Done with Dieting Episode #26: Goal Setting

You are listening to the Done with Dieting Podcast Episode number 26.

Hi, I’m Elizabeth Sherman, former corporate high tech executive turn life and weight loss coach. But it wasn’t that long ago that I was searching for that perfect diet, the one that would finally be the golden ticket to lose the weight that I so desired.

Fast forward past tons of failed diet attempts, exercise fads and painful lessons learned, and although I still have not reached the state of Nirvana, body love, my relationship with food exercise in my body is infinitely better than it was not only when I started this journey, but even as recently as three years ago.

The journey that has allowed me to ditch my scale, stop logging my food and exercise, eat food that I didn’t prepare and easily maintain my weight – something that I never thought was possible for me.

I created the Done with Dieting podcast to give you simple, easy to do and sustainable strategies to help you do the same without all of the drama that I went through.

If you’re a woman who’s looking to create a better relationship with food and her body, get off the diet roller coaster and free up a bunch of headspace spent on calories, how you should look what you should eat and beating yourself up for not doing what you think you should be doing. You are in the right place.

Let’s get started.

Hello, hello, hello, welcome to the podcast.

Today, we are going to talk about goal setting. Before you turn it off, don’t do that yet. I want to tell you that goal setting is so freaking important. In fact, goal setting is so important if you want to reach your goals, that if you’ve never set goals before, that’s probably why you’ve never actually achieved them. They go hand in hand.

I would love for you to tune in today because I think that the way that I approach goal setting isn’t as bland and boring as we usually make goal setting.

First, when we think about goal setting, we think about, “oh, I just want to be fit,” or I just want to lose weight, or I want to run a marathon or things like that. And I think that goal setting needs to be a little bit more robust than that.

First, let’s answer the question of why do we want to create goals? And I was talking to a client just this week about the process that I help my clients through when creating goals and writing them down. And she was asking me a question about my history with goal setting. And I realized that when I was a younger woman, like maybe in my twenties and in my thirties, I would set goals and write in a journal a lot.

It was one of my major things that I did. And it was really interesting when I moved in with my husband. I stopped writing in my journal, and it wasn’t the type of journal like a dear diary or anything like that. But it just allowed me to process my thoughts and think about what it was that I wanted to accomplish in the future.

And I don’t know I was afraid that he was going to find it, or maybe I just let it fall by the wayside. But I realized now looking back on those years that I wasn’t setting goals and I wasn’t writing in my journal, that my life became pretty stagnant. I really wasn’t moving forward and not that I wasn’t happy, but I wasn’t accomplishing a lot.

I was just going by, day-by-day, by-day, and nothing was really happening in my life. And it wasn’t until I reignited my love affair with my journal, goal setting and all of the things that I’m going to teach you today, that my life started moving in the direction that I wanted it to go.

And so, why do we need goals? We need goals because our brains need direction and supervision. If you’ve been listening to my podcast, you’ve probably heard me say that our brains tend to be like toddlers.

We tend to move towards the negative and we tend to be very narcissistic. And untended, our brains will just run amuck and go down this negative path. And that negative comfortable path is usually keeping us safe. It’s keeping us out of harm’s way. It’s not allowing us to branch out and put ourselves at risk. It keeps us safe and at home.

We don’t want to stick out our necks and do something that’s really brave because bravery takes a lot of courage and whenever there’s courage, there’s always fear involved.

So, when we have goals, what that means is that we are breaking out of our comfort zone. Because, if we had already accomplished the goal, then we would already have what the goal will give us.

We wouldn’t have to stretch or be uncomfortable. If we don’t give our brains something to focus on, again our brains will just keep us safe, and it will keep us comfortable. And when we want to accomplish something new, we can’t be comfortable in that.

Now the other thing that I want to mention is that, keeping us comfortable- what that’s about our brain repeating the past. So, the brain feels very comfortable doing what we’ve done before, because it knows what’s going to happen. It’s predictable.

