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…
This one was hard for me, because I think I’m my own worst enemy and critic. Then again, aren’t we all? But I think I got a few good observations down!
This one wasn’t too tough as I learned to quit beating myself up about my eating habits, the not exercising part that’s where I get rough on myself
Wow! I had no idea that I had a running non-stop judgement in my day-to-day like I do. This was really an eye-opening task.
Today’s assignment was a little hard for me! I am always judging myself.. I am going to try really hard to avoid negative thinking….
Well, I didn’t do yesterdays assignment 🙁 and I ate terribly today! Makes me very mad at myself. I did read todays though! Guess I’ll do day 2 and 4 tomorrow.
45 min walk this morning but was derailed with my son’s birthday party food. Still, limited myself to half slice of cake and dessert. Observation: I am getting stronger with tempting food.
This one’s definitely a challenge. I often don’t take the time to ask myself Why am I eating this? When really feeling stressed or emotional I turn my brain “off” (if that makes sense) so I can snack excessively.
This has always been a tough one for me! I think this is such a good exercise that I may print it out to remind myself every morning until it becomes habit.
I’m sort of having a hard time reframing the judging as observational. I’m pretty much stuck on “I need to try harder to not eat what I shouldn’t and get to the gym more.”
I confess I had a hard time converting some of my judgements. This took me more than ten minutes. It was worth it though. Observations are definitely more constructive than judgements.
I don’t really judge myself very often I’m more of a “scientist” by nature unless I can’t fit into my jeans so instead of calling myself fat I’ll just think well I can’t fit into these jeans now but I’ll keep them for when I can.
Completed but not done with this one. I’m my worst critic and have been told many times I’m too hard on myself. Guess I’ll be visiting this one for a long while.
today is a BIG one for me. That judges coat is like a second skin for me! I will work at taking it off and being kinder and gentler. Looking at the situation instead of summing it up.
Day 3 done – that was tough but needed to be done! I am a BEAUTIFUL CREATION in Christ and I’m going to strive daily to honor and glorify Him w/my choices and work on my temple He created!
Judges robe is off…and the lab coat is on! Looking forward to this 30 day health experiment…But I am praying, that it becomes a lifelong commitment, to a better life! <3 : ).
This is a tough one, but I did come up with some observations. I try not to be a negative thinker, but it can be difficult, especially when I’m not seeing the results I want as fast as I’d like.
I snack a lot at night.. I need to get into the habit of 1. actually eating breakfast every day and 2. make it a meal-size breakfast instead of a small fiber bar so I stay satiated the rest of the day instead of going into hunger-mode!
Only one little bit of judging, today – drinking Sprite when I could have chosen water, and giving myself permission to “be bad”. Is that actually judging, though?
Love this 1. I just started reading Dr. Wayne W. Dyer books & lectures. The 1st. thing I learned was not to put myself down(which I always did). And to go to bed every night with positive thoughts. Like I am thin, I am nonjudgmental and I am happy and so on.
I really liked this exercise. I’m always fast to judge but then leave it at that. definitely going to try to observe more to develop better habits!