An Inside Look At How I Maintain 50lbs Down As A Busy Mom Of 3

Welcome to Mom On Purpose, where it’s all about helping moms overcome challenges and live their best lives. My hope is by being here, you are more inspired to become the mom you are made to be. I’m Natalie, your host, a wife, boy mom, dog mama, Chicagoan, and former lawyer turned professionally certified coach. If you’re here to grow, I can help. Let’s go.

Hello, my beautiful friends. How we doing today? I am so happy to be here with you. Today I want to talk with you about how I maintain 50 pounds down, given my crazy full life as a mom of three boys. So the reason that I wanted to record this podcast is because I am hosting for the very first time ever, a live weight loss training. And if you are listening to this in real time, I highly recommend that you attend. If you want to lose weight, you can go on over to momonpurpose.com/live and register.

Make sure you attend live because that’s how you’re going to get a free gift from me. It’s a bonus, it’s a surprise, and you will hear all about it very shortly. And I would love, love, love to see you there. And more than that, you’re going to get so much more out of it if you show up. I will be talking about the top three things that I did to lose weight. And then I will be talking also about the top three things that I didn’t do and why and how my weight loss approach is uniquely suited for high achieving moms with very full plates who don’t want to spend hours in the gym overhauling their eating habits, following all of these recipes, starting and stopping and losing a little bit, and then not losing anymore. And really kind of just setting one goal, one the weight loss goal, achieving it, and like being done with that.

So if that’s you, come live momonpurpose.com/live, and it’s going to be a good time. It’s happening on Friday, July 3rd in the morning before all of the 4th of July festivities get started. I think it is such a good use of your time ahead of the holiday weekend. I, at the time of recording this, just came back from a girls trip it’s funny, the last time that, you heard from me, I was heading to the girls trip and what I want to share with you here is that I came back from that girls trip expecting to be like up, I don’t know, one to two pounds, and I wasn’t up at all. And I was like, yes, let’s freaking go. That is maintenance mode, my friends. And it’s not perfect. Like I said, I kind of expected to be up a pound or two and then just go into a little bit of a deficit over the next few days.

But it was like such a pleasant surprise, I will say. And I guess honestly, it’s a, it’s a perfect, way to start talking about this topic, which is how I maintain 50 pounds down, right? Because I think some people think like, I’m not sharing something like, like how is it that you cannot work out and not count calories and not be on a GLP one and maintain 50 pounds down? And so I really wanted this episode to just be conversational, like what it’s like to be me, to be busy in a good way and have a full life and have lost the weight and be maintaining it, right? Like a couple of years later now, almost a year and a half later, and for me, kind of talking about this trip is like the perfect example because we tend to think that celebrations and vacations and holidays are reasons why we should gain weight.

And we think that it’s those events that make us gain weight, but it’s not, and I know this and I live it, but it does take intentionality. And so for me on this girls trip, more than other trips, which is kind of why I expected to be up a pound or two, because on other trips I maybe haven’t been as intentional about it. And this time what I really did was focus on, okay, I’m going to make sure I’m not snacking. I’m like mindlessly, right? If I’m hungry, that’s real and valid, especially if like I’m at the beach, I want to make sure I’m, I’m nourishing myself. But you know, how often is there like a bag of pretzels around a bag of chips? Like we’re just chatting. I’m with nine of my girlfriends or nine of us together and it’s so much fun and it’s just so easy to snack and to overeat in those situations.

And this is just a perfect example of how I was like in Florida at this beautiful hotel with all of my girlfriends. We went to the pink hotel, the Don Cesar, if you’ve been there, I know it’s kind of iconic. It really was just fabulous. We were in the penthouse, it was just gorgeous. It was really a wonderful time. We were celebrating all of our 40th birthdays and there was plenty of food. My friends and I don’t drink alcohol. There was definitely alcohol, that opportunity there. But even that, right? I had some mocktails, I definitely felt like included in the cheersing and all of that, and I still did not gain weight. And it really is because of my intention. I just think like, okay, I am not going to snack here. I’m going to eat when I’m hungry and I’m just going to be a little bit more mindful than sometimes.

