In this episode of Simple Shifts: Conversations to Fuel Your Body, Mind and Soul, Martha and Peter discuss the importance of sustainable weight loss strategies, emphasizing the need for lifestyle changes that can be maintained long-term. They explore the dangers of extreme dieting, the significance of self-love in making healthy choices, and the value of new experiences in personal growth. The conversation highlights the power of gradual changes and the mindset shift required to achieve lasting results in weight management.
Key Takeaways
- New experiences are essential for personal growth.
- Sustainable weight loss requires a lifestyle you can maintain.
- Extreme diets often lead to yo-yo dieting and frustration.
- Mindset matters: self-love leads to better choices.
- Small, incremental changes can yield significant results.
- You can’t force yourself into someone else’s diet plan.
- Enjoyment in activities leads to healthier choices.
- Stay open to learning and exploring new things.
- Life is more enjoyable when you embrace uncertainty.
- Gradual changes are more effective than extreme measures.
Don’t Do Anything To Lose Weight You Aren’t Willing To Do Forever Podcast
Video Transcript
Martha McKinnon (00:00)
Hi, welcome to Simple Shifts: Conversations to Fuel the Body, Mind and Soul. I am Martha McKinnon from the blog Simple Nourished Living and with me is my brother and partner, Peter Morrison.
Peter Morrison (00:13)
Hello Martha McKinnon.
Martha McKinnon (00:16)
Hello, Peter Morrison, how are you today?
Peter Morrison (00:19)
I’m doing well. How are you?
Martha McKinnon (00:21)
I’m doing really well. So today we’re going to talk about one of Martha’s rules for weight loss or weight management. But before we dive into that…
Peter Morrison (00:32)
Well that’s a teaser.
Martha McKinnon (00:34)
A teaser? I’m practicing. I’m practicing being a teaser. What’s new, what are you happy about? What are you excited about?
Peter Morrison (00:46)
We’re having beautiful weather. I’m playing a lot of pickleball and as we’ve touched on in several episodes in the past, there’s a new, not a new, but a tournament coming up in a couple of weeks. And by the time this gets out, it’ll be long gone in the past, but I found a new partner to play with and I’ve actually entered both singles and doubles this time.
Martha McKinnon (01:17)
That’s great.
Peter Morrison (01:18)
So, gonna shake things up and try something new in the pickleball world.
Martha McKinnon (01:20)
Well, good for you. Congratulations. That’s great. So you’re continuing to thrive on pickleball. That’s good.
Peter Morrison (01:23)
Thank you.
Martha McKinnon (01:27)
And life is somehow easier when weather’s nice. It’s interesting. Everything’s a little easier when the sun is shining and the temperatures are nice. Well, good. I’m happy for you. And I look forward to hearing about how the tournament goes for you. And either way, you’ll have fun, right?
Peter Morrison (01:49)
Thank you. Yeah, and this is a bigger tournament and they call it a golden ticket tournament. So that means every year there’s a big national tournament. And this year it happens to be in San Diego, which is about an hour from where I live. And the winner of each division gets an automatic entry into the national tournament. I don’t know normally what it takes to qualify for it but this is kind of a shortcut way to have a chance to play in that tournament.
Martha McKinnon (02:26)
Good for you.
Peter Morrison (02:29)
Yeah, and actually it’s a tournament where there’ll be pros playing at it. I mean, not with us, but like you’re sort of playing at the same tournament that they are. So it’ll be interesting. I’ve never done that before. I’ve only done smaller local, you know, city type tournaments.
Martha McKinnon (02:49)
So, new experiences. I think new experiences are so important, especially all through life, but I think especially as we age, because I think the longer that we live, the more we can get stuck in our habits, and our world can become smaller. So kudos to you for continuing to expand and learn and grow and try new things. I think life is magical and so much more enjoyable when we just continue to explore.
Peter Morrison (03:21)
Yeah, it’s kind of scary on one hand, like going in because it’s scary just from that, well, I’ve never done this before. And you kind of don’t know, I mean, you kind of know what to expect, but you don’t know exactly what to expect. And there’s something scary yet exciting about that. And it never, like most things I worry about either never materialize or aren’t anywhere near the level of severity that I’ve sort of gotten myself all riled up about. Yeah, so I’m anxious in a good, excited kind of way about it. But I do think new things and new experiences are definitely the way to go.
