Dr. Sarah Stombaugh:
This is Dr. Sarah Stombaugh and you are listening to the Conquer Your Weight Podcast.

Announcer:
Welcome to the Conquer Your Weight Podcast, where you will learn to understand your mind and body so you can achieve long-term weight loss. Here’s your host, obesity medicine physician, and life coach, Dr. Sarah Stombaugh.

Dr. Sarah Stombaugh:
Hello everyone, and welcome to today’s episode. I am really excited. We are doing a series that will help you to understand what is going on in your mind so that you can support your body to reach your long-term weight loss goals. And you hear me talk a lot about GLP medications. Sometimes you hear me talk about psychology, we talk about nutrition and exercise and all the good stuff. And what is absolutely true that regardless how you lose weight, understanding your psychology, getting everything right in your head so that you feel connected to yourself, you understand your motivation, you’re wanting to lose weight from a place of love and reconnection with your body, that is the ultimate goal. And so that is what we are going to be doing here for the rest of the summer. So whether you are just starting out in your weight loss journey or whether this has been something you’ve been doing for a while, these next eight weeks are going to be so important to help change the way your mind thinks about food, thinks about your relationship with your food, with your body, and I am so, so excited to see you change during this period of time.

If you are new to my channel, what will be so important is that you like this video, that you subscribe to this video so that you get access to the other ones that are coming up so that you can follow along to get the best success during your weight loss journey as possible. And this is something that we also do as part of our weight loss program. So I see patients in person in Charlottesville, Virginia and throughout the states of Illinois, Tennessee, and Virginia by telemedicine. So if you are in one of those states and you are looking for someone who’s more than just prescribing the GLP medications, someone who is going to walk alongside you during your weight loss journey in order to help you reconnect with your body, heal your mind and your relationship with food, that is exactly what we do in my weight loss practice.

And I’m so excited to dive into that with you today. But again, if you’d love to be my patient, I would be so happy and honored to support you with that. You can learn more about being a patient in my practice at www.sarahstombaughmd.com, and that’s where you can find information about our practice as well as some of our online programs like The GLP Guide. Today, we are talking about motivation, and this is something I think we’ve all felt at times of feeling like, okay, I’m really motivated. It’s Monday morning, I’m starting up my weight loss journey, and you’re all in. And then by the end of the week you’re like, oh my gosh, it’s been a stressful week. Work has been hard. My kids are driving me crazy. Someone brought me cookies or maybe left donuts in the break room. And it’s like, you know what?

That motivation is just gone and it feels really hard to stick with your goals. So today we’re going to talk about how to harness that motivation or more importantly, figure out what’s deeper beyond just motivation. Motivation is a word that you hear all the time in the weight loss world, but the reality is motivation is just an emotion like anger or sadness or happiness. It is emotion that comes and it is an emotion that goes. And so we are not all of the time feeling motivated, and that is completely normal. So I think one thing that we often fail to realize is that we think, okay, I just need to be motivated or I just need to grit through it a little bit harder, need a white knuckle with this situation, but that does not always get us where we want to go. In fact, that usually does not get us where we need to go.

So today’s goal is to understand what is deeper than that, what is our why that keeps us going? And a lot of times we don’t even know what this is. We might have this desire to lose weight. We might say things like, okay, I’d like to lose 40 pounds. I’d like to fit better into my clothes. I’d like to look better. And those are just really surface level goals. And so what we want to do is dive down a little bit deeper and help us to understand why. What is the underlying challenge, fear, excitement? What is the goal that we are walking towards and why are we doing that? So a lot of times we might have a goal like, okay, I want to lose 40 pounds. So well, why? Why do you want to lose 40 pounds? You might say, well, I think I’ll feel better if I lose 40 pounds.

Well, why will you feel better? Well, I’ll have more energy. I won’t feel so run down. I won’t feel so tired. Okay, so you’ll have more energy. What would that allow you to do in your life? Maybe that would allow you to get down on the floor and play with your grandchildren. Well, why is that important to you? You might be thinking, well, I remember my own grandparents and I remember that they were wheelchair bound or that they had to sit and sort of watch from the sidelines while the rest of us played. And I remember thinking that they were kind of old sick people and that I wasn’t able to enjoy them in the same way if they had been playing with me. And so I think about that for my own life and I think I want to be on the floor. I want to be playing with my grandchildren.