I typically am on vacations solely for the purpose of, saving my future self from needing to go into a calorie deficit to lose weight. Now, typically, I think we do the opposite and we use vacations as an opportunity to, you know, Yolo, eat whatever you want, drink whatever you want, like overindulge. And I think that’s where we have to like examine our lives. Like why are you going on a vacation? Why are you so excited for the celebration? Why are you so excited for, fill in the blank, right? I was just coaching a client on this and she said, like, I overate and I like had this uptick, but it was a celebration and I’m so glad that I celebrated. And I said, okay, but let’s separate out the celebration from the food in your mouth. And this is something that I teach inside At Your Goal Weight, which is coming out on July 3rd.

And you can get all of the information for that over at momonpurpose.com/GOAL. And I have like a section, it’s a specific training in this course about how you have to separate out connection and celebrating from food because the food that you put in your mouth has nothing to do with celebrating. I know it’s so crazy my friends, okay, we think, oh my gosh, I’m celebrating, I’m connecting like the, the food is a part of that. We think that the food is the connection, but it’s not. Connection is something that you feel based on what you’re thinking and actually it has nothing to do with food. Now what I’m not saying is just sit there and don’t eat anything and act like a weirdo and not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is the amount of food that you put in your mouth when you are celebrating, when you are on holiday, when you are on vacation, when you are doing whatever, right, is irrelevant.

So like, for example, perfect example. I found myself eating when I was hungry, not snacking that much and just being a little bit attentional about it. And I felt very connected and I had a wonderful time and I felt very included and like the food had nothing to do with it, is what I’m saying. And so the way that I teach maintenance is its own skill. And I actually think this is where we kind of get into trouble with weight loss when we think we know how to lose weight, but we’re not yet at our goal weight. And I hear this from clients, it’s like, I know what to do, I’m just not doing it, or I’ve done it in the past, but for whatever happened in my life, you know, life’s happening. I’m not at my goal weight right now. And that line of thinking is toxic.

It just does not help you lose weight. And for me, I think about it as two phases. And this is like inside At. Your Goal Weight. I think about it as like phase one of learning how to create the weight loss. And then phase two, which is learning how to maintain it. There’s the creating of the goal, and this is really for any goal. And then there’s the having of the goal. So I learned how to create a calorie deficit without counting calories, without exercising while having like this crazy full life of three under four, working 20 hours a week, you know, all the things. And then once I lost the weight, I needed to learn how to have it, how to maintain that weight, how to be someone who was just at my weight. And that’s its own skill. And I think that people in general just talk about the weight loss process, not the identity shift, not the skillset of maintenance.

And so for me, like maintenance is still, something on my mind, but not in like a heavy unhelpful way. More so in a way of like, I want to take care of my body. So you probably already do this in other ways. For example, some people count steps. So if you are someone who counts steps or pays attention to steps, you do that because you want to take care of your body and you know, all of the benefits of movement and of specifically of walking, that is something you do to take care of your body. So there are things that I do to maintain my goal weight for example, I get on the scale every single day, even in maintenance. I remember a long time ago when I was coaching a private weight loss client and she said, you know, once I reach my goal weight, she’s kind of close to reaching her goal weight.

And she said, once I reach my goal weight, what’s the swing going to be for when I go back into a calorie deficit? Like what should I aim for for maintenance? Like, is it like 10 pound swing? Is it a five pound swing, whatever? And I said like, there there is no swing. It’s like the exact number. And that really, really surprised her. And so, you know, if your goal is to get to weighing 145 pounds and you reach that goal, then you don’t go up to like one 50 and say, oh, that’s totally fine. And do nothing about it. Like you maintain 1 45 every single day. And like that doesn’t mean you’re neurotic about it. It doesn’t mean that, something’s gone wrong. If you have a little uptick or a downtick, of course you’re going to have those things. But the scale, and I teach you how to do this inside At, Your Goal Weight is what you anchor to, to make your new decisions about where like how much you’re going to eat that day.

