Day 3: Trade Your Judge’s Robe For A Lab Coat | 30-Day Weight Loss-athon
Welcome to Day 3 of the 30-Day Weight Loss-athon! Today we make a very important mindset shift – one that can support or sabotage you as you fight the fat.
I suggest you read through the steps first, then take 10 minutes to complete them.
We only have 10 minutes, so you need to move fast, act quickly and stop over-thinking. Just throw yourself in. Ready?
What You Need:
- Pen
- Paper
- An open mind.
Step 1
A number of the tasks in the 30-Day Weight Loss-athon ask you to change the way you think. This shouldn’t be too much of a surprise – the reasons most people fail at losing weight tend to be psychological.
In this task the mindset shift is an especially challenging one. I’m asking you to stop judging and start observing what you do.
| Instead of judging… | Observe… |
| I’m such a fat cow for eating all that dessert | Having that tiny lunch really backfired – I ate twice as much dessert |
| I’m so lazy for not going to the gym today | Trying to fit exercise in after work doesn’t work for me. I’m more successful when I exercise in the morning. |
| What a pig! | Huh. I really ate a lot of junk today. I wonder why. |
Now I’m not asking you to stop judging in order to discover self-love, re-parent your inner child or heal the emotional wounds of your past. I want you to stop judging because it’s difficult to observe what’s going on when you’re busy self-flagellating.
To notice and learn, you need to step away from the whip.
I want you to observe what’s going on because you are highly individual. The particular combination of diet, exercise and mindset that will work for you, getting you to a fabulous weight and keeping you there, is one that can’t be formulated in advance. No book, system or program will have it ready-made for you. We have to discover it.
Which means we have to try things, observe the effect, do more when something works, try something else when it doesn’t.
So the challenge here is to take off your judge’s robes and put on your scientist’s coat. Visualize that if it helps.
Switching from judge to observer will take practice, and you may need to re-visit today’s task occasionally to remind yourself to notice, observe, question.
Step 2
For the rest of today’s time, get a notebook and list a few of the weight-related things you say to yourself that are judgmental. Don’t dwell on this, just get it down.
For each judgement, write down an observation instead. Just extract the information and ignore everything else – that stuff is what starts binge cycles.
See the examples above to help you.
Step 3
Decide that you are going to be a scientist for the rest of this month.
If you want to put those judge’s robes back on after the 30 days are over, then go for it.
But seriously, the lab coat is so much more flattering.
Check in!
And you’re done! Turn off the Bunsen burner before you leave. 🙂
Be sure to leave your comment below to check in and stay accountable. If you’re reading this by email or in a reader then please click here to leave your comment.
See you tomorrow…
For some reason I can’t seem to get into this task – still trying – BUT I did decide to walk to pick up my son from school – so I snuck in an extra 30 minutes of exercise, SWEATED, & saved gas!
Lab coat is on! I have had 3 bottles of water, tuna with bbq sauce, and a hard boiled egg so far. The eating is going good and I am almost ready for the protein shake. Thanks for the motivation!
I’m definitely a stress eater, and am hard on myself for not having the willpower to resist. Which just causes more stress. Gotta reduce that stress level!
Negative self-talk is so destructive! I’ve had to struggle with this over and over again, so here we go…hopefully to beat it in this area once and for all.
This is a key point for me, I know I consume ‘unconsciously’ sometimes. I’ve just put a daily reminder into my phone – four words: “ACT, notice, observe, question” Thankyou Michele!
Such an important task today…love it! I’ve written down 5 of my most common thoughts and will work on fixing them and noticing when I have them in the future, so that I can correct them. Thanks Michele!
How funny to find this step here now….I have been really working on the mindset lately and this just affirms what I have been doing. I tend to be my own worst enemy and harshest critic. No more pity parties, just lots of honesty and investigation.
Today was a lot harder than I thought it would be, because changing the way I think isn’t easy. However, I have a notebook set up to jot down all those negative comments to turn into observations.
It was hard to read what I wrote but it made me think different. I had a tough year with two surgerys and not being able to do anything but I’m back feeling better and commited to these 30 days and hopefully longer,
Wow this really made me look at the negative talk I have been doing with myself. Definitely need to keep the lab jacket on and look at things much differently. Thanks for pointing this out to me!
Walked 6kms today( with a mid way break to njoy Bircher muesli, soy latte, and freshly squeezed juice). Wish I lived by the beach as its been easy to go out walking amidst such beauty.
I didn’t realize that I was being so judgemental to myself. I talked to my doctor today about the motivation from this, and he was encouraging me to keep it up. We talked about BMI, and I was shocked how high mine is. I have to get it down. Time for my walk! Thanks Michelle!
Hello again 🙂 for some reason my step two didn’t come through to my email until late last night. So I plan on getting it done today. Also just finished today’s and wow I’m really hard on myself. Thank you for having me to do this exercise and show me what I can say instead.
I get discouraged when I can’t do EVERYTHING, and then I slide back into doing NOTHING. I will focus on being more analytical and not critical of myself. I am a scientist, so it shouldn’t be that difficult…hmmm.
Pretty much every “observation” from “blowing it” can be solved by planning ahead, whether it’s grocery shopping, packing a lunch, planning when I’ll exercise. I just need to do it! (And P.S., I did my 10 min. walk from yesterday.)
All I have ever done is judge myself. So, I know this will be very hard for me to do, but I am going to do my best to stop the negative thinking. I must accept that we all make mistakes, except now I will look at it as a learning and growing experience.
Day 3 of the 30 day challenge. I judge myself ALL THE TIME. I know I am an emotional eater, so I can keep myself in check by asking myself “do I really need this?” Medifast has taught me to drink more water…..get a drink of water and collect myself….I can do this!
I realized that while I do judge myself a bit, it’s not to the extreme that I thought it was. I can get down on myself, but I usually turn it into something encouraging already. Granted this doesn’t always happen, so this shows me that there is still room for improvement!
Checking in for day 3! My comments all point to being tired and taking the easy way out of eating well (fast food). Don’t want to do dishes, don’t want to grocery shop. Snack too much because it’s easy. Guess I have work to do with these issues before I’ll progress further.
This morning when doing this I reflected on all the judgements I had on my self, and the one that keeps on coming up is my unconscience snacking. Instead of flogging myself for being week with no willpower I can change this to reflect on what I can do to be more conscience when snacking. So 1 thing I can do is move the objects of desire to a location that takes thought to get (and a step stool) lol I like it!!!