BODY GOALS
Welcome to the Small Jar Podcast, where we moms of teens find the power to step off the emotional roller coaster between motherhood and the empty nest. I'm your host, Jennifer Collins. Episode number 83.
Hello, my friends. We are embarking on a brand new year. And since this is the time of year, we can typically be focused on tackling resolutions or maybe renewing our commitment to long-standing goals.
I thought it would be helpful to do a mini podcast series on how mindset work can offer a radical new approach to how we think about pursuing our goals. I've always been someone who's had big goals for myself, but I'll be honest, for most of my life, I felt confused about why there were some times or some goals that felt easy for me to pursue and others that I would pursue for years, decades even, with little lasting success. Through my journey with thought work, this has changed drastically for me.
And so I want to share a bit of this process with you in a few different areas. Today, I'm going to tackle body goals, and I'm starting here for a few reasons. First, it's totally different than what I typically talk about, namely creating purpose and finding connection with our teens.
And because the tools of thought work are universal, you might find it helpful to see how this work can be applied to other goals like weight loss or fitness. In upcoming episodes, I'm going to focus on other goals like breaking bad habits. Then I'll turn to relationship goals with our kids and others in our lives.
I'll also focus on personal, professional, and even career goals. No matter which of these goals are highest on your list of priorities, I want to invite you to listen in to each of these episodes because I think what you'll find is once you learn the skill of being curious about your mind, you can apply the skill universally to any goal. So as I said, I'm starting the series with body goals, and this episode in this series of goal-related podcasts is not about you needing to do anything different.
If you don't have any goals related to your body, whether that be weight loss or fitness or nutrition, whatever these goals might be, if this isn't at all a priority or even a problem for you, I still encourage you to listen because it could be that you're already fostering a mindset that's helping you. I've found that it can be just as powerful to fully take ownership of the mindset and belief systems that are already creating success for us in our lives. Now, if you find yourself at a place where you're sick of people focusing on weight and are working on loving yourself where you are, I think that is amazing.
In fact, I encourage every single one of us to consider that the only work we might need to do is to be sure we're loving the body we're in right now, whether or not we want to change it in the future. Just consider that beating yourself up isn't a recipe for success. When it comes to weight management and exercise, we can literally be so cruel to ourselves and it's not sustainable.
So I'm going to go through this in more detail, but I did want to mention this in advance because practicing self-love is always a worthwhile strategy. Whether or not you ever lose another pound or spend one more minute in the gym, this episode is not about you doing anything different, but it's about how your mindset sets you up for either success or failure. And when it comes to your body goals, you are the only one who can define what success or failure means.
All this said, here are a few reasons why I wanted to tackle body goals first. For many of us, having just gotten through the holidays or if you're getting back from vacation, it's fairly typical for us to get out of our normal routines. Our sleep schedule is off, we're eating different types of meals, maybe eating out more or eating more decadent foods.
We might not have had any time for exercise. And so often when you come off of these holidays or vacation periods, we find that we've gained a few extra pounds and might be looking to get back on track. The other reason I wanted to address body goals is that I found that the older we get, the harder it is to manage our weight in the same way that we might have done in the past.
I'll get into some of the underlying reasons why this is the case in a moment. But for now, let me say from a personal perspective, for so much of my life, I've had somewhat of a love-hate relationship with my body and weight. And for me, one of the most frustrating aspects of aging has been the uphill battle I feel like I'm waging against hormone changes and honestly, aspects of life that have made sticking to a plan a challenge.
Having coached so many women on their own weight loss, I know that I haven't been alone in this past frustration and overwhelming sense of disappointment that I wasn't able to lose weight and keep it off. Now, this is obviously not true for everyone, but for many of us, our weight and our body composition can be a big piece of our own self-image in terms of how we feel about ourselves and how capable we think we are in our lives. When you don't feel good in your body, whether physically or mentally, this feeling can sometimes take over other aspects of our lives.
So when we're talking about body goals, I want to talk about this broadly because we all have very different goals. Overall, what I think we might all be able to agree on is that what we really want is to feel good in our body. Now, there are lots of ways to measure this.
You could measure this from a physical standpoint in terms of how easy it is for us to move. You could measure it in terms of your digestion, maybe how much you feel bloated or inflamed in areas of your body. We could also put quantifiable measures on these goals.
