Back to Square One? This is How to Begin Again.
We all know the feeling of waking up with such good intentions, only to be completely knocked off course when the kids are driving us crazy this morning, we’re running late to work, and we have an important meeting we’re now going to be late for. We walk by the break room after the meeting and the donuts are calling our name. One donut never hurt anyone (true statement)…
But the one turned into 3. Now it’s lunchtime and you say “F” it, hit the drive-through, and decide you’ll start again tomorrow already thinking of the naughty stuff you’ll eat when you get home.
If you’ve ever started then stopped… tried and failed… and felt all the defeating feelings about it…then you’re not going to want to miss this episode!
Resources and Links:
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TIMESTAMPS:
[00:02:22] Cleaning up stinking thinking.
[00:04:18] All-or-nothing thinking.
[00:09:32] Comparison and jealousy in weight loss.
[00:13:30] Starting from Square One.
[00:15:33] Mindset Matters
[00:19:27] Finding a middle ground in thinking.
[00:22:01] Starting small for big results.
[00:28:22] Sustainable weight loss behavior change.
[00:29:09] Q and A Tuesday.
Full Episode Transcript:
So what we’re talking about today is what it feels like to feel like you’re back at square one. Doesn’t feel great. What do I do? What does that even mean?
What does it mean to be like back to square one? You have these healthy, like healthy habits you’re starting. You’re eating healthy, you’re getting some things down, you make some progress, and then you quote unquote fall off, and then you think you’re back to square one. Why are we even talking about this today?
Because I do Q& A Tuesday every Tuesday, and this happens to be the common thing that came up. So that’s why we’re talking about it today, and I think that it can be really powerful because I have three different things that I’m going to walk you through three different steps that I want to walk you through.
And I’ve got a bonus step for you of exactly what to do when you feel like you are back to square one and how to get back on. I know that it feels defeating. When you have tried so hard and then you just feel like everything, has just completely fallen off. Or if you’ve just gone asleep and just haven’t paid attention to anything.
And next thing a week’s gone by, a month’s gone by, six months have gone by, a year has gone by. This is very common. So to give you context, I ask inside of the Hello Body Freedom community every single week, I go, Hey, What questions do you have? And this is what I got from this time.
Okay, here it is. So here’s what I got. At this moment, I’m really struggling with all of it. I had a bereavement and it’s literally put me back to day one. Going back to day one. And so then the sentiments that like follow that were yeah, all of this is a struggle for me as well. So we need to have a conversation about this party people because this is a problem that we need to clean up.
And I’m giving you, again, I’m giving you the steps to how to get out of this. And you might think that the step is going to be like, Oh, go drink some water, go for a walk, have a healthier meal the next meal. But that answer is, that’s the most BS answer anybody could ever give you, in my opinion. We need to figure out what the hell is going on with your stinking thinking.
Okay. So the very first thing we’re going to do in this case is we’re going to really come to the table and go, Do I really believe this bullshit that I’m feeding myself? Because what we end up doing is we believe our thoughts. We have a thought and then we just automatically believe it. But what you need to understand are that your thought patterns, the way that you talk to yourself, the shit that goes on inside of your head, it’s often like gibberish.
It’s old neuronal patterns of just in the Buddhist traditions, I’ve heard it called the monkey mind. It’s just your mind does what your fucking mind does. Okay. And if you have always been stuck in diet culture, if you always believe, Oh, every time I mess up, I’m back to square one.
I’m back to square one. I’m back to square one. What I want you to understand is that your first step is you’ve got to clean up your stinking thinking. That is it. We have to clean up that belief that is even fucking true. Okay. Whenever you say stuff like I’m struggling with everything. So like the posts that I put in the Facebook group let me know if you’re getting stuck with any of these things.
Weight loss, emotional eating, trauma resolution, overeating, meditation, nutrition, movement, fitness, healthy habits, binge eating, body image. So if you hear me list that off and the only thing you can think of instead of having like a particular thing that you’re working on, all you can see is all of those equal.