When we want to do something new, that’s not predictable. And the brain doesn’t like that. When we have goals, we’re doing something new, and that’s going to allow us to grow. When we don’t have goals, our brains are just rinsing and repeating old stories, old habits, everything that we’ve done before. That’s sometimes why we feel stuck, is because we’re not doing something new.

If you want to live your life on purpose. If you want to live a deliberate life, then you need to create goals. And I love that song, by the Talking Heads called “Once in a Lifetime.” You know the song, it starts out, you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack; you may find yourself in another part of the world; you may find yourself with a large automobile; I don’t know, I could be messing up the lyrics.

But something to that fact, that over the intentional path, some days we wake up and we’re like, “whoa! What happened to my life? Where did it go? What happened here?” And we don’t recognize ourselves anymore. Through creating goals, we deliberately and intentionally create where we want our life to go. We set a course and a path, and then we follow it.

So now then, why do some of us resist setting goals? Or why do we sometimes resist setting goals? We resist setting goals because it’s super uncomfortable. When we set goals, all of a sudden now, we are on the hook for doing that thing. Even if it’s something really small and simple, like going for a walk this afternoon. If we declare, I’m going to go for a walk, then when it comes time and we’re supposed to do that walk, and we haven’t done it yet, then we start to feel bad about ourselves.

So, setting goals is super uncomfortable. And when we set goals, especially if these are audacious goals, like big, huge, things that we really want in our bones, we really want this thing. All of a sudden, a ton of self-doubt creeps in. When we moved to Mexico, when we set the intention that we were going to do this, we were like, “oh my God, are we crazy for wanting to do this?”

And when I set a goal to move my business online, no one was doing that or very few were. And it was really super scary. There wasn’t the evidence that I could do this. There wasn’t the evidence that showed that we could make it actually happen. When I created my podcast, there wasn’t any evidence that I would actually enjoy it doing this or that anyone was going to be out there to listen to me.

When we set a goal, it’s really freaking scary. Immediately, our brains are like, how is this going to happen? What are we going to do? And the brain needs to know the “how” when we decide I’m going to lose weight, when we decide I’m going to run a marathon.

The brain kicks into gear and goes, “okay, how are we going to accomplish this?” And a lot of times we don’t know how we’re going to do it. And that’s super scary because we want certainty. We want to know that this is exactly what’s going to happen.

But the crazy thing about setting a goal and accomplishing it, is that we don’t actually know how we’re going to accomplish it until we accomplish it. Now sometimes like creating the podcast. It’s pretty straightforward, we know the steps that we need to take. They’re pretty well-documented out on the internet, but as far as losing weight goes or moving to Mexico, a lot of that is uncharted territory.

Like, what do I need to do first? And some of it we can have a good idea but what about our specific situation? Is it going to be different? Do we need to do things differently? All of a sudden, the brain starts asking all of these questions about how do we do that? And what things are missing and when there’s missing steps, ” oh my goodness!” That’s just scary as all, get out.

Like I have no idea how to do that. I’ve never done that before. And that’s where the growth comes in, because when we’ve never done something before, we know that we have to grow in skills in order to cover that area that we’ve never done.

So now that we know why we want to set goals and why we resist setting goals. Now let’s talk about how we want to set goals. Like, what’s the process? The first thing that we want to do is when we decide that we want something, when we have a goal in mind, we want to write them down. And here’s a really super interesting statistic.

That, when we write a goal down, we are 40% more likely to actually do the goal than if we don’t write it down. Because then it solidifies that goal in our heads. Now I’ve been playing around with this, and I actually write my goals every single day. And what it’s done is it has just immensely fast forwarded these goals into my life because it’s not a manifestly thing, but because then it keeps them top of mind.

So, when we think about writing our goals down, we think about what’s called SMART goals. SMART is an acronym that stands for Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, and Time-based or Time-bound. Now what do all those mean?

First, the S stands for Specific. So instead of I want to lose weight, we want to say, I want to lose 10 pounds of fat; or I want to gain two pounds of muscle; I want to fit into my size 10 jeans. So, we want to be very specific. How do we know when we’re going to get to that goal?

