.
THE MIND SKILLS
Skill 7 Communicating With your Inner Coach. You cultivate a powerful relationship with the wise goal-setting, planning, solution-seeking, Weight-Mastery-committed part of you with specific daily and weekly huddle sessions designed to help you reach and maintain your ideal weight.
Skill 8 Managing your Inner Critic. You manage your Inner Critic and shift out of limiting beliefs and negative self-talk.
Skill 9 Managing Your Inner Rebel. You use strategies that make you immune to the seductive voice of your Inner Rebel, the one that wants to sabotage your best efforts.
Most of the challenges you have had with consistency in eating or exercise or any other aspect of weight management started in your mind:
With a critical thought: “I blew it, so screw it.”
A lack of thought: “Gee, I forgot to exercise.”
A limiting belief: “It’s too hard.”
A mindless habit, such as eating in front of the TV.
Up until now, the negative wiring in your mind has dominated your ability to manage your weight long-term. Next you are going to construct the powerful thinking skills that will free you of those beliefs and habits.