Update on My Hiatus, a Modified Media Fast, and a Bit About 2024
In today's episode I'm giving an update on my hiatus from this podcast and YouTube channel, my modified media fast, the projects I completed since we last spoke, and a look at what I'm thinking about for 2024. (: Links to the various and sundry things mentioned in this episode: My Newsletter Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way on Amazon The Laid Back Guide to Weight Loss Maintenance Overcoming Weight Loss Obstacles The Swamps of Dorscha (Book II in the Forgotten Portal series) Intermittent Fasting Workbook Slow and Steady Success Academy Become an Insider on Youtube Discord Server Subscription Video: Intermittent Fasting During the Holidays Interivew on Justin Dorff's Channel AI Generated Transcript of this Podcast Episode Welcome to the Six Miles to Supper podcast. I'm your host, Kayla Cox, and I've lost over £80 with intermittent fasting six days a week, eating whatever I wanted at my meals, taking a cheat day every Sunday and walking six miles a day. And I'm here to help you on your weight loss journey. On this episode, we're going to talk about all the things I've been up to since I've been on hiatus from this podcast. First of all, I would like to say I'm sorry, I forgot to update you and let you know that I was on hiatus from this podcast. I realized today as I was going through the last podcast that I recorded, I really listened to it because I thought, surely I said, you know, I'm going on hiatus, but I didn't do that. So if you are not subscribed to my newsletter and you don't watch my YouTube, you might have been wondering where I was. And by the way, if you'd like to subscribe to my newsletter or if you're interested in any of the things that I'm going to be talking about, you can find the links in the show notes for this episode. The newsletter is really the best way to kind of keep up with what I'm doing because there are so many different places where I'm active that is easy for me to forget to update one. So in mid-September, I started looking around at my life and looking at, you know, how things went this past year and kind of thinking about what kind of direction I wanted to head in 2024. And I realized I had all these projects that were sitting there, unfinished things I had been working on but had never really, you know, got them to the finish line. And so I thought, you know, I really want to finish these things by the end of the year. I knew that I couldn't continue doing the same schedule I had been doing and still try to finish these things. I had already tried that and it had not worked. And that's the definition of insanity. Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. So I decided to go on a modified media fast. So if you've never read the excellent book by Julia Cameron called The Artist Way, you may not know what a media fest is, but a media farce is basically taking a break from consuming other people's creativity. Now she recommends a seven day strict media fest, meaning for seven days straight, you don't read anything written by anyone else. You don't listen to music. You don't consume anybody else's creativity. And and it's a very great exercise. I highly recommend it to anybody. But I knew that that kind of strict fasting wasn't going to be sustainable for the amount of time that I guessed that this was going to take. Now, I was a little bit wrong in how long I thought this media fest would go on. I thought really I would be done. Maybe, you know, after a month and then after I kind of got into it, I thought, well, maybe it'll be more like Halloween. As it turned out, it was mid-November before I was finished. And quite frankly, I'm still trying to get caught up and really restarted back on those things that I wanted to do. For example, this is the first podcast episode I've created since the Media Fest was over. So what was I doing on the media Fest? How did I do it and why did I do it? So the way I decided to modify it fast, which is very much like how I modify regular fasting for weight loss purposes. You know, for me I was thinking about long term, okay, you know, I think this is going to happen for at least a month, maybe longer. So what can I really stick with? Because sticking with it was a lot more important to me than, you know, having super strict rules and trying to be a perfectionist. So I decided for myself that Monday through Saturday, I was not going to consume other people's creativity just in general. That meant no reading except for the Bible and the Phillip Clear. I didn't allow myself to listen to any podcast or watch any YouTube videos or watch any kind of TV or anything like that. The only exceptions to that were on date night and on Sleep on the Couch Night, which is the family movie night we have on Saturday nights. At that point, I would, you know, watch a movie with them. And then on Sunday, I would just I wouldn't seek out creativity from other people. But if it happened to be on, I would watch it. So, for example, if my husband flipped on the TV on Sunday, I would sit there and watch it with him because it was important to me to spend time with him and not to just like leave the room because he wanted to watch TV. And I also went on hiatus from creating new topical videos for YouTube and for creating podcasts for this podcast. So I did continue to do my weekly lives for my YouTube members on Wednesdays at noon, and I do one also just for the general YouTube public on Fridays at noon. And so I did those. I continued to those and I continued to do the vlog for members. Also, but I didn't create other types of topical videos because, you know, the vlogs are unedited and so are the lives like alive. I just sit down, do the thing and then I'm done. Same with the vlog, just record it. I don't edit and then I just, you know, pop it on YouTube. But when I do a topical video that that's like a lot more work, you know, like I have to rehearse it, I have to outline it. I have to be, you know, I have to go through it a lot and then I record it and then I edited it and then, you know, it's just this whole big long process. So I knew that I could continue to do those things, but that if I tried to do the topical videos and things like that, I would just not get done with these other projects so that those were my rules. So I did this because I knew that if I did not create this kind of set of rules for myself, I would just never finish these projects. And these projects