The next letter stands for Measurable, and it means, what do we really want to happen? Again, it’s kind of along the specific piece, but it’s also being measurable, instead of I want to be fit maybe change that to I want to run a mile in 10 minutes. So, you see how that’s measurable.

And then the next one A is Actionable. So, it’s not I want to have a million dollars, but rather I want to earn a million dollars. Now here’s something that’s really interesting that I want to pause on that whenever we create goals, we have to create them for ourselves and so that falls under the A as well.

We cannot set goals for other people. I know that you want to, you want to set goals for your partners; you want to set goals for your kids; your coworkers; all these other people; I wish they would treat me better, but we cannot do that. They have to be goals that we set for ourselves, alright?

The R is Realistic. Now, I don’t love this one because I think sometimes, we play safe when we talk about the R in realistic, what we’re talking about is I want to lose 100 pounds of body fat in 10 months. Okay, so maybe that’s not realistic. But is there harm in setting that goal and not reaching it? Maybe, maybe not, it just depends. It depends on if we’re making, not reaching the goal means something about ourselves.

So, if we decide that we are going to try this goal, and if I don’t lose the fat, then I am just a loser. Well, then it’s not effective. But if in the process that we lose 80 pounds, does that make the goal unworthy? I don’t know, I think it’s up to you as to what you decide realistic is.

But be aware that for many of our goals and many of the things that we want in life, we will continually overestimate what we can do in a day or in a short timeframe and underestimate what we can do in a longer timeframe.

So, for example, I want to lose 10 pounds of fat in a month. You might be thinking, “yeah, I totally want to do that.” But what if we said, okay, I want to lose a hundred pounds over the course of two years and your brain might just switch off on that and be like, ” oh yeah, no, I don’t want to do that, I don’t want to wait that long.” And the question comes back to, ” why?” I mean, two years is going to pass regardless of what’s going to happen in the world. And so why not? What’s the harm in keeping that goal?

The last piece to smart goals is Time-bound. So, we want a goal to be time bound because otherwise, it’s just a dream. If we say I want to move to Mexico, and there’s no timeframe, then it just becomes a wish. But if we say , I want to move to Mexico by January 2023. Well then you have a goal. You see how those just feel totally different.

So now the next question and that comes up is how long should I set my goals for? And you can totally set your goals for any amount of time that you want to. You can set your goals for 90 days; you can set your goals for six months; a year; five years; 10 years; 25 years; it’s totally up to you.

Oftentimes, when goals are very short. So, like 90 days, our brains freak out a little bit more because all of a sudden, we are crunched for time. Like, “oh my God, how is that going to possibly happen?” And I have the solution for you in this episode.

But sometimes when we create the goal over a longer period of time, like when we are talking about a hundred pounds over one year or two years. We have some time to settle into the idea of, how is this going to happen?

Now the risk that you run when setting longer-term goals is that they don’t feel as urgent. Sometimes we might not get started on moving towards them as quickly, but we’re going to cover both of those scenarios today.

Now I work with my clients over about a six-month period of time. Sometimes longer, sometimes less, but the average client success story is about six months. And the reason for that is because it takes that much time for one for us to get all of the habits in place, but also it takes that much time for the brain to change.

What I mean by that is to learn a new way of doing things. When we set a timeframe of six months to a year, the brain has a little bit more success in saying, “okay, we’re in this for the long run, let’s make this work, let’s figure this out.”

Oftentimes, clients will come to me and be like no, that’s way too long. I need to get this weight off, like within the next 30 days, or I need to get this weight off within the next three months. And I totally hear you.

However, what that’s doing is it’s putting extra stress on you and your body. And if there’s one thing that you do not want to stress out about, it’s putting a timeframe on your weight loss because stress will stop weight loss in a heartbeat.

I can’t tell you this enough, that if you want to lose weight, you have to just let it go and allow your body to lose weight on its terms. Not when you think that you should be losing weight, okay?

Now when we’re in a hurry to accomplish a goal, it’s usually because we think there, finishing the goal is going to be better than here. We think that the goal is going to bring us some sort of happiness or some sort of satisfaction. And when we’re in a hurry to get there, we think that accomplishing the goal is going to bring us a better life.