Obviously, weight is one measure, but we could also measure body fat percentage, muscle tone, cholesterol levels, blood glucose, or A1C. We could view body goals in terms of how we feel in our clothes, how well we're sleeping, whether we have energy throughout the day. Honestly, there's so many different factors that you could look at when you think about body goals.
When I was younger, I was really focused exclusively on the number on the scale, and I'll be honest, that number is often triggering. It's embarrassing to admit, although I know I'm not alone in this, I have in my head a number that I want my weight to be, and so throughout my life, I've measured my success or failure based on that expectation. As I've gotten older, I've come to appreciate how one-sided that number really is.
The number on the scale doesn't take into account any of the other factors I mentioned earlier, digestion, muscle tone, how well you're sleeping, general well-being. And so really, as I talk about body goals, I want to invite you to take an expansive view of what that really means. Are you focused on the number on the scale, or does feeling good in your body also take into account other factors and measures? I'm not suggesting that there's a right answer here, but I want to invite you to be curious about what's right for you.
Now, I want to be clear up front. My goal with this discussion is not to pretend to be an expert on weight management, exercise, nutrition, or health. You have plenty of other health experts taking up space in your email inbox, selling you that next miracle diet or supplement or exercise routine.
For me as a mindset coach, I will never tell you or my clients what you should do. This is true for parenting, or how you spend your time or pursue relationships, and it is most definitely true in terms of your body goals. I will never give you advice or a list of actions I think you should take.
I personally don't think there is one universal strategy for any goal that works for every single one of us all the time. It doesn't matter whether that's weight loss and exercise or parenting or even building a business. There are millions of experts out there who will tell you what you should do.
But how many of these experts have you tried to follow only to be frustrated that you didn't get the promised results? This isn't to say that those experts are necessarily wrong. I just don't think that you can blindly apply advice and assume that it will work for everyone. And when it comes to body goals, we all have different bodies.
We have different habits, physical limitations. We all have different preferences, strengths, and weaknesses. But even more than this, the reason we fail when we try to follow other people's advice is that we haven't curated the mindset that will help us ensure our success.
And for each of the goals in this series, I'm going to get into more detail in terms of what I mean by this. So let's dive into the reasons why body goals are so challenging for us women at this time of our lives. Well, let's just dive right into menopause.
First, menopause is much more than us stopping our periods. Without getting too technical, what's really underlying this change is that our bodies stop making three powerful hormones, estrogen, testosterone, and progesterone. Now, throughout our lives up to this point, if our bodies were normally producing these hormones, they would automatically fluctuate during our menstrual cycle.
You might have experienced improved moods and energy in the times immediately following your period. This is called the follicular phase of our period, and this is when estrogen in our body is rising. And estrogen has a positive impact on our mood and mental functions.
In contrast, those times when we've experienced PMS were when estrogen levels were falling and our progesterone was fluctuating. Okay, then enter perimenopause, which can last for years before we actually get to menopause. During this stage, estrogen and progesterone both fluctuate.
And because of these fluctuations, we start experiencing hot flashes, night sweats, mood swings, insomnia, and changes in our desire for sex. Super fun. These symptoms alone can cause us to eat more just to feel better.
But on top of this, as our estrogen levels decline, our bodies start shifting where we store fat. So while in our younger years, estrogen would cause us to store fat in our hips, the decline in estrogen causes us to store this fat in our belly. On top of this, during perimenopause and menopause, our metabolism slows down.
This is in large part because we also start losing lean muscle mass. And the more muscle we have in our bodies, the higher our metabolism. Some of us also might experience increased insulin resistance or insulin sensitivity during this time of life.
Well, of course, all of us experience these fluctuations and declines in hormones differently. This is just a quick primer on what we're working with. Or should I say what we're working against? And so far, I haven't said anything about how all of these physical changes are happening.
At the same time, we have so many other stresses in our lives, namely stresses with our teenagers, but potentially also with our partners, our finances, our parents aging. There is a lot of stress in our lives. And so all of these factors combined can also cause us to eat or drink in an effort to feel a little bit better.
And of course, all of this only works against us more. Now, I've only scratched the surface of the hormone changes that happen leading up to menopause. So if this is interesting to you, I invite you to research this for yourself.
