Episode 5 Transcript
Need Weight Loss Motivation? My Favorite Advice for Successful Results
March 22, 2023
Lucy: Do you wish to lose weight, but this question nags at you: “What if I try to lose weight, but I can’t maintain it?” And, each time that question repeats in your head, you slowly lose momentum! And, you want to learn how to stay motivated, so that you can stop the frustration and get the results you want, right? This episode is about how I maintained the energy to lose 100 pounds. It’s not a secret! Or at least, it won’t be after I share what I learned with you! One encounter at the airport changed my life, and this episode will reveal what a man taught me about motivation.
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Lucy: Welcome to the Weight Loss Made Possible! I’m your host Lucy Laramie! When a semi-truck crashed into my car and flat-lined my life as I knew it, the recovery heaped an additional 60 pounds onto my lifelong battle with my weight. Do you know how kids get a little too heavy to be carried? The extra weight I lugged around was equal to constantly carrying 3 small children. My weight loss journey empowered me to lose 100 pounds and keep it off over 5 years! Yet, it wasn’t all that long ago that I lacked confidence about who I was and what I could do. Fast forward past many failed attempts and the lessons learned, and you will see the version of me today that looks better, feels better, is healthier, and has more freedom. I created the Weight Loss Made Possible podcast to share stories and the lessons learned from my journey and to give you simple strategies to help you forge your own path to success. If you want to become the champion in your weight loss story, you’re in the right place! Let’s get to it!
Lucy:
Have you ever had an encounter with someone, and you’re just like: “Whelp! that changes everything!”? And, is it just me or does this happen when you least expect it? With over 600 routes connecting about 50 countries, and about 100 million passengers per year, the Atlanta airport is a hub for all types of connections. Millions of people all with a different stories intersecting at a moment in time. Some saying hello, and others saying goodbye. Some chasing new opportunities and others closing out chapters. There’s a certain ambiance to an airport. It’s like constantly flipping through the chapters of a book. As a server or bartender, you can see an average of about 150 new faces per day. That adds up over a year to meeting about 40,000 people— enough people to fill a medium sized football stadium! Can you imagine all of the people you come across and stories you hear? One time, a man who had worked in rodeo production his entire life came, had a couple drinks, and started lassoing chairs and pulling them across the restaurant. You just never know what to expect! As memorable as that professional cowboy was, there was one man who I will never forget that changed me, and I met him at the least expected moment. What many people don’t realize about the airport is that even the world’s busiest airport usually clears out almost completely well before midnight. When you work 2nd shift, you walk into the busiest part of the day with numerous flight connections constantly pouring new people into the terminal. Yet, by the time you walk out there is a stark change of pace as the energy, noise and chaos of the day dissipates and things become quiet. At a certain hour, even the train shuts down and it becomes so quiet the only thing heard is the hum of a floor cleaning machine slowly turning over the 2.5 million square feet of space. My job at the time was located in a corner of a low-key, business-oriented terminal that would become especially quiet at night. One server was designated to stay and mop the floor at the end of the shift, and I was the one designated to stay late that night. The floors were still drying and the retail gate clattered as I slipped past it and headed out for the night. As soon as I squeezed out and took a couple steps into the terminal, it became apparent something was wrong. A short distance from the restaurant's back entrance and hidden behind a large structural column in the concourse, there were two feet jutting out. It wasn’t uncommon for passengers to occasionally sleep in the airport, but something was off and my instincts told me something was wrong. Really wrong. As I quickly approached, I saw a man slumped over next to a large structural column in a blind spot that could only be seen from the back exit of the restaurant in a now vacant terminal. I had no idea how long he had been there! Confusion and panic flooded me. In one hand the man held his chest and the other reached for his phone that had fallen a few inches from his other hand. It became apparent very quickly that this man seemed to be suffering a severe medical emergency! Possibly a heart attack! What do you do first in a situation like that? He was conscious but I didn’t know for how long. He was barely coherent. My last job had provided me with CPR and first aid training, but nothing prepared me for what happened next. I called 9-1-1. While waiting, I wanted to get as much information from this man as I could while making him feel as calm as possible. “Where are you from, sir?” I asked. “Germany.” He stammered. According to his boarding passes, he had arrived from Germany and missed a connecting flight to his final destination. Over 5,000 miles stood between where the man was coming from and where he was going, and there he was trapped in limbo in unfamiliar territory during a crisis. The man was alone, and utter terror and panic must have sunk in as he faced his circumstances. Noting the phone on the floor a few inches from him, my mind surmised that he must have been trying to call for help. “Please…” the man gasped. As he tried to reach for his phone. “My wife…” he says. “I was trying to talk to my wife.” And it struck me: “the man hadn’t even tried to call for emergency assistance.” Concluding that he was in distress and possibly dying, he simply wanted to speak with his wife. Every time I left work from that day forward and walked past that column to the train, that man would cross my mind. He left a lasting impression on me about what is important in life. He taught me about the value of asking yourself what is truly important and to have the courage to build your life around the answer. Here’s the problem: You can’t effectively proceed if you don’t know what’s important. If you want to stand in your power, you must know: What am I fighting for? If there is nothing to fight for, there is no reason for your power to activate. The common myth about weight loss is that you need motivation to activate your power. Yet, what few people understand is that it is actually inspiration that will fuel your ability to succeed. And, you want to know the difference and how