But the truth is, that when we accomplish, and this is so funny because so many of my clients have come back to me and they’ve said, I thought that things were going to be better on the other side of losing my weight, but now I have a completely different set of problems.

We are always going to have problems. Our problems are no better when we’ve lost weight than they are pre lost weight. It’s really important for us to realize and to really relish where we are in the moment and enjoy the journey because the journey and I know you’re just rolling your eyes right now, but the journey is really where the success happens.

If overnight, you immediately lost weights and woke up 40 pounds lighter. You wouldn’t have learned anything. In the process of going through the steps and failing and understanding, what works for you and what doesn’t? That’s actually what creates your success, not just losing the weight.

Now the truth is that when we set a goal, we feel better, for like five seconds. But then the process of getting to the goal requires us to be super uncomfortable. The process of accomplishing the goal requires so much growth and to be honest, growth feels terrible.

When we set goals, we get really super excited. But then, in a matter of five seconds, our brain starts coming up with all of the reasons of why it’s not going to work. There’s a really good book by Mel Robbins, it’s called “The 5 Second Rule.” And what she suggests is that whenever we decide that we’re going to do something, so maybe you’re sitting on the couch, and you decide I’m going to go for a run today.

If we do not do something towards that goal within the next five seconds, our brain is going to start coming up with reasons of why we shouldn’t do it. If you decide I’m going to wake up early tomorrow, you need to set an alarm on your phone, right then that says, I’m going to wake up at 6:00 AM. Otherwise, your brain is going to talk you out of it. It’s going to tell you all of the reasons why it’s a terrible-terrible idea.

This is a fact, watch me, watch your brain do it. So set an audacious goal, decide that you’re going to lose a bunch of weights or that you’re going to run a marathon or whatever it is that you want to do, I don’t know. And when you do it, I bet you will realize that your brain is like, “no, we don’t want to do that, that’s terrible!”

So, when we decide that we’re going to set goals, you need to answer two different questions. The first question is, why do you want the goal? And there’s a really great exercise called the “5 WHYs.”

Basically, what you’re doing is you’re asking yourself, why? So, when you decide I’m going to lose 10 pounds, the question comes, well, why do I want to lose 10 pounds? I want to lose 10 pounds so that I can fit into my jeans. Okay, so that’s one why. Second why, why do you want to fit into your jeans? I want to fit into my jeans so that I will be more comfortable with my body. Okay, so that’s the second why.

The third why, why do you want to feel more comfortable in your body? I want to feel more comfortable in my body because I think that I will come across as more confident. Okay, that’s four. And number five, why do you want to be more confident? I want to be more confident so that I can feel better about myself.

Those were the 5 WHYs. You keep asking yourself why five times until you get to the root of the question. Your brain is going to be like, “I don’t know, I don’t know why, I just want it.” So, ask yourself. If you knew why, what would it be? So that’s the first question. Why do you want the goal?

The second question you want to ask yourself is, who will you have to become in order to accomplish the goal? So again, like I was mentioning before, if you had a goal of losing 10 pounds or 25 pounds or 50 pounds, whatever it is. If you woke up tomorrow and you were that new weight, would you be able to maintain it?

Who do you have to become, in order to be the type of person who has embodied that goal? It’s an interesting question. So, who do I have to become in order to maintain a 25-pound weight loss? How do I think about food? How do I think about my body? How do I think about exercise? What will I be thinking that’s different?

How is this person who’s accomplished this goal? How is she different than who I am today? What will I be thinking that’s different? What will I be feeling that’s different? What will I be doing that’s different? And why will my results then be different? Because we know that our results are based on our actions.

And then the last piece is we need to pick a timeframe. So, we need to figure out how long the goal is going to be. The next thing we want to do is we want to write the goals down. And again, you can use the format of the SMART goals, but there are a few other things that I want to share with you when writing your goals down.

