Perfectionism Is The Enemy of Weight Loss: Here Are 3 Ways to Defeat It

Perfectionism is a dangerous enemy on the weight loss journey. In this podcast, we're going to talk about how to defeat it.  The Laid Back Guide to Intermittent Fasting: How I lost Over 80 Pounds and Kept it Off Eating Whatever I Wanted https://amzn.to/2QjgUJ4 The Laid Back Guide to Weight Loss Maintenance: https://amzn.to/3RUTT1p Overcoming Weight Loss Obstacles: https://amzn.to/3PJD6M4 Intermittent Fasting Workbook: https://sixmilestosupper.com/workbook/ Private coaching with Kayla: https://sixmilestosupper.com/coaching Courses with Kayla: https://sixmilestosupper.com/course Overcoming Weight Loss Obstacles: https://amzn.to/2R1EVqA

In today's episode, I outline my manifesto: the things I believe about food, exercise, and fasting, as they relate to weight loss. For the text version of the manifesto, visit this link: https://sixmilestosupper.com/the-six-miles-to-supper-manifesto/  The Laid Back Guide to Weight Loss Maintenance: https://amzn.to/3RUTT1p Overcoming Weight Loss Obstacles: https://amzn.to/3PJD6M4 Intermittent Fasting Workbook: https://sixmilestosupper.com/workbook/ Private coaching with Kayla: https://sixmilestosupper.com/coaching Courses with Kayla: https://sixmilestosupper.com/course The Laid Back Guide to Intermittent Fasting: How I lost Over 80 Pounds and Kept it Off Eating Whatever I Wanted https://amzn.to/2QjgUJ4 Overcoming Weight Loss Obstacles: https://amzn.to/2R1EVqA

In this interview, I talk to Justin Dorff, an intermittent fasting coach and YouTuber who lost 50 pounds in 2.5 months with extended fasting. Connect With Justin: On YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzNboS4xv0CekKBs_K3CLGw Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/justin.dorff.5 Signup For Justin's Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/maxeffectfitness/newsletter-registration The Laid Back Guide to Weight Loss Maintenance: https://amzn.to/3RUTT1p Overcoming Weight Loss Obstacles: https://amzn.to/3PJD6M4 Intermittent Fasting Workbook: https://sixmilestosupper.com/workbook/ Private coaching with Kayla: https://sixmilestosupper.com/coaching Courses with Kayla: https://sixmilestosupper.com/course The Laid Back Guide to Intermittent Fasting: How I lost Over 80 Pounds and Kept it Off Eating Whatever I Wanted https://amzn.to/2QjgUJ4 Overcoming Weight Loss Obstacles: https://amzn.to/2R1EVqA  

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.

In this episode I talk about the importance of autonomy when practicing intermittent fasting for weight loss.  An AI generated transcript is below.   Links: Private Coaching With Kayla Sign up for my weekly newsletter My Books (ebook or paperback) on Amazon: The Laid Back Guide to Intermittent Fasting: How I lost Over 80 Pounds and Kept It Off Eating Whatever I Wanted Overcoming Weight Loss Obstacles: How To Keep Going When Things Get Difficult  Get the audiobook for free with a 30 day FREE TRIAL from Audible My young adult fiction novel: Escape From Olshek's Castle  ALL THE INFORMATION CONTAINED ON THIS PODCAST IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY. IT IS NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR MEDICAL ADVICE. YOU SHOULD ALWAYS CONSULT A MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL BEFORE GOING ON ANY DIET OR EXERCISE PROGRAM. Begin AI Generated Transcript Welcome to the Six Miles to Supper podcast. I'm your host, Kayla Cox, and I've lost over 80 pounds 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. In today's episode, we're going to talk about the importance of autonomy with intermittent fasting. I recently read a really good book on motivation called Drive by Daniel Pink. And in that book, he talks about motivation and what are the ingredients that need to be present in order for motivation to occur. And he says it comes basically down to three elements autonomy, mastery and purpose. And in today's episode, we're going to just focus on the idea of autonomy. Autonomy comes from two Greek words Otto's meaning self and numerous meaning law. When you put that together, all it really means is when you have autonomy, you are governing yourself, you're giving yourself rules, and then you are following them. And if you don't feel like you have autonomy, then you lose motivation. In other words, when you start to feel like other people are in control of your weight loss journey or they're in control of your fasting, you're going to feel less in control. You're going to feel like you don't have autonomy and then you're going to lose motivation. So it's important to listen to how you are feeling on the weight loss journey and to, you know, like if you ever start to feel like you're not in control, that's a red flag. And so I'm going to go through a few areas where I feel like a lot of us can start to feel like we don't have autonomy. But really, this is an illusion. Ultimately, you are in control of every single aspect of the weight loss journey. So let's talk about the fasting window itself, because that's where a lot of people have trouble. Ultimately, you are in control of what you allow yourself in the fasting window. But too often it can be, you know, a thing where maybe you've heard like, oh, well, you can't have anything at all, or you're not allowed to have a mint, or you can't have gum or you can't have cream in your coffee. And then you can think that that rule is forcing you to do something you don't really want to do. But the truth is, it is your choice whether to adopt that rule for yourself or not. It's a trap to adopt that rule for yourself and then to feel resentful of the person who you got the rule from. The truth is, there is no intermittent fasting police. So if you want to have cream in your coffee or you want to have a piece of gum or you want to have a spoonful of peanut butter in the fasting window, because that's what gets you through it. That's okay. You also have autonomy in the eating window. You get to decide what to eat and what not to eat and how much to eat. If you want to eat higher calorie kind of foods or things, you know, have a lot of sugar, a lot of salt or a lot of fat, you can do that. You're in control of every bite that goes into your body. And yet sometimes you can start to forget that, you know, you might think the other people are forcing you to eat a certain way, but that's simply not true. If you want to be low carb, be low carb, but understand that that's your choice. It's not anybody else's. Also, you are in control of how often you eat. If you want to eat three or four different times, and that still makes it so that you have the appropriate amount of food going into your body. Then you'll still lose weight. You're in control also of what time you fast and for how long you fast. You know, like if you want to do a second eat, great. If you want to do a 15 nine, you can do that. You can, you know, put all your eating in the morning or you can do all your eating late at night. It doesn't really matter. You're in control of that. It's also up to you how many days a week you're practicing fasting. You know, some people do it seven days a week. Other people do it five days a week. Some people do it three days a week. It's all about what you can stick with and what works in your life. It's also in your control. How often you take the day off. For whatever reason, you get to decide what an acceptable reason is. The thing is, people can get into your head, you know, like if you listen to one fasting person and they're all about clean fasting and they tell you absolutely, you can't have even a single bite of anything and can never have any kind of calories at all. And if you ever, ever, ever do it any differently, then you're doing it wrong. They can get in your head. And I mean, right now I'm in your head and I hope that you remember that just because something worked for me, just because, you know, I like Matt and I like I like dirty fasting. That isn't necessarily mean that that's the right path for you. You have to decide what will work in your life If you ever find yourself thinking like, Oh, other people are in control, other people are making you eat this certain way. Just understand that that can lead to some, you know, really interesting kind of behavior that will make you gain weight, you know, because you may start to eat out of a sense of rebellion. I know I certainly did this on various diets. I would start to really be resentful that, you know, some doctor in some book was telling me that I couldn't eat bread and that kind of a thing. And and so I would rebellion step. And ultimately, that did not serve me. And the real change happened for me when I realized that I'm in control of every bite I take. I get to make the rules for myself. And that will eventually get the weight off my body. So I hope that you'll take a minute and think about all the different parts of your plan. And if you see an area where you feel like you don't have autonomy, I would encourage you to remind yourself that you do that. You get to control that. And if you need to make a change, you should. Thank you for listening to this episode and I'll see you in the 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.

