I have a special guest with me today, Dr. Amanda Dove. You may remember her from a previous episode, but our topic today is different. Amanda is not only a client but a dear, dear friend of mine. She has been with me for years. We started out doing nutrition work together, and now she is still a personal training client, so I get to see her every week, and I’m so excited to have her with me today!

Amanda’s mantra for a long time was, “I don’t have time.” And it was very reinforced by her job, home life, colleagues, and friends. That it’s okay to be busy all the time and not take time for yourself, and she had to unlearn a lot of things. Amanda had lost the same 40 pounds twice at one point. And she had done it through basically a combination of starvation, being very hungry all the time, exercising inappropriately, and hurting herself. Finally, she questioned herself and said, “Why can’t I maintain this? Why do I always feel tired, and why does everybody else seem to make it and have it easy? I should be able to do anything I put my mind to, right?” And that’s a common comparison trap that so many women fall into. 

Willpower isn’t real.

All these crazy phases that we’ve been peppered with our whole lives as women. This may sound overly simplistic, but learning to make a bubble around yourself that keeps out really helps. Like when someone says, “Oh, you’ve lost weight. You look great.” We tend to latch onto that. So either that was the thing that can give you confidence or ruin your confidence because was I not valuable 25 pounds ago? 

It’s all about taking good care of this amazing physical form we get for our whole lives and cherishing it. Of course, everybody has bad moments, but you can feel neutral about the scale and celebrate the fact that you got up this morning. Your eyes work. You can eat, and you can run.

Isn’t that an amazing feeling to not have that emotional weight of always feeling bad and always basing your self-worth on where you were on the scale?  I always tell people, don’t embark on any wellness plan that makes you miserable. Cause it will not be sustainable. You can’t be miserable forever. You cannot go hungry forever. We always want the quick results. We just want to look good, and we just want to feel good. But it doesn’t last. And how many times does it take to prove to yourself everybody’s looking for the next new thing? 

It sounds like magic, but honestly, until you accept and actually love your body, the weight won’t move. Yeah. Five or 10 pounds would come off and back on, but until I finally really internalized the fact that I am worth existing exactly as I am, no matter what that number says, none of that matters.

You can’t manufacture happiness through dietary restrictions.