Growing up I was a tomboy. I loved climbing trees, riding on snowmobiles and ice skating in Massachusetts where I was born. We moved to Tennessee when I was 10 and from then on I played softball, swam, rode bikes, took classes of some sort in the summers (dance, gymnastics, ballet). I stayed active and never thought about my weight. I remember my mother drinking Tab and keeping sugar out of the house, because she was always dieting and she encouraged my sister and I to watch our sugar intake so we didn’t get fat.
Beginning the Diet Mentality Cycle
Once I hit age 14, I was in constant competition with my best friend, trying to be the same size she was. We went on diets constantly trying to get the perfect model-size body. This was in the era of Cheryl Tiggs and Charlie’s Angels. I remember even going on ice cube diets. I was a size 7 but all I saw in the mirror was thick thighs and thick waist. I remember a friend in high school that would wear a bandana as a belt, and I envied her for that. Of course I never took into account the fact that she had a long and lean build, whereas I have a short (5’3″) athletic build. From that time on, I was always dieting.
In my 20s I started lifting light weights and doing The Firm videos after they came out. I loved what squats and pushups did for my build. My body puts on muscle fairly easily. In my later 20s I got burned out with the routine I was doing and I started running instead. I wasn’t very good at it due to asthma, but I absolutely loved pushing myself to the point where it hurt to breathe in. I did 5Ks and for awhile every Thanksgiving morning my sister and I would meet in our hometown for the Autumnfest 8K. It was crazy, usually in the 30s and one time it was in the 20s.
Finding my passion
When I turned 37 I discovered the local recreation department offered tae kwon do classes. I signed up and never looked back. It was the best of both worlds, building muscle and pushing yourself until you’re gasping for air and think you’ll pass out. I LOVED IT! 3 nights a week for 2 hours I was giving it all I had, even sparring with the men. I worked out for another hour 3 other nights in my garage with a punching bag. And I was good at it!
5 years 2 broken bones and torn ligament in my finger later, I tested for my black belt. I was in the best shape of my life. I had washboard abs, shoulder muscles that popped out and strong legs. But all this time training had really hurt my home life. I had really neglected my husband and I felt guilty. Stress took hold and I lost my appetite. For 3 months I ate very little, and my muscles were the first to exit. Needless to say, the weight started climbing at that point.
I stayed with martial arts for another 2 years but I had torn ligaments in my hip from overuse and my back always hurt. I finally realized it was not worth the pain. I took up a new hobby, watching television and spending time with my husband. I tried Weight Watchers and a couple online diet companies. None were possible for me to stick with. I was used to being able to eat anything I wanted, these diets left me starving. I tried Atkins but couldn’t live without carbs. I lost some weight with Thrive which was a plan created by a local man. He now calls it Shiboleth. It was doable but for me impossible to stick with. It limits carbs and fats too much for me and left me without energy and feeling weaker than ever.
Taking back my life
In 2012 I signed up with My Fitness Pal where I came across a group called Eat More to Weigh Less. I read all about it and found it to be very sensible. But I couldn’t stomach a reset. I mean I just wouldn’t do that. So I just watched my calories through MFP, trying to stay with 1200. I failed most days but even when I stayed on it, I couldn’t seem to lose weight. I think it’s because I had lost so much muscle, but losing my mother and menopause were major reasons also.
In 2017 I faced the fact that I needed to quit dieting and learn to accept myself the way I am. I got back into the gym a couple nights a week and did whatever I wanted. Walked, punched a bag, pushups, it didn’t matter as long as I did something. I knew exercise would help my mood and attitude more than anything else would. I also started looking at the EM2WL website and Facebook group, where I came across the announcement for the workshop in the Fall. I signed up thinking it would just be instructions for how to get started with a reset and how to move through the phases. Boy was I wrong! (But for the better!) It was about the mental game and learning to love yourself as you are now. I really needed that. It was also about creating a path that will work for you, which is exactly what I needed.
Breaking free from Diet Mentality
I am now in my first cut phase. It hasn’t been easy because we’re just coming off the holidays and I’ve probably been in the maintenance phase as much as I’ve been in the cut phase, but I know now how to analyze what I’ve done and I know I can change the rules to make them work for me. I’m also using the EM2WL Workout app to work out and I absolutely love it! It’s the guidance I need. I’m definitely increasing my strength. My clothes are starting to loosen up slightly around the waist. I haven’t weighed myself and I don’t know that I will. If I’m building muscle, which I’m sure I am, then the weight won’t go down. But I will measure in a month or so and I do think I’ll like what I see!