It’s so simple, my friends, and it’s something that I do every single day. But, but like, it takes seconds, my friends. Okay? So maintenance is so much easier than, weight loss like unsurprising because you are really just taking care of what you’ve already created. So you take care of your body in lots of ways. If it’s not walking, it’s showering, it’s brushing your teeth. You have daily habits that you do on purpose because that’s how you want to take care of your body. The way that I think about maintaining my weight is the same. It’s like I’ve created this specific weight for my body and now I want to take care of that weight. So I weigh that exact weight, you know, within a pound or so, for every day that I can. Now, if there’s a reason why I gained weight, whether it’s a medication or in the past it’s been pregnancy or whatever, totally fine.

The goal is not to be so rigid that like you don’t make space for changes, it’s to be aware of what’s happening. So when I was gaining weight and my third pregnancy, and it was just so difficult, I was very aware that I was overeating and I had no shame about it. I was thinking thoughts like, I know I’m going to lose this weight. It’s not a problem. This is what my body needs right now. This is extraordinarily uncomfortable and food is taking the edge off. I feel a lot better when I’m eating. And so I ate and I didn’t worry about not being able to lose the weight, truly my friends. And so like there are lots of different life circumstances. Maybe it’s, some sort of medication that you need to be on that causes weight gain and like, that’s okay, right? It’s like it’s a choice.

And I think normalizing like taking the shame out of our choices is so important. ’cause otherwise, and I, I’ve coached women who are pregnant, who are really struggling with the way that they think about their body getting so big and worrying about whether they’ll be able to lose the weight. And it’s like, it’s heartbreaking and there’s such an opportunity to change that with thought work because it’s heartbreaking because your body is literally creating another human and that is so beautiful and wonderful and then, you know, it’s heartbreaking because you have these thoughts that are coming from the way that we’ve been conditioned to think about our bodies in a certain way that can really almost ruin that experience or at least make it so much harder. And so when you learn how to just think about your body differently, approve of your body and be with yourself and whatever you’re going through, it’s a beautiful thing.

And it also is really, really empowering because as I was gaining weight during my third pregnancy, and it was the biggest I had ever been, I mean, I didn’t worry. I really was with myself and present with myself and just allowed myself to gain the weight and then I lost the weight. And now over a year and a half later maintenance, it’s easy. And I want to say that because I, I think sometimes again, smart high achiever listening to this, if something feels challenging for you, you probably assume it’s very complicated. And so I’m using language like easy on purpose because sometimes you’re just doing more of the wrong thing and that means you’re going to over complicate it. And no matter how much you try, it’s still not getting you the result that you want. And so it is available to you and I want you to know that it’s available to you to lose weight in a much easier way and in a way that fits into your life, which I think is the most important thing.

That’s why maintenance for me is easier. It’s because how I lost it was already in my crazy full, amazingly busy life. And so I didn’t have to change anything in maintenance, I simply just stopped going into the deficit. So for example, if you learn how to eat different types of foods and you follow all of these recipes and you know, you are switching up the way that you eat solely to lose weight and you want to stop eating that way, once you’re at your weight loss school is really problematic because you’re going to gain the weight back. I’ve seen it time and time again. And that is really why I like my weight loss method of lose more with less. Because it teaches you how to simply go into a calorie deficit eating the way you’re already eating. And what I always say is like one goal at a time, my membership girlies, you know this, right?

Around New Year’s, everyone is always wanting to set five 10 goals. And I’m like, please, could we just set one goal? The same is true for weight loss and there’s a reason for this. It’s because your brain wants to focus on a bunch of different things at once and then guess what happens? You’re still a mom, you are still a wife, you’re still a homemaker, you still have your career, you have all of these other things. And so you’re adding in eight different goals, it becomes too overwhelming and you’re never going to choose eight different goals that you haven’t barely made any progress on over the life that you’ve already built and the life that you already love. And so I say that because, you know, it’s not as sexy to just set one goal at a time, right? It’s like, oh, I’m just working on weight loss.

Okay. It’s much, I think more fun to talk about like, I’m doing this for my fitness and I’m doing that for my sleep and I’m doing this for my hormones and at the same time I’m working with a personal trainer and I’m doing all of this, right? It’s like a, a way we like to, get excited about our goals, but your goals job is not to excite you, okay? It’s to give you something to focus on to create more of what you want in your life. And I think what’s like given me a little bit of an edge with the way that I set goals is I’m really focused on one at a time. So with weight loss, I focused on just going into a calorie deficit given, you know, my very full life and just eating how I normally eat, but eating less of it to go into a calorie deficit.

