You keep practicing and don’t we tell kids to do that, just keep practicing, keep trying; don’t give up. You see, when we’re talking about skills, we don’t make it mean anything about us. It just means that we haven’t done it enough for it to be familiar because skills get better with practice.  The more we practice it; the more familiar it is and skills get better with practice and they feel more familiar. So I’ll go over the skills that you need to learn and to practice, so that they then become integrated into your life. So that you have lasting weight loss. And then I’ll go through the phases that each skill goes through. Now, this isn’t complicated, but I want you to understand that the skills that I go through you weren’t born knowing and there will be a learning curve. And that as you learn it, you’ll have to continue to practice and don’t think that not being good at something is a reason to give up or to make it mean anything about you being weak or having no willpower. No, it just means you need to continue to have more practice. So what I find the skills that are necessary for lasting weight loss is the ability to be in tune or to detect feelings.  Feelings that are going on in your body or thoughts that you’re having.  And so, in last week’s episode, I was talking about the two foods that you should never eat for lasting weight loss. 

And those are impulse foods or pressure foods, so the skill that you would develop is developing the skill of detecting that feeling of pressure and so I teach you how to do that.  That might sound really hard, but no one’s taught you how to do it. You just need to learn how to do it and how to detect when you’re having certain feelings or you’re noticing thoughts going through your head, like food lies. Like I never get this or it’s a special occasion, so it’s just becoming more in tune with yourself. I like to call those detect skills, then you’ll need to develop the skill of calming yourself down, returning yourself to calm when you feel agitated, unsettled, stressed. It is a skill to be able to calm yourself down. I call that a re-collect skill.  Then you’ll also need to develop the skills of reflecting, of understanding, oh, okay so I was thinking about this, which led to this, which led to this, which led to this. I like to just kind of think of it as pulling out your magnifying glass and you’re just becoming a detective to look at the clues to understand more of what happened, so that you can understand the results that you’re getting.  

And one of the best skills that you will learn is how to protect you and protect the life that you want and how to show up the way that you want to show up, and How to handle situations the way that you want to handle them, how to eat the way that you want to eat. How to persevere and the way that you want to persevere. I like to call protect skills. There’s things that we do  that are problem solving and an example of that is if you recognize that Monday nights are really busy, probably setting a Crock-Pot Sunday night, so you can throw it in right away on Monday would be helpful to you. We do lots of planning in that protect skill. I also created some skills that I liked to call safe eating skills, so we just look at things that you can practice, you say that word again, practice that just ensure that you are eating in a manner that you feel really good about. I have a client that I’m working with right now, and she loves to use the word dignified in the way that she feels dignified. An example of these skills is, in our community, we practiced three habits there, chewing your food, 20 or more times per bite. Emptying your hands while you’re chewing and they are not putting more food in your mouth until your mouth is empty. That’s just an example of a safe eating skill. Some other things that women liked to practice are eating, seated, slowly, they like practicing eating food that they planned. I personally find that one of the safe eating skills for me is eating food that’s prepared for me and not eating off other people’s plates.  

And then we develop some skills to ensure that we have regular support and that’s checking in with a support person. In fact, you guys, did you know that you are 72% more likely to meet your goals? If you share those goals weekly with someone, isn’t it amazing? The other things that we do is we learn how to talk to ourselves in a kind and supportive way. We fill our lives with non food pleasures, which is a skill I am telling you, it is a skill to find pleasures and create fun in your life that isn’t putting food in your mouth. These are all skills, it sounds like a really long list, but one by one by one, we learn how to create these skills and integrate them into our lives. Now you don’t learn them all at once and so for each skill, you go through some phases. The first phase is you’re not even practicing the skill. And so you may have heard me say a few things that you’re like, oh, I’m not even doing that, great! Then you are in phase one. You are never not in these phases, you’re either in phase one or phase five. And in phase one, you’re like, I’m not using that skill. I don’t even know how to do that, no problem. Not a problem at all. Phase two is when you’re not sure how to do it perfectly, but you’ve heard it and you’re willing to try. So for all of those skills you just heard, if you’re like, well, I think I’d like to learn that, then congratulations, you’re in phase two.  

I like to call that willing. These three is when you’ve learned them and you’re practicing them.  And in this phase, the risk is that you’re not going to feel really good at it. You’re going to have to endure that uncomfortable feeling of not feeling good at it. But in this phase, you’re prioritizing time to practice it. And if you’re not really sure about things, you’re asking questions, you’re getting support and you continue to persist, even when you feel like you’re not doing it right. You just keep practicing it. Now in phase four, you’re continuing to practice it. It’s getting better, but here, I like to call phase four, committed and surrendered. You’re like, listen, this is just what I need to do for my life to be what I want it to be. For me to live in the Lord’s will; for me to feel peace and freedom, around food, for me to release that excess weight. Your focus is on what the skill is bringing to your life, and you see that, although it is effort is becoming more familiar to you and you’re seeing the effects. Your focus is on positive progress, you’re committed to making this part of your life.  

And the fifth phase, the fifth phase is unwavering to this way of life. Recognizing that all of those skills are necessary. And we might not practice them perfectly, but they’re necessary daily to be able to live at a healthy weight for the rest of your life. This is where you have a daily commitment to practicing those skills. And when obstacles arise, you implement a tool, a skill, you pray, you problem solve, you don’t give up. Obstacles will come up and you don’t give up. He just keeps practicing this skill and this is where it becomes just part of who you are. It’s so integrated into your life. And so you might hear that and say, wow, that feels like a really far place to go but I promise you if you are in level one, if you were in phase one and saying, oh, I’m not doing any of that, and I don’t want to, that’s fine. You never have to go to phase two, but phase two is where you say, I don’t really know how to do that, but I’m willing to learn. 

And if you’d like to start on this journey and start learning some of these skills for the summer, now is the perfect time because I’m doing a free workshop. I invite you to my workshops summer slim down, where I’ll be teaching you some of the skills that you need, they’re just skills, remember, you just learned them and then you can practice them this summer to eating the treats that you want and losing weight. I’m going to be teaching you the skills of how to not sabotage your weight loss efforts, even while you’re enjoying all of the social gatherings. I’m gonna teach you how to handle social pressure and how to not give up and these are just a few  skills. Listen, you guys weren’t born knowing them. I can’t expect you to know how to do this, but you can learn them. And so if you’d like to learn them, get your spot in my workshop today. Go to weightlosswiththeholyspirit.com to get your spot. 

All right, I can’t wait to see you there have a blessed day.