I’m not doing anything. I must be a failure. I must be starting over from square one. This my friends is the biggest problem that you have. That’s your biggest problem. So whenever your brain catches on to nothing’s going right. I’m back to the beginning. Okay, this is a problem with the mind.
So I want you to really hear me when you are going all or nothing. And you’re thinking when you are really, like, because here’s the point I really want to make your belief that you’re back to square one is bullshit. I’m calling full-blown bullshit on you. You are not back to square one.
Okay. Your mindset and your thinking is skewed in a direction that you have decided to cling on as truth. So the first thing you need to understand is that if all or nothing thinking, and trust me, feeling that you’re literally starting from square one is all-or-nothing thinking because you’re not starting from square one.
There’s no way on God’s green earth you were starting from square one. Why? Because you’ve already had the history. You’ve already been on this path. You’ve already just because you’re not doing it exactly right or exactly the way you wished you would does not equal starting with square one. The other thing I also hear with this one is square one means that I gained the weight back.
Okay, gaining the weight back still does not equal starting over from square one. It does not. Okay. You went through a process to figure out how to lose weight. And on the other side of this, if you fell asleep, if you ended up going back into old bad behaviors or old behaviors of eating for a million other reasons besides physical hunger, right?
Now what you get to do is you get to learn at a deeper level than how you learned before. The other thing I want to say about that is I’m telling you, first off dieting, like deciding I’m going to go on a diet. In order to lose weight, that is like a setup to basically feel like you’re coming back to square one because all it does is it gets you to eat less calories, count your macros, cut out food groups.
It’s a very dangerous way to be. It really messes with the metabolism in a huge way, messes with your body set points, a disaster. But then also you’re not doing any mindset training. So when you spend a lifetime believing your thoughts. You spend a lifetime getting stuck up in your head with this bullshit.
I don’t know what to tell you. You got to change your thoughts. You’ve got to change your stinking thinking. Okay. So the very first thing you want to start to understand and really do is just because you have the thought doesn’t make it true. Just because you’re thinking the thing doesn’t mean that you should believe it.
The first thing you want to do is question yourself all the time, especially if you’re sitting in a shithole, if you’re sitting in a situation that doesn’t feel good and you’re just spinning out in it, like the only person that gets to change that is you. And if you keep deciding to hold on to Oh, I can’t do anything right.
Or, Oh, I’m starting over from square one. You’re not going to change. Nothing is going to change. If you keep choosing to believe that. All right. This is the very first piece. We’ve got to get cleaned up. Your thoughts matter. What you believe really matters. All right. I want to make another point about this because I just want to drive this home.
So inside of our Facebook group, if you guys are in there watching this live right now, You can scroll down and you can see a post that I made and it was a poll that I took and basically here’s what I said. I was like, let’s say that somebody in your Facebook world or your Instagram world, like you’re scrolling down social media, right?
Just chilling out at the end of the day, whatever. And you see somebody that came up in your feed and they’re posting all about this insane new diet they went on and they’re constantly talking about their crazy new workout or their crazy new diet. And then they’re sitting here talking about, Oh my God, I’ve lost so much weight.
I lost 30 pounds in 30 days. Or they put up some insane drastic before and after picture where it’s I’m like 60 pounds down in four months or something crazy like that. And you look at this and my question was, what happens inside of you? Okay. So only 12% of my community, 12% said, I will mentally wish them well.
And I’m just going to keep doing what works for me towards sustainable weight loss. Because if you’ve been in my world forever, you know that fast weight loss is basically just a ticket to gain it back, gain more back, lose muscle mass lose bone density, but metabolically speaking, end up in a worse place than when you started fuck with your set point, right?
Like all of these things are wrong, which is why you would even be in my community, which means you are here to learn a different way to be in relationship with if you need to lose weight or want to lose weight, a different way to do it, a more sustainable, holistic approach that includes lifestyle change, not some fancy, shiny diet.