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One of the many problems dieters encounter in their fat loss journey, is they will not pivot and make a change if something is not working. So often a dieter will hold on to whatever worked in the past as the end all, be all to get their results.
And they will keep going back to it. Over and over again.
What got you “Here”, won’t get you “There”
First of all, know that there will always be bumps in your journey. Some of them will not be clear the first time you encounter them, and some of them will require running into multiple times before it will actually apply to you. These are blindspots.
“If I am doing _____ and it is working for me, why would I do ____ instead?”
Let’s back up a moment.
Let’s say you have never done anything physical before. So you get off the couch and start walking. Almost immediately you see results in fat loss, so you walk further. Then you start running. Again, results start to happen for you. So you run further, faster.
For the weeks or months leading up to this, maybe you have come across HIIT workouts, or someone has suggested weight training for fat loss and muscle building. It makes complete sense to you, but you are able to push these items out of your mind because running has been getting you results.
Eventually, it all stops working.
Uncovering blindspots
The problem with human nature is we are all egotistical at heart. No one ever wants to be proven wrong. So in this case, because you’ve told yourself that running was giving you progress, you can’t fathom giving it up for anything else.
Soon the blindspot is uncovered – your body has adapted completely to running, and in order to get results, resistance and weight training need to be added.
A great analogy for this is a potted plant. For a seed to grow, it needs a small pot. But eventually that seed will outgrow the pot and needs something bigger. If you don’t replant the pot into the ground, then the roots get stifled and it will no longer grow.
Blindspots are your seeds trying to grow. Eventually they cannot be ignored any longer and a decision has to be made whether to proceed forward, or continue stifling the plant.
These happen around every corner of your journey. Knowing they will come is a huge part of the mentality shift. By preparing ahead of time that something will need to change, we can immediately make the right decision to propel our progress forward.
Be open to change, and be open to knowing that what worked in your past, may not work for your future.
In our previous blog post, we discussed three main reasons why many women struggle with fat loss:
– Women are more focused on “weight” loss, rather than fat loss. – Hormones can play a big role in how fast and where the fat loss can occur. – Women generally have a lower muscle mass than men do.
While we could have certainly ended the conversation there, (solving any one of those issues could result in a shift in fat loss for most ladies), we feel compelled to bring the topic home by pointing out the elephant in the room: The Diet Mentality. Even if most ladies understand the central theme behind developing a less stressed, “muscle-based” mindset, they still want to go about solving their fat loss issues with extreme diets and unrealistic deadlines.
Diet Preferences
When we choose to diet in a way to lose “weight,” (remember reason #1!) we typically select very extreme methods to do so. (*cough* 1200 calorie diets!)
Whenever you embark on a low calorie diet your body is forced to make less food spread farther, so it often has to make budget cuts to survive (literally). Because muscle requires more calories to maintain, extreme “budget cuts” can put those precious muscles you’re striving so hard to hold on to, in jeopardy. When the body is faced with a low calorie (especially low protein) diet – it has to break down muscles in order to “find” the protein it needs to survive (essentially getting rid of those dang “expensive” muscles, so that the budget can spread further!).
Most women (whether on a diet or not) prefer a high carb, high fat diet with very low protein incorporated. When coupled with little to no resistance training, and repeated bouts of super low calories, many women are living in a perpetual “muscle wasting” lifestyle. Rejecting the 1200 calorie insanity, and increasing the protein is a great starting point for most ladies seeking fat loss. Protein not only keeps you fuller longer, it helps to keep the metabolism from burning up the proteins in our muscles, thus making our workouts more effective, and allows the muscles to build up instead of break down. Once weight lifting is sprinkled in, it’s icing on the cake! (Note: I didn’t say anything about getting rid of cake…)
Because many of the diets that we tried in the past helped us to lose weight “fast,” it’s honestly tough to NOT lack patience. Thanks to our microwave society, we tend to want alllllllll. the. things. RIGHT. NOW. We can’t understand why men can lose weight so quickly, or why younger women are dropping pounds faster than us. The media knows this, and makes sure to taunt/target/tempt us regularly with quick fixes (and we just keep taking the bait- even when we know better). We want things that happen as fast for us as they did in the past – to have the losses we did when we went on our first diet.
We say we’re willing to do “whatever it takes” — but never for “as long as it takes.”