So, one is you do want to write your goals down in the present tense so that they sound like affirmations. And I’m going to give you some examples, but the other thing is that you want to create goals that tie into your vision.

So, in episode number 22, the Power of Visualization in your weight loss. I talk about creating a vision and when we create this vision. We actually want to pull our goals from that vision. And when we do that, we also want to use feeling words. And again, I’m going to give you some examples in just a minute.

But when we write these goals down, our brains are all of a sudden going to come up with all of the reasons why it’s a terrible idea why we shouldn’t do it and why it’s never going to work. If that happens to you, be assured that you are doing it right.

Now, here’s the thing I want you to write down all of those obstacles. I want you to get out a piece of paper and write down all of the reasons why it’s a terrible-terrible idea to go for this goal. And here’s what’s going to happen.

You are going to start noticing what all of the skills are that you need in order to accomplish the goal. And you’re also going to notice all of the thoughts that are going to come up as a result of you getting this goal.

So again, I’ll often ask my clients, okay, so you want to lose 50 pounds. What are all of the reasons why that would be a bad idea? And they look at me like there are no reasons why that would be a bad idea. But oftentimes, when we want to change the way that we are living our life because being at a lower weight means that we’re going to have to make some changes.

It’s going to affect maybe what we’re eating, how we eat, how we interact with our friends and family, how we’re exercising, the amount of time that we’re spending at home, or the amount of time that we’re spending away from home.

Oftentimes, when we are changing our lifestyle because that’s going to happen as a result, when we change our life and how we’re interacting in the world. There could be some fears that pop up.

I’m afraid that my partner isn’t going to be really as supportive of this weight loss because eating together at restaurants is one of our things, or we typically travel a lot. And I’m a little bit worried that when we travel, I’m not going to be able to eat all of the local favorites. I’m afraid that if I lose this weight, that I’m going to disappoint my mother because she likes to cook for me, or I’m afraid that when I start training for this marathon, I’m going to be away from my family for a long time. And they’re going to be resentful of it.

So, there are a lot of really solid reasons and fears of why this is a terrible idea, other than I just don’t know how to do these things, or I’m afraid I’m going to get injured. So when we get down to those really limiting beliefs, those things that are ultimately going to keep us stuck. That’s where the gold is, because once we know those root objections.

Those subconscious beliefs of why this is a bad idea. Then we can start to work together to overcome them. Okay, so now I have some examples for you about goals that I’ve created. And I want you to observe that these goals that I’ve written down are present tense and they have very strong feelings attached to them.

And the reason why we want to do this is because we want the goal to be more compelling than staying in our current position. We want the goal to be more compelling than staying comfortable, where we are right now.

So, the first one I have for you is actually my goal. So, it’s a goal that I had from a year or two ago. And it states I have an amazingly successful coaching practice that I love. It brings me joy and connection and consistently earns $10,000 monthly, okay? Now, these other ones are ones that I just made up, and you can totally borrow them or modify them. It’s your goal, you can do whatever you want with it.

So, the first one is when I wake up in the morning, I am so excited because I feel so connected to my family and partner. I feel amazing in my body because I know that I’m taking care of it and honoring not only what I need in the moment, but what feeds my soul. I love my life. And then I am amazed at myself because I no longer desire chocolate and other sweet treats that are around me and in the house. I trust myself in social situations. And when I’m home alone to be present, eat just enough and honor my hunger signals.

So those are some examples of goal setting. Now they don’t follow the traditional SMART goals. These goals are a little bit more affirmation based, but they still work.

Another example could be, it is January 2023, and I am amazed at myself because I no longer desire, chocolate and other sweet treats that are around me and in the house. I trust myself in social situations not to eat when I’m not hungry and to honor my hunger signals. So those are just some examples of goals that you can create and how to create them.

Now, once we have the overarching goal, again, our brain is going to freak out and be like, “oh my God, I don’t know how to get there.” So, what we want to do is we want to start thinking about behaviors. Because we know that behaviors or actions are going to get us our results. We may not know the how we’re going to get there, but we probably have a pretty good idea.

