OWL Success Tips: Feeding Your Real Needs
How many times have you found yourself eating and realized that you were not really hungry?
Or you noticed yourself eating something you did not really want? Or you realized that no matter how much you ate, you still felt hungry?
When food becomes more than fuel to us, we use it to fill all kinds of needs other than hunger. What needs? Over-eaters Anonymous asks us to look at the acronym H.A.L.T. – hungry, angry, lonely, tired – as a tool for distinguishing hunger from other needs. Ontological Weight Loss Program (OWL) adds an S for Stress – H.A.L.T.S.
Cognitive therapist Judith Beck asks her weight loss clients to abstain from eating and to feel the hunger pangs in order to distinguish physical hunger from emotional hunger. Transformational coach Anthony Robbins identifies six needs of human beings: certainty, significance, love, variety, growth, and contribution. Psychologist Abraham Mazlow in his 1943 paper, A Theory of Human Motivation, describes human needs as physical, safety, social, esteem, and self-actualization.
Because we are so used to operating on automatic pilot, we don’t always recognize the needs underneath. If we turn off our auto pilot mechanism long enough, we may identify our real needs and may then empower ourselves to choose behaviors that support rather than sabotage a healthy weight.
- Simple example #1: If I realize I am tired, I can choose to rest instead of eat.
- Simple example #2: If I realize I don’t feel loved, I can do something kind and loving for myself.
- Simple example #3: If I realize I am stressed, I can call a friend, take a bath, meditate, or take a walk
It sounds easy, doesn’t it? The challenge, of course, is to have the willingness, self-respect, and courage to get out of the automatic comfort zone and move into the realm of possibility and transformation. Another challenge is to change ingrained habits.
O.W.L. Success Tip: If you’re up for it, stop before you eat. Notice what you are feeling. Identify your real needs. And take action to fill the needs with something other than food.
To learn more about “Feeding Your Real Needs” register for a complimentary Weight Loss Breakthrough session.
With Love,
You & The Sabotage Cycle
Have you ever been on a weight loss program, doing just fine thank you, when whammo!
You notice you have sabotaged yourself big time. Maybe you went off your diet. Maybe you stopped exercising. Maybe you allowed a small indiscretion to balloon into a full-out eating binge or exercise boycott. And then what happened? If there was a downward spiral that lasted a while, you may have been caught in the Sabotage Cycle!
I believe that we sabotage our best efforts and our commitments in a variety of ways and for a variety of reasons. Sabotage takes us from power to powerlessness, keeps us from realizing our results and our greatness, and then is a tool to beat ourselves up. Ready to give up sabotage? Let’s do it!
First identify your sabotage cycle so that you can understand it and not have it run your life. In your experience of sabotage, what happens first? And then what happens? And what happens next? Keep going until you have made a full circle.
Here is my cycle as an example:
- I am empowered, being in integrity, and practicing good self-care.
- I have an unexpressed fear or a need.
- I don’t want to look at it.
- I stuff it or manage it, operating over the top of the fear of need.
- I do something to numb out, usually eat or play computer games.
- I beat myself up – self-criticize.
- I suffer.
- I decide to break the cycle.
- I break the cycle
- I am empowered, back in integrity and self-care.
Although I come back to empowerment, I have probably created havoc with my weight loss in the meantime. So the trick is to stop it mid-cycle. What does your Sabotage Cycle look like? Take a moment to make some notes. Once you have described it, then the following exercise can support you in the intervention.
Step 1: Notice the red flags signaling a fear or need. (If I am reaching for snacks when I have just finished a meal, it might be a red flag. If I do not like chocolate but find myself eating chocolate, that might be a red flag.)
Step 2: Name the voices inside your head. (Is Debby Denial saying, “I won’t think about this today.” Is Nancy Nazi saying, “You are a fat pig loser!” Is Ruby Rebel saying, “I’ll eat whatever I want!”) These voices are merely protection defaults. Whenever you notice them, you can bet there is an undistinguished need or fear underneath.
Step 3: Thank these voices. Be grateful that they are trying to protect you.
Step 4: Identify the fear or the need. (For instance, if I am preparing a speech and notice myself eating absently, I may be covering my fear of public speaking. Or if I feel lonely, I may numb the need for companionship with food.)
Step 5: Remember who you are and what is your commitment.
Step 6: Break the Sabotage Cycle with a tool such as these:
- See yourself with compassion
- Forgive yourself
- Recommit
- Get coaching or other support
- Review your plan
- Get back on program (or join the OWL program 🙂
To learn more about the “Sabotage/Entitlement” Sabotage Pattern and creating a Lifetime Plan, you will want to register for my “Weight Loss Jump Start”.
You CAN have it all!
Healing From the Inside Out
Weight loss is NOT about eating less and exercising more.