In today's episode, I'm talking about bad days on the weight loss journey. Here's the link I mentioned to Jocko Willink's Good speech. An AI generated transcript is below.   Links: Private Coaching With Kayla Sign up for my weekly newsletter My Books (ebook or paperback) on Amazon: The Laid Back Guide to Intermittent Fasting: How I lost Over 80 Pounds and Kept It Off Eating Whatever I Wanted Overcoming Weight Loss Obstacles: How To Keep Going When Things Get Difficult  Get the audiobook for free with a 30 day FREE TRIAL from Audible My young adult fiction novel: Escape From Olshek's Castle  ALL THE INFORMATION CONTAINED ON THIS PODCAST IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY. IT IS NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR MEDICAL ADVICE. YOU SHOULD ALWAYS CONSULT A MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL BEFORE GOING ON ANY DIET OR EXERCISE PROGRAM. Begin AI Generated Transcript I. 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. Before we get into today's episode, I just want to let you know that I am offering the all access pass for my academy. So what this means is that you can pay a monthly subscription for access to all the courses inside my academy. That also gets you access to office hours with me and to a weekly group meeting that will do on Zoom. This meeting will have a topical component based on the group's needs, and I'll also be taking questions and I will answer them in depth inside the meeting. In order to get access. All you need to do is log in to the course and then go to the weekly group meeting module, which should be located in the course introduction for whichever course you're in and if you'd like to get your all access pass subscription, you can click the link in the show notes. Thanks. In today's episode, we're going to talk about bad days on the weight loss journey. Now, the thing about bad days is that when you're going through it, they're not fun. They're actually quite bad. That's why we call them a bad day. And I know that it sounds trite, you know, when when someone says, oh, well, there's always a silver lining in every, you know, bad thing. If you just look on the positive side, some good can come of it. But I have found that this is so true on the weight loss journey. I thought it might be helpful to take you through several different specific examples of my own weight loss journey to show you how you know, some of the roughest times that I had were actually the things that ended up being the best for me. And I'm just going to go in chronological order. So the first bad day I had was my I've had enough moment. Now, for those of you who have not heard this story. I got tagged in some Facebook photos back in March of 2014. And as I sat there in the bathroom, you know, I remember logging in to Facebook and I and I saw these notifications and it said, Oh, you've been tagged in some photos. And I remember thinking, oh, I wonder, well, you know, when would was that from? And that I thought, well, it's probably just, you know, just my kids because I always avoided the camera. So when I clicked on the notification, I started seeing all these pictures. I was like swiping through and I didn't recognize myself. And I remember in that moment I was so humiliated. I was embarrassed. I was really angry at the person who had posted the pictures. I was angry at Facebook for having the stupid tagging feature. I remember being very upset, just, you know, crying. And I remember thinking, you know, maybe my family would be better off without me. And in that moment, I called out to God. I was like, I, I need help. You know, I can't do this alone. So even though that was my low point, it was also this turning point that happened to me because it was in that moment that very, very low time when things started to change. As soon as I said that little prayer, I remember just having some clarity, just, you know, like just sitting there, things that I really had not realized until that moment I started to realize. And one thing was I realized that all this anger that I was feeling and I mean, I was blaming everybody. I was really mad at everybody else. You know, I was mad at the person who had posted the photos. I was mad at Facebook. I was mad at all the fast food companies. I was mad at all the food companies in general. I was mad at my kids because I thought, well, it was the pregnancy's that really put on this weight of the minute. My husband, because he never had to worry about his weight. You know, I was just mad at everybody. And then as I sat there, I realized I have no one else to blame. This all falls on me because I am the one who took every bite of food. I am the one who, you know, decided every day, you know, should I sit here or should I go for a walk or should I, you know, this bag of chips or should I just not? And from that day forward, even though it was by no means an overnight transformation, because you'll you'll hear, you know, how long this whole process took. But but it was the start out of doing just a little bit better with my eating doing just a little bit better with my relationships, communicating just a little bit better, taking a little bit of time for myself, you know, trying not to be resentful of things, trying to say no to people so that I wouldn't be resentful. But it all started because of one really bad day. So, you know, time rocked on and almost a whole year passed with no real progress being made, even though I knew, like, okay, I want to lose weight. I was trying to figure things out, but I wasn't really taking any action, not consistently and not the appropriate kind of action that would actually help me lose weight. I was in the gym. I had I was there like on a free seven day trial thing, and I was working out really hard. And and I realized, like, I really need to go weigh myself. And this was a very difficult thing for me to do because I had not weighed in years. I mean, I had had my third child and had not weighed. And I knew that, you know, I wasn't going to like the number, but I was pretty sure I was pretty sure the number would be like 185. I thought know, probably like 175, but maybe it's 185, maybe it's gotten that bad. And so I got up the nerve. I was like, okay, I just I need to look at that number. I've got to know. So I went to the locker room and I climbed up on the scale. And then I looked at the number and I saw £222 staring back at me. And I felt like I had just gotten socked in the gut. You know, I was I was just so embarrassed yet again about like, how far off I was in my self-perception. And so I felt really bad in that moment. It was a really bad day when that happened. But I learned something really important in that day, which was I had the power to make it so that I was never in that place again, that I was never blindsided by what I weighed, because that was the day that I'd decided, okay, daily weighing, that's for me. I just, you know, I'm going away for the rest of my life so that I always just know where I'm at with my weight. And I think that has been a huge reason why I was able to not only lose the weight, but more importantly, keep it off, because it has kept me accountable in maintenance, which is where I always struggled. About four months after I weighed myself for the first time, I had another really bad day and that was the day that I injured my back doing a deadlift. Now I had lost about £17 by that point and so I was making pretty good progress. Now, I didn't think at the time I really kind of thought, I'm not losing weight nearly fast enough. I don't really hurry up, which is one big reason why I injured my back because I was pushing myself too hard. But I remember, you know, I went to do this deadlift and I knew that it was really heavy. And you know, there was a thing in the back of my mind that said, this is probably a bit too heavy. I should wait until I can do this. Lower weight was really good form and, and then, you know, move up. But I was in a rush and I remember when I picked up the weight, it was like I saw like a snap of a white light go off, like in my vision. And so I set the weight back down and I had injured my back. And I don't know to this day, like what was the technical injury? I just knew my back hurts really bad and and I was in a lot of pain. I could not work out for several days at all. I mean, and I just kept, you know, taking Tylenol and Advil and stuff like that. I didn't go to the doctor. We were tied on money at the time, and I was just like, well, I mean, all they're going to tell me is, you know, basically just take these painkillers or whatever. And I was like, I'm not going to take really strong painkillers. And so I just decided to tough it out and so for the weeks following, I was in pain. So this is like a whole period of time, or I was just in pain. And the pain, you know, it lessened over the course of time. And then what happened was I kept trying to start working out again. And what ended up happening was I kept injuring myself because I was not ready to go back into those workouts, or at least maybe I was trying to lift too heavy still because I was still in a hurry. And eventually I got to the point where I said, okay, I really need to heal. I can't do this anymore. And at the time that felt like defeat. Not only was I in like physical pain, but I was just devastated because I thought, well, now I'm definitely going to gain weight because I can't lose weight without really hard, intense exercise. I just I had this in my mind, but this was actually one of the best things in hindsight that could have happened to me, because once I couldn't focus on the working out, I had to focus on my eating. And this was really the root of all my weight problems. It wasn't that I was inactive, although that did not help things. What was really my problem was that I was an emotional eater. I was a chronic kind of overeater, and I didn't know that about myself until I could only focus on that. How this looked in reality was, you know, I decided all I could do for exercise was walk. And so I had a set goal for myself. And so what started happening was on those days where normally I would have just been inconsistent with my intermittent fasting, you know, broken the fast, early or whatever, just because like, well, I'm hungry, I wouldn't do that. I'd be like, Well, I can't afford to do that because all I'm doing is walking. So I've got to be really, really careful here. So I would just not break the fast and instead I would go for a walk about, Oh, well, I've got steps again, so let's go for a walk. And as I started to do that consistently, I started to learn about myself that, oh, you know, so many times when I am eating, it's for the wrong reasons. It's not because I'm actually hungry, it's because I'm stressed or it's because I'm bored or I'm procrastinating and learning. Those root causes of my weight gain has been so helpful, both, you know, to get it off, but also to be very watchful of myself in maintenance because those, you know, bad habits can creep back in. Another silver lining from that deadlift injury has been I have been better, although certainly not perfect about listening to myself when I kind of get that intuition that I'm pushing myself a little too hard, that I'm expecting too much out of myself. And so that has been, you know, just a lesson that I've learned. And I'm just now starting to get back into powerlifting after being away from it for about eight years now as of this recording. And and so I'm trying to be very careful that when I am lifting weights, I'm not going to re injure myself, that I really, you know, listen to that voice that says, okay, you know, it's good to push, but not too hard. Now, the last bad day, really bad day that I had, it was in 2015, and that was when I almost quit the weight loss journey completely. I was just really feeling like it's time for me to throw in the towel. Now, remember, by this point, it had been almost two years since my I've had enough moment, and at that point I was sitting around, you