to stop getting stuck, right? The reason why motivation is not as effective is because it is external. It’s received from other people or things. Since motivation therefore relies on your external environment, you have very little control over the consistency in which you receive it. There will be a perpetual challenge to maintain consistency if your motivation is reliant on the things around you. Furthermore, if you become focused on chasing motivation, you risk giving up your sense of autonomy and let other people and things define your purpose. If you find yourself asking yourself: “What should I be doing? And, how do I stay motivated to keep doing it?” It’s an indication that you are stuck in this trap. After meeting that man, every day I passed the place where I had found him slumped over, I found myself wondering about what had happened to him and if he had been reunited with his wife. His wife was his inspiration, and that is what is needed to keep you going when things get tough. I promise if you focus on the purpose of your journey before you focus on what to do and how to do it, everything will shift. Why? You will generate inspiration for yourself, and inspiration is motivation on steroids. It comes from within, and it’s what keeps you going consistently. Everything will shift when you stop asking “What should I be doing?” and start asking: “Why am I doing this?” Everyone understands parenthood, right? Either you are a parent, you have parents, or someone who felt like a parent. Weight loss is a lot like being a parent. Think of it like being the mom of a toddler having a temper tantrum. The reason for the tantrum is often something illogical and unpredictable. Like your child is having an all-out tantrum because she didn’t get to go to your wedding which happened 3 years before she was born or because you won’t let her pour apple juice on the cat. And as that child is crying and making a scene, at the most inconvenient place and time, you think to yourself: “I don’t want to do this right now, but I will because….”. You know why it is important to be a good parent, and you have optimism that not all days will have tantrums. Inspiration allows for optimism and optimism allows you to have good days and bad days. Your “why” as a parent may be… I want my kids to grow up happy and healthy. But all parents have a different sense of “how” they want to accomplish that. A parents knows that it is their purpose that carries them through the struggle and frustration of temper tantrums in the short term. Your purpose gives you tenacity and perserverance. The essential ingredients needed for success. To achieve your goals, you need a constant energy source. Where can you find this? Everyone knows that motivation is essential for reaching your goals. What most people do not realize is that after motivation gets you started, inspiration is what keeps your efforts on track. Things around you can motivate you to act, but inspiration comes from within and inspires you to keep showing up. The most effective way to understand this is to imagine yourself as a tree. The branches you grow are what everyone sees, and when they are in full bloom, they can be beautiful. Yet, your branches also change with the seasons. They are triggered by the weather and impacted by fluctuations in the environment surrounding the tree. As a tree, your greatest asset is your roots. In order for your branches to bloom and bare fruit, your roots must be able to supply them with water and nutrients. On a shady day, nutrients from the soil keep the tree alive. Your roots are the foundation of everything you produce. Have you heard of Malaysia? It's a small country in southeast Asia about the size of New Mexico and the birthplace of Jimmy Choo, the shoe designer! Besides shoes, why is Malaysia significant? It's covered with dense rainforest, and it's prone to typhoons. The people that live there have a proverb that says: “A tree with strong roots laughs at storms.” You will survive the storm no matter how many branches you lose, thanks to your roots. As you face a storm, ask yourself: What are my roots? What is at the core of who I am? Your answer will help you weather the storm. It is possible for a tree to lose most of its branches and still come back, but if its roots are lost, it will likely die. It is more important to maintain your roots during hard times than to expand your branches. And, what are the steps you can take to do this? There are 4 steps you can take, and the order doesn’t matter. Start with the one that resonates the most for you. FIRST: Think of shifting from a mindset of "doing" to a mindset of "being". Your actions won't stick if they contradict who you want to be. It is more valuable to ask yourself "Who do I want to be?" then "What do I need to do?" when deciding how to move forward. In the same logic, when a child is growing up, you don’t ask them what they need to do to get a job before you ask them which career they want to pursue. You ask the child: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Because, the steps forward vary based upon their answer. SECOND: Instead of trying to control everything, surrender to the process and let it unfold. It's often a sign that fear is getting in your way if you feel the need to control how things unfold. Are you only interested in playing the game if you are sure you will win? The desire to avoid failure and ensure success may lead you to strive for perfection. Yet, the opposite is true. It is the ability to overcome adversity and failure that leads to success, not perfection. If you want success, you must be willing to fail fast and get back up quickly. Think of it like learning to ice skate. You can’t hold the wall the whole time if you want to get anywhere! And, knowing how to stand back up is the most important component to learning to skate or you are going to freeze your butt off! THIRD: When you feel the following words creeping in: “I should…” or “I have to…” or “I must….” check in with yourself, because the core things that make us who we are should not feel taxing. You want things you “love” and “choose.” True, on my journey, there were some foods I really didn’t want to give up, but I knew I needed to for multiple reasons. They were vices: they had no nutritional value, they didn’t make me feel good, and I ate them for bad reasons. These foods were a lot easier to give up when I replaced them with something I liked equally or better. AND FINALLY, FOURTH: Have you ever felt depression or anxiety on your journey? This is a signal to come back to the present. Anxiety is a sign you are living in the future and depression is a sign that you are living in the past. Shifting back to the future and what you can control in the here and now will help you ditch anxiety and depression. The here and now is the only effective place that you can create change.