Martha Mckinnon (04:09)
Yeah, they’re growth creating. Growth is good. We have, I just feel like we have to keep learning and exploring and I just, think I’m coming to understand that I know, I know so much less than I thought I did. And every day I know less and less and that’s a good thing. Cause a lot of those, I don’t know that a lot of the spiritual teachings, you know, that Eastern Eastern spirituality, Zen, all this kind of stuff, will talk about showing up empty, this whole concept of empty cup. You can’t really learn what you think you already know.
And the more I let go of what I think I know and just show up and just learn and let the experience unfold, the more I realize I don’t know what I thought I knew and it just becomes fun to realize that I’m not nearly as smart as I thought I was. I don’t know nearly as much as I thought I did. There’s so much more to know, there’s so much more to explore, and it’s okay. And it makes life fun because you do continue to learn, and you have experiences that you wouldn’t have otherwise. If you think you already know the answer, you’re losing out in so many ways on what you could experience.
So good for you. I’m happy for you. So today, one of Martha’s rules, and I’ve come from all my rules, again, from life experience and discovering things that didn’t work. And so one of my strong rules, or suggestions, for anybody trying to lose weight is to not do anything to lose weight that you’re not willing to continue to do to keep it off. Because a lot of years of trial and error has helped me to understand that losing weight and maintaining weight are not that different.
And when you think that they are different and you think that there’s some one magic path to lose the weight, that then is very different from what it’s going to take to maintain the weight, that’s where you end up in this vicious cycle of trying extreme things and having them not work, over and over like the yo-yoing or the just going round and round in circles and just not making any sustainable progress. So once you realize that, and once you realize that the path to lasting change is to carve out and figure out for yourself a lifestyle that you can live with over the long term, it gets so much easier.
Because so many of us for so long get stuck in believing that, I’m just going to do this to lose the weight. And we get really extreme with ourselves. I’m never like, what are some of the things I’ve told myself? I’m never going to eat. You know, I’m giving up sugar forever. Or, you know, going on a very extreme, like a liquid diet, you know.
How many people, Oprah was this classic example, right, of she went on the liquid diet and she walked out on stage having lost all this weight and she had the wagon with, you know, an approximation, a representation of all the weight, you know, she had lost. But again, she did it in a way, and many of us have done it in a way that wasn’t sustainable. So when you go back to your everyday life, you start then engaging in the habits that got you to where you were in the first place, you’re now really back. You haven’t made any lasting forward progress. Does that make sense?
Peter Morrison (08:08)
Oh, it makes total sense. Because I know I think at my heaviest, which was when I left the Navy, surprisingly enough. I was young, I was 22, maybe just about just about to turn 22. I weighed at my heaviest. And I think that was due to, obviously my lifestyle, not a lot of moving, probably more alcohol consumption than I needed and a lot of fast food.
But when I wanted to lose weight and started reading about this diet plan or that diet plan, it seemed like every book or every program required their own special foods and they wanted you to clean out your pantry and clean out your refrigerator and then you had this super long list of, you know, special foods and supplements and stuff I had to go buy.
It had a very strict, you know, eat this at six a.m. and eat this at 10 a.m. And there’s an excitement. I mean, there’s no doubt. It’s like, my goodness, I finally found that, you know, whatever it is, you know, that resonates with you. I’m finally going to do it. And day one is might be exciting or might be, whoa, this is going to be harder than I thought. And then day two, day three, day four.
And all of a sudden, you’re not, I think gradually, for me, I can only speak for myself, I’d start slipping and it’s like, well, I’ll do that at dinner or I’ll do that at breakfast, but then I’m gonna have, I’ll figure out lunch. And then all of a sudden, that just sort of fades away and you’re sort of, or I would find myself back to maybe what I was doing before.
So I totally think it makes sense because to try to change your whole way of living in the name of losing weight or managing your weight, I think for me, it never worked because my way of living was different from what I had to do to get the result that I was looking for.
Martha McKinnon (10:45)
Yeah, and I’ve had the same experience and I think that that’s why when you go to the diet section of any bookstore, you know, I mean, you’ve got hundreds of different approaches. They all worked for somebody.
Peter Morrison (11:02)
And they will work if you stick to it.
