Category: Deep thoughts

A lot of us use food as a coping mechanism. 

We eat to cope with stress, fatigue, boredom, anxiety, anger, grief…did I mention stress?

This might be OK — after all, coping is good, right? Unless all that “coping” is leading to unwanted  consequences. We gain weight or we can’t lose weight…and that is creates stress, fatigue, anxiety, anger, grief. 

Maybe we actually need to do less coping. 

If you stopped using food to “cope,” maybe you’d be compelled to make changes that made your life less stressful, boring, or exhausting. 

And maybe that’s the difference between coping and self-care.

So, here’s a question to consider: Is self-medicating with food allowing you to tolerate things that maybe you shouldn’t be tolerating?

What about your life might you be moved to change if you stopped “coping”?

This was sparked by a great conversation a group of our Spring 2021 members were having in the forum.

We’ve talked about why our weight may fluctuate from day to day and how this does not reflect fat loss.

• A high-salt meal (or hormonal swings) can lead to water retention
• A high fiber meal (or slow digestion) can increase waste in the system
• Strenuous exercise (or other issues) may lead to inflammation

All of these can cause your weight to fluctuate from day to day, or even week to week.

And here’s the truth: Becoming someone who weighs less doesn’t necessarily mean that we won’t continue to experience these fluctuations.   If your weight fluctuates a good deal now, it will likely continue to.. And that’s OK. 

As you practice more weighless behaviors, your entire range will slowly slide down. So instead of your weekly checkpoints fluctuating from 175 to 180, they start fluctuating between 170 and 175 and then between 165 and 170, and so on. 

So, we may expect that if we’re doing this “right,” our graph will look like this:

But often, they look more like this:

Both have lost approximately the same amount of weight.

The point here is that fluctuation is not a problem–unless we allow it to throw us off our game. Unless we make it an excuse to give up. So if you’re a high flux individual, try to take those weekly ups and downs in stride. As long as that bumpy curve is trending bumpily down. you’re doing fine.

And if it’s not, let’s figure out where your most impactful wins and missed opportunities are lurking.

In the Weighless program, we are not just here to give pep talks or give you something interesting to think about. We are offering tools that can help you create the results you want. But they have to be picked up and used.

So often we see people whose entire effort is comprised of completely passive activities: reading, researching, thinking, planning. All of those things have their place. But you’ve got to actually take some action if you want to see change happen.

If you’re thinking but not doing…

If you’re learning, but not taking action…

If you’re “inspired” but not actually moving…

…then you are sitting on the sidelines of your own life.

The only way to reach your goal is to get on the field. Yes, you might drop the ball or lose yards. But you can’t win (or lose!) by standing on the sidelines