know, like maybe 208 or so. After two years, basically, I lost £14, which, you know, in hindsight I think that's good. But at the time I felt like that's complete and total failure. Like, what am I even doing? This is this is ridiculous. I was feeling really down because in my mind, you know, I should have had this weight loss thing over and done with within a few months. I mean, that's just how it was in my head. But fortunately, in 2015, I had really been listening to a lot of self-help like audiotapes and CDs and just motivational material on YouTube and reading self-help books. And, you know, I thought, okay, you know, I need to I need to try to learn from this. There was a quote from Henry Ford that I liked to repeat to myself, which was, you know, failure is the opportunity to begin again more intelligently. So I thought to myself, okay, instead of quitting, I'm going to see if I can just learn from this. So, yes, I'm not satisfied with my results. So how can I try to learn and then begin again more intelligently? I looked at my spreadsheet where I had, you know, logged my weight and I looked at my notes because I had made, you know, notes in the margins of like, okay, you know, this is what I've been doing this week, this is what I've been doing this week. And that was when I saw, you know, how often I had been quitting on my plan and how often I've been, you know, changing things up and how inconsistent I had been. And so in this Google doc that I had, it was my notes for 2015. I wrote this. I have learned that whatever I do needs to be sustainable throughout my life. Not I can do this for two months. I need to be able to modify for life. And I look back on that statement and it makes me smile because that was my aha moment, you know, where I really finally, finally out of, you know, years of hearing people say, oh, you know, weight loss is really about permanent lifestyle changes, all about lifestyle change. I had heard that a million times in my lifetime, but I finally got it. I finally realized my problem is I'm not sticking with anything. I'm trying to be unsustainable in everything I do. So instead I am going to move forward with sustainability as my is my top goal. So I'm not going to do anything that I can't foresee myself doing for the rest of my life. And that is what directly led to my decision to practice intermittent fasting six days a week and taking the day off every Sunday. And, you know, just walking, having that be my movement because I knew I could stick with that, you know, as long as I didn't become disabled, I could walk every day. And it led to, you know, the decision to let myself have coffee in the fasting window. Those things were things I could see myself doing forever. That was like, yeah, that's easy. I can do that. And it was that plan that got the weight off my body and, you know, and has helped me throughout maintenance, which has been going on for years now. But that only happened because I had some really bad days. So right now, if you are, you know, just going through a hard time, you're just having a rough go of it. Try your best. And I know it's hard. I know it's hard when things are not going well. It's hard to to really tell yourself and believe it that something good can come from this. But it can. You may not see it right off the bat, but I have found that if you really are intentional with saying something good will come from this and you really start looking for it, you'll see it sooner rather than later. And I also want to highly recommend Jocko, which links speech is just called Good. It's just this short video where he talks about why when bad things happen, you should say good. It has helped me many a time when I am going through a rough time. I hope that this episode has helped you. Thank you for joining me and I'll see you in the 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.

In today's episode, I'm talking about overthinking and how to avoid it on the weight loss journey. An AI generated transcript is below. (:  Other links: IF for Weight Loss Course Become an Insider Private Coaching With Kayla Sign up for my weekly newsletter My Books (ebook or paperback) on Amazon: The Laid Back Guide to Intermittent Fasting: How I lost Over 80 Pounds and Kept It Off Eating Whatever I Wanted Overcoming Weight Loss Obstacles: How To Keep Going When Things Get Difficult  Get the audiobook for free with a 30 day FREE TRIAL from Audible My young adult fiction novel: Escape From Olshek's Castle  ALL THE INFORMATION CONTAINED ON THIS PODCAST IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY. IT IS NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR MEDICAL ADVICE. YOU SHOULD ALWAYS CONSULT A MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL BEFORE GOING ON ANY DIET OR EXERCISE PROGRAM. Begin AI Generated Transcript: 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. Before we get into today's episode, I just wanted to remind you that I do have courses and coaching available. If you are interested in that, you can use the link in the description to go to my slow and Steady Success Academy. All students inside my courses have access to office hours where you can get your questions answered inside a Zoom call. And if you enroll, you can get 25% off by using the coupon code pod at checkout. In today's episode, we're going to talk about overthinking and why it's not a good thing to do on the weight loss journey and how you can stop it. Overthinking is one of those things that I think some people are just more prone to do, and I happen to be one of those people. I tend to overthink just about everything. There are good things about thinking deeply about a thing, but it really can derail your progress when it comes to weight loss. So the first place that this can creep in is when you set up your goal weight. Back in March of 2014, that was when I had my I've had enough moment. I was so ready to get the weight off and I was just determined. But it took me almost an entire year to get on the scale and finally come up with the number that I was shooting for. I didn't really know what a good thing to shoot for was. I, you know, like, I had always had trouble with my weight. I never was able to keep it off. So I kind of thought, well, I don't know. Like, is the problem that I am getting down to, you know, to overweight and then that's causing me to not be able to maintain it. Like, should I be shooting for something higher? You know, and so I would just debate these things in my mind constantly. But once I finally got on the scale and I saw the number, I thought, okay, I just need to pick a number and try to get down to it and I need to stop overthinking it and just, you know, write down a number, pick a number, write it down, and then just go about the business of trying to lose the weight. And that was the right thing to do in hindsight. The key here is that you just pick a number because once you pick something, you know, even if it's arbitrary, even if you're not really sure that that's going to be the right number. And look, any goal weight that you pick is going to be arbitrary, too. To some extent and you may not know until you get there whether it's going to be a good goal or not. It's just an educated guess. So because of that, it's better to just go ahead and pick something. Once you've picked it, then you can start moving towards it When you're not really sure where you want to end up. It's going to be really hard to motivate yourself to stop overthinking your goal weight, to sit down. You know, if you want to sit down with the BMI chart, I think that's a great place for people to start. And then just look at what a normal weight range is for you. I would pick something on the high end of normal or the low end of overweight. From what I've talked with other people and through my own experience, I'll say that's when weight loss seems to be, you know, fairly easy. It's not it doesn't take like super good consistency or a lot of restriction. On the other hand, you know, once once you get or at least in my experience, once you get down into the normal BMI, like right there at that cusp between overweight and normal BMI, that's when the weight loss really slowed down for me. Up until that point, it was about a pound a week. Once I got down to that point, it was a third of a pound a week, and that was even with really good consistency. So just some food for thought. So pick a number and go ahead and make a deal with yourself there. If you feel comfortable stopping earlier because maybe you just shot too low that okay, you can you can stop at a higher number. Or conversely, if you get down to that number and you decide I still want to lose, you know, five or ten more pounds or whatever number, then then you can move on from there. But it's important to just pick something and start moving towards it. Think of it as the good enough goal, which brings you to the next step in the weight loss journey, which is to pick out your plan. And this is the place where so many people get stuck because of overthinking. They research and research and research, and there's all this conflicting information out there. You know, if you go on YouTube or just, you know, do a Google search, you'll be able to see that there are a million experts out there with a million different opinions about which plan is best. And it can be overwhelming. It can get you stuck in inaction for years. And, you know, this is a big reason in 2014 that I stayed stuck because I was researching everything and I was so confused about everything. I was just like, you know, like I would read stuff about kiddo. I would read stuff about veganism. I would read stuff about Carnivore. I would read stuff about, you know, like don't eat sugar or, you know, other people would say, Oh, that's fine. You know, like and counting calories is the way or you've got to cycle your carbs or, you know, and there's so much information out there. The way to stop overthinking this is to break it down into a really simple equation, which is you need to burn more calories than you're consuming. Now, most people do this through a combination of eating less and moving more. And my own opinion on this is that the most important part is eating less. The moving part, I think, is very helpful for staying encouraged, having your your mental state, you know, in a positive place. But as far as just from a perspective of can you lose weight without exercise, Yes, you can. So if you're right now, if the big thing that's messing with you is like you don't like to exercise and you don't know how to get yourself to exercise, then focus 100% on the eating and just don't worry about it, because you can certainly still lose weight. When I look back, you know, I remember I spent days, weeks of just researching all this stuff, just researching, especially exercise. I was, you know, spending hours and hours at the computer thinking about these things, trying to figure out, you know, like, should it be high intensity exercise or is it better to do low state cardio or is it better to lift heavyweights or is it better to do, you know, more volume of reps but with with less weight or, you know, like there is so much stuff that I just filled my head with. Meanwhile, and sitting there not exercising and I did this for so long. I mean, I look back and I laugh at myself and I think, what on earth were you thinking? You know, like and the same with the plan, the eating plan. I would research and research and research. Meanwhile, you know, I would just be overeating constantly. So by 2015, I was I was doing more towards trying to, you know, practice intermittent fasting and things like that. I really didn't have a plan yet, though. I was doing a lot of stuff, but no clear plan again, because I was just overthinking it. I was constantly reading contradictory evidence and then changing my plan accordingly and then not really having results and getting frustrated and then changing the plan, you know, And just in truth, not really having a plan, just trying