That your friend on Facebook went, Ooh, I lost 60 pounds in five weeks or whatever bullshit that they keep claiming. So you’re actually already, if you’re even listening to me, you’re probably already on that bus of I am done with that BS, right? Yet only 12% of you said mentally, I will wish them well, I’m not going to try to get up all in their business, but I’m just going to keep focusing on me.
I’m going to keep the focus on me. Here’s what I got. I got 25% said. Tell them that it’ll never work and they’re just gonna gain the weight back since they aren’t healing the deeper reasons. You know what? I like that. I’m like, at least good for you. Show. Tell ’em how it is.
Maybe try to help them because you realize how what a struggle that is. But 62% 62% of you said that you would feel jealous, envious and or frustrated with your own progress as you compare their journey to your journey. 62% man. So I have a full two-thirds of people who still have a lot of work to do.
And here’s the point I’m making. Why am I bringing this up when I’m talking about getting back to square one? Because the part in you that immediately looks outside of yourself as somebody else’s post and you start to doubt yourself, feel frustrated, right? You start to go in an inner, like mindset shithole, right?
This whole like, Oh my God, look at what they’re doing. They’re doing so much better than I am. Probably this isn’t going to work. This is such bullshit. Who do I think I am that this is going to work for me anyways? All of the talk that goes around that my friends, like it’s a disaster of the mind.
It’s that the thinking goes completely array and you just like cling to it like it’s truth. And that’s where we have to stop this shit. Okay. When you are noticing thoughts, they, it’s the start thoughts and feelings and emotion, but really your thoughts, at least from where I’m talking about here, if you cannot figure out how to stop believing them and stop believing that they’re true and making a decision to go, maybe there’s another way I can see this or think about this.
Okay. So when I hear of one of my girls saying, I’m really struggling with all of it, I had a thing that set me back. She said a bereavement, whatever that might’ve been, but then the belief that it literally put me back to day one. I need for you to challenge your own thinking. That’s it. For one of my other girls,
I love so much, this says Everything above that I wrote I need help with. Like she just blanketed with a thought All the different pieces I talked about. So in the post I remember I’ll just repeat myself again. I talked about weight struggling with weight loss, emotional eating, trauma resolution, overeating, meditation, nutrition.
Like instead of being able to come up with a concrete question that says, actually, this is where I’m actually struggling today. I could use help with that. Instead, this blanket response of everything I’m struggling with. We’ve got to be willing to change our freaking thinking party people. We absolutely have to, okay?
So that’s the first piece. If you are not willing to have a mental conversation and catch your thoughts to make this shift, nothing else changes. All right. So how can we do this? So the very first thing is change your stinking thinking. The second part about how to really get out of that idea that you’re starting from square one, so you can get going again.
First, you have to question that belief because it’s bullshit. You have to literally make the decision that I am never starting from square one. You have to believe in the affirmation is I am never starting from square one. Square one was a long ass time ago. I am on a journey and it never goes back to square one.
I might fall off a little bit. I might get distracted. I might even gain weight back, but there is no possible way, that I am starting from square one. I have too much knowledge. I have too much experience and I have too much almost a virility. I have too much like believability that in myself that I’m not going to stop until I figure this shit out.
So even though it feels like a setback, I’m going to use the setback to move my ass forward faster. Listen to how that sounds compared to, I literally am starting from square one. One says I’m a fucking victim and nothing is going to change. And the other one says, F you and F that. I am not a victim.
I can fall back and have setbacks, but I am not starting back from square one. Okay, so really hear that. Then the next thing we need to do, once you’ve made that realization, once you have done that, you have turned the light switch on in your brain to consciously make a decision that you are not starting from square one.
Now it’s time to connect with something that’s going right. What actually went right? If you feel like you’ve fallen off the wagon or you’re starting from square one over the last month of your life, I need for you to go back and look at that month. And I want you to look at everything that’s gone right.
