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You're listening to episode number 11 of the Fat Fuelled Female podcast.
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Welcome to the Fat Fuelled Female podcast. I'm your host, Marja Chow, a holistic nutritionist, personal trainer and proud dog mama of two. I am obsessed with helping women achieve their goals, feel confident in their skin and become empowered health advocates.
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This podcast is designed to help ambitious women thrive on a low carb, high fat lifestyle. So tune in each week as we talk all aspects of nutrition, improving your fitness, enhancing your mindset, so that you can take inspired action, and live your best life all starting from the inside out. I'm so happy to have you here. Now let's get started.
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Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back to the Fat Fuelled email podcast. In this episode, we're going to discuss how having low expectations is a good thing on your health and fitness journey. Say what come again, did I say a lower your expectations? I sure did. Stay with me, okay.
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Most people create all these expectations around their health that they need to lose X amount of weight and this amount of time and they want to get fit. So they need to go to the gym five days a week. And they have to have all their meals done properly, or else they won't get results.
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But having this mindset could actually hurt your progress. And I get it. Everyone says you have to have high expectations for yourself, you need to dig deep, you have to have strong willpower, you know the saying no pain, no gain. It's all about sacrifice and kind of suffering, right? So it's really easy to take on this belief.
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But let me ask you, does everyone who creates these high expectations for themselves, get the success and results they set out to achieve? No. And you could actually argue that some people who create such high expectations have nothing have zip zero, nothing to show for it. Because they develop that all or nothing mentality.
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It's like if I can't do it, quote unquote, perfectly, why even bother? And it's not about being perfect, because there is no such thing as perfectionism. It's completely subjective based on the opinions of each individual person.
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So how do you become successful on your health journey, if you have low expectations? Well, first off, you need to raise your standards of what you want to achieve and set huge massive goals for yourself. But you need to lower your expectations.
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So for example, say you set out to lose eight to 10 pounds in one month. At the end of the month, you lost say around four to five. What does this mean? It means you still lost four to five pounds, which is a win, you still improved 50% from where you were when you started. It's so easy for us as humans to focus on what you didn't get what you didn't achieve what you didn't accomplish. But remember, even if you improved 30,20 or even 10% It's still an improvement from where you started.
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I find a lot of women, a lot of the time I have a very hard time is celebrating our own personal wins, right? It's like Oh, I was wanting to lose 10 pounds and I lost 4, what the heck, man, I'm such a failure. I'm not doing this right.
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Like, even if you're like putting everything into action and you're doing the best you can. A lot of this time this negative, this negative Nancy this negative self talk this, you know, really, really mean way of speaking and talking to your ourselves comes up.
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But what I want to offer you are what I want you to question is, what if your mom or your sister or your husband or your best friend, they were setting out to lose they're on a weight loss journey.
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And they lost four to five pounds in in the first month and they set out to lose 10. You would be so happy for them you would be like "Oh my gosh, I'm so proud of you, that's such an improvement, look at you go, keep it up, keep it up, keep it UP!"
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You wouldn't be like only four pounds. Really, that's, that's all you did. Right? So we you would be cheering the people you love around and you would be so excited for them. So can you take that energy you give to everyone else around you apply it to yourself.
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Remember, nothing has meaning except the meaning you give it. I'll say it again, nothing has meaning at all, except the meaning you are giving it.
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It's the expectation that you created in your mind. It's how you are interpreting this situation? Are you looking at the glass half empty? Or the glass half full? How are you interpreting? What how? Well you think you did.
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And, for example, like, if you can look back, this is just you know, made up theoretically, if you can look back objectively, at those last four weeks, and just take, take the the weight loss, take the number out of the equation, what did you learn?
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What steps and new habits did you continuously do each day abd each week? What did you let go of habits, beliefs? You know, and what did you step into, to achieve these results? How did you show up differently each day.
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And remember when it comes to weight loss, it isn't this linear pathway, although it can be sometimes but you know, everyone and every body is so different, especially based on your dieting history, your gut health, your digestive capacity, your stress your activity level, right, so many things.
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Weight loss can be a slower progress, metabolic adaptation, hormonal imbalance, right digestive function, mental stress mindset, which is huge.
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So in my signature coaching program, the fat fuelled female method, we address all of these, and you learn how to break down your goals a way, week by week that works for you.
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So when you don't get the results, you expected, especially with nutrition and weight loss, you have a plan you create for yourself. But our bodies are not like computers. It's not a simply mathematical equation, right?
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We wish it were that easy, but it is not. Especially if you come from a place of constantly dieting, right? Let's make this a lifestyle change. And with that, it takes time and patience for longevity to shine through.