lots of stuff. One thing that kind of shifted my paradigm a little bit, it kind of helped me to call myself out on what I was doing. I remember I was reading a book and I think it was starting strength, My Mark crypto. But in it this author said that the way to lose weight, like if you're just going to lose weight, he said, eat nothing but chicken breasts for a month and let you lose £40. I can't remember the exact quote, but that was that was the the thrust of it. And in that moment I realized, you know, that's the thing. I'm not trying to like, just lose weight, Like, that's not what I'm going for. And so I was looking for the wrong thing. When I was looking, I was always, you know, looking for the fastest way to lose weight or the best way to lose weight. But that's not really what I was wanting to do. I realized when I saw that in black and white, like, Oh, this is the way that I could lose weight really fast. I knew, like if I do that plan, I will gain it. All right. That because there is no way for the rest of my life I can just eat nothing but, you know, chicken breasts. And I think it was that moment where I really said to myself, okay, so what? I'm actually trying to figure out here is how do I eat the right amount of food? Like, I'm not really interested in cutting out, you know, you know, different whole food groups and stuff like that. I just want to figure out how to eat. My plan is to help me learn how to eat the right amount of food. So January of 2016, that's when I finally wrote down an actual plan. And I remember I was just like, okay, is January is is time to, like, really knock this thing out? I've got to figure out a plan. And so I did. I sat down and I said, intermittent fasting six days a week, cheat day on Sunday, walk six miles a day. So I had everything, you know, down on paper. I knew what I was doing, I knew what I was committed to doing. And that was my plan. And then and this is a this is a big part of stopping overthinking is once you've picked that plan, you commit to it and you just say, I'm doing this. And so I committed to six weeks in my mind because, you know, when I look back over my history, I realize like I was usually quitting a plan. After about a week, I would give it a week and then I would quit. And then, you know, sometimes I'd be with something for longer than that. But generally speaking, I was thinking week to week, not like months of trying something consistently. Now, if you actually commit to a plan, it takes out the overthinking or it can you know, any time you start overthinking your plan, it means you're not really committed to it. Now, I understand that it's really difficult to commit to a plan when you don't really know if it's going to work. And that's the thing. Before you've tested a plan, you're not really sure if it's going to work. So it can be hard mentally to truly commit to it. But if you commit to it and you, you know, you can give yourself an out, What worked for me was to say, okay, I'm going to do this plan and I'm going to try it for six weeks and if during that time I gain £10, then I will allow myself to quit the plan. And I chose £10 because at that point I was around two or five and I knew that if I gained all the weight back, I would have been really upset with myself and it would have been really hard to like try again. So I thought, okay, £10. If I gain £10, I would put me to 15, which means I still would have, you know, lost £7 from my heaviest confirmed weight and it wouldn't be like completely starting over. So that was an that was enough of a compromise for me to get myself to commit. And what has helped me since then, to stay committed to the plan and to try my best not to overthink it is to simply be committed to it and to remind myself if I ever do hear people, you know, like and I do, I hear people all the time trying to, you know, convince me that one plan is better than the other or, oh, you know, you should really be trying to eat this way or whatever. The thing that has helped me is to just remind myself I'm committed to my plan and I know what works for me. I know what I feel best done. And if it works for them, great. But I don't need a plan that's different from what I'm already doing because I'm happy with it. In the end, I just decided, you know, I think humans are really adaptable that we can survive and thrive on a wide variety of food inputs, you know? So I'm going to just eat what is available to me. I'm going to be grateful for every bite that is put before me. So that helped me to stop overthinking food and it really improved my relationship with food. I found stopping power once I said, you know, all the foods are allowed and I'm not going to worry about it. And it's just given me a lot of peace. But everybody has to make their own minds up. I would say, you know, just figure out what works for you. You know, pay attention to how various foods affect you and and eat those, the things that make you feel the best and avoid those things that make you feel the worst and and just go based on your own experience. So if how remote your eating is causing the scale to go up, it simply means you're eating too much. So don't overthink it. Don't don't like get it all in your head that oh, it means I need to like cut out this or that. It just means you need to eat. That's all you need to do. There's a lot of different strategies you can use to help yourself eat less. You can cut out snacking, you can cut out distracted eating. You can just make yourself slow down while you're eating. You can eat from a smaller plate. There are plenty of things that you can do to help yourself eat less. So once you have your goal weight and you've got your plan, then it's time to start implementing. And this is yet another place where overthinking can really start to come into play because you're going to be constantly bombarded with information from all different camps about, you know, what you should be doing or what you should not be doing in order to lose weight. You know, if you bring this up with people, you're going to get lots of opinions. You're going to get a lot of advice. And, you know, my personal advice here is that if you don't want that kind of stuff, just don't talk about the fact that you're losing weight, that you're on a plan or anything like that. Just keep, you know, keep it to yourself and that that'll help you to have less advice thrown at you. But even even if you tell no one, you know, likely you're going to see it on YouTube or on television. There's going to be, you know, various fad things in the news about, oh, you get to try this diet drug. Are you going to, you know, do this new exercise? And there's just a lot that can kind of cause you to doubt the thing that you're doing. One thing that really helped me a lot was to go on a low information diet, meaning I just stopped consuming most news. I didn't watch the news anymore. I really limit my YouTube consumption. And, you know, I avoided and really when it came to like all the weight loss things, I completely avoided those in 2014, 2015, I was going on different websites, you know, that would, you know, talk about different ways to lose weight. There was one blog in particular. This girl had documented her weight loss journey, but she had gained the weight back. And so I was always like looking, you know, watching her story, like, oh, is she going to figure out how to get the weight back off and I realized that I had to stop looking at all of it. So, you know, when it came to things I was going to watch or things I was going to read or things that I was going to listen to, I just avoided all things diet and exercise related. And instead I just focused on like motivational things, uplifting things, inspirational things, things that would make my life better and my attitude better. And I'm really glad that I did that. And I told myself, if I ever actually have a problem, then I'll go and try to find the solution. But until such a time, I'm just going to keep it all turned off. So protect your mind, you know? And that includes like turning off things like this podcast, my YouTube channel. If those things end up messing with you and you find that you're not being as consistent, then don't watch it. You know, if something helps, you keep it in your life. But if something is just causing you to overthink things, get it out of your life. The last area that overthinking can creep into is the tracking. So you know, you've got a plan, you've got a goal, you're implementing, and then you got to be tracking in order to decide, you know, like, is this plan working or do you need to implement some changes into your plan so that you lose weight? And so the tracking part is tricky because weight fluctuates right now, if you have not weighed and you're trying to lose weight, I would encourage you go get on the scale right now. Just face reality. It's I know it's scary, but it's one of the best things you can do on the weight loss journey, because then you'll know you'll know exactly where you are and you can start tracking your progress. But just know that weight fluctuates. You know, some people, their weight fluctuates by £5 within a day. This is why I really like daily weighing and then keeping track of that seven day average over time because you know, your weight is going to fluctuate up and down, up and down, up and down. And your cycle, if you're a female, is also going to cause weight fluctuations. Generally speaking, people find their weight is a few pounds higher on their period than it is for the rest of the month. And if you know these things and you can just mentally prepare for the fact that it's not going to be a straight line down, but that you do need to be tracking so that you see what's going on, You're going to have a much easier time looking at things on a day to day basis or even a week to week basis. It's really not going to tell you very much. And if you and if you focus on those things, it's going to be really easy to overthink it and to, you know, kind of panic like, oh, you know, like my weight didn't go down per pound this week. Does that mean my plan isn't working? Like, those types of overthinking instances are going to be very unhelpful. Instead, just detach from that. Look at your seven day average over six weeks of time. Here's a little window into how my mind works, how much I can overthink things and worry about things. So once I started this plan and I was being consistent with it, in 2016, the scale started moving down consistently. I mean, it wasn't necessarily every single week it was down exactly £1, but it was consistent enough that I was like, Wow, I'm finally losing weight. Do you know what I started to do? I started to worry that I had cancer or some other terrible disease because because I was losing weight. Because it was because before it had been so difficult to lose weight. And now here I was. I was eating all the food. I was having chocolate cake. When I wanted chocolate cake, I was you know, I wasn't doing anything for exercise except for walking and I was losing weight. And so I was I was suddenly worried and I was over thinking. And this is one of those times when you kind of just have to say, okay, let's more likely let's try to be rational here that, you know, I suddenly have this terrible disease, or is it perhaps because I finally have picked a plan and have started implementing it consistently? Sometimes you have to just give yourself a little sit down talking to you and tell yourself, you know, you're just overthinking it. You need you need to stop. Which is exactly what I did. So if you are in the habit of overthinking, I hope that this episode has helped you to kind of realize it, you know, kind of see maybe where you're overthinking things. And so hopefully you can use that information and help yourself to stop overthinking in the future. Thank you for listening to this episode and I'll see you in the 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 Believe That 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.