And you’re going to go, but nothing, the only reason you were unable to find Something that’s gone right, something that proves that you are on this weight loss journey, that you did not start back from square one. The only reason you would not be able to do that is if you are still stuck in the belief systems of I’m back to square one.
Okay. I saw this picture and it says every day is a good day. That’s not what it says. Let me start over. It says not every day is a good day, but there is something good in every day. Not every month is a great month, but there’s something good. And there are things that you did that actually did move the needle forward.
There were thoughts that you were had, there was emotional regulation that you were working on. There were habits that you did. I guarantee it. And so when you can start connecting to what’s actually been going right, and what I will have clients do. I literally, from a coaching call on Friday, had a client. I told her, “you need to write down a hundred things that have gone right.” And I really meant it. I’m like, seriously, not even joking. Why? Because your mindset matters. If you cannot train your brain and retrain your thinking to get out of doom and gloom all the time, what on earth makes you think this is going to change?
What on earth makes you think anything is going to change? There has to be a mindset component to this process. You have to be willing to flex your mindset muscle, even if you’ve never done it, just like going to the gym sucks a little bit at first, but you do a little by little and things start to change.
Okay, stay in your pity party. Nothing’s going to change. All right. So these first two things are key. You’ve got to catch your thoughts. You’ve got to change your stinking thinking. And then from there, now at least you’re questioning your psycho beliefs. And by you, I mean me, I mean everybody. You are not special this way.
We all do this. Okay? It’s part of being human. But now, if you want to become superhuman, if you actually want to reach your goals, most people never reach their goals, people. Most humans don’t. You have to be willing to do this. It doesn’t just magically happen. If you decide to go to college and get a degree, do you think you just blink your eyes and all of a sudden you get a fucking degree?
Of course not. You go to school, you go to fricking nine classes a semester, you study, you read books, you take tests you pass some of them, you pass some with flying colors. You fail some of them, but you don’t get to junior year after having a really tough month because somebody in your family had a struggle bus moment in your life.
And now you’re back to square one and you’re a freshman. It’s just, it’s, stop it. Stop thinking that way. I feel like I’m beating a dead horse, which is the worst. And I hate that analogy, but I hope I’m making my point. Okay. If you are unwilling to change your thoughts, nothing changes. You have to be able to change your thoughts.
And then finally, you have to be able to connect with what has actually gone right. Wow, I’m actually a junior now. I must have passed enough classes to get that far. Maybe I’m not a freshman anymore. Like really, truly. And then the next piece, once you’ve done this. You are in a much better head space.
You are seen more truthfully and clearly now. And when you can do that, and only once you can do that, the third thing I have for you in terms of getting back up and getting to move again, okay? Is now that you’re like this third step means absolutely nothing without the first and second one.
I need you to really hear that because what I’m about to ask you to do requires you to have your head on straight and thinking straight and believing that you have been doing a good job and knowing that you can do this work. Okay, the third piece is what baby step am I willing and able to take? F now, what baby step am I willing to take?
What thing am I willing to go do right now? What little, and this is super important because what all or nothing thinking, or when you’re really lost and I’m starting over from square one, there’s two things that happen when you’re thinking, when you’re really lost in that bullshit thinking. The first thing is, You just go down a shame spiral and you just go screw it.
Who cares? I’m hopeless. Everything is hopeless. And I’m just going to shove food in my face. I’m just going to, . It’s super not helpful or the 180 degree opposite, which is now I’m going to go on a 30 day juice cleanse and I’m going to join a gym and I’m going to work out 20 hours a day.
It’s insanity. You’re either like one side of the pendulum or the other side. And both of those they’re just like, they’re two sides of the same toxic coin. Neither of them are going to help you. Okay. What you need to find is some middle ground. Stop being so black and white, which is another reason why we’ve got to look at our thinking.
