Losing weight is a goal many of you have. This goal seems worthy, objective and understandable. But what if this goal was actually the thing holding you back from your true desires? What is it that you want to achieve from losing weight? Join me today as we discuss losing weight vs gaining health.

Welcome to Your Living Health, the podcast where we talk about real life strategies to reduce chronic inflammation. Each episode will uncover tools for you to lose weight and achieve optimal health. I’m your host, Carly Lucchesi, I’m a UC Davis trained registered dietitian and I’m also a life coach. Together let’s coach through the science of inflammation, but in a way that is simple, purposeful and fun.

You ready? Let’s Go!

Hey there! Today I want to go in a different direction with this episode. We’ve been talking a lot about what you can do to feel better, mostly because symptoms are annoying and it’s nice to know how to feel great when you want to. But for today I want to shift our focus to what it will LOOK like when you’re on the path to gaining health instead of losing weight.

Losing weight is really catchy. Sure, for some people there’s a lot of dread, overwhelm, frustration… But the possibility of losing weight is really quite exciting. There a decisive point when you decide enough is enough. There is a search to figure out how you’re going to lose the weight. You get to choose what foods you’re going to eat, how much you’re going to eat, when and how you’re going to shop and prep all of these things so that you don’t fall back into old habits. Then once food is settled on, you focus your attention to exercise… how much you’re going to exercise, what types of exercise you’re going to do, when you’re going to fit it in, what equipment to buy, walks to take, friends to go with. At the beginning of a weight loss adventure, there really is a lot of anticipation and decisions to be made. There may even be the excitement of the last day before your diet, right? The day you get to splurge because tomorrow you’re going to start. Your dopamine (which is the brain chemical of motivation) is really present at this point! First week of dieting down, you might feel awful, but the scale has gifted you with a significant loss of weight already. Yes!! You’re on your way! Enter motivation because by golly, the scale is moving! But then after a few weeks, the excitement fades. The scale begins to move less and less. You become less motivated to plan foods ahead of time. Parties, holidays, weekends away begin to knock you off track. Your calorie deficit is begun to shift to more calorie neutral from overeating and under exercising. You try to tap into the motivation to continue, but it’s long gone and has been replaced with this steady urge for carb filled, sweet and salty foods.

Setting a goal of weight loss sounds pretty. It sounds like you’re on the right track… you’ve set an objective goal, you have a destination in mind. But when you set a goal of weight loss, I think you are completely missing the point. Weight loss should never be the primary goal, and this is because you lose sight of the purpose entirely. How I know weight loss should never be the goal is because there’s a clear start and a finish line. When the scale says a certain number, you’re done. You’ve arrived. You can relax back into the life you really want to be living instead of this dieting hell you’ve been going through. And the scale tells you numbers that might entirely be taken out of context. You may think you’ve done well this week by dropping 2lbs, but how can it be a win if those 2lbs were lost from eating foods that promote inflammation and strain? The number on the scale should instead be used as an objective piece of evidence letting you know how your body is responding to your plan. The end number should be a rough guess, an estimate of where you think your body wants to go. If you are taking care of your body in the way that it needs, it will reward you with weight loss and longevity. How much weight it releases is completely up to your willingness to stay on protocol, what protocol you’ve decided to do, your genetic capacity and your willingness to feel your feelings. When you become fixated on a number on the scale, what can happen is a tunnel vision to the how it happens. This can lead to crash diets, severe limitations of food and nutrient variety, and weight loss against the will of your body.

When your focus is on gaining health, weight loss looks like taking care of your body. You transition into the space where you want to love your body because of the amazing things it does for you every single day. Your body protects you from diseases, removes toxins from your environment, produces chemicals, hormones and nutrients, allows you to move throughout the world, allows you to see the world, hear, touch, taste. Your body is your partner in life, you will never get another you live with so intimately and consistently. When you shift your perspective to gaining health, you come alongside your body and begin to work together synergistically to reach a common goal. Your body wants to be healthy, just like you do. It wants to live long, feel good, and take you all the places you want to go. Your body wants to lose weight, it doesn’t want to hang onto extra energy that compromises your overall quality of life. Your body is your friend, and when you begin to talk and treat your body like you do your best friend, only then will it begin to respond with equal love and grace.

Losing weight sounds like a healthy and appropriate thing to do. But losing weight should never be at the expense of the relationship you have with your body. There should never be resentment, disgust, deprivation or discouragement. These are the emotions that breed inflammation, hormone dysregulation and being stuck in fight or flight. Losing weight should not be a gruff dictatorship where you tell your body what is going to happen. The foods used to lose weight should never promote strain and inflammation despite being marketed as healthy, low calorie or “good for you”. Losing weight should NOT be your PRIMARY goal because a lower number on a scale means NOTHING if your brain and body has not been optimized. I am very passionate about this belief because I believe it so completely. I feel that this is where many of you are going down the wrong path, and I know it’s where many of you can completely change your lives. There are many specific tools that can be used to cultivate a deep relationship of love and trust with yourself, all of which I teach within Synergistic Lifestyle, the program I’ve carefully developed to help women reduce their inflammation and achieve optimal health with a by-product of weight loss. If that is something that interests you, I encourage you to head over to YourLivingHealth.com and book your free consult. For everyone else, I want you each to evaluate the ways you are using to lose weight. I want you to evaluate and question your goals. I want you to see if these goals and weight loss methods are in alignment with an improved or estranged relationship with your body. I want you to use today to gain awareness, and use that awareness to help you decide where you ultimately want to go. Do you want to lose weight? Or do you want to gain health? I’ll talk to you next week, bye everybody!

If this has been helpful to you in any way, I ask that you leave me a review so that others can have easier access to this information. For those who have comments or ideas for future episodes, please take a few minutes now and type them out, I promise to read every single one. If you’re looking for some 1:1 guidance, head over to yourlivinghealth.com and book your free introductory consult. Again, thanks for your support of this podcast and I’ll talk to you soon.