And then there are tools that I teach inside At Your Goal Weight about how to do that in a way where you’re losing like one to two pounds a week, right? On average, of course, results vary based on you doing the work, but that’s kind of how my clients tend to, do it. And that’s was my experience. And in maintenance it’s still me taking care of my body in that same way. So anytime I want to change my eating, now it’s just because I want to change my eating so if I want to give up fried food or just become someone who doesn’t eat fried food or if I want to, right? In the past I gave up,and still don’t drink alcohol, and if I decide to stop eating sugar or whatever, right? Or, or just eat more protein and macros or however you want to define it with respect to the nutrients and the foods that you eat, do that.

But be super clear about the different goals that you’re lumping together. And my advice would be to separate them out. The reason that I’m able to maintain 50 pounds down as a busy mom of three is because I’m literally basing it on 50 pounds down. It’s not based on all of these other goals lumped into one that I tried to do at once. I went into a calorie deficit using my Lose More with Less method. And I’ve been in maintenance mode a year and a half later simply by paying attention, getting on the scale every single day. You know, I talk about that. And at the live training I’m going to talk about why, and I’m going to talk about the other things that I did, and I’m going to talk specifically about certain things that I didn’t do that I think a lot of like really smart, high achieving moms tend to do that leads to self-sabotage, which means slowing down, taking breaks or quitting even when you still desire the result.

And so for me, a year and a half later in maintenance, I’m able to confidently say like, this is where I want to be with my weight and plan to be like, until something changes or I want to change it because I have the tools to maintain it and in my everyday life, it’s, it’s pretty boring, right? And that’s how it should be. It shouldn’t be exciting. I’m just like getting on the scale. I am focusing on, you know, my food and being mindful of the time of day that I’m eating, right? I’m not eating a bunch at night, I’m not snacking that much one of the comments that I get from a lot of my newer clients is like, wow, I didn’t realize how much I was overeating and how that was really impacting my body. And the reason for that is because a lot of times we’re just so busy and focused on other areas of our lives that we don’t pay attention to it.

We’ve sort of been taught, okay, brush your teeth twice a day, right? Or sometimes maybe you do it a third time or whatever, but we’ve been taught that. So that’s what we do, right? Since we are probably very little, as far as I know, typically we’re not taught to get on the scale every day and just pay attention to your weight as information. Okay? That doesn’t even mean you have to do anything with it. A lot of times we even kind of now have swung to the other side of the spectrum where it’s like, okay, any talk about weight might come off as as like, negative. And especially like for women and girls, right? We don’t want to send the message that it’s all about your body and how much you weigh. And that’s not what I’m talking about at all. In fact, it’s the opposite.

It’s about taking care of your body and being aware of your weight and deciding and intentionally how much you want your body to weigh from a place of loving your body, not from a place of shoulding on your body. Like your body should weigh less or you should be different or whatever. Any of the kind of unhelpful body thoughts that would be from a place of rejection. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about you have a body, your in a body, however you want to think about it, right? Maybe that’s spiritually, maybe that’s, physiologically whatever the case may be, right? You are your body with your body and you’re going to take care of it in certain ways. And one of the ways is your weight and you already weigh a certain amount. And so practicing being aware of that is just another form of taking care of your body, I think is one of the best things that you can do.

Because then you don’t wake up one day and you’re like, oh, where did that 10-20 pounds come from? I weigh myself every single day in maintenance, just like I brush my teeth every single day, not because something’s wrong with my teeth, just because I want to take care of my teeth. I weigh myself because I want to be aware of my weight so simple, my friends. And so what I do to maintain 50 pounds down is not sexy. And I think that’s really good news because there’s not some crazy hack there’s not a bunch of things that you need to do. In fact, that is why I call it my lose more with less method because I’ve literally figured out how to lose more weight by doing less, which in my opinion is the high achieving mom’s dream. And so I really invite you to learn more about my method, about At Your Goal Weight, and hear the three specific things that I did to lose the weight and the three specific things that I didn’t do to lose the weight and why. And you will take so much away from this live training. I would love, love, love to see you there over momonpurpose.com/live. Alright, my beautiful friends. Until next week, take care.