Martha McKinnon (11:04)
And they will work if you could do them. But the truth is that that’s they’re just so counter to our lives. And so you really have to construct something that will work for you and your likes and your dislikes and your lifestyle and to try to just fit yourself into somebody else’s plan that’s really super uber extreme doesn’t work. And I think what happens too, so in addition to the fact that it doesn’t work, I think we end up in this sort of, it actually, it’s almost like a boomerang effect that actually is worse.
So we try to do something very, very extreme. We feel very, very deprived. And then we sort of boomerang back even worse. And we go into this, so we were all in, right, with something very extreme, but then we give up on it and we boomerang back to like, forget about it. I’m just going to do whatever I want whenever I want, which isn’t the answer either. You know, we need some type of balance and some type of the guidelines.
But it almost makes it worse because it’s like, forget it. You know, I’m just going to I’m going to eat whatever I want, whenever I want, however much I want. And that’s that’s just that’s totally counterproductive as well. So you end up in the sort of these extremes that you just keep vacillating back and forth from that that and neither extreme works.
And so if you’ll believe me and if everybody’s out there just believe it. If you’re contemplating doing anything to lose weight, to stop and ask yourself, am I willing to keep doing this forever? And if you’re not, then don’t do it. Look for something where you’re suddenly starting to create sustainable ways of being that can slowly, gradually move you to the place you want to be. I think it’s just so much more powerful.
Martha McKinnon (13:08)
And a lot of people say, it’s not making any shift, but it does. I because you’re doing something that will last as opposed to just boomeranging, you know, back and forth between extremes.
Peter Morrison (13:17)
Yeah, and it might be slow, you’re not gonna wake up and necessarily see a change, but if you stick with it, and I think over time you will gradually see a change, and then I think it’s easier, for me it’s easier to find the motivation when you see a little change, or when I see a little change.
Martha McKinnon (13:42)
Yeah, you see the little change. Right.
Peter Morrison (13:45)
And I think for me, I’m now 55 about to be 56 soon, and I’ve never found it easier to maintain my weight. Actually I could probably, people have told me… I feel good, but people have told me I could probably gain a few pounds But I’ve I don’t know I’ve I’ve sort of settled into this way of being that I mean, it’s it’s not, not that it’s effortless, but it’s easy.
Martha McKinnon (14:22)
What do you think makes it easy?
Peter Morrison (14:30)
I think I’m just doing things that I love. I’m playing a lot of pickleball, so I’m very active. My sister and brother-in-law recently gave me an old bicycle, and I’ve taken that out a few times. And I’ll use it periodically. We’ve got some nice bike trails, but I’m not a biker, so going out and buying this uber expensive bike and all this equipment to like lose weight biking. Well, that’s, you know, that’s not something that would work for me. I like walking. We walk pretty much every day. I used to run, but I mean, distance running. I’m not really a runner. So I think the fact that I found like an aerobic type activity that’s very social. I’m meeting a lot of people.
Just all of that sort of coming together in an active, know, it gets me outside, gets me out, gets me meeting people, gets me to pickleball tournaments. I mean, all of these things. And then there’s something when I’m like super active, I want to make better meal choices because I know I’m playing again tomorrow. I mean, pretty much every day. So, you know, fish and chips for dinner or a big, you know, a burger and fries is less appealing to me because I want to be ready for the next time that I’m playing. So for me, that’s different from I really want to have the fish and chips for lunch, but you say, well, I can’t do that because it’s not in my diet plan is for me is a very different mindset than, no, I’d really like to have that, but I’m choosing not to. I’d rather have this. But I’ll eat, you know, we’ll go to lunch, we’ll have pizza, and we’ll split a salad and I’ll have a piece of pizza with lunch and we’ll bring the rest home or, yeah, I don’t know. It’s…
Martha McKinnon (16:56)
Well, I think what you hit on it, I mean, you said it’s easy, but I think what I’m also hearing is that it’s enjoyable and it’s coming from a place of what you want to do. And it’s coming from a place of like self love versus self punishment. And that’s like that’s the mindset shift that we can go on and have – I can think of several more topics to explore, you know, coming, coming away from this, but it’s just it’s like the same action done for different reasons feels very different.
Peter Morrison (17:30)
Mm-hmm.
Martha McKinnon (17:32)
When you’re making a choice because you know you’re going to feel good and it’s going to empower you to play better out on the pickleball court versus feeling as though I have to because I’m hating the way I feel in my clothes, it’s just same action but very different results because of your mind and because of your thinking. So you’ve tapped on something very powerful.