We’ve got to look at our black and white thinking, find that middle ground. What is the smallest thing that I’m willing to do that? Not only that I’m willing, I am able, I am going to do it. If on a scale of one to 10, I’m like a nine or 10. Meaning that there’s no way on God’s green earth I am not doing this unless somehow God’s green earth just disappeared off the face of the planet.
If it is up to me and my own volition, I am doing this. That is the level of knowing that you’re going to do whatever action is going to get you moving in the right direction. Now I have a ton of trainings on action in here, like what kinds of action, eating when you’re hungry, eating what you want. Tuning into satisfaction working with caloric energy and balance, right?
Like the sexy habits that we do like getting enough sleep, going for a walk, moving your body calling a friend to help get you out of the funk. Like whatever the action is, it is, what is the baby step that I’m willing to take. All right. And the reason why this is so important, and then here’s what I want to tell you.
If you’re thinking that baby step is like, baby steps are so stupid. What is this one little thing going to do for me? It’s just bullshit. You need to go back to number one and number two, you need to look at your stinking thinking. You need to challenge that belief. And then you need to like, look at what you’ve actually done that has worked.
Okay. So I’m going to give you an example. This is like an example that I’ve seen this common theme of this example in. So many of my clients I want to say up to 50%, especially the ones that don’t like to exercise. So I had a client, it was probably like three years ago, wasn’t doing anything, wasn’t moving, had every reason and excuse under the book to not move.
And I’m like, can you not walk out your front door for five minutes? And then look down and when five minutes have passed, turn around and walk back and be done for the day. You just got 10 minutes of movement in when you’ve gotten absolutely nothing in. And she gave me every excuse. That’s not enough.
That doesn’t even do anything. And so what do we have to do? We have to change your stinking thinking. If you have that kind of attitude and that kind of mindset, of course, nothing’s going to change y’all. Nothing’s going to change. If you keep thinking you’re starting back from square one, guess what?
You’re just going to keep starting from square one again and again. Nothing changes until you change this. Okay. And so anyhow, the story with this client is that she started doing it and then she started liking it. She started really getting used. She’s like really the whole 10-minute thing.
She was able to do it every day. So she was able to make it into a daily habit. It wasn’t like going to the gym on just on Mondays and Thursdays. It was something that really felt easy to integrate into her life. This is a little bit crazy of an example. But she ended up over time, why wouldn’t I just keep walking?
I’m liking it. And so then her 10-minute walks turned into 12 minutes and then 15 and 30 and then an hour. But she ended up walking like hours almost every day. It became her hobby. It became her pastime. She would go to all of these like nature areas and she would take pictures of all the deer and the flowers and the clouds and the trees and stuff.
And she would share it in our Facebook group. It was just like the most beautiful thing because she went from not having any capacity to do anything and having the mindset that set her up for that and her little baby step, you know what that did is, it put her into action. My friends action is key, and if you’re not willing to take the action, then you’re not going to get the benefit.
You’re not going to do the thing, right? And so when I say have it be a baby step, it’s literally all it takes. It requires you to train your brain and train your nervous system that wasn’t so hard. I could do that again. I have a degree in exercise physiology and I used to own a fitness and nutrition company back in the day.
And I will tell you from before I ever went on that journey up until selling the company up until where I am now in my life. If I go do a workout that feels like super out of my league, doesn’t mean I won’t do it. Because like I have this background and I love move my body doesn’t mean I’m not going to show up to that CrossFit class that my friend showed me, but because it was too much for where I was with my own fitness and my own routine in that moment when I overdo it, I’m not saying that I don’t get excited.
I’m like, Oh my God, this was the best. I’m going to come every day. Guess what happens every time when my nervous system gets overwhelmed from too much, too soon. I don’t do anything for months after that I don’t know if you’ve experienced that before, but it is real. You have to work with the level that your nervous system is at right now.