were important to me for various reasons. So let's talk about the projects I did and what that looked like. So the first project was finishing the laid back guide to Weight Loss Maintenance. This is a book that I actually started in May of 2019, so four and a half years ago. So I had just written The Laid Back Guide to Intermittent Fasting and a very kind reader reached out and they had really enjoyed the book and they said, You know, the next book you should write is a book on maintenance because nobody writes books about maintenance, you know, And so I think that's what you should write next. And I thought that's yeah, that's a really great idea. But I was totally intimidated by the idea of writing a book about maintenance. And also I felt like I needed more experience with maintenance. I felt very confident about weight loss itself with intermittent fasting, but I felt like, you know, I need to experience more of the maintenance because maintenance is where I always have failed. Now, at that point I had maintained my initial £65 loss. I had done that for a year before I lost more weight. But then, you know, there was that year where I was losing more weight and I kind of felt like that didn't quite count as maintenance because when you're actively trying to lose weight, that's a different process than just trying to maintain your weight loss. So I thought, you know, I really want to I want to maintain for a while longer before I really work on this book. So instead, I wrote another book called Overcoming Weight Loss Obstacles. And then I thought, I'll just put the maintenance book on the backburner. And so then I went back to it. After a while, I finally thought, you know, I feel like I could start writing this book again. But I just kept working on it and working on it. And then I got it earlier this year in to kind of draft format, you know, like I felt like the the format was basically where I wanted it to be. But the way I write a book is basically I sometimes I outline, but then I kind of write the first draft and then I'll let it sit for a while and then I'll reread it and then I'll do a second draft. And then more and more and more drafts until I finally get it to where I want it to be. And then at that point, I will read it out loud over and over and over and over again until I feel like it's exactly what I want to say. Or at least it said in the best way I know how to say it. And then then I'll do all the other parts of publishing it, which is, you know, for me, because it's self-published, I, I then need to do the cover art and then put the thing out on KDP and which is Amazon's publishing platform. And so and also it is currently available on Amazon. And then later on I'm going to have it on other platforms as well. After I finished the maintenance book, I went on to my next project, which was to redo the Overcoming Weight Loss Obstacles book cover. When I first put it out, it was just a text based cover and it was just what I could do at the time. You know, I really wanted to get the book out there. And so I, I sent it out there with a text based cover. But over time, I just had this idea of something that I wanted to put on the cover. And it was kind of intimidating because I knew I wanted to draw it and I wanted to relay the message, and I had the idea that I would make it look like Sisyphus, you know, pushing the boulder up the hill. And so I started sketching it out and I had been working on this, you know, just in my head for a long time, but it never could quite make myself sit down and actually do the work. So that was the next task I did, was I sat down and I worked on that and I had no excuse because it wasn't like, Well, I need to make another video or I need to make another podcast. I just need to focus on this. So I did. I and I'm happy with the final result. So I updated the cover and so the updated cover is now on Amazon and so if you're interested in looking at it, you can see it on there. Since the Office is a character in Greek mythology and he had this punishment of pushing a boulder up a hill and just when he would get it to the top of the hill, it would roll back down. And so this has come to describe, you know, basically any kind of task where it feels like you accomplish it and then it just kind of falls apart and you have to do it over again, which is what weight loss felt like to me until I found intermittent fasting. So I thought, Oh, that's kind of a, you know, like these obstacles, it feels sometimes like a Sisyphean task. And so that's why I did the cover the way I did it, except for the weight loss journey, Unlike Surfaces story can have a happy ending. You can get that boulder to the top of the hill and it doesn't have to roll back down. The next project was to finish book two in my forgotten portal Young Adult series. And so I had written a book called Escape from All Shakes Castle several years ago, and I actually started writing Book two right away, even before book one was out. But I just worked on it and worked on it. And then, you know, several things kind of happened in my life that kind of interrupted my progress on it. But I finally got back to it. And but again, it was one of those things that it was just sitting there, you know, kind of in this state of it just needed more attention. I needed to just put all of my attention on that thing. So that's what I did. I worked on it and worked on it and worked on it. Same kind of process as I use for my nonfiction books, you know, reading it over and over and over again, having other people read it, tell me what they think, especially my kids. And once I got the manuscript finished, then it was a process of, you know, doing the cover and then putting it out there for the world. And so then when I was finished with that, I went on to work on the intermittent fasting workbook. Now this is one of those projects I thought, Oh, this is going to take like a day. And, and it taught me again that I'm really terrible estimating the amount of work that needs to go into something because so I had had this workbook as a companion to the intermittent fasting for weight loss course that I have on Teachable. So the workbook, as it was on the course, was basically just a compilation of all the worksheets that went along with the course. So, you know, you watch a video and then I would tell you, okay, now fill out this worksheet and then you would, you know, fill out the worksheet. And so my thought was, well, you know, that