I want their memories of me to be me as the fun and active grandma, for example. And so you start tapping into something like that and you can feel it can be incredibly emotionally powerful. Now, obviously that was a very specific example and yours might look very different, but that asking of why, why, okay, you want to feel this way, why? What would be different if you felt that way? Becomes really powerful because you start to see how compelling it is to say, wow, I want my grandchildren to remember me as having energy. I want my grandchildren to remember me in this way. Looks very different than saying, oh, I’d like to lose 40 pounds. It might be the exact same thing. It might be losing 40 pounds that creates that for you in your life, but the motivation looks a lot different because your grandchildren do not care the size of the body that you live in, but they’ll remember things like the way that you played or engaged with them.

And so tap into what that looks like. I’ve had patients who’ve tapped into so many different things. Very commonly it might be a health scare. Sometimes it’s something minor, like they’ve had gestational diabetes or pre-diabetes for example, but for them seeing those blood sugar numbers tick up as a reminder of a parent or a grandparent that struggled with type two diabetes and maybe even had severe complications of their diabetes. And so they see things going that direction and they’re like, oh my gosh, I do not want that for myself. There might be other things like recognizing I’m dealing with a chronic pain or I’m dealing with arthritis and man, I would love to not have to have a surgery or at least not feel like surgery is so urgent for me. What can I do to lose weight or to strengthen my body? When I think about my relationship with my loved ones, I want to stay active and live longer.

What is the deeper why that is driving you that is so, so much powerful than or more powerful than the fleeting emotion that is motivation. So sometimes that just asking over and over again, okay, well why? Well, why? And giving yourself, okay, I want this because this, I want this because this. And you dig down each time sort of layer by layer figuring out what feels like, okay, I’ve peeled away another layer of the onion. I’m getting to the core of what this thing is. Sometimes it’s not quite that easy though. So we can look at different ways of finding, okay, what is your underlying why? And I want you to offer two other ways beyond just asking why, why, why, two other ways that you can do this. So one, I want you to look into the future. I want you to close your eyes.

I want you to think five years into the future. Really, unless you’re driving, close your eyes here, imagine what that looks like and try to imagine what’s different. What is your daily routine? How does your energy level feel? What is your confidence? Do you show up differently at work? Do you show up differently in your relationships? What are the habits that you have that are now just part of your routine? Can you picture what that would look like? And we have to be careful here. I don’t want you, if you go to a place where it’s very restrictive and you’re like, oh, I’m only allowed to eat iceberg lettuce, red flags, stop going down that path right now and make sure you’re working with someone who can help support you in building that future in this beautiful, loving, reconnection way. But if you can close your eyes and you picture that future, you might see a day-to-day routine where things feel calm, where your body feels lighter, where there’s less pain, where you step into your closet and you zip up your pants and there’s no struggle to get them up, where you go for a walk or whatever your favorite form of exercise is, and you can do that in a way that you don’t feel winded.

Maybe you start feeling more confident in your clothes, in your body, so you’re showing up differently in relationships, that you’re showing up differently at work. And if you can start to see that and you can start to imagine this possibility of a future, it doesn’t have to be crystal clear, it can just be the idea of, wow, I imagine if I did this type of thing or if I lost the weight I would show up in this type of way, what is it that changed? What are the things that are different? And getting clear on what that looks like can sometimes be incredibly helpful. Now, sometimes as we’re looking into the future, it feels very muddy and you’re like, I know that I’m just putting one foot in front of the next one, but I’m not totally sure what I’m walking towards. And if that’s the case, that’s okay.

So don’t worry if that vision doesn’t work out for you. Let’s look instead, imagine five years into the future if nothing changed. Imagine that you’re just on the same trajectory that you’re on right now, maybe you weigh the same, maybe you even gained five or 10 pounds if you’ve been seeing some weight creep that’s happened over the year. Maybe there are health conditions like high blood pressure, high blood sugars like pre-diabetes or diabetes that have been starting to creep up. Maybe you’re dealing with some chronic pain like knee pain, for example. Imagine five years into the future, if things just stayed exactly as they are right now or you stayed on this current trajectory that you’re on, what is it that worries you the most? What is the fear that comes up or what are the concerns that you have if nothing changes? And that can be really clarifying as well.

I don’t want you to feel afraid. I don’t want you to just change from a place of, oh my gosh, I’m terrified, but that can be a really big driver of, okay, the way things are going right now is not in line with the goals that I have for myself. So even if the future isn’t totally clear of what I want it to be, I know what I want it not to be, and so let me start making changes in that direction. So getting really clear on some of the good things, maybe some of the challenges that would come up can help to clarify what is that underlying why. Because as we talked about earlier, motivation is just an emotion and it comes and goes and when it goes, it can be really frustrating to keep up with our journey. So when we are feeling discouraged, knowing your why, reconnecting with your why becomes incredibly important.