YouTube Live Q&A  In today's episode, I'm talking about the most important lessons I've learned in maintenance.  Other links: IF for Weight Loss Course Become an Insider Private Coaching With Kayla Sign up for my weekly newsletter My Books (ebook or paperback) on Amazon: The Laid Back Guide to Intermittent Fasting: How I lost Over 80 Pounds and Kept It Off Eating Whatever I Wanted Overcoming Weight Loss Obstacles: How To Keep Going When Things Get Difficult  Get the audiobook for free with a 30 day FREE TRIAL from Audible My young adult fiction novel: Escape From Olshek's Castle  ALL THE INFORMATION CONTAINED ON THIS PODCAST IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY. IT IS NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR MEDICAL ADVICE. YOU SHOULD ALWAYS CONSULT A MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL BEFORE GOING ON ANY DIET OR EXERCISE PROGRAM.   The following is an AI generated transcript of this podcast.  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. Hey, guys, before you get into today's episode, I just wanted to take a minute to let you know about something you might not know about, which is my live Q&A, is that I do on YouTube. These happen on Fridays at noon Eastern, which for you international people, that is UTC minus four in these lives. I take questions from people in the chat. So if you have any questions, you just can join up and you know, ask your question. Usually I'm live for about an hour and I'm usually able to answer all the questions that are asked. I'll put a link in the show notes to the live and if you are subscribed to my channel, you can also choose to get notifications and then that will alert you whenever I go live. These lives are always a good time, so I hope to see you there. And this episode, I'm going to take you through my two maintenance experiences and talk about the similarities and the differences and what I've learned. I went from 220 to down to about 157 158, and that was my initial weight loss. I was really happy at 157 and I remember thinking, you know, we're coming up on the holidays. I don't really know if I'm going to be able to keep this off. It felt so easy that I wasn't really sure, you know, like would it continue to be easy or what? And so I decided to maintain and I wasn't really sure what I was supposed to do. I kind of had it in my head, you know, Is it. It was this question of is it is it like failure? If I continue to do the plan or some version of the plan, like, you know, is it kind of like graduating from the weight loss program and then you got to go back to real life? You know, this is where I had always failed. I had always gained the weight back, which was, you know, at this point in my life, I had done it many, many times. I don't know how many times I had, you know, lost weight, gotten down to a goal away and then just promptly gained it. All right. Back. So I wanted to do it right. So I made some decisions that I think were really important right upfront. And that was, first of all, I cannot go back to eating how I was eating before, like eating all day, no boundaries with food, overeating, you know, on a regular basis, snacking all the time. Those things I didn't think would be wise, you know, to do anymore. But as far as the day to day planner wasn't really sure. And so I decided to just keep the experimental mindset. And I just wanted to see, you know, like, what exactly do I need to do in order to keep the weight off another decision I made that was really important was to continue to weigh. And my idea was, you know, I'm just going to do some experimentation here. But ultimately, if my if my weight start to trend upwards into a place where I'm just not comfortable anymore with the weight gain, then I'm going to stop. I'm going to, you know, change something up and I'll lose weight. My, my, my kind of vague idea was I'll I'll just go back on the plan that I know works and so I started experimenting and I tried to keep, you know, self-aware, like, you know, what's going on. So there were days this would have been like 2016 and into 2017. I just would sometimes do, you know, homemade like I like to do. Sometimes I would do two meals a day. Sometimes I would do no fasting at all. Just eat, you know, like just be, you know, quote unquote normal, you know, just have breakfast and have lunch and have dinner. And I would even experiment with like, okay, you know, like, what if I what if I snack? You know, what? What is that like? And I really wanted to see, you know, what works and what doesn't. And a big lesson I learned that year was that my walks were important and it wasn't because of calorie burn. I don't think, you know, it was more going for my daily walks put me in a good headspace, like it just made my emotional life better. I found that I was a more patient person, both with myself and with my family, and I just didn't feel great if I didn't get out there and do my steps. So that was really the first lesson I learned in the maintenance journey was, okay, I need I need to keep active. And I found that I could maintain my weight pretty easily within like a £5 range based on my seven day average with really being pretty, pretty lax. I would say like looking back at those times. I mean, again, I wasn't practicing intermittent fasting very consist ardently as far as like I didn't have a consistent plan. I was being really lucid. So maintaining my weight between 158 and 163 was pretty easy in my experience. It didn't really require too too much thought really, as long as I kept, you know, walking like I was walking and which was six miles a day and and just keeping on weighing that, that was really easy. So then I decided in September of 2017 to start my YouTube channel, and I got it in my head that, you know, I really need to lose these last like, you know, it was at this point probably five or £6 to get, you know, into the normal BMI, which I know, you know, BMI is not perfect. It's arbitrary, quite frankly. But it was the the yardstick that I had decided to measure, you know, by and and it did kind of bug me that I was a few pounds overweight. It did not bug me as far as my weight felt great. As far as me moving through life, I felt great. My energy levels were really good. I my joints were good. I didn't I didn't feel like my weight was holding me back at all. But, you know, the idea of being on YouTube and having a journal about weight loss and being a little bit overweight, like, I just couldn't handle that. Like I was afraid of what people were going to say. And I wanted to be helpful to people like I didn't want the fact that I was slightly overweight to prevent people from learning about intermittent fasting and that kind of a thing. So I thought, you know, like, I want to do this, I want to do it for myself, but I also want to do it, you know, just to show people that it's possible to do it. And so for the next year, I went on this journey of, you know, losing more weight. And so I went back to the plan that I had used to help me lose weight. So that was eating one meal a day, walking six miles a day, and then taking a cheat day on Sunday. And I documented that process on YouTube. I just, you know, like every month I would sit down and give like a report of my numbers, what my weight did and all that stuff. And so I got down to a point by like the end of 2018 where I was like, okay, I feel like I'm just chasing a low number at this point. Like, like there was there was just nothing that was like motivating me to lose more, you know? It was just like, Why am I doing this? I kept thinking, like, what? Like why do I continue to want to lose weight? I mean, and I wasn't even really wanting to is just kind of like, you know, you need a Y, right? So I thought, you know, since I've been the type of person historically who's just never satisfied, like, no matter what the number is, it's like it needs to be one less, you know, like if I'm at 142, it needs to be 141. If I'm at 141 needs to be 140, and if 140, then I'll be happy when it's 139. So I said, I'm going to stop doing that. I'm just going to be satisfied with that number, which I had been satisfied with. 158 So so I decided, okay, I'm going to try to maintain this and so here's what I've learned since then. So that started, you know, like at the end of 2018, I think it was around September or October of that year that I decided, okay, I'm done and now I want to maintain again. And I wasn't really sure once again, like, what exactly does this mean? And I think that's where a lot of people find themselves when they get down to their goal weight. They're like, I don't know really what I'm supposed to do next. And so, you know, based on the the the things I had learned before, I knew I wanted to continue to be active, to continue to do my walks. I knew that was going to be really important. And it was definitely important to continue to weigh. But I wasn't really sure about my day to day plan. I felt kind of I was overthinking it, quite frankly, which I tend to do about things. But I was you know, I was thinking, well, you know, I know what would work. Obviously, eating one meal a day, like if I just kept doing what I was doing, I would either, you know, maybe lose some more weight or I would just maintain. And so that was an option. But then I