Having patience is about being willing to build/maintain muscle mass and actually stop stressing about it. It means focusing less on weight loss, more on fat loss. It’s about finally settling in and doing things right by your body. It’s about reaching your goals in a no-nonsense way that does not backfire in the long run: eating enough food, eating enough protein, getting enough fiber, lifting and doing workouts in a way that are built to maintain the muscle mass you already have, and maybe even encourage more muscle growth along the way.
So there you have it. The five biggest reasons why women tend to struggle with fat loss. So remember this on your journey to a better and healthier you. Dieting will lead you down a path of never ending gain/lose cycles, constantly frustrated with the lack of progress. The goal of the Diet Mentality is to make you stop enjoying your life to its fullest. A change in your diet focus, throwing the scale away, and taking the time to build your muscle mass back up while living your life now, will all put you down the path to success. The path just winds along the rose gardens, rather than plows right through them.
It’s not your imagination. Women have fat loss struggles that seem to elude their male counterparts. Many of us have been known start to the “hey let’s do this diet together” – only to end up frustrated when we plateau and they…don’t. Of course this is an oversimplification of gender (not allmen lose fat super easily — but dang it sure feels like it at times!), but men definitely have a few advantages over us.
Over the next two articles, we’ll explore five main reasons why women have a harder time than men when it comes to shedding the fat.
Weight Loss
Women are often more focused on weight loss over fat loss, which means they pay a lot of attention to the scale. And if you’re constantly looking at the scale, that can skew what you think is progress. Men tend to not be focused on the scale when it comes to their weight. Most of the time, men just do one or two simple things and the weight seems to fall off of them (more on that later!) By eliminating the need to see a number on the scale, men do not get as obsessed about a certain “goal number” than women do.
You can lose weight in almost any way. You can lose weight by losing muscle mass, or water, or you can even lose a limb and see the scale drop. If the loss is coming from fat, then it actually keeps your metabolism on track. But if that loss is coming from muscle, it’s actually slowing your metabolism down, which is what happens to a lot of people.
Hormones
Obviously we all want to blame gains on hormones and whine “Women have it so much harder!!” Our hormones are more sensitive to stress than men’s hormones may be. So when we add stress into mix, (because let’s face it, we are more prone to stress about things) our hormones actually react in a way that stops us from losing weight. It actually causes us to often gain weight, especially in the belly. Women normally tend to hold onto fat in the belly area, but when under stress this area refuses to let any fat go. (This is referred to as a “Stress Belly”)
Guys may have a hormonal advantage because of their testosterone, but if we keep our stress levels low, we can use estrogen to our advantage, and help trigger the fat loss. Unfortunately, most forms of extreme dieting exacerbate stress – lower calories, higher exercise exertions, constant weigh ins, are all forms of stress which can, in turn make it incredibly hard for women to lose fat, especially in the belly area.
Muscle Mass
Another HUGE reason for why it’s easier for guys to lose weight than women is because of their muscle mass. Women naturally have less muscle. The time our muscle mass is at it’s highest is when we are young teenagers. That is, unless we do something about it – unless we choose to actively seek a lifestyle that builds and maintains our muscle mass. We want to see that scale go down because we think the scale is what is going to make us skinny. This typically means that we’re not focused on muscle mass.
Just like Melanie, you could be losing fat even when the scale isn’t moving!
Muscle equals metabolism, so when we start putting on muscle mass, the scale may not move at all, or even go up. It’s mentally tough to put focus on our lovely new muscle gains when that darn scale is going up/staying the same, so this is where we tend to self sabotage. When it comes to muscle, you can actually gain weight AND look better because the increased metabolism will help you burn fat even faster, burning calories at rest. Muscle is what keeps everything toned and tight and compact underneath your skin. Simply losing weight doesn’t do that. If you lose muscle you may get smaller, but you get softer looking. (skinny fat)
Releasing the grip that the scale has on you, managing your stress/hormone levels, and focusing on building muscle mass are three major keys to conquering the female fat loss code. In our next post, we’ll touch on two other ignored-but-critical factors that play a major role in female fat loss.
From the beginning of time, diet companies have made us feel like our willpower is what will allow us to succeed. If we fail, it is not the diets fault – it’s our willpower. If we just concentrate harder, stop cheating and don’t allow for derailments, then we can easily stick to the plan and “suck it up” for the long haul.
Wrong!
It’s NOT you – It’s your diet.