In fact, I've been following a few experts on health and fitness during menopause. And at some point, I might have them on as guests because this is really incredible stuff. And for some reason, it's only just now being researched in a meaningful way.
My main point in sharing all of this information about hormonal changes during menopause is first to underscore why it's so challenging to pursue body goals. Literally, it's not just something wrong with you. It's something going on with your body over which you have very little control in the short term.
But also, and maybe even more importantly, because all of these changes impact each of us so differently, it's again why a one-size-fits-all approach to body goals often fails. And again, that's not to say that the strategies are wrong. It's just that we have to consider them as possibilities rather than absolute guarantees for success.
So here's another reason why I think focusing only on the how to achieve a goal rarely works. When we focus on actions that involve changing our own behavior, then we're typically relying on willpower to get us to change. The problem with willpower is it's a finite resource.
Willpower is essentially the effort to control your actions or behavior. And the more you use it, the more this muscle, this willpower muscle, is exhausted. It's relatively easy to eat healthy first thing in the morning, but as the day wears on, your willpower starts to wane.
And all of a sudden, that afternoon snack becomes almost irresistible. When we're only focused on actions and results, then this is the only way we define success. So we're basing our success solely on the end result we're looking for or the degree to which we're doing the specific actions we think we need to do to achieve that result.
And look, achieving any goal takes time. We rarely get immediate gratification. We don't typically lose weight right away.
The changes in our body when we start to exercise are imperceptible in the short term. So while we might have some defined end result in mind when we think about our body goals, it takes a long time to see those results. If anything, sometimes measuring our progress, like stepping on the scale, it can feel demotivating when we think we've been putting in all this effort and we're not making the progress we want to be making.
Many of us have a lot of feelings about not loving being in our bodies. In some ways, these feelings are the reasons that we want our bodies to change so we can feel better. But think about what feelings you tend to have about your body on a regular basis.
We might feel defeated. We wish it wasn't so hard to lose a few pounds or just maintain our weight. At this time of life, the pounds seem to creep up without us doing anything differently.
They say on average, women gain 1.5 pounds a year throughout their 50s. That's 15 pounds over the decade without you doing anything differently. And this can be on top of the weight we were already trying to lose in our 40s.
So we feel defeated. We look back on all of our failed past attempts and we feel disappointed. Or how many of us have lost weight only to gain it back, or started exercising regularly only to get injured or have life get in the way so we couldn't keep up the commitment.
All of this compounds so that we honestly don't believe that we're capable of having the body that we want. How many of us simply hate our bodies, but almost give up and give into it because there doesn't seem to be any option. It honestly can sometimes feel worse to try.
Every new year or moment when we get a burst of motivation and we set out to take better care of ourselves, then that motivation wanes and we're back to giving up. It's like when we fail, it gives us more evidence that we're the problem and that we can't achieve our goal. But just think about the impact of taking action from a place of self-loathing.
We think we'll feel better about ourselves once we lose the weight or exercise more regularly, but in the process we make ourselves miserable by depriving ourselves or beating ourselves up. We do all sorts of things that frankly we know we won't be able to sustain in the long run. Crazy diets, eating food we hate, surviving on shakes, long grueling workouts that only seem to make us hungrier.
It's only a matter of time before we stop. Either we give up on our goals because we're so miserable, or we make progress towards our goal and then we stop because we finally achieved our goal. But then we go back to doing what we did before and the weight comes back, or we backslide on our fitness goals.
Here's something really important to consider. Focusing on actions and behavior alone doesn't help us take into account why we haven't already achieved our goals. I shared a number of reasons why achieving body goals at this point in our life is complicated and personal.
And so it stands to reason that the approach each of us should be taking should be highly individualized. And to find this approach that works for you, whatever your goals, you need to be willing to learn, to be curious. One really powerful lesson I've learned on my own journey with body goals is that so many of us use external short-term pleasures to make us feel better in our own lives.
Whether we turn to food or alcohol or scrolling on social media, watching tv, we're looking for a bit of an escape. And honestly, I think this is one way we're trying to take care of ourselves. It's a form of self-love.
And when you look at it this way, it's no wonder that many of us have a mental tantrum when we contemplate having to give up or cut back on our favorite foods or drinks. It can feel like we're being cut off from the joy in our lives. And so it becomes a tug of war in our minds.