So, when we think about being at a lower weight, we might think about; I know that I’m going to be sleeping eight hours a day; I know that I’m going to be eating tons of fruits and vegetables; I know that I’m going to be prioritizing water in my life; and I know that I’m going to be exercising in some capacity on a regular basis. Maybe five days a week, maybe seven days a week and whatever time that is for each of those.

What we can do is we can start creating behavior goals. Now the real important key here is, that we don’t want to start those behavior goals today. We want to lean into them, and in episode number three, titled the foundation, I talk about how to start really super simple, small, and then gradually getting more intense with the goal either through intensity density or what I call frequency.

So, if you have questions about that, go back to episode number three. Now the next step is when we set these behavior goals. It is so super important to put the behavior goals on your calendar.

So, if you say that you are going to exercise three times a week, I want you to ask yourself, when are you going to do that? Is it going to be Monday, Wednesday, Friday? Is it going to be Saturday, Sunday, Wednesday? What are the days that you’re going to do it? And then what time are you going to do it during the day?

And the reason why this is super important is because if you just say, I’m going to do it three days a week, and then you don’t figure out when it’s going to happen, it’s not going to happen. And let me tell you that when you put it on your calendar, It’s going to pop up that, “Hey, it’s time to exercise” and you’re going to be like, “no, I don’t want to do that.” the brain never wants to do what’s uncomfortable.

In episode 21, I talk about Discomfort Now or Discomfort Later. And in that episode, I talk about how to get yourself to do the thing that you don’t want to do, that you want, but you don’t want, right?

Go listen to that episode, if you’re having problems showing up and actually following through with what it is that you do want to do.

Now in an upcoming episode, I’m talking all about how to get yourself to be accountable to yourself versus someone else. But in the meantime, if you’re interested in creating accountability for yourself. You know one of the best ways of doing that is to get a partner.

And my group coaching program, which is opening its doors like any day now is a great way of being accountable. Holding yourself accountable to yourself and also to other people. Because when we work together as a group towards a common goal, it is so much more supportive than doing it on your own. When you don’t know what is going on? Am I doing this right?

Now when we start a goal, we always think that we know the way to the result, like when you started your first diet, I’m sure that you had this grand plan that, that one diet was going to be the way. And what’s really interesting and I see this a lot within my own business is that I think that the way to my result is going to be one certain path.

But then what happens is, that one path doesn’t work out like I thought it was going to. And so, I have to pivot, and I have to do something else and figure out, ” okay, so that didn’t work, will this work?” And I try that and maybe it’ll work or get me a little bit closer, but not exactly to where I want to go.

And I have to keep trying different methods and learning and being reflect-full of what’s been happening. And unfortunately, we don’t generally have this same idea when it comes to our health and when it comes to diets.

When we start a new diet and it doesn’t work out, like we think it should, we make it mean something about us. That we are stupid or dumb or that we are lazy or all of these negative things about us that we didn’t try hard enough. And to be honest, there’s a whole host of health and fitness professionals that propagate this stuff.

Well, I gave you the diet, the diet worked for these other people. So, if it’s not working for you, you must be doing something wrong. And what I want to suggest is that that’s not necessarily true when it comes to our health. Our bodies are so incredibly different, and we just need to figure out what works for us.

When we try one method of eating, and it doesn’t produce the results that we think it should. We make it mean something about us instead of something wrong with the diet. That the diet wasn’t the right solution for us, that there may have been some pieces of the diet that worked for us. But then there are other pieces that really didn’t, when we fail.

And this could be in the entire sense of the diet, or it could mean on a smaller level, like you go out for dinner and the restaurant was closed. Therefore, you had to pivot, and you didn’t make the right choice. We use failure as a weapon against ourselves.

But really, if we want to become resilient and resilience is the key thing that you want to have in your life. If you want to make it to your goal, if you can be resilient. And what that means is when things don’t work out, like you think they should, that you’re able to observe it. You’re able to get curious with it and you’re able to recover and keep going on the path.

