Choosing a Weight Loss Plan that Works for You

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January 12, 2022 - Episode #88 - Choosing a Weight Loss Plan that Works for You

It’s that time of year! The New Year.  And all those who profit off weight loss are saying the same thing.  "New Year, New you!!"
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They know you feel guilty about the weight gain, they know you are looking for a quick fix.  They prey on that.  Who is they?  The Diet and Weight Loss industry.  That industry is worth $78 Billion dollars.  A highly profitable industry that just cares about profit, that’s it folks.  Just profit! 

Playing on your guilt, your shame, your vulnerability and your desperation.  I keep shouting it from the dang rooftops and I’m not going to stop…….they don’t care about your health!!  They just care about profit, that’s it.  

Aren't you tired of losing the weight only to regain it?  Here are some stats I want to make sure you keep in mind.......

95% of diets fail
Crash diets can mess up your metabolism from 4 months to 5 years!
Weight Loss and Diet Industry is worth $78 Billion dollars (it bears repeating)
You have to be your own best advocate.  And today I'm giving you 8 Top Tips to help you choose a weight loss plan that works for you.

Need a chat to brainstorm or discover if my style of health coaching is a good fit for you?  Book a 15 min discovery call here https://calendly.com/coachjennpickett/15min_discovery_call?month=2022-01


Read Full Transcript below

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FULL TRANSCRIPT

January 12, 2022 - Episode #88 - Choosing a Weight Loss Plan that Works for You

Welcome back to the Healthy Harmony podcast. It's that time of year it's the new year. And guess what? All of those people who profit off weight loss are saying the same thing, “new year, new you”, they know you feel guilty about the weight gain. They know you're looking for a quick fix. They prey on that. Who is they? The diet and weight loss industry. By the way, that industry is worth 78 billion, $78 billion is the average amount of money that was made in 2019 78 billion. This is a highly profitable industry that just cares about profit. That's it folks just profit. By playing on your guilt, your shame, your vulnerability and your desperation. I keep shouting it from the dang rooftops and I'm not gonna stop. They don't care about your health, these big industries, big pharma, big food, big diet, and weight loss. These big industries do not care about your health.

They just care about the profit. That's it. So today I'm talking about how to choose a weight loss plan that works for you. You need a customized approach, and I know you're thinking about it this time of year, because everybody is thinking about it this time of year.

Welcome to the healthy harmony podcast. I'm Jennifer, Dietitian turned functional medicine, health coach. I help spiraling moms overcome the overwhelm through functional wellness coaching for the body, mind, and soul. So they can transform their health and live a deeply fulfilled life of freedom and harm, and must get real. When it comes to your health, you know what to do. I strongly believe that to make the shift from knowing to doing you must supply mindfulness, listen to your body address. What's really driving that behavior. Be intentional and finally practice some self compassion. The last 24 years of experience have taught me that the absolute last thing a woman needs is a lecture about self care and another unrealistic diet plan.

I recognize the importance of compassionate and intentional health practices. So you can feel good because guess what? When you feel good, you are more likely to make better decisions for your health. If you're ready to take control of your complete health, address the obstacles standing in your way and live a life of freedom and harmony.

You, my friend are in the right place. So let me give you some more stats. Before we get started. 95% of diets fail 95%. So is it the diet that fails or is it you, let me tell you it's the diet because they profit more. When you fail that diet and you restart it with more determination and determined to have more willpower, they benefit when you fail, the industry would not make as much money if it was, if you were successful at that at those weight loss efforts, but what most people do, they go on a crash diet and they lose weight.

And then what happens? You regain it all back and it's heartbreaking. And so many people do this for most of their life. They lose weight and then they regain it and it usually brings some friends. So they regain even more than what they lost in the first place. And then the cycle starts all over losing and regaining, losing and regaining these crash diets. Here's another stat for you. These crash diets. When you go on a crash diet, you are messing up your metabolism for anywhere from five months to four years. So these crash diets, these ultras restricted diets, all of these funky approaches that completely ignore common and ignore good solid science. Current science is messing up your metabolism. You're shooting yourself in the foot and you don't even realize it because you're falling prey to some really good marketing. You're falling prey to some of these companies that do not care about your health.

Remember, it's a 78 billion industry. It's just about the money, honey. It's not about you. It's not about your health. It's not about your wellbeing. And you having the energy to keep up with your kids. It's just about the money.
 
So what do you do? You're here. You need to lose weight. You need to get healthier. You want more energy. You want to live a fulfilled life, but you feel like your health is holding you back. So what do you do? How do you take control of your health? How do you choose a plan, a health plan, a weight loss plan that works for you. Well, today, that's what I'm talking about. I'm gonna give you eight tips so you can choose a good plan for you.