Enjoy the short-term relief of the chocolate or the chips or the cookies, but forego the long-term reward of being in the body we want to be in. If your goal is to exercise more, the battle is between staying cozy and relaxed or heading out for a workout for a better body months or years down the road. My friends, it's really no wonder most of us pick the chocolate and the coziness.
It feels so much better to take care of ourselves now rather than feel deprived or uncomfortable for a reward we have to wait to see. But here's the logic I want to invite you to question. Does it really feel better to have the chocolate? Or have we just convinced ourselves that chocolate is happiness? Do you really want to watch another show on Netflix? Or can you spare 15 minutes for a walk outside? This work is even beyond finding your why.
You know, that vision board of what you want your body to look like. Yes, on one hand, we have the opportunity to make a choice between the short-term pleasure of chocolate and the long-term reward of being in the body we want. But also, have you really looked into why the short-term pleasure of these external rewards is so compelling? For example, why do you need to eat when you're bored? Why do you think certain foods create joy for you? What is your relationship with exercise and why does it need to feel like punishment? What emotions are you trying to escape in your life? What's going on in your mind when you find yourself overeating? And let's get back to this question of why you haven't already achieved the body goal you want in the first place.
We might not have any control over our bodies in this moment, whether that be our weight or muscle mass, cholesterol, or A1C. But presumably, if we were willing to be curious, there is a strategy that will help us move closer to that goal. But when we focus only on the actions we need to take to move towards this goal, we're missing out on understanding how to be successful in the first place.
It's not about not snacking. It's about understanding why you're snacking in the first place. Is it because you think food brings you joy or is it because you're trying to escape some painful emotion? It's not about exercising more.
It's about being honest with yourself about why you're not exercising now. Is it because you think you don't have time or because the exercise you think you need to do is something you actually hate? More broadly, and this applies to any behavior goal, when you make a commitment to yourself to do something, do you keep your promises to yourself? Why or why not? And how do you treat yourself when you break your promises? Do you use this as evidence against yourself or is it simply data? When the strategy you're trying doesn't work, do you make it mean there's something wrong with you or could it be that this strategy isn't quite right for you? I've been asking a number of questions that you might not have the answers to and I'm telling you that curiosity is the way to achieve any goal. This is true of the goals we have in our relationship with our kids.
It's true of us as we find our purpose and happiness in our lives and it's true when it comes to these goals around health, fitness, and nutrition. We think motivation is required to keep us on track, but if you think about motivation as the reason we have for acting or behaving in a certain way, the reality is that we're sometimes motivated to lose weight and exercise, but much more often we're motivated to seek short-term pleasures that take away a bit of the pain in our lives. In fact, we have plenty of motivation, but perhaps not enough curiosity about the reasons we have for behaving in the way that we do.
My friends, pursuing body goals is not about the how. There are a million strategies and if you kept trying different strategies and you were willing to stay consistent and committed until you found the one that worked for you, you would be successful. I bet you even have an idea of where to start.
So the problem isn't that you don't know how or that you don't have the skills to research different options for weight loss or fitness. The problem isn't the how. The opportunity you have is to become the woman who achieves the goal in front of you.
It's becoming the woman who doesn't use food to find joy or to escape emotion. It's becoming the person who finds time to exercise and is honest with herself about the type of exercise she really wants to do. It's becoming the woman who makes a commitment to herself to do something and then she does it, or when she doesn't keep her commitments, she's willing to be honest with herself about why.
She's willing to learn from her mistakes rather than make them mean she is a failure. My friend, achieving goals is about creating a new relationship with yourself. It's about building trust and confidence in yourself and also understanding how to build feelings of self-love and happiness within yourself rather than looking to food or external sources of short-term pleasure as a crutch.
Who do you need to be to achieve your goal, my friend? This is the work we do in Mom 2.0. Whether you want to lose weight, feel better, improve your relationship with your teen, find new purpose, all of these goals start with you building trust and confidence in yourself. So who do you want to be and what's stopping you from being that version of yourself right now?
Until next time, friends.
If you enjoyed this podcast, please leave a review and check out our coaching program, Mom 2.0 at www.thesmalljar.com. You have more power than you think, my friend.