thought, but what if, you know, what if the only reason I'm doing this is because I have this YouTube channel and people are watching me and, you know, and that created a little bit of a problem in my head because I don't want to do things like that just for the sake of doing them because I'm being watched, if that makes sense. Like, I think it's much more helpful for you guys and anybody who watches my videos, if I do my very best to act as if in my own life, as if I do not have this podcast, as if I do not have the YouTube channel, and as if I have not written books about intermittent fasting and weight loss. Because if I do that, if I, if I, if I try to just live my life in that way, as if I do not have those things, I feel like my daily actions are just going to be more normal and I know that this is on some level futile. The Hawthorne effect comes into play, which is, you know, when you observe something, it changes its behavior. It just does. But I still try to do my very, very best to act as though I don't have those things. And so with maintenance, I was like, well, you know, like, I remember when I was maintaining last time, I was pretty loosey goosey. Like I really didn't have to be on any particular kind of like fasting window. I could, you know, just it was just easy since then. So at this point it's been about five years and I've just been experimenting with all different ways of eating and, you know, like there have been times where I've done, you know, like two meals a day. Sometimes I've done just an eating window like a six, eight or an 18 six. I've done shorter fasting windows to like, you know, like a 1212. And there have been days where I'll just do, you know, like no fasting at all. Like we're just going to have a, you know, quote unquote regular day. And so here is what I have found. Maintaining at a higher weight is easier. And maybe that sounds obvious to you when I say that out loud, but it really is true. I mean, it was it was just a lot easier to maintain in that £5 range when I was up at that height weight. I mean, which makes sense. You can eat more at a higher weight and maintain that weight. When you weigh less, you have to eat less. And as someone who likes big portions and likes to eat, that is just something that I have had to learn that, you know, if I want to be in the one forties, then that means I have to eat at that 140 level, which is fine. That's actually something that I that I can do without too much effort. But it does mean that I have to be a bit more structured than what I have found during both of these times of maintenance, that it's been very important to stay vigilant because those little habits can just creep back in, you know, these little things and it's like it's not it doesn't seem like a big deal at the time, you know, like one little time where you eat just a little too much or, you know, like that time you're like, oh, I'm just going to, you know, have the snack or, you know, those things can really creep in and then the weight can start to come back on. And so just being vigilant about that and just remaining aware like, okay, why, why am I want in this snack and, you know, 99 times out of 100 for me, it's I'm stressed about something. So it's not actually that I want to snack. It's actually stress eating, which is not good. That will definitely make me gain weight. And in general, what I have found because I am a tinkerer, I know that about myself. I like to experiment. I like to, you know, kind of see like, well, you know what? If I do this or what if I try, you know, this this way of, you know, doing, you know, an eating window, you know, or just doing it, you know, every other day, like, how is that going to work? And I like to do that at times. But what I have found works the best is to pay attention to what's going on in my life and then proceed accordingly. So when my life is chaotic, you know, things are really stressful. There's a lot going on, maybe a lot of changes are happening. The best thing I can do is be on just a regular plan with a lot of just regularity. So in other words, like just saying, okay, I'm going to do ad, you know, six days a week or I'm going to do, you know, six, eight, six days a week, or I'm going to do to med six days a week, just keeping it the same and not experimenting and not being loosey goosey. And when things are like really, really stressful, I'm talking, you know, not only are they hectic, but also maybe upsetting. Like, you know, I've gone through a couple of different periods of time where it's been some really difficult things to deal with, like with some deaths in the family or, you know, of friends during those times. I have found it's a lot easier on me to just go back to Omaha six days a week, walk six miles a day, six days a week, and, you know, take Sundays off and just keep it super easy. And it provides a balance there, because when life is hectic and I need my my, my eating life to be orderly. On the other hand, when my life is really calm and I've gone through seasons like this where it's like, wow, you know, like it's just been calm. It was, you know, no stress, really. Then during those times, it's a better time to try those experiments to, you know, like kind of be looser and see like what's going on, you know, how how's my weight going to do. And so there is that balance there. What I have found to be most important, though, because I think this is something that happens to everybody on, you know, in maintenance there. You're going to have times, right, where your weight is going to be a little bit higher. And, you know, it may go out of the range that you want it to be in, like I like to say, a £10 range. That's a good thing to shoot for. I know Joe Holman, a guy that I interviewed years ago, he's an Omega guy and he says £15. But, you know, like I like £10 of beef. 15 just a little bit, you know, like I feel like that's maybe a little bit too much free rein for me, but like a £10 range, right? So I want to be in the one forties. But what happens when I get outside of the one forties, which has happened since maintenance? There have been times when my seven day average has even been one 52.49 because I keep track of all this stuff. And so I want you to know that like there are times where mine is not in range. And so what do I do in that moment? Because those are the moments I feel like that are just crucially important. Nobody likes to talk about those moments because it's like, Oh, no, you know, you want to believe that it's always going to be easy, and sometimes life is just not easy. Sometimes you mess up, sometimes you just have water weight, like sometimes you get sick and that can cause water weight. Sometimes you eat salty food and that can cause water weight. Sometimes you go on vacation, you gain weight, you know, there's like a lot of things that happen where you may just get into bad habits for a while. What what my process has been doing during those times is to say, okay, what's going on? Because that's the first thing, is to figure out, you know, like what's going on. And usually if you're just able to just sit and think, you'll know what's wrong, like you'll know, you know, when you look back on your days, like, yeah, like there's this stressful thing happening. I mean, and there's lots of things that can that can mess with you. So in that moment though, if you will, just give yourself a pep talk. And that's what I do. I just I sit down and I'm like, you know, what's going on? I usually can figure it out most of the time. I know at this point, like I am more self-aware than I used to be. And I can tell when when I'm, you know, feeling stressed out, especially if my sleep is out of kilter. Like, that's always a big red flag for me. If I if I notice myself waking up too early in the morning or having trouble going to sleep at night, something's up. Got to get that under control. But I'll sit down and I'll just say, okay, what's going on? And I'll figure out, you know, usually it's just stress. And then the main answer is, okay, go back to the old reliable plan, you know, which is bad. Six days a week, get down Sunday, what, six miles Monday through Saturday? And that's what I do. So and I've found that every time that I do that, then the weight, you know, comes back down, gets back in range, and there's nothing really to worry over. But I have had moments, you know, where I kind of get nervous. It's like, oh, wait, you know, like, does this mean I'm gaining the weight back? And I always have to remind myself the only way that's going to happen is if I don't change something. And I think, you know, remaining humble always, like just remembering like, look, no one's perfect. We all mess up. If you're ever out of range and you realize, like, wow, you know, like even if you've gained, let's say you've gained ten more pounds, right? Like you're not only out of range, you're like £10 out of range. All you have to do is just go back to work, go back to what worked, get back down into your range and then try maintenance again. Like it's it's a process is what I'm trying to say. So I hope that my experiences can help you on your maintenance journey whenever you get down to your goal weight. Thanks for listening and I'll see you in the 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.

