The Real Cost of Losing Weight and Becoming Your Healthiest Self

SHOW NOTES

Losing weight isn't just going to cost you eating your favourite foods, socializing with your party friends and drinking all the alcohol you want.  It's going to cost you something you might not want to give up.

In today's episode I share the real cost of weight loss and becoming your healthiest self.  We dive into how to assess how you respond to stressors in life and how the key to becoming your best self is to be more intentional.

 TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to man in the Arena. This podcast is for men over 40 who want to master their health and weight loss goals once and for all, with innovative strategies, practical tools and insightful interviews. My goal is to help you overcome your limiting beliefs and achieve your optimal health. It's time to look good, feel good and do better. Hey guys, welcome back to man in the Area. Thank you so much for tuning in today. I've got another quick episode here, something that will just hopefully give you some new perspective, some more motivation to take action and continue to live the healthiest life that you can.

Today, I want to talk about the real cost of losing weight and attaining the healthiest version of yourself. Now, you might think that the cost of losing weight is giving up carbs and sugar, giving up late nights with friends or giving up alcohol, and sure, all of those things are part of the cost. But the real cost of losing weight and becoming the healthiest version of yourself is it's going to cost you your old self. It's going to cost you your past self and your current self. Who you are right now, who you are right now and who you've always been, is the real cost. So, essentially, the real cost is your identity. In order to change your personal reality, we need to change our personality, and our personality is made up of the way that we think, feel and act. So the cost of your new health and weight loss is your old ways of thinking, feeling and acting. And here's the great news 99% of this identity, the thing that you need to change, is the unconscious part of you. In other words, you get to become a much more conscious and aware person, and who doesn't want that? The bad news is it's very difficult and comes with a lot of discomfort, right, because it's the unconscious part of you. This is decades of the ways that you've been thinking and feeling and acting, and so to change that, you have to be so much more aware, and, of course, this means you have to be so much more intentional, you have to be so much more planful and you don't just get to go on autopilot, and that's not easy, okay, and this is why the failure rate of losing weight and getting in shape is really high, because people either don't know what they need to change about themselves or they're not willing to change the things that need to change.

So what I'm describing here, by the way, this is what's called identity-based behavior change, and it's by far the most effective way of creating and cultivating new habits and attaining the outcomes you desire. Most strategies, including dieting, they simply focus on the behavior and they're tied to a goal. So that's goal-based behavior change, and the science shows that this just does not last in the long run. So to change your identity, you have to become aware, and that's step one. So what I want to do right have to become aware, and that's step one. So what I want to do right now is a quick little exercise, a little bit of a self-scouting exercise, but I want to ask you a few questions, right, because this is going to give you some really good understanding as to who you are and how you're unconsciously sort of showing up. This is the things that you're going to have to change eventually.

The first question here is how do you respond to major life stressors? I'm talking about big events. When we look at life in general, there's usually top five of most dramatic big life stressors that could be moving, could be a divorce, a new job, losing a loved one, having a child. These are all transitionary events. They involve big emotions, grief, anxiety, uncertainty. So a lot of people give up their habits, their most helpful habits, during these major life transitions, habits like working out, eating, clean social connections, all the things that serve them in their self-care.

Number two I want you to identify how you respond to micro -stressors. These are smaller things that compound over time or maybe even over the course of a day or an afternoon. It might be the fight with a loved one, it might be a disagreement with a colleague at work. It's even smaller things. Like you know, someone cuts you off on the way to work, or someone I know this is a really trivial one, but someone gets your order wrong at lunch. Okay, I want you to identify the strategies maybe not the strategies, but what you kind of do unconsciously to manage those stressors. And a lot of times it's reactionary, it's overeating, it's over drinking, it's staying up too late, it's going to our phone, it's buffering. We've talked a lot about that on this podcast.

Okay, question number three of this kind of self-scouting exercise here is how do you show up during vacations and holidays? Again, these are major disruptors to our routine, to our unconscious habits and patterns, but they're very telling of what is important to you and the identity that you're eventually going to need to change. Okay, so when you go on vacation, do you start to overeat? Do you stress more? Do you get a chance to relax? I want you to assess how you show up on vacations and holidays. The last question here is how do you show up on weekends? What's different about the weekends in terms of your behavior, in terms of your thought process, in terms of how you feel? That's different during the week?

Now, based on my nearly five years as a health and weight loss coach for guys over 40, and my previous 15 years as a trainer and fitness professional, these four areas are the most common disruptors to a conscious life Major life stressors the micro stressors we experience every day vacations and holidays, and then the weekends. Micro stressors we experience every day vacations and holidays, and then the weekends. These are major life events, daily stressors that compound again the vacations, the holidays, the weekends. By understanding how your old self thinks, feels and acts in these situations, you can now start to create a more conscious and intentional identity. So now we go to step two. Right, and how does your future self show up in these situations? You'll ask yourself how do I respond to major life stressors as my future self? What about daily stressors. What strategies do you use to manage the day-to-day stress that compounds and grows? How do you manage that and regulate your emotions? What is your conscious plan as you go into vacations and holidays and weekends? Okay, so this is deciding and defining who your future self is. That's step two. You create this vision for yourself right Now.

As a conscious person and someone whose identity is deeply rooted in being conscious about my health. I can tell you I put a lot of intention and effort into these areas. I have a game plan right. So when I travel, I make sure that the hotel we stay at has a decent gym, or at least one close by that I can go work out at. Now, this is part of my identity. I'm not saying you have to adopt this. I'm just saying that it's important to realize how conscious I am about this area of my life because it's important to me Maybe that's part of this, too is really identifying the values that are important to you. I plan my meals on my weekends, I prioritize my sleep. I use different tools to manage my stress. I journal, I meditate, I work out, I plan my workouts. Another thing that's really part of my identity is I'm interested in health and science research, so I'm constantly learning about new ways to improve my health and new tools and new tricks.

Okay, the last step here is I want you to assess your commitment to your new conscious identity and future self. So this means you keep the score of the day right. Ask yourself was today a day I was more aligned with who I'm trying to become or was it more aligned with who I'm shifting away from? Okay, were you your past self today or were you your future self Now? With that, I'm going to leave you with a little secret.

You don't suddenly shift into your future self overnight. You evolve through many different renditions and models because your thoughts, feelings and actions they're going to evolve. If your thoughts were the same as your future self, you'd be your future self right now. If you felt the same way as your future self and acted the same way as your future self, you'd be your future self already. So it's hard to make that leap overnight.

Okay, it takes practice. It takes practicing your new thoughts and creating that identity with purpose every day, and that's why it's hard. That's why it's difficult. It takes staying power, but I know that you possess the ability to do that, because I've seen other people do that. I've experienced that myself. All right, so this is the challenge, and the goal is to start to assess your current identity and then create the new one.

Okay, the last thing I'll mention is this I want you to give yourself a lot of grace along the way through this discovery. You're probably going to lose some friends. You're probably going to lose some colleagues who just don't align with your new self. You are definitely going to lose your old self, and that's the cost, but the benefit and the outcome is so much greater than anything that you could ever imagine, believe me. Okay, good luck in this process, guys. Until next week, keep showing up, keep doing the uncomfortable work and keep surrendering the outcome. Thank you so much for listening. Now is the time to take action and change your life. Head on over to thespearmethodcom and discover how I can help you get started on your path to better health and weight loss.