Losing Weight & Identity
Aug 21, 2024
Losing Weight Can Be HARD!
If you’ve embarked on the weight loss journey, you know what it feels like to have motivation one day, and deep and intense temptation the next.
We are so deeply entrenched in the patterns of the way we have been doing things, in the way we have been living our lives, that the lifestyle shift of losing weight can feel like an uphill battle.
- How do I stay consistent?
- How do I resist my old ways?
- How do I do this while dealing with the stress of life?
- How, how HOW?!
Because oftentimes we have the “recipe” for weight loss. We have the intellectual understanding that we are required to exercise more, to eat in moderation, and to consume healthy foods. But we simply can’t overcome the way things have “always been” or the way we have “always done it”.
And this is where it gets interesting because it opens up the question of what is required to lose weight, which is beyond the action steps.
- What is necessary behind the scenes?
- Behind the dietary changes?
- Behind the exercise regimen?
- What is the ingredient that fuels the consistency for us to show up no matter what?
I have found in my own life and in the lives of my clients, that the core ingredient influencing our behavior is our identity; our sense of self.
If we’ve ALWAYS been someone who has been overweight, or someone who hasn’t felt competent at the gym, or someone who eats junk food since a young age- we have neural pathways that strengthen this sense of identity. Our sense of self comes stems repeated behaviors over time or strong emotional experiences from the past. Our identity is how we perceive ourselves in relationship with the rest of the world.
And I have had mentors and coaches who have told me to simply, “change your identity”, “just DECIDE that you’re successful”, “just CHOOSE to be someone else” – and I used to preach this same thing.
But what I have found in my own journey is that it’s not as simple as a quick mental decision to “snap out of”who you’ve always been. Because who we have been so far in our life- is held in our body; not our mind. The way in which we have showed up for life and our goals, is an experience and sensation that is in the body- not the mind. So to speak on “fixing your mindset” without addressing what is happening in the physical body, is incomplete.
If we want to shift our health goals and lifestyle, we have to go deep into the body and feel what it feels like to be us. To be someone who feels overweight, like it’ll never happen for us, to be someone who feels scared and not fully capable. Because if we WERE someone who felt in shape, fit, and a full YES to a healthy habit lifestyle- then we would be living that.
But the hard truth is that that’s not where we are (yet!). And in order to fill that gap from where we are to where we are going- we have to feel into our body of what it feels like to be where we are right now. And only once we recognize this current sense of self, are we able to shift and transform and play with the sensations of what it feels like to be our next level self. Of what it feels like to be someone who has lost the weight, who meal preps, who knows their way around the gym.
Until we acknowledge our current identity and sensations of what that feels like, we will continuously feel stuck towards our goals. Because our mind alone cannot make us consistent. Our body has to move with our mind, because our body is where our identity lives.
Effective weight loss is fueled by our identity and sense of self.
This is the work I do with my clients! And this is the work I would love to help you with.