Number one, realize there is no one size fits all approach. You are unique and different. Your body is unique.  You need someone to give you a customized approach, not to treat you like you are a one size fits all. This is why I absolutely love the functional medicine approach. Now, remember, I've been in traditional medicine as a dietician. Now I'm in functional medicine as a functional medicine, trained health coach and the functional medicine health approach is superior. Here's why, because it asks the question why and it's asking the question, why can this person not lose weight? And why does this person lose weight and then regain it? What else is going on here? Is there food sensitivities? Is there some obstacles there? Like mindset? Is there toxicity, hormone, imbalance what's causing the weight gain? Is it blood sugar, instability, insulin resistance inflammation. What's at the root cause of that weight gain. So you really wanna use an approach that is using that functional medicine approach and getting to the root issue.  Let me tell you, maybe it's not just lack of, will you need to know what's going on with your body. What is keeping you from the health that you desire?

Number two, avoid a ultra restrictive approach. This never works. Those crash diets, that ultra restrictive approach. Number one, it really messes with your mind when you tell your I can't have that, no matter what that is. If you tell yourself, oh my goodness, I can't have that. Guess what? You gonna crave it. I promise you you're gonna crave it. And that too, that ultra restrictive approach, our tendency is once we below it, okay, we're on a diet. And then we below it, we have a cheat meal, right? And we're like, oh, it's just one cheat meal. But what happens? It's like a downhill slide. And that just, and then we're like, you know what? I knew I couldn't do this. So the ultra restrictive approach never works. And when you lose weight that way, guess what? It's coming right back on.

Number three, choose a weight loss plan that revolves around real foods, real whole foods. You hear me talk about it all the time? Food is medicine. Real whole foods is medicine. Okay? Not fake foods, not processed foods that are dressed up to look healthy, not foods that have a fantastic marketing team that make it look healthy, not packaged junk. That happens to have just really good packaging, real whole foods. Those easily recognizable don't need a label. Don't have a marketing team foods, the foods you easily recognize. Okay? So you need to have a plan that it revolves around real foods.

Number four, you need a plan that teaches you about health and nutrition. This is not just for short term. That is the problem. When it comes to weight loss, we're thinking right now, I need to lose the weight right now. I need to get into this dress again. I need to fit into these jeans again. I need to lose weight right now. It's January and we're all focused on weight loss. This is what I need to do right now. Yes, I hear you. And I understand we do need to do something right now, but we have to think long time, we have to think sustainable. If you lose weight, can you do that in a sustainable manner? So you keep it off and get off of this awful roller coaster of weight lost and then weight regained. Cause let me tell you, haven't you done this before. I mean, the, I I'll tell you. I get clients all the time who have a very, very distorted view because of how they grew up.

Okay. They were never taught about nutrition growing up because mama was always on a diet. So now we have all these women, mama was, was on, was on a diet. Now they're the mama, always on a diet. Who's gonna teach those kids about nutrition, who it's up to you, mamas. It's up to you. So enough is enough. We have to be different. We have to do different for our kids. We have to teach them about nutrition, food, healthy nourishing food needs to be a positive experience. We've gotta get rid of this mentality. Healthy foods are boring, healthy foods. Don't taste good, healthy foods or diet foods, and I'm on a diet and that's negative. Nope. We've gotta drop that. We have got to adopt some really good healthy nutrition practices. Make sure those healthy, delicious, real foods taste good. And it's a positive experience. We want to learn about nutrition. So a good plan is gonna teach you about health and nutrition and set you up for long term success.

Number five in it can be a great diet plan, but if you aren't getting the body mind and soul tools to address why your emotional eating in the first place and how you address stress in your life, it's not gonna work. It can be the best diet plan in the whole wide world. But if it's not addressing the why, why are you emotional, eating, how you are dealing with stress, then you're not gonna get anywhere. Okay? Because that, that great diet plan, it just falls away when you're in the middle of an emotional moment and you don't have those cognitive behavioral tools to deal with the emotions in the first place. So a good plan is going to address all of that.

Number six, a good plan will address your obstacles. Okay? I love helping my clients identify their obstacles. Now there's several different obstacles here and we share a lot of obstacles in common mindset plays such a huge role. How we look at food. Well, healthy food is diet food, and I don't like diet food or healthy food. Doesn't taste good. And that's and that's just negative. So mindset plays a huge role. Mindset plays a very big role with exercise. Mindset plays a huge role in everything. That's why I work so much with mindset and mindfulness with my clients, insulin resistance, hormone imbalance, lack of sleep, poor stress management blood sugar, instability, poor gut health inflammation. What about all those? Those are obstacles. Those need to be addressed. If you truly want sustainable weight loss, you know I'll tell you just thinking about a, a client recently. I was helping her identify her, her issues that were standing in the weight of why she wasn't losing weight.

