The Real Reason You Can’t Lose Weight

The reason why we don’t weigh what we want to weigh is because we're treating the wrong problem. When you are misdiagnosed, you apply the incorrect solution. And this is literally what’s happening to us when it comes to weight loss and our relationship with food. What we think is the problem is not the *actual* problem. And so we’re throwing completely the wrong solutions at it!

Today I’m going to share the 5 key elements of what the actual problem is so that you can finally find that AHA moment you've been looking for, and not ever have to worry about not being able to solve this problem again.

The misdiagnosis (aka “special unicorn syndrome”)

Maybe you’ve thought you can’t lose weight because of your thyroid, or because it’s just your fate, or it’s down to your genes. Maybe you think that if you could just muster up a little bit more willpower, then you would be good to go. There are literally sooo many reasons people come up with but I promise you, you are not a special unicorn–you have just misdiagnosed the problem. And because of that, you are then applying the incorrect solution.

The perceived solution

When you misdiagnose the problem like this, you automatically think the solution is to hop on the next diet, whether it’s the one your friend’s doing, keto, or some extreme detox or “cleanse”. You think you just have to do better and try harder, and maybe you think you have to hire a personal trainer or see a nutritionist. This incorrect solution is essentially getting someone else outside of yourself to prescribe something to you. 

We often think the perceived solution is doing the thing that “worked” before. 

“Oh, I know. I'm just gonna go to Weight Watchers again. That worked.” 

Newsflash, that didn't work because you're reading this right now! You're still trying to solve this. And what we want is to solve this permanently, not for six weeks, and not for just the one vacation that's coming up in a couple months. No, we want to solve this permanently. 

So what do we have to do here? We have to actually get the correct diagnosis because when we are not applying the correct solution, we get all these crazy results. You're constantly overthinking, you're not losing any weight or you are, but then you're gaining it back, or you're just gaining more weight back. You're not living the life that you want, you don't feel like yourself, and you're moving farther away from who you really are. All of that means you end up walking around in a big suit of shame, feeling like a total failure (totally been there!).

The actual problem 

First, and foremost, let’s be super clear that there is nothing wrong with you and this is not your fault. But even though it's not your fault, the cool thing is that you still have the ability (and even responsibility) to respond to this problem so that you can get the result that you want. 

So, here’s the actual problem:

1. Your brain is wired as a diet brain. 

The reason why your brain is wired as a diet brain is because of the culture you live in. Inside your brain there are sentences which are called your thoughts, which create your feelings, which create your actions (the “thought, feeling, action” cycle). 

Right now, your thoughts are misaligned and are coming from a diet brain. Perfectionistic thinking comes from the diet brain and likes to do “all or nothing” thinking. Moral licensing comes from diet brain thinking–this is the “I've done good all week, so I deserve X, Y, Z”. Diet brains love to use willpower but it’s not renewable so at the end of the week, you don’t care about eating ten slices of pizza.

We don't celebrate the little wins when we act from our diet brains. We aren't having fun, and we're not loving ourselves–instead we're berating ourselves. We beat ourselves up for when we make a “mistake” instead of just learning from it. This is all coming from your diet brain. 

But the good news is, we can rewire your diet brain!

2. You have an over desire for food. 

Again, this is completely to be expected. There are literal food labs which design the processed food in our culture to create an over desire in our brains. So you overeat food and then you're over your desired weight. This can then turn into the over restriction cycle because once you've noticed that you've overeaten, you start to over restrict food to make up for it.

I don't ever want you to be deprived, but if you want a result, there has to be a healthy restriction. We can lower the desire and not have food sitting at the top of the list of things we look forward to because when it's number one, we don't weigh what we want to weigh.

3. You are eating for emotional reasons. 

This was a huge eye opener for me because I never thought that I was an emotional eater. I didn't eat in the way that our culture depicts, meaning I didn't binge on a Wednesday night after a very stressful day. But I was doing it with things like an extra square of grilled cheese or a handful of nuts when I was bored or an extra cupcake at the party. And when I realized if I could identify as an emotional eater, I realized I had a problem that I could actually solve. 

We want to eat most of the time (not necessarily all the time) for physical hunger, not for emotional hunger. We don't want to use food to solve problems other than hunger, so if you're standing in front of the fridge and you're not hungry, we need a different solution. And I teach that inside the Yummy Mummy Experience (don’t panic–there is still tons of room for having your favorite cupcake or whatever the thing is–it's just not all the time). 

4. You don't have real accountability.

Accountability works when it is real and true. But this doesn't mean you can just get your bestie to do some diet plan with you–that's not real accountability. Real accountability is where you put yourself in a container where someone is checking in on you on a day-to-day basis while you are being taught the skill of inner accountability. That's the ability to want to follow your word when things get hard. I teach you how you can cultivate the skill of wanting to follow through in the moment, which is where you become unstoppable and a total badass!

So many of us as moms and women are really good at keeping our word to other people, but not to ourselves. The good news is we can learn how to do that. I think a lot of us are trying to do this work alone, which is another part of the problem. But you need a community, you need a container, and you need real accountability if you want to solve this once and for all. 

5. Your hunger hormones are not balanced. 

As a culture, 88% of our hunger hormones are not balanced. That means because the chemicals in your body are imbalanced, they’re telling you you're hungry when you're not hungry and they're not telling you you're full when you actually are full. When they're imbalanced, you're also going to be storing fat when you're not meant to be storing fat, and you're not going to be able to release the fat on your body when you're meant to release it.

We don't need fancy tests. We just need to slowly start moving ourselves away from processed foods and foods that will spike our blood sugar, which therefore spikes our insulin (the hunger hormone that cues your body to store fat). Instead we want nice, even rolling hills of insulin instead of huge spikes and troughs, which make it impossible to lose weight.

The whole point of the protocol (or Yummy Mummy map) that we create for you is to balance those hunger hormones because when they are balanced, it is borderline effortless to weigh what you want. 

So now you know what the actual problem is made up of, you can stop spending so much time, energy, and mental space on it. You can solve it once and for all so you can go and live an awesome life. You can literally dedicate six months to this inside the Yummy Mummy Experience and never have to worry about solving this problem again! Our next cohort starts October 2023 - up for it? Enroll here!