Maybe that one diet wasn’t right for you but take with it what you learned that was good and try something different. And as I mentioned in episode number 22, that when we feel self-doubt, when we aren’t confident that what we really want to accomplish is possible because we don’t have the evidence from our past.

We can rely on belief and the vision that we create in order to pull ourselves through. If you can really get a crystal-clear vision of what life looks like on the other side of success, you can totally use that as motivation of getting you there.

Now, oftentimes we will quit on our goals. And one of the questions that people ask is why Elizabeth, do we quit on our goals? We quit on our goals because it feels really freaking good.

Creating goals as I said at the beginning is super uncomfortable. When we quit, we feel this relief. We don’t have to try as hard. We feel this comfort of not having to be uncomfortable because again, setting goals is uncomfortable. We’re like, “oh, well I don’t have to do that anymore.”

But the other thing about quitting is it really stops our growth, and it confirms our current identity. When we create a new goal, when we want something that we don’t yet have, that we have not accomplished yet, it really challenges who we are as people.

When we quit, all of a sudden, the pressure to be that new person isn’t there anymore. And it confirms who we are and that was the correct choice. It feels really good to quit something that brings up negative emotion. Because when we are stretching and growing and becoming something that we weren’t before, we are going to have a lot of negative emotions. Of course, quitting feels good.

Now on a more positive note, one of the most amazing things about setting goals, isn’t even in achieving the goal. But it’s about all of the things that we get as a benefit along the way. So, some of the strategic byproducts of losing weight, is learning how to ask for what you want, and you need.

So, when you go to a restaurant, looking at the menu and seeing that there isn’t anything that you can order, that’s going to make you feel good. Being able to ask the waiter for something different than what is automatically given. And sure, you might annoy the people that you’re eating with, but that’s okay. They get to be annoyed. That’s not your problem. You don’t even feel their annoyance. They may complain to you, but that’s okay.

Number two is we set up boundaries. So, asking for what we want and then being unwilling to tolerate sometimes what other people are willing to give us. That’s really freaking scary. But when we have boundaries established, it just opens up our entire world.

The increased self-esteem and confidence that we get, not from losing the weight, but rather from starting the goal and actually seeing it through. It is so freaking satisfying. Especially when you don’t need my fitness pal or a scale in order to stay at your goal weight.

Like those are the types of things that a diet that someone else gives you can’t possibly compete with. The cherry on top here, isn’t what you’re getting as a result of the goal. It’s not accomplishing the goal, but it’s everything that happens in process to the goal. Learning how to have a better relationship with yourself, learning how to have a better relationship with your partner or your kids, or your friends, maybe having a relationship that isn’t based on food and alcohol.

I just want to offer that, when we think about goals, it’s not the goal. It’s what we get around the goal. And if you want to share these goals with other women who are just like you, the doors are opening for my group coaching program in just days.

So, head over to elizabethsherman.com/groupcoaching, that’s all one word, and put your name on the waiting list.

If you want to accomplish your goals, if what I’m saying here resonates with you, then this is something that you might want to do.

That’s all I have. Alright, so go out and set some goals and be successful and uncomfortable and tell your brain that you’re going to do it anyway.

Have an amazing week everyone. Bye-bye.

Hey there! Thanks for listening!

If you’re a woman who is done with dieting, but still wants to lose weight, I want to invite you to join me in the Feel Good Sisterhood.

The Feel Good Sisterhood is a 6 month group coaching program where you’ll learn to apply so many of the tools, concepts, and skills that I teach right here on the podcast.

The way the program is structured, you’ll learn crucial skills and tools that will help you to be able to pay attention to what your body needs, therefore ending emotional eating, help you gain consistency and discipline with your eating, exercise, or sleep habits.

As a result, you’ll not only end up feeling physically good, but that will also lead to having more confidence, and finally freeing up all of that mental space currently dedicated to your weight, what you’re SUPPOSED TO be doing, but not doing it, and then the subsequent negative self-talk that happens afterwards.

To learn more about the Feel Good Sisterhood, go to elizabethsherman.com/groupcoaching. There, you’ll be able to send me a message with any questions you have.