A lot of people make the mistake of thinking that the key to permanent weight reduction is diet and exercise. I’ve said this many times, it’s been my personal experience that as important and necessary as diet and exercise are, at least for me, those were the least important aspects of it.
That’s because I went to the gym every single day when I looked like this:
I was at the gym 3, 4, 5 sometimes more days per week exercising, and yet nothing seemed to work for me. For the most part, I ate pretty dang healthy, and yet I did not release that weight.
I started dropping weight last year when I finally put together what we call the Three Pillars of Growth: Body, Mind, Soul. Yes the Body Pillar is important, the diet and exercise, yeah you’ve gotta do that, but at least for me, the mental and emotional breakthroughs were a lot more important.
A lot of people fall into old habits or they get stuck because as weight starts coming off, you actually have to confront negative emotion and stress and things that you’ve been holding onto and covering up from the past.
For example, many times I would reach a new weight while working out at the gym, and all of a sudden I would just feel really, really weird. I remember I was at the gym one time, and I started feeling this massive feeling of loneliness, and I’m like, “where is this coming from? I have no reason to feel lonely; I’ve got my family, I’ve got a great company, I’ve got people surrounding me, and I’ve got an amazing wife and kids.” But then, I remembered back to the last time I had been at that weight, and I had gone through a major period of loneliness.
There was an entire summer where I think I only saw my kids once; this was the summer where we lost our home a number of years ago, and my wife and kids had to go spend the entire summer with my wife’s parents in St. George, and it was a very lonely time for me… an extremely lonely time for me. Also, there was another time shortly after I got home from being a missionary for 2 years in Peru, when I was trying to enter the dating scene, I was 21 years old and I really wanted to find a significant other, and I felt very, very lonely.
I had stuffed a lot of that loneliness down; I had covered it up with that excess body fat. As I released that weight and uncovered it, that’s when I began to feel it again.
What leads to a lot of sabotage is when people don’t know what to do with those feelings when they resurface. Because they don’t like how that feels, they go right back to stuffing it down with extra food, and this is when a lot of binge-eating moments happen.
There are times that still happens for me, every so often I will be on the verge of reaching a new personal record and suddenly I will feel just really, really weird. I’m not perfect, I haven’t mastered everything totally, and so every so often, yeah, I will experience that where I will suddenly eat a whole bunch of stuff, and then I’ll take a step back and I’ll go, “What did I just do? Why did I just cover all that up?” And so I’ll go back and do the emotional work and mental work, and that’s when that weight will come off once and for all; those plateaus are broken.
There have been a lot of people in my Enjoy Yourself Thin Facebook group that really, really want to release this weight, and so they’ll apply for one of our Metabolism and Weight Reduction Assessments. Just for them to make an appointment, I put people to the test, and I’ll send over an application with 9 questions to see just how committed they really are. Some of the 9 are actually very personal questions, and there are some people that will get very, very triggered just at those questions and say, “No I’m not interested! Never mind!”
It’s fascinating to see that happen because, as of course you know, how we do one thing is usually how we do most other things, if not everything. The people that weed themselves out just because of a few simple questions are probably going to weed themselves out when it comes to other things because they aren’t 100% committed to working through those triggers.
My invitation for you is when triggers happen, whether it’s in your weight reduction journey, whether it’s when you’re faced with stressors, whether it’s whatever it is, instead of avoiding those triggers, instead of using food to cover up those emotional triggers, allow yourself to work through them. Simply get through those triggers, and there are many tools you can use in order to make it easier; I have an audio training called “Leaky Joy Tank – 13 Ways to Release Stress,” if you want a free copy of it, email my team at Clientservices@FeelWellLiveWell.com, we’ll give that to you at no charge. That will be my gift for you to help you work through those triggers.
If you allow the slightest trigger to stop you from moving forward, then everything else is going to stop you from moving forward. As I mentioned, as you go through this process, you are going to have to confront some of those old emotions. If you are the type of person that avoids the triggers rather than working through them, transformation is not going to be possible on that path, and I mean permanent total transformation. You are going to have to work through that.
One more time, my invitation to you is recognize in yourself what triggers you, recognize the patterns that follow that cause you to stop in your tracks. Are you the type of person that allows those triggers to stop you? If so, allow yourself to break those patterns. Get through the triggers and allow yourself to release and transform.
Again, if you aren’t already a part of your Enjoy Yourself Thin Facebook group, it’s totally free to join. There are lots of additional tools, strategies and support there for you. If you need some additional tools, then reach out to me personally. I’m happy to send you a copy of the Leaky Joy Tank audio training, so that you can get through those triggers.
You are worth it, my friend. Stop buying into your triggers, stop allowing those triggers to stop you. Get through them, and allow yourself to reach that new level of success. Love you!
Watch “Slimming Down Can be EXTREMELY Triggering…How to Get Past the Triggers” on YouTube
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