In today's episode, Nikki Esquivel shares her 30 pound weight loss journey with intermittent fasting. An autogenerated transcript is available at the end of these show notes.  Click here to connect with Nikki on Facebook Click here to donate to Mercy House    Other links: Slow and Steady Success Academy Courses Become an Insider on Youtube Private Coaching With Kayla Sign up for my weekly newsletter My Books (ebook or paperback) on Amazon: The Laid Back Guide to Intermittent Fasting: How I lost Over 80 Pounds and Kept It Off Eating Whatever I Wanted Overcoming Weight Loss Obstacles: How To Keep Going When Things Get Difficult  Get the audiobook for free with a 30 day FREE TRIAL from Audible My young adult fiction novel: Escape From Olshek's Castle  ALL THE INFORMATION CONTAINED ON THIS PODCAST IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY. IT IS NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR MEDICAL ADVICE. YOU SHOULD ALWAYS CONSULT A MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL BEFORE GOING ON ANY DIET OR EXERCISE PROGRAM.   The following is an AI generated transcript of this podcast.  Welcome to the Six Miles to Supper podcast. I'm your host, Kayla Cox, and I've lost over 80 pounds 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. Today's episode is a crossover from the Intermittent Fasting Success Stories series I do on my YouTube channel, also called Six Miles to Supper. These interviews are recorded on Zoom, so the audio might be a little bit different than what you're used to on this podcast. Regardless, I hope you enjoy it. If you consider yourself a success story and you would like to be interviewed, please reach out to me at interviews at six miles to supper. Tor.com. Nikki Esquivel lost a £30 with intermittent fasting and she's kept it off for two years now. So thank you for being here. Nikki. Why don't you give yourself a little introduction, Tell everybody who you are and what you do. I sure. Thanks for having me, Kayla. My name is Nikki Esquivel, and I live in the Philippines. I've lived in the Philippines for ten years, along with my husband, Anthony. We run an orphanage for street boys called Mercy House X Street Boys because there are boys now. We have 17 boys in our home right now. We've had as many as 25 at times here and there. Ten years ago, we moved here from the U.S. We were just your regular typical American family. We had six children that we homeschooled. My husband worked outside and I stayed home and took care of the family. And just kind of your normal, average family that we're called to to come overseas and and start an orphanage. So that's that's me. Wow. So why don't you give us a rundown of how you have found success with weight loss? How much have you lost and how long did it take? Sure, sure. It took about a year and I lost about 30 pounds. I was not ever what you would call obese. I was probably I'm five little less than five four. So I'm not very tall and at my highest weight, I was probably about £170. So maybe by the doctors charts, I was I was on the edge of obesity. But what really challenged me to lose weight was I was just feeling so achy and old and bad every single day. When we first moved to the Philippines, it was busy and hectic and I lost some weight and I had a lot of energy. And then as we got settled into our routine with our orphanage and kind of knew what we were doing and knew the ropes, we just I got a lot more sedentary. A lot of the work that we do here involves a lot of writing of newsletters and updating our friends in the States and all of this. And so there was a lot of sitting on the computer for me and I started packing on the pounds. My husband and I started this nightly habit of having a glass of wine and some chips in our room, and it became every single night. And before I knew it, I had just put on weight and I just felt achy and uncomfortable. So that's kind of what led to the I just had to change. I knew I had to do something. Mm hmm. Right. So. So you lost 30 pounds and it took about a year. What were you doing during that time? What was your daily routine like? Well, first of all, I learned about intermittent fasting from a friend of mine in the States who. Who's a lady much older than I am, and one of the a close friend of our orphanage. I went home on a furlough and I saw her and she looked amazing. She looked thin, but just radiant. Her skin was beautiful, her eyes were bright. And I said, What are you doing? And she said, I'm intermittent fasting. And I kind of said, okay, well, that's great. And I didn't think about it again until I started to feel bad and realized I needed to do something. And I thought, what was that thing that my friend said she was doing? And I just started Googling. So the routine that I settled on is I started out slow at 16 eight, I think was my first fast and I had to take a spoonful of peanut butter in the middle of my my fast I couldn't even make my first bypass because I was so hungry, but I stuck with six eight for probably a month. And I was amazed in the first two weeks just how much better I felt. My my aches and pains started to go away. My sleep got a little bit better. Just small things of those non scale victories in two weeks time. I was already seeing those. And so about a month in I upped my my window. I made my eating window a little bit smaller and I did 18 six for a while now, now several years in, I'm in maintenance. I'm about 132 pounds, I think. I don't weigh regularly anymore, but I know when my certain pair of pants fit a certain way, you know that it's time to to do something different. So my maintenance is either 24, so four hour eating window or man, just depending on how busy the day is. And I like to eat early in the day, so I will have a window for maybe 9 to 12 or 9 to 1. You know, earlier in the day. And then I will close my window before dinner time for sure and just fast out the rest of the day with some decaffeinated coffee, helping me make it through to bedtime. So that's my my window. And I do exercise. I do walk about six kilometers. I don't know what it is in miles, but I think that's six kilometers, five days a week probably, and then two days a week of strength training with dumbbells, resistance training. Just a an hour. I'm just I'm light near. Exercise is fairly light, but it's super effective, coupled together with with my fasting program. So when you are eating in the evening window, what do you eat? I'm a I'm a mindful eater, but I'm not on any specific plan. I'm not low carb or no sugar. I've toyed with those things. I know you have to because I've listened to your podcast and I've tried temporarily and I'm just so unhappy right now. I, I like I can't have a piece of cheesecake if I'm at a gathering and there's cheesecake. Come on. You know, I'm not going to I'm not going to live that way the rest of my life. I'm more than 50 years old and I'm definitely not going to live out the rest of these years, not having cheesecake or not having so I'm mindful, but I do eat till I'm nice and full and satisfied. I focus on vegetables and protein because I know those things keep me going until the next day. And then I usually do have a little dessert at the end of each window, sometimes a little glass of wine, even though it's still afternoon, just so I don't feel deprived. And then I shut my window and I think, okay, I'll see you again tomorrow, refrigerator. And I kind of go about my day. And so you said mindful eating. I think that's really interesting. What what is mindful eating to you? Like what? How do you define that for yourself? I eat with a purpose. Like I know I need to get some fiber in my diet each day. I want to have vitamin dense food. So normally I will have we don't have good lettuce here in the Philippines. It's hard to find. So I'll use a cabbage for my lettuce and I'll cut it up and then I'll put the things on it that I know have what I think my body needs. I'll put cashews and some raisins and other vegetables, some kind of addressing that doesn't have a lot of sugar in it and just make a really big, pretty salad and eat that first. When I when I open up my eating window and I feel like I don't want to take a bunch of supplements, I just feel like, okay, I've you know, I've given myself food as medicine, and so I've given myself the things that I know my body needs. And it tasted good. But now maybe little something I want after that and I'll go for a little treat of some kind of a break before I shut my window. I'm just mindful of what's going into my mouth. I don't eat in front of a screen watching a movie or on my phone or any of that I really look forward to. It's almost like a little ceremony. I get my food, I get my whatever I'm going to drink, and I'm excited. I like to be alone. If I'm if I'm eating. A lot of times of the schedule, the kids is a lot different from my schedule. So I like to have that kind of as me times saying and just kind of enjoy my big salad and think about the day and, and and eat alone. Very good. And so you said you drink coffee during your fasting window and do you put anything in every district hit black? I just think it's like I always have even before intermittent fasting. So that was an easy thing for me. A lot of my friends struggle with that, that splash of cream, that that's stevia or monk fruit or something to sweeten it. But I really have never used anything. My dad's a military man and so black coffee was I thought, that's all you could have if we put that around the house. And so I grew to love it at an early age. So in maintenance, you said that, you know, occasionally maybe the pants get a little bit too tight. And so what do you do when you when you find yourself? It's like, huh, I think I've gained a little bit. Do you what has there been anything where you've noticed, like, oh, here's what I started doing and this is what led to it to a lot of gain. Can you talk about that a little bit? I'll notice I get a little bit loosey goosey in my window. My my four hour window will still usually be 4 hours, but I'll have you know, I'll get a candy bar at the gas station. And when we stop, I'll get a few more treats here and there, and then I'll notice maybe the next week or so. The the pants getting tight and I'll just go back to oh, mad for a few days. I don't stop having my little one treat if I want it, because I know that it takes time to, you know, to to gain it takes time to lose. I don't mean to do it