So the more we can tap into self-acceptance and self-love and come up with things that are easy and enjoyable because we really want to do them because we care about ourselves. Versus trying to like beat ourselves up and force ourselves and punish ourselves because we’re not liking ourselves right now. It’s just diametrically opposed, you know?
And so you’re tapping into this place of joy and happiness and just like taking care of yourself and nourishing yourself in ways that you know are going to feed your lifestyle and feed what you’re wanting to accomplish. So you’re in it. So that’s what makes it easy because you’re doing what you want to do. That’s what it comes down to. You’re really doing what you what you want to do. And what you’re wanting to do is take care of yourself.
Peter Morrison (18:47)
Mm-hmm. Right. Which I’m very fortunate. Mm-hmm.
Martha McKinnon (18:50)
And if that’s the place that we could all get to, little by little, step by step, that’s where the real power is. And that’s where the real insight happens. And I think it does sometimes start with just accepting where you are and really giving consideration to what it is you really, really want and trying to figure out how you can give yourself what you really, really want because it’s going to be so much more positive.
Peter Morrison (19:15)
And that makes me think of Mindless Eating – you know, here it comes again. But when you talk about not doing anything that you’re not willing to do forever or to keep the weight off, you know, if you still want to drink soda, well, drink soda, but drink a little less soda.
If you still want to have potato chips with your sandwich at lunch, well, maybe have half the amount of potato chips. Because I think what I learned from rereading Mindless Eating is all it takes is a small reduction in calories every day to see results over the long term. So you really don’t have to, you really don’t have to go on some special eating plan. You just need a small, you know, eat a little less in a way that you’re not even gonna, it’s not like you’re gonna even notice from a calorie perspective.
Martha McKinnon (20:17)
Yeah. And everything works better that way because like we said, when you try to deprive yourself, so much works against you when you try to be extreme, right? Your body works against you, your mind works against you, you know, because your body wants to survive, your body doesn’t know what’s happening. And so when you try to do this extreme stuff and you try to go radical, you just end up kind of shooting yourself in the foot because everything is working against you, your environment, your mind, your body, and it’s just not sustainable.
And that’s why I’m hoping people will just pause and really appreciate what I’m saying here and save themselves buying the book and buying the program and buying all the expensive special foods and things that you don’t like and you don’t even know how to really work with them and subjecting yourself to such extreme regimentation that’s just not going to get you where you want to be in the long run.
Martha McKinnon (21:15)
So thank you for that.
Peter Morrison (21:18)
Yeah, you can essentially accomplish your goals with your same, you know, I’d say with your same shopping habits and with your same meal preparation if you just make small, incremental changes, that you can easily incorporate.
Martha McKinnon (21:35)
And then slowly over time, you will start to see shifts that you didn’t expect. But just let them happen gradually and naturally in a way that feels easy and enjoyable and not overwhelming. Because once you overwhelm yourself, that’s when it just gets really hard to keep it going.
Martha McKinnon (22:00)
So thank you for that share. I think that was very helpful. I’m glad that you were able to have the same experience, you know, that I had.
Peter Morrison (22:11)
Yeah, and like I said, it just happened. I mean, I wasn’t necessarily searching for a way to manage my weight. I was looking for more of a social change that just sort of snowballed into these other things. So.
Martha McKinnon (22:33)
And that’s what’s exciting too. It’s like what we talked about when you keep opening yourself up to new experiences, when you realize that you don’t know what you, what you think you know, and you stay open and you try new things, life just is, you never know where it’s going to lead you. And so you struggled and searched for a long time for the lasting path, right? The lasting way to lose the weight that you felt was a struggle. Having no idea that pickleball was going to be it, but it turned out to be and that’s sort of the magic of life. It’s often that what you’re seeking is going to turn up in a totally unexpected way if you just stay open to to experimenting and trying new things.
Martha Mckinnon (23:19)
Life gets fun.
Peter Morrison (23:20)
Love it, great advice, great advice.
Martha McKinnon (23:23)
Yeah. Well, thank you. This has been fun.
Peter Morrison (23:28)
Yes and we’d love your support, your help if you can share this video with anybody you might think would find it helpful. Please like, please subscribe. We’d appreciate your support and we’ll be back again soon.
Martha McKinnon (23:42)
Have a great day and take care everyone. We’ll see you soon. Bye bye.
Peter Morrison (23:45)
Bye bye.