general process would be really helpful for people. Not everybody maybe wants to buy the course, but some people maybe just want the workbook. So my thought was, well, oh, I can just take that workbook and kind of just, you know, create a little bit of explanation and then and then just put the workbook out there. But then as I got into the project, I realized, Well, no, you really need to give context and it needs to kind of stand on its own. And so after a while of working on it, I realized like this is just a really big project. So the further I got into the project, the more I realized that it was a really good thing because it helped me to see that I needed to tweak the course a little bit. Now, when I look at the course as it is right now, I really like it. I think it's helpful. I know that it's helpful because people have told me, you know, that they've gone through it and that it has helped them. But through the process of making this workbook and tweaking it, I, I, I broke down the process of weight loss even further into five distinct phases. And I did this because I wanted to base it on what I have learned in my own journey and also what I see other people kind of getting stuck on. And so before I had like three phases. Basically the first phase was write your plan and start testing things out. Phase two is like going through just the process of losing weight and phase three was maintenance. So I ended up breaking it down a little bit further. So the first phase is preparation. It's about getting your mindset in the right place, about doing a little bit of work on the front end about, you know, getting your motivations in place so that when you do kind of struggle in the later parts of the journey, you won't quit. And the second phase is about learning how to fast. The third phase is figuring out your plan, experimenting with things, getting that plan in place. Fourth phase is the actual process of losing weight, and the fifth phase is maintenance. So the work takes you through that process and if you'd like to buy the work, but you can do so in the link in the show notes. But if you have ever purchased a course from me in the past or you are a past coaching client, then you can get the workbook for free. The way to get it is to log into the course that you purchased. So and it doesn't matter. It can be any of the courses that I've made. Just log into the course and you should be able to just download the workbook from the Intermittent Fasting workbook module. If you are a past coaching client, please just email me and I will email you the PDF. So there is a challenge that comes up with something like a workbook. For some people what happens is, you know, you hear about a word like, Yes, that's going to, that's going to be a great thing to do and you'll buy the workbook and then maybe you'll read the entire workbook, but then you never actually do the work in the workbook. That just happens to so many of us. You know, there are so many books that I've picked up. And in the past, what I would do is I wouldn't do the exercises. You know, I'd read this self-help book and I would just, you know, I'd read the questions, but I wouldn't actually journal them out like they said to do. But what I learned on the weight loss journey was that if I actually did the exercises, that's when the change started to happen. It wasn't just from reading the book, it was from doing these, you know, journal exercises, writing things out, really thinking these things through. So with that in mind, I'm going to try to solve that problem using the Discord server. This leads me to another announcement for all current or future or past students or coaching clients. I'm giving you permanent access to the Discord server that I've set up now. I originally set this up because the insiders on my YouTube channel, those are people who are just paying a monthly subscription. They were asking for a place to get together and hold each other accountable and so that's how the Discord server was born. And as I've started to use the Discord server, I've really liked the different features it has. And what I've seen in there. So and the Discord server is going to figure heavily into what I'm going to do in 2024 in order to get access to the Discord server. All you need to do is log into the course and then you'll see the instructions how to get access. Just be aware that it is a private server. So I need to manually approve everything, so just be aware of that. So just follow the instructions that I've given you in there and then you should be able to get access. So for those of you who don't know what discord is, discord is basically just a place where you can chat with other people. And basically, if you can use Facebook, then you can use discord like it doesn't require a bunch of skills or anything. It's going to look a little different than Facebook, of course. But but the basics are the same, so don't be intimidated by that. So on the Discord server, right now we have an accountability channel. We also have places for people to share what they're doing during the fasting window to keep themselves busy. It's called filling the void. Also, the Discord server is where I hold office hours now. So if you have questions on the weight loss journey about, you know, anything that you've dealt with in the course or, you know, just like if you're tracking and you're kind of like what in a second opinion on what's going on, or if you're just kind of having trouble, you can drop into the office hours that I hold and we can chat about it. You can be on just in the chat, but so you don't have to be on camera, You don't have to be on a microphone, or you can share your screen with me or you can have your microphone on, or you can have your camera on. It's really up to you and I'll post my availability within the Discord server. Also on the Discord server, we are going to be doing a book club. So the first book that we're doing is Steven Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and we're starting that now here in December. So if you're interested in participating in that, go ahead and join the Discord server. Now, like I mentioned, you can get access to the discord server either by being an insider on YouTube or being a student inside Sloan say Success Academy, or you can purchase a server subscription directly on Discord. And the Discord server is also a place where I'm going to be experimenting with some different types of offerings. For