Pearl One
A lifetime weight loss doesn’t just happen like one day we instantly find ourself on a Hawaiian beach. We know that a ton of planning goes into any trip. These five ideas are “must Journal-write about” prompts.
Take a close look at five ideas that has had my back.
Eating.
Write a daily mission plan that includes eating a big breakfast, a medium-sized lunch and a tiny dinner with two small snacks during the day. By “tiny dinner” I mean a cup of brown mixed with my favorite veggies (Costco’s Stir Fry in frozen next to strawberries. I add a smidgen of salt and low-salt soy sauce.) Then I take my book-dessert upstairs for a good read. If you find yourself struggling because you’re legit hungry have an apple or a banana. The whole “tiny dinner” thing takes time to establish. Remember the study that said it takes sixry-six days to establish a habit.
Plateauing.
The new plateauing is called “holding” and is — in modern times — considered crucial for lifetime maintenance.
Self-sabotage.
Did you know that if a newborn has hair he might pull it hard and scream at the same time? It’s all the caregiver can do to get the baby to release its iron-grip fist pulling his own hair. We can see the self-sabotage with the baby, but less so in our own self. A question for your journal: how am I pulling my own hair? Revisit this topic on the regular in your journal.
Recovery.
How do you pull yourself back onto the Smart Eating path? Everyone slips up. It’s just how human beings are built. We live in the land of massive junk-food and so, of course we might “slip” and overeat or eat trigger foods that send us into an overeating-mode for weeks or months to come.
Have a plan in place for getting back on the path.
A story about habits.
I know about a man who had an awesome habit of going to his fancy gym five or six times a week. Something happened health-wise and he couldn’t go in for two weeks. So, you know what he did instead? Every day he would drive to the gym and hang out in the parking lot for 15 minutes or so thereby maintaining his workout habit. Love this. His response to “two weeks off” was to show profound respect for the habit he’d taken time to embed.
I tell myself that I learn as I go. You and I are works in progress. ♥
Pearl Two
How should it look? Somewhere within our fad-diet culture we accepted the idea that weight loss should unfold in a linear style. You start at 200-pounds and get down to 130 in a couple months.
We’re accustomed to our world being somewhat A + B = C. We start college as freshman and finish as seniors four years later (hopefully). The December holidays follow Thanksgiving that follows Halloween (in the U.S.).
And that’s how we want our Smart Eating Lifestyle too. Picture-perfect, pristine, and — above all — linear.
Not only that, we demand that it be so. And if our experience isn’t linear, we beat up ourselves for not doing a better job. We have no willpower (nobody maintained a forever-loss on willpower.)
Having maintained a 55-pound loss for 18 years, I can assure you that it did not come off in a linear fashion. It was a small win among many fails. It helped that I’d embedded the habit of getting back on the horse.
It often comes down to instilling the right food habits. ♥
Pearl Three
Sequencing is taken directly from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). The purpose of sequences is to help us move from reacting to circumstances to responding. I encourage you to do a sequence a day in your journal. Powerful stuff.
Automatic Sequence
- Situation (be super concrete, something we all agree is true): My weight is stuck at 160 pounds and I can’t seem to budge it.
- Automatic thought: Here we go again. I hate my body and call myself “fat and ugly.”
- Feeling: I’m so angry and disappointed that here I am again trying to lose weight and getting terrible results. What am I doing wrong?
- Action: Sometimes I return to overeating, other times I skip meals hoping for a small miracle.
- Result: I turn on myself: why can’t I have better willpower?
Chosen Sequence
- Situation (be super concrete, something we all agree is true): My weight is stuck at 160 pounds and I can’t seem to nudge it.
- Chosen thought: My weight isn’t dropping but I’m cool with the idea that I’m plateauing (or “holding”) and this is a good thing.
- Feeling: I feel a little amped up thinking I can do this.
- Action: I remind myself throughout the day that I’m in the holding mode and that is a wonderful place to be. My body is adjusting to the 160 weight which is important. If I drop weight too quickly, it’ll pile back on just as fast.
- Result: I work on my habits. I’m currently embedding the habit of eating a small dinner around six o‘clock and taking a book dessert to bed. ♥
Pearl Four
Books love us and want us to be happy
I think this woman is hilarious and apparently, she knows how to write too. Unless I’m mistaken, Chelsea Handler’s debut book was My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands back in 2005 And it was such a hit that she went on to write many more.
I’ve read all of Handler’s prior books because she’s brutally honest and so open about her own life. She loves making money and loves and sharing it with her siblings and friends so that they’ll travel with her. Her latest book out is I’ll Have What She’s Having (2025). These books make for a fun summer.
Chelsea Handler’s Book Collection Handler had a tragic loss of her brother when Handler was just nine-years
- My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands (2005)
- Are You There, Vodka? It’s Me, Chelsea (2009)
- Chelsea, Chelsea, Bang, Bang (2011)
- Lies that Chelsea Handler Told Me (2012)
- Uganda, You’ve Got to be Kidding Me (2015)
- My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One Night Stands (2016)
- Life Will Be the Death of Me: . . . And You Too! (2020)
These books would a riot for the beach, the pool, the living room couch and the like. ♥
Pearl Five
When you have exhausted all possibilities, remember this: you haven’t.”
Thomas A. Edison ♥
Welcome to summer!! I remember summer sunburns and how hard it was to get sleep at night as a kid in the summer even with open windows and a good floor fan. Oddly enough, sunburns and floor fans are my fond memories.
What are some memories from your childhood? Share in the comments below.
Have a great week everyone!
♥, Wendy
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I am not an expert, doctor, surgeon, nurse, dietician, or nutritionist: the information within TheInspiredEater.com is based solely on my personal experience and is not intended to be used as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.