overnight. I'm very thankful for my body the way that it is right now, the way that it's working. I feel so good and I love the way that I look. So it's not a matter of beating myself up, but I just don't want it to get out of control. You know how one one kind of Lucy Day can turn into two, three, four. And before you know it, so am I still in intermittent fat? Start in my still on a health program at all of my. So I like to rein it in kind of quickly, but I don't do anything drastic. I just go back to Oman and just kind of move on and it always resolves in just a very short time, just a few maybe three days to five days of being a little bit more mindful and it resolves. All right. And so do you feel like you have any challenges that you that you still face with this whole thing, or do you feel like I've pretty much got it under control? I do sometimes have challenges. There are times that I have I'm challenged with being consistent, giving myself a few too many liberties sometimes. And I and I, one of my big challenges is, is finding good shoes here for my walking like I love to walk. And it's hard to find a good pair of trustworthy walking shoes when I find a pair, I I'll buy them and then when they start to hurt, it's hard to find another pair. That's been a big challenge for me. So when I come home on furlough, that's when I. I get good shoes, good shoes that are made in the States. And then I but I mean, I'd a consistency as far as the fitness journey can still sometimes be a challenge for me because I can be an emotional eater and it's a very high stress environment. I live inside the orphanage with the boys and my husband and some of our own kids and, you know, a lot of behaviors from past trauma come along with what we do. And so sometimes at the end of the day, I just think I just want a sleeve of cookies and need to end my and some days I give in to that. And I'm sorry when I do and other days I don't. And I feel really strong that I didn't. But I still do struggle. I battle myself sometimes. That's good. Thank you for for sharing that. So I'm going to show my ignorance, like in the Philippines because you're in the Philippines. So Amazon is not a thing there. It's no, they have their own version, but it's local products. So Amazon has just started delivering over here. We haven't tried it yet. I mean, we're missionaries, so we also have to be careful and frugal. And there are times that I just feel bad about dropping 100 U.S. dollars on a pair of shoes. But I think, yeah, Amazon has just started. And so I'm thinking it may be something that's worth the investment just because it it's my sanity, my mental health, those walks are my everything. And like, I can't wait to get out there when it's time to walk. It's not even a chore. I never dread it. I don't think I've got it. I think, Oh good, I do it all at once. a6k all at one time. I don't break it up. I know that you break it up, but just. I know, I know my Marg when it's three K when I turn around but that's when I listen to podcasts. Yours and others, I listen to worship music I can think have time to just not focus on the orphanage so that you know, that that walk is. It's one of my favorite things, actually. That's awesome. So what is one piece of advice that you would give to someone else? Right now they're on the weight loss journey. What would you tell them? I would tell them to be patient on the journey. It takes so much longer than you think it's going to take, but it's instead of eyes on the goal all the time, eyes on the being skinny or eyes on the wearing a size whatever, or having a certain number on the scale just each day. Just enjoy the journey because it is going to take you longer than you think, but it's so worth it. I am so thankful that I saw that friend and her glow and heard the words intermittent fasting and then, you know, came back here and thought I got to do something. I honestly I thought that maybe I have an autoimmune disorder or some kind of an illness or even ALS. Like, I scared myself because my body was just hurting and I was young for that. I wasn't you know, I was too young to be in that much pain. And I would just I would just encourage anybody who's thinking about starting intermittent fasting to just start today, pick a pick a window that you think you can live with whatever food you really wanted when the windows closed. Just save it for tomorrow and do a little bit. Do a little bit of moving, if you like. Put on a song and dance to one song with the blinds closed in your room. Just one song. Maybe the next week, two songs, little by little and just give it time. Give yourself a year. Don't, don't say if I'm not feeling better or looking great in 30 days, I'm done with this thing. Give it a really good, fair shot. And I don't think anybody would be sorry that they did. I'm super thankful that I started this this journey. I can't even believe I'm in maintenance. I never thought I would say I'm in maintenance. I always thought I'd be losing those extra ten. Those extra five on there. I'm just I'm just exactly the size that I love being just a normal, healthy, energetic 53 year old woman. That's awesome. And something I said, You've been in maintenance for a while, so when did you actually lose the weight? And so you've been maintaining for how long? It took about a year, a little bit more than a year to be where I was really felt like I wasn't going to go back and I was comfortable. So I started around 2020. So sometime in the middle of 2021, toward the end of 2021, I would say I had lost all the weight I was going to lose. And then I became I went into maintenance. But even through maintenance, I worked on toning up things through exercise and trying to walk my 6ka little bit faster. Little personal challenges just for my heart. In my own physical health. I do have my youngest child is a child who has Down syndrome. And so a big part of my motivation was just to be here as long as I can for him. So it's, you know, it's one of those special needs parent's worst fears that something would happen to you and your child would be left with somebody that isn't just as crazy about them as you are. But for me, it was, you know, that bad thing was already happening. I was out of energy. I was out of, you know, desire to play and run and all those kinds of things. And so that was just a big part of my motivation to get myself together for him so that I can be the best mom. So, Nikki, is there anything else that you'd like to share about your weight loss journey? I guess, you know, one one little tiny piece of advice that I'd caution people that are maybe just starting or haven't started yet is to be really careful about scrolling the Internet for advice. You hear so much contradicting advice. Meals, great. Oatmeal is terrible. Peanut butters, great. Peanut butter is terrible. And you can get yourself so confused. And I know you call this the research stage. People will get there. It's so easy, especially with Reelz on social media, to hear from these influencers. All this contradicting advice and think, forget it, I'm not I'm never going to get it right, but you're never going to get it right if you don't get started. So my advice is just to get started, eat mindfully what sounds good to you and your window and just test it out and see what can see. You will make progress if you're if you're reasonable with your input and your and you're faithful with your window, you will have progress. So don't be scared of all that contradicted contradictory advice. That's such good advice. Okay. So Nikki, if people would like to get in touch with you, connecting with you somehow, how can they do that? Sure. So they can go to Facebook and look for Mercy House of the Philippines, and that's me. I run the page for our orphanage and I'm happy to answer questions. I can, you know, help somebody be there. Accountability, partner, if they need that. I'm happy to help out in any way that that is feasible for my time schedule and theirs as well. So Mercy House in the Philippines. And I can I can help you out. Awesome. And can people donate to Mercy House? Is that like do you? I'm assuming charities always need money, right? Yeah. Yeah, we are. We're missionaries and we we don't we aren't allowed to work here. Even though my husband is a native Filipino, he's not able to work on the visas that we have. And so, yes, anybody wanted to to donate to the work we do here. We have residential care for street boys and then we have a lot of community outreach. If anybody listening is planning to be in the Philippines for another reason and wants to join in a feeding program or community outreach, you can just come and serve food and meet the kids. We'd love to have you. Awesome. And I'll put the link in the description so that everybody can find you on this. And so thank you very much for being here, Nikki, and for sharing your story. Thanks for having me. You've been a great part of my journey here lately. Kayla, it's been a pleasure to really meet you. Now that I've met you on a podcast, to really meet you on on a chat. So thanks for the opportunity. Thank you. I hope you enjoyed that interview. I just want to take a moment to remind you, if you are a student in my slow and steady Success Academy that you have access to me during office hours to make an appointment. You just simply need to log into the academy and go over to the Office hours module. So if you're having trouble implementing some of the concepts, be sure to reach out. 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.  

Become an Insider (Youtube Members) Private Coaching With Kayla In today's episode, we're going to talk about perfectionism and how it manifests with intermittent fasting, as well as some tips to overcome it.   Sign up for my weekly newsletter My Books (ebook or paperback) on Amazon: The Laid Back Guide to Intermittent Fasting: How I lost Over 80 Pounds and Kept It Off Eating Whatever I Wanted Overcoming Weight Loss Obstacles: How To Keep Going When Things Get Difficult  Get the audiobook for free with a 30 day FREE TRIAL from Audible My young adult fiction novel: Escape From Olshek's Castle  ALL THE INFORMATION CONTAINED ON THIS PODCAST IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY. IT IS NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR MEDICAL ADVICE. YOU SHOULD ALWAYS CONSULT A MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL BEFORE GOING ON ANY DIET OR EXERCISE PROGRAM.