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And a lot of the times, we as a society, we don't have patience. And when we don't get the results we want or expected, people will often revert back to old habits and behaviors and thoughts like, you know, "this isn't working for me," "I'm working so hard and it's not paying off, "You know, it's time to try something new, I need a new approach.
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And if you think about how much time you maybe would spend jumping from diet to diet, as opposed to just focusing on one strategy, being consistent, celebrating all the small wins you're making each day each week that is so important.
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A lot of the times, we're just looking at that finish line, we're looking at that end goal. And it's like everyone wants to get to the destination. But the destination comes in the doing what we consistently do each day and each week.
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So women can get so caught up with the weight on the scale, that we often overlook all the progress and underlying work you have created. And all those small shifts and changes are gonna get you to where you want to go, right.
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It's those small shifts in our behavior, what create the compound effect. So remember, true transformation starts internally. It's not just about eating better and moving your body. It's the thoughts and beliefs you carry and that negative self talk and self sabotaging behavior.
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You know, what beliefs have you created subconsciously, around your health over the years, and the judgment on where you think you should be right now.
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And that's why how I work with clients is a lot of the work is just honing in on yourself, and your internal dialogue and your beliefs in your self sabotage and your fear. And you not wanting to step out of your comfort zone, right.
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But everything you want everything you desire, everything you dream of, is out of your comfort zone. You have to get uncomfortable, you have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable, right?
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So, you know, think about anything you want in life is probably super scary to you. If you haven't if you weren't a mom before, and now you're a mom, that must have been super scary, being a mom and caring for another human being, or like starting a job. And maybe you have a higher position and having to delegate like, all of these things are scary to us.
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But to get there, we have to step into newer versions of ourselves and step out of what is familiar. So when you don't get the results you expected, people will often be like, I'm not losing weight fast enough, or I feel so behind.
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And I always like to question that belief by asking a fast enough for what, what are what are you measuring this against? This isn't a race, you know, you're not, you're not a professional athlete, you're not a UFC fighter, cutting weight, and you have a deadline of cutting the weight. And when you're a professional athlete like that they're cutting weight and just to make weight for the fight.
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It's not like a sustainable weight loss. So remember, your journey is your journey, we can get so programmed by things on social media, you know, the before and after shots, the the transformation, the snapshot, those are just snapshots, right?
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No one knows the struggle, and the energy and the trials and tribulations that went through that person's beautiful experience to get from A to B, remember that.
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So if you're trying to create a healthy lifestyle, this isn't a sprint, this is a beautiful marathon. It is a life long journey. And it's the conscious decisions you make each day to choose yourself and choose your health.
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Because where you are right now, what I always tell my clients is where you are right now, wherever that is on your health or weight loss or fitness journey, that is exactly where you're supposed to be.
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And there is always there is always always always enough time in the day to make you a priority. Because we place value, we place time on things that are important to us.
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So stressing out about not reaching your goals fast enough, it really doesn't provide any sort of benefit. And it sure as hell doesn't get you there any faster. So just trust the process. Understand you're going to get to your goal or your goals. It just may not be that straight pathway to get the success you want.
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And one of my mentors always shared with me, success is a crappy teacher because you don't learn anything. And there's that diagram what people think success is and it's like a straight like line elevating up, when in actuality it's a bunch of like, scribbles going up and down and around and around. Right.
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So success is or failure. I like to reframe the word failure as feedback. But when things don't go our way, feedback is what gives us the experience to make changes and get the results we want in time.
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So instead of having these high expectations, raise your standards. And remember, raise those standards of what you want to achieve, create massive goals for yourself. But lower your expectations.
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Create small bite sized goals for yourself each week, which are realistic and tangible for you to achieve. Because those small wins are so important for you to celebrate and see these changes you are making week by week.
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Again, it's that compound effect of all these small goals and behaviors behavior changes in which creates the transformation again, so when it comes down to it, learn to lower your expectations, you will enjoy the process so much more.
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And you will learn to be so much kinder to yourself. And in a world where you can choose to be anything, be kind and especially to yourself. That is everything today beautiful humans and I will see you later
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Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. If you enjoyed what you heard, make sure to subscribe to the podcast and if you feel you got some extra value from this episode, it would mean the world to me. If you could head over to Apple podcasts or whatever service you're listening to this podcast on. Drop a five star review. Let me know your thoughts in the show. Doing this really helps more people like yourself By the podcast, and if you're not already following me on social media right now is the time. You can find me on Instagram at Marja Chow for all your nutrition tips, tricks and inspiration or visit my website at fatfuelledfemale.com where you can download my free seven day keto meal planning with recipes. Thanks so much for tuning in and I will catch you next week.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