Willpower is an exhaustible resource. You only have so much of it and when it’s gone, it won’t matter what you had planned to do; it’s gone. Diets unfortunately, take up a vast amount of willpower. So when you diet, your willpower is drained by trying to stay on track. But we don’t get to pick and choose where our self control comes from.
We spend our whole day just trying to keep our willpower in check. Our boss gets on our back, and we keep a tight lipped, respectful reply. Traffic jam on the way home, the frustration keeps rising. We get home and try not to yell at our children for no reason. It all requires willpower, and it’s just a matter of time before we drop a ball somewhere.
Eventually it fail. Using all your willpower up in other areas will mean it’s bound to spin out of control in another. Mainly, your diet.
Dieting in general causes an insane amount of stress on us. Diets tend to be very restricting, eliminating too many food choices, or calorie levels. And dieting during high stress situations is never a wise choice. (let alone a restrictive diet at any time!) When it comes to sticking to any kind of diet, picking one with a dozen different changes to your food intake, will surely cause a catastrophic failure to your willpower. So choose a diet that will change only ONE thing. This will allow you to concentrate on that one change until it becomes a habit.
When something becomes a habit, it will not require your willpower to keep going. So pick the diet that you can incorporate into your life for the long term. Think not weeks or even months, think for life. If you cannot sustain your diet plan for the rest of your days and be happy living your life, then your willpower will run out.
Today’s post is from Team Member, Tereza Toledo. Tereza recently went on a family vacation to Jamaica, and shares how she she crushed her Diet Mentality and truly relaxed during her Chill Phase.
Tereza’s Chill Vacation
I just got back from a true chill phase. 7 days on an all-inclusive resort in Jamaica with husband and kids.
In the past, the diet mentality would have made everything different; it would have ruined it all. I would have spent weeks trying to eat barely anything, cardio-ing myself to exhaustion, just so I could look a certain way for the vacation. Then I would be miserable. I would not enjoy the beautiful scenery, the amazing food and the company of my family, all because I’d be full of insecurities over my body and all the other stuff the we allow to come in when we let the diet mentality take over our lives.
But nope, none of that happened. I am a #crusher and I’m proud to brag! I was on a very mild cut for six weeks, not because of the upcoming vacation (last minute decision) but just because that was the phase I chose to be in after a long maintenance turned bulk. I kept lifting, watching my macros and eating what I should until the day before we left. No pressure to squeeze myself in old clothes that wouldn’t make me feel or look good.
During my chill phase
I ate the food, I slept, I put my feet up and enjoyed. You don’t get someone cooking your meals and tidying up your room too often! I don’t usually drink, but who can pass on pina coladas being served at a pool bar (literally inside the pool – genius idea) with my favorite people in the world (the kids got virgin drinks, of course). It would have been rude to the bartenders! I didn’t worry about how much sugar/carbs/whatever was in there, I just sipped and chilled!
I even had dinner and breakfast twice a few days. How could I say no to my husband and kids or not joining them or to nag at them for eating. I never get to enjoy Jamaican food! I wasn’t going to not eat! It wasn’t a crazy feeding frenzy as it may sound, but it was a decision that I made. I allowed myself to have my time off and enjoy it, bit by bit.
I didn’t feel gross about myself; I did not compare myself to other people; I did not worry about how I would look in my bathing suit. I didn’t spend a second thinking that I was ruining my previous phase or that I’d have to undo the damage when I got home. I didn’t eat salad in the last day or on the way home, I didn’t even try to use the amazing gym they had there! I just chilled.
Today, I have no regrets. I’m not worried if my pants feel a little snug or if I don’t look as cut as I did before the vacation. I am re-energized and ready to move on with my next phase. I reconnected with myself and with my family, we had a great time and made wonderful memories. We laughed and had fun. And that’s what EM2WL and #crushingthedietmentality is all about.
How are you Crushing the Diet Mentality? Post your NSV’s in the CTDM online community, we’d love to share it with the fam!
New to EM2WL?
Grab our FREE quick start guide!
Are you curious about how the process works, or wondering what's in our Starter Kit E-Book? START HERE. We'll send you a free breakdown of the basics, exclusive videos explaining why everything that you've learned about diets have only led you astray, and an action plan to take your life back immediately.
Beginning the Diet Mentality Cycle
Taking back my life
One of the many problems dieters encounter in their fat loss journey, is they will not pivot and make a change if something is not working. So often a dieter will hold on to whatever worked in the past as the end all, be all to get their results.
Uncovering blindspots
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