Like you have to, okay. And if you don’t like, man, this lighting is so weird. I’m in a coworking space. It’s like crazy light. Nothing changes. Nothing changes until you change this. Okay. Now obviously what makes me very different from anybody else out there is I work with trauma resolution. We know that the nervous system and what you’re doing with the nervous system really matters.
So mindset matters too. We have to have the right thoughts, right? But your thoughts and the feelings you have in your body, the sensations in your body, they’re totally connected. They’re totally connected. All right, and so immediately when you think you’re starting over from square one when everything sucks and you can’t figure your shit out, and you just stay in that loopy of just shitty thinking, I don’t know what to tell you.
Like I can’t help you until you figure out if you literally have to decide, I don’t wanna be this way anymore. Something inside of you, like a light switch, it has to go on. This is unacceptable. Now, that doesn’t mean that the thoughts go away.
They don’t go away. What you think and what you wish is you want your brain to just be like, Oh, I just want to get up and do all the things. No, your loops of crazy shit has been going on in your brain and mine. I’m not special forever. The difference between you and me is I have learned to see that shitty thinking.
And really detach myself from it. Like literally pull myself and go, what the hell? Oh, there’s that crazy thought again. Okay. Audra, how’d that go? Last time you believe that literally I have the capacity to. Know the shit that I say to myself. That’s not nice. That’s a judgy and bitchy and all that stuff.
And I’m able to pull myself apart from it. It’s not about wishing it away. It’s not about wishing it away or shoving it away or wish it. It’s just going to be there. It’s like a level of like surrender in me. It’s Oh, there it is. And then what do I do?
I go do the thing I said I was going to do anyways. That’s it. I do the thing that I know that my higher self, when I’m in a place of really planning of knowing like what I want for my life, I’m able to ignore the bullshit going on over here and go do the thing that I know I said I wanted to do that I wanted, whether I’m in the mood or not.
And I will tell you that takes practice. It’s like building a muscle, but you will never get there until you make the decision. Is this thought working for me? If it’s not working for me, can I pick another fucking thought? Yes. Yes, you can. Is it weird? Is it like make believe? Sometimes it feels make believe.
Sometimes it feels I have all this evidence that I am starting over from square one again and that all this is going wrong with me. Okay. That’s great. Do I also have evidence over here that maybe I did some things right that maybe I’m not starting over from square one. Oh yeah, now I can see I’m finding things that went right.
So now I have all the shitty thinking that I’m back to square one. And I also have an evidence. And I also now have evidence that, huh. And I’m not necessarily back to square one. You have to decide which one you want to believe. You have to decide which bandwagon you’re going to get on with your crazy shitty thoughts that aren’t helping you or maybe the more helpful thoughts.
That’s how you make this process real. And this goes for anything in life, obviously, but I’m an expert in helping you come into a beautiful relationship with food and your body, a sustainable, sane approach to being in relationship with food. That is a normal way to eat to move into a space where you start to respect your body. Maybe you don’t like your body right now, but you can at least respect it to start moving forward. And then how to start creating behavior change in a way that will get you there. Sustainable weight loss is behavior change stacked on top of behavior change. I should change that sustainable.
Boss is itty bitty baby step behavior change stacked on top of itty bitty baby step behavior change Stacked on top of itty bitty baby step behavior change, right? That’s it. Okay and this is what we do. This is what I do. It’s what i’ve been doing for you know over two decades now.
It’s crazy. If you’re interested in being a part of our community, we are taking applications for VIP coaching and we’d love to do it. Love to see you there. So check it out. Hello, body freedom. com forward slash apply. And we can help you in a much bigger way. And if not, no big deal. Like we have this free community.
I do these free trainings every single week. And I have so many women that show up in here telling me that they’ve lost 10 pounds, 30 pounds, 40 pounds, just being inside of this free community. So you do you, my friends. But thank you so much for being here. Very excited to do this and reach out with any questions.
You can DM me anytime and I will see you on the upside of my friends. Bye everybody.
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