Now, what I will say is that this can be something that’s changing over time. Sometimes we’re gaining clarity as we go. We’re looking and seeing the progress that we’ve made. A lot of times we’re always just measuring forward and we’re looking to some sort of future that maybe just never comes. But what if we look backwards, we look back one month or six months or however long you’ve been on this journey and see what is the progress that you’ve made? Setting aside even just the number on the scale, and we can celebrate that too, but what are the changes that you’ve made in terms of your day-to-day routine and habits? Rather than celebrating just a number goal, let’s celebrate the progress goals, that day-to-day change of recognizing, okay, I’m really connected with my hunger signals perhaps. Maybe I’m really connected with the way certain foods feel in my body.

I’m really connected with how important sleep is for me and how differently I feel if I’ve had a good night’s sleep versus a bad night’s sleep. Recognizing that even if progress feels slow and some really big air quotes there, likely things have changed and I want you to celebrate the progress that you’ve already made. And sometimes too, that can start us to see there is evidence that things are looking different, that I’ve made changes, and that could help get us back into that routine where we are continuing to make those changes. I think sometimes we feel like we just need to overhaul everything and everything needs to look different, but I’ll encourage you that if you’re feeling discouraged or I’m feeling lack of motivation, starting even with something small can feel really powerful. And so asking yourself, what’s something that I could do today that is 1% more in line with my goals compared to what I was doing yesterday?

And it does not have to be something earth-shattering. It can be something like I’m going to have a glass of water first thing in the morning or a glass of water before I start any meal or before I check in about having a snack. It might be I’m going for a five-minute walk. It might be I’m going to bed 10 minutes earlier than I usually do. It might be I remember to take my daily vitamin or medications that I’m on. It can be very small things, but those small things build up and create evidence for ourselves that we are doing things that are helping us. And that helps to build on not just the motivation, but what can be an identity shift over time. Because this is what’s really amazing is that over time as we walk on this journey is that things evolve, both our motivation evolves as we get more clear, as we see what this looks like and how it feels in our body, but also our identity starts to evolve.

And when that happens, it’s incredibly powerful because it’s not just like, oh, I’m an unhealthy person doing good things, but we start to realize, oh, I’m someone who cares about my health. I’m someone who cooks healthy meals or someone who exercises regularly. I’m an active person. We start to see these identity shifts happen for us and then it becomes just this rhythm that we get into. I think one thing that becomes challenging is that weight loss journeys are never linear, and everybody will often hear me say that, but they don’t believe me until their journey is not linear. It is normal to have plateaus. It is normal to have times where things feel like they’ve taken a step back that might be in terms of the number on the scale or just feeling like things are not moving in the way that you want them to, and that is okay.

And that is the time where reconnecting with your why, reconnecting with what is it that fuels you and keeps you going becomes the most important because being in a plateau, if you’ve been on a weight trajectory that has been increasing for years, being on a plateau might actually be a really huge win and we can celebrate that your body is in a stage of maintenance. Even if we know that we want it to keep going on a weight loss journey at some point in the future, that plateau may be a win that we need to celebrate. And so reconnecting with yourself, understanding what is your motivation, what is your deeper why becomes so incredibly important for supporting yourself in the journey. Now, one thing that’s absolutely true is losing weight on your own can be incredibly challenging. Doing it in community, doing it with the support of someone in the healthcare field like myself, an obesity medicine physician can be incredibly helpful.

A lot of times I am lending my motivation, I am lending my encouragement to my patients. I see a very clear path forward for them, and so I am sharing that vision with them and helping reflect with them as they’re having these wins that sometimes are subtle and go unnoticed when they’re not pointed out. So if you are looking for someone to partner with you in your weight loss journey, I would so love to be that person. I see patients in person in Charlottesville, Virginia and by telemedicine throughout the states of Illinois, Tennessee and Virginia. You can learn more at www.sarahstombaughmd.com. If you are not in one of those states and looking for additional support, I have a great online resource called the GLP Guide. This is a one-year self-guided program that has all of the tools that you’ll need to support you in your weight loss journey.

We often know that people have questions. They want to know how their medications work, what is nutrition, what is some of the behavioral and psychological underpinnings that are going to support them in the journey, and we have short five to 10 minute long videos to address the most frequently asked questions that you will have during your weight loss journey. To learn more about that, you can go to www.sarahstombaughmd.com/glp, and I would love to support you in your weight loss journey. Thank you for joining me for this week’s episode. I’m excited to continue on over the next seven weeks as we talk about the psychology of weight loss. I can’t wait to cheer you on in your journey. Drop any comments that you have, let me know the questions that you have, and I can’t wait to continue to support you. See you all next week. Bye-bye.