And and you know, I went through all of this, of, of what could be standing in her way and all she kept coming back to is, but tell me how to lose weight. And we had already identified. She had a lot of she had a lot of stress in her life. She wasn't managing the stress. She was not eating well. So I went into all of that, the good science there that supports a, if you're not getting good sleep, you're not gonna lose weight. And we were discussing inflammation and how inflammation and weight gain. Those are best friends, those hang out together. And still, even with all of that at the end of that one hour session, I just saw her once. She kept saying, but, but just tell me how to lose weight. So she wasn't getting it. She wasn't getting the connection because we had that quick fix blinders on. Just tell me how to lose weight. I just wanna lose weight right now. We've gotta look at the big, the big picture, the body, mind, and soul approach and identify the obstacles standing in your way.

Number seven quick fix. If it looks too good to be, it probably is. We want to avoid the quick fixes, the lose 10 pounds in 20 days and all of that other BS. And I'm gonna call it for what it is. It's a bunch of BS. Okay? All that quickie, weight loss. Guess what happens? It's quickie put back on the weight. Okay. It comes back on just as quickly. And it invites some friends. And remember how that is destroying your metabolism, cuz you've been doing this your whole life. So I'm gonna tell you sister, it's time to do something different.

Number eight, the last one, if you're looking at a particular person's plan, whether it's a health coach, a nutritionist, an influencer, et cetera. Here's what I want you to ask. What are their credentials? What's their experience. I will tell you it is not enough to just say I've lost weight doing this. Okay. No, no, no, no, no. That does not qualify them to help you. You need someone that's going to come alongside you. That's going to support you. That's going to encourage you. That's gonna hold you accountable, but is also going to help you identify the root issues. Identify the obstacles that have been holding you back. It is time for a personalized, customized approach. So ask what is their experience? You need someone with a lot of training with a lot of experience. Now, remember this is a huge gray area. People can use the term nutritionist and have had little to no training. Okay. They can also use the term health coach. There are companies out there that use the term health and they have none. I mean, absolutely no training whatsoever. They just signed up to work with this same company. So guys enough is enough. So realize if someone's calling themselves a health coach, a nutritionist, et cetera, you ask, okay, what's your training? What is your experience? How long have been doing this? I wanna know more about you. They should have no problems answering those questions. Okay. And finally you wanna find out, even if they're highly trained and educated and experienced, that's fantastic. Are they a good fit for you? This is important. You're making an investment in your health. You make sure that individual is a good fit for you. Now. See, that is why I offer a 15 minute discovery call because I want people to get the help they need. I wanna make sure that I'm a good fit for them. If they're gonna make that investment, that I'm a good fit for them, that we together, especially if we're doing that ongoing coaching, which a lot of my clients do that ongoing three month coaching where we really get into some issues.

So you wanna make sure somebody is a good fit for you. So that's it. That is the eight tips. So you can choose a weight loss, a health plan that works for you. Just remember it's about you. And it's time to get that personalized, customized approach. You're looking for. If you're thinking, Hey Jennifer, I need some help. I'm overwhelmed. I keep choosing all the wrong things. I'm tired of losing weight. I'm tired of regaining it. I need to know more. If you wanna connect with me over a phone call, I do those 15 minute discovery calls. So go to inspire healthy harmony.com. You will see a place where you can book that call. I'll put a link right here in the show notes. So you can access that easily. And when I post it on social, you'll see it there as well. So if you just need a, you know, to bounce some ideas off of me, if you're saying, Hey Jennifer, I found a program, but I'm kind of curious what you think of this.

I'm more than happy to give you some quick thoughts. Just a kind of an unbiased opinion. Like, Hey, this looks good or Hey, this, this is a red flag to me, watch out for this. So if you just need someone to help you figure out your next your next plan of action. I'm happy to do that for you. Remember I'm here because I want you to feel good. I want you to live a fulfilled life and I'm here to support you mama, because I know you have people that you're supporting. So I love doing this for you. I love being a support to you. Do not forget. We have that Facebook page, functional medicine for weight loss, body, mind wellness for women. I will put that link here. If you're not a part of it, you're missing out. And just remember I'm here and I've got your back. I will see you next week. Bye.