There have been times in my life I really had no idea how some people could choose any sort of health journey and stay motivated. Sticking to a health plan, especially for weight loss, when it relies so heavily on your body‘s needs — requiring you to change your appetite or energy levels — appeared especially outlandish to me.
You see, I’ve never been very good at “self-discipline”.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve achieved big BIG goals.
I’ve travelled, without a smart phone, through the East — for a year — on my own, in my teens. I studied ancient philosophies and dropped my entire culture at the door. I worked for Michelin starred chefs in Europe — without any formal training — to pay for it. I’ve gone head-long into a very disciplined university degree — without a high school education — when I was fully accustom to doing whatever I wanted based on however I felt, and came out on top of my class.
I can do goals. I cannot do self-deprivation or forced actions.
The difference between the big goals I have achieved and what I thought it meant to lose weight is: the dedication all of these goals required was aligned with what felt good for me.
Health goals seemed to require a whole different kind of dedicated.
How can I cut calories if I’m hungry? How could I force myself to work out when I don’t have the energy?
The answer is, I don’t.
The only way to achieve health goals is to align your journey to your primal — ie. physical — desires.
The main thing I was getting wrong is probably the biggest failure of the weight loss industry: you can’t deprive yourself into a body you love. People who lose weight and go on successful health journeys do it for the love, not hate, of themselves!
One way to do this is by aligning these goals with your true motivations. Or what I call your “Primal Pulses”.
This strategy is called “Primal Pulse Goal Planning”. I teach this method in-depth as a stand-alone course, but I also include it in other foundational bundles like the “Ideal Body Composition: Comprehensive” (my most popular course for weight loss). The goal and outcome of Primal Pulse is to begin filtering your pure motivations (your physical desires) through the lens of your ultimate health and body goals (your ‘truer-to-you’ physique).
The Primal Pulses: Unconscious Drives that Move You
1. Vitality
2. Authenticity
3. Relationships
4. Contribution
5. Personal Growth
6. Living in your Highest Self
These are your real goals. Losing weight, or health in general is never actually the goal. It’s just a beacon. Your ideal body composition is simply a symbol of a kind of harmony and achievement you crave. It starts within.
I can guarantee that if you manage to muster the self-discipline alone, to restrict calories and exercise in order to lose weight, you will not be satisfied even if your get the results (which will be incredibly difficult given the unnaturalness of the endeavour).
I can also guarantee that if you align your mind, heart, spirit and physical desires with your body goal, you won’t even care about your weight loss results because you will be so satisfied with how you feel.
That’s how I felt when I finally cracked the code to alignment and lost all the weight I’d been struggling with; I just felt free. I simply stopped worrying about my body. I don’t feel all lah-tee-dah about my fit form, it just feels natural to me.
Your best health and body is easy and natural, what’s hard is figuring out why it is so difficult to take the steps you know you need to take.
Laura-Lee Bowers, Nutritionist & CEO of UpRoots Wellness
You know as well as I do if it were as simple as a step-by-step goal-planning system like Primal Pulse then we wouldn’t be having an obesity epidemic. You and I both know it’s hard to change our body composition. However, the difficulty does not come from our bodies.
The real weight loss challenge, from genetics to motivation, is in the mind.
The real hurdle I see people other than my students facing is simply developing a strategy to address their own inner roadblocks.
This is where developing a “Perfect Body Mindset” comes in handy.
Inner roadblocks are picked up throughout our lives. Your family, culture, education, experiences — they all shape your Mindset, Heartset, Soulset, BODiset etc. These are the different stories in the building of your inner being. In fact, because these create your inner world they, in effect, create your outer world as well. This inner scaffolding provides the framework for everything we experience. That includes behaviour and our physical form. For some of us, in these early days, the construction of our “Inner Culture” (by our outside world) threw up roadblocks to our natural path towards our own personal highest health & wellness.
I’m not going to lie. These roadblocks do cause some pain to address.
This is the only pain of discipline you ever need to know.
I like to think the pain of this kind discipline is actually just annoying, because it’s challenging (sometimes incredibly challenging), because it’s nowhere close to how much pain endured by those continuing on without a vision of attaining the vitality, authenticity, relationships, contribution, personal growth and high self they yearn for.
You could go for all of your dreams, and life will be hard. You could go for none of them … and … life will be hard.
Did you know that being unhealthy is actually harder for your body to accomplish? Don’t believe me? Did you know that grey hair has actually been bleached by your body? Your body goes through an EXTRA process to MAKE your hair grey. It’s EASIER to have your hair stay its original colour. It’s EASIER for your body to be lean than overweight. It’s actually more pleasurable to eat less. When you exercise in the right ways, you create more energy instead of taking it away.
It’s also easier for you to live in that healthy way you envisage than staying out of alignment with that high self. Trust me.
The key is doing this authentically — not forcefully.
The discipline required is to stay the course you’ve chosen to love yourself more, not deprive yourself more.
The way to a fit body is through healing, growing then strengthening — it is not about strength alone.
We are sold this idea that having an ideal body or magnificent life is HARD. In reality, it’s EASIER than staying the same!
Key Steps to Develop Perfect Body Mindset
- Notice when you are compulsively distracting (like when you want to do an exercise or eat good food you love but you grab a snickers and stick your face in the phone).
- Find a way to get mindful as you distract away from the healthy action (you need ot make a plan, a toolkit, that you can call on in these times. Do NOT rely on having a good idea in that moment! Plan ahead).
- JOURNAL IT OUT. Get into your objective voice and ASK yourself WHAT in you doesn’t THINK YOU CAN be healthy (or awesome, or feel good..).
- Ask yourself WHERE DOES THAT BELIEF COME FROM (clue: it will be from your family, elders, cultural beliefs etc).
- Meditate on GIVING SPACE TO THAT BELIEF (letting it go and bringing in your TRUE, healthful, natural SELF is actually a given. Youre nly job is to create space for it to happen. Remember, we are doing this AUTHENTICALLY, not FORCEFULLY).
- Take baby steps. Plan to fail. You will fall. Your only job is to get back up and follow steps 1-5 again. (Don’t push too hard, be gentle on yourself).
- Watch you success unfold, slowly but surely!
Related: Further Reading on Goals, Mindset and Weight Loss