If that were all there was to it, I would have reached all my weight loss goals years ago without the struggle, suffering, and embarrassment.
What’s the real issue? The excess weight is a symptom of inner wounds that need to be healed. Long story short, my wounds have been about feeling unloved and worthless as a result of my mother killing herself when I was six and my father remarrying a stepmother who was cruel. Food became a protection and a comfort for me — my best friend. My parent figures have now all passed away, yet recently I distinguished that I still view food as love.
As a result of the transformative healing work I have done and the insights I was inspired to include when I created the O.W.L. Weight Loss Program, I am very compassionate with folks who are overweight. In our program we address the whole person; you get to experience healing while you drop the weight.
If you know that psychological sabotages are at the root of your excess weight and if you are ready for a once-in-a-lifetime transformation, please contact me for a complimentary “Lose Weight for Life” weight loss breakthrough session.
How to Stop Holiday/Vacation Mentality from Sabotaging Your Diet
Is this you? You are doing great on your diet until holiday or vacation time.
Then you blow it, gaining back much of what you worked so hard to lose. It’s a common dilemma! Several of my weight loss clients have had coaching requests about how to handle these occasions so that they don’t backslide.
First, let me remind you that there are holidays, and thus excuses to overeat and to not exercise, every time we turn around! The fall season introduces Halloween, Thanksgiving, and then Christmas. We celebrate New Year’s, Super Bowl Sunday, Valentine’s Day, Oscar Parties, St. Patrick’s Day, Easter, and Mother’s Day. Then come Memorial Day, Independence Day, and Labor Day. If you throw in a few other religious holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, barbeques, and vacations, you are certain to ALWAYS be anticipating, enjoying, or recovering from some form of overeating holiday. Not to mention TGIF (Thank God It’s Friday) and WTHIBIA (What The Heck, I Blew It Anyway)!
Learn from the experiences of my O.W.L. graduates: Whether they were on a trip to Mexico with girlfriends, on a cruise, visiting Hawaii, or going camping, all either continued losing or maintaining their weight. What’s the secret? They have shifted the “Deprivation/Entitlement” sabotage pattern. Instead of viewing their diet as deprivation alternating with holiday entitlement, they now make powerful choices about what they want and need each and every day. And they also practice a new perspective of getting to have it all: weight loss, a wonderful time, and delicious eating.
O.W.L. Success Tip: In order to have permanent weight maintenance, you must develop a lifetime plan, including treats, which supports you for every day, every month, and every circumstance or event.
To learn more about the “Sabotage/Entitlement” Sabotage Pattern and creating a Lifetime Plan, you will want to register for “Weight Loss Jump Start”.
You CAN have it all!
[O.W.W.L. Success Tip] Weight Loss Wisdom From A Basketball Grandmom
As a young, working divorced mom, I did not get to see my daughter’s basketball games, so now that I have teen granddaughters, I try to make as many games as I can. During the district playoffs, I noticed the parents and players were very emotional about the way the game was going, the calls the referees made, and the players’ mistakes or shots. Our team had been ahead by over ten points throughout the game, but in the final quarter we lost by three. It was our team’s fault. Lack of expertise or skill was not in question; emotions sabotaged focus. The other team, which stayed steady with a committed focus to winning, played consistently throughout the game…and won!
O.W.W.L. Success Tip: Lack of expertise or skill is not the issue; it’s your emotions that will sabotage your focus. With a committed and consistent focus to your goals, you too can WIN THE GAME! This applies to all areas of your life…weight, wealth, business & family.
What a great metaphor for my weight loss journey! How many times did I get on the scales and felt happy if I had lost but felt miserable and resigned when I gained? If I gained, I said, “The heck with it!” and ate whatever I wanted. My emotions sabotaged my focus. If I had stayed steady and consistent throughout, I would have dropped those pounds the first time, instead of taking so many years. Now I still feel my emotions, but I have tools to deal with them so they don’t run the show. I now stay in integrity with my plan and my commitment to it.
Are you ready to stop the emotional yoyo and win the game of weight maintenance once and for all? Then visit www.OWLWeightLoss.com and schedule a complimentary “Lose Weight for Life” Weight Loss Breakthrough session.
If you missed m sypecial free teleclass, “The Ultimate Coach: Three secrets to extraordinary profits and results in your weight loss practice,” you may download the recording by visiting www.janispullen.com/ultimatecoach/.
To your success!
Success Story
Janis Pullen is an extraordinary coach. She has a gift for blending the skills of facilitative coaching- guiding, motivating and inspiring achievement at the highest levels- with the sensitivity and attunement of the ontological coach- providing the insight and emotional support that dissolves internal barriers to full self-expression and life satisfaction. I highly recommend her.
~Gail Feldman, PhD, Psychologist, Author, Speaker, Coach
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9 Unconscious reasons you can’t keep the weight off and what to do about it
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