example, with this workbook in mind, I'm thinking, you know, I know one of the things that's really hard to do is to carve out time for the weight loss journey, meaning it's hard to get yourself to sit down and, you know, do a worksheet, but it's very helpful to do so. So I'm planning on doing what I call the work of weight loss blocks. The idea is based off of a thing I've seen other people doing called sprints. So basically, you know, people do this with writing sprints or reading sprints. They'll basically get together. You know, some YouTubers do this where they'll that like actually just sit there with their microphone off in and they'll like. Right. So the idea is you kind of start out maybe the first 10 minutes or so I would be, I would be hosting it and I would take, you know, questions or maybe we would discuss a topic for about 10 minutes and then for the next, say, you know, 20 to 30 minutes, depending on how what works best for the group, we would do, you know, a sprint, quote unquote. But really all it would mean is to do the work of weight loss. So for some people that might be doing a worksheet for other people that might be sitting down with their weight tracking spreadsheet and looking at the trends and, you know, updating it with notes and things like that or, you know, sitting down with your your plan and looking at is it working? And should teenagers be made or it might be something else. But the idea is to carve out that time. And so I'm thinking about, you know, offering these on a weekly basis. It's going to be experimental because I don't really know it. It may not be something that people are interested in or it may need to be tweaked or something else might work better. But I have plenty of administrative tasks that I also need to make myself sit down and do. So My plan is to be doing that kind of work while other people are doing the other kind of work. And then after the sprint is over, after that 30 minutes is up, then we'll have about another 10 minutes to kind of talk about, you know, anything that came up for us during that sprint and and then then it's done. So that's kind of my idea. So just be on the lookout for that as well. So once I finished the workbook, then it was time for my last project, which was a painting for my daughter. Apparently I had promised my daughter a painting and it's really important to me to keep promises. It was a big lesson I learned on the weight loss journey that it is important to keep promises to yourself is important also to keep promises to other people. And on the weight loss journey, I realized, you know, I'm pretty good about keeping promises to other people, but I'm really not good at keeping promises to myself, you know, promises that I'm going to lose weight, promises that I'm going to stick to a plan, that kind of thing. And I've really learned the importance of doing that, of, you know, when you say you're going to do something, then you need to do it, you know, and which also if you start to do that, you start to become more careful of about what you promise to do. And so my daughter brought this up to me that I had promised her a painting. She said, you know, one day she just kind of randomly came up to me and she said, When are you going to do that painting that you promised? And I thought, I don't what what painting? I had completely forgotten that I had promised. So she showed me the picture of this church that I had promised to paint for her. And and so I got myself to sit down and actually do the work and to do the painting. And it took a while to do this. But and I mean, it took many, many hours because I was not familiar at all really with the medium that I was using. I was using acrylic paint. I had done like a couple of oil paintings before, just small little things. And this was a bigger canvas and it was very intimidating. But I learned a lot. I loved the process. I highly recommend doing art, you know, just creating things just, just for fun, you know, just just to do it. It's very relaxing. Is far superior to watching a movie or anything like that. And so I finished the project and then with that project finished, I was finished with my media fast, and then I tried to get back into doing all those things that I had kind of got behind on. And so I've been slowly working my way back in. So as you can see, today is December 6th and I am, you know, finally putting out a podcast episode. So, you know, doing a little quick math, that means it basically took me three weeks to kind of get back into the groove of of publishing things. I've been doing things I've been I did put up a topical video on YouTube about intermittent fasting during the holidays, and I've also been continuing to do the vlog for insider. I've been on the Discord server and I've also just been, you know, trying to get caught up on various things. I was interviewed by Justin Dorff for his YouTube channel and so so I've been busy creating things. It's just that this podcast has been kind of like the last thing for me to get back into. So going forward, my plan is to try to to create consistently for the YouTube channel and for this podcast, but also I really enjoy, you know, helping people on a more personal basis, you know, getting to know the people. And, you know, on the Discord server, that's been really neat to be able to actually interact with people. It's been a difficult thing to do on YouTube itself because the comment section in the public comment section, I just can't do it. I can't go in it and keep my mental health in the right place. But this Discord server has been good so far, I think because it is private and it's not just open to anyone who wants to come in and and come. It is just for people who really want to be there. So thank you guys for listening to this very long update, but I hope you enjoyed it and I will see you next one. Do you want to lose the weight without getting rid of the foods you love and that you know you'll go back to eating again? Anyway, my book, The Laid Back Guide to Intermittent Fasting, teaches you how to practice intermittent fasting so that you lose the weight sustainably and keep it off for good. You can get the audiobook read by me for free when you sign up for your 30 day trial of Audible, the link is in the show notes, and if you've gotten value from this podcast and you'd like to let other people know about it, it'd be great if you could leave a review on either iTunes or wherever you get your podcast. Thanks.
