When it comes to a Body and Lifestyle Transformation program, most people think it’s only for those who want to lose weight. In other words, if you’re happy with your current weight or you’re skinny, transformation is a waste of time.
This is what the diet industry has led you to believe — that a body and lifestyle transformation is all about weight loss; all about before and after photos. And the bigger the difference between these photos, the more ‘successful’ the transformation has been.
But that’s a very shallow, superficial understanding of the power of transformation.
What is transformation?
Transformation is not before and after photos that illustrate how much weight someone has lost or how much muscle they have built. It isn’t just fitness and exercise or food and nutrition. It’s not about being fitter or stronger, or about being able to run a marathon. It’s not even about having better eating habits or giving up drinking.
Transformation is acquiring lifelong knowledge, systems, tools and skills to help you overcome the personal problems (obstacles) that are preventing you from having the body and life you want.
The majority of people believe that a transformation program is designed to deal with a weight problem. However, weight is not a problem in itself. It’s just a symptom of your personal problems — (habits, mindset, beliefs and fears) that happens to show up on your body.
A lot of people experience their personal problems showing up on their body as excess weight. However, this is not the case for everyone. Sometimes people’s problems manifest in other ways that are not so visible. In other words, there are a lot of skinny people who have personal problems too.
Correlation is not causation
Just because one thing correlates (or is associated) with another doesn’t mean that it causes another.
Correlation is not causation.
A lot of people believe that people who are overweight have bad habits and think that skinny people have good habits.
However, the truth is that everyone, regardless of their weight, has personal problems (habits, mindset, beliefs and fears) that reflect in their life in some form.
Weight problems are just a reflection of personal problems. However, not everyone’s personal problems are reflected in their weight. Some people’s personal problems may be reflected in toxic relationships, low confidence and low self-worth. This explains why being skinny doesn’t mean you’re healthy.
Why skinny people need transformation more than overweight people
Personal problems are not unique to people who are overweight. It’s just easier to see them.
That’s because overweight people’s problems are easily exposed, as they are reflected as physical weight on their body. The positive aspect about this is that it’s easier to be aware of your problems (habits, mindset, beliefs and fears) if you’re overweight, so you’re more likely to take action and do something about them.
However, when you’re not overweight it’s easier to mask or hide these issues.
For example, someone who is overweight who deals with stress by turning to food and alcohol, are more likely to gain more weight. This weight gain will help them become aware that their habits of overeating and drinking is causing this, so they are more likely to address the reasons behind their stress.
On the other hand, a skinny person who turns to food and alcohol to manage stress who doesn’t gain weight from these behaviours will remain unaware of the impact of their habits, mindset, beliefs and fears. This means that they will be able to continue to mask their stress with these habits, because the consequences are not showing up as visible weight gain.
The problem here is that skinny people are more likely to be impacted by their personal problems (aka bad habits) because they don’t show up as physical weight. This means they are less likely to be aware of their problems, or take action to overcome them. Continuing to mask their problems only perpetuates these habits, mindset, beliefs and fears, which snowballs into bigger problems. And the longer you hide or ignore your problems, the more they impact your mental health.
This is why everyone needs transformation — even the skinny people who look like they ‘have their shit together’.
Why you need transformation?
Transformation is the journey between the before and after photos.
It’s about unbecoming and unlearning the person you are in order to achieve your body weight goals. It’s about gaining the skills, knowledge, systems and tools so you can have the confidence to handle any situation that life throws at you. Because unless you change your habits, mindset, beliefs and overcome your fears, you’ll never have the body or life you desire.
Problems in our life alert us that certain habits and beliefs are no longer serving us. If you can identify with any of the issues below, then you definitely need transformation.
Fear of judgement
Fear of judgement is why a lot of people are too afraid to be seen for who they really are and where they’re really at. It explains why people like to hide from photos, from going to the beach, from going to parties, from wearing the clothes they’d really like to wear, and doing the things they’d really love to do.
This is how fear of judgment manifests in your life.
You worry about what others think
If you worry too much about what other people think, you have a serious problem that not only affects your weight but your entire life. Worrying about what other people think of you is not only stressful, it will lead to people-pleasing behaviours and toxic relationships. When you spend your life trying to keep everyone else happy, you do so at the expense of your own needs and desires. Quite simply, you have no time or energy left to do what’s right for you. We explain this in more detail in our blog Why caring what others think leads to weight gain and how you can stop caring.
You’re afraid to be your authentic self
Everyone should feel free to be their authentic selves, free from judgement or worrying about what other people think of them. Sadly, this is not the case. Most of us are so worried about being our authentic selves because we’re worried that our flaws will mean that no one will love us. This means we put on a mask, pretend to be someone we’re not, and then live a life not in alignment with our true selves. If you’re afraid to be yourself or have difficulty letting people see the real you, then you need transformation. You can read more about this in our blog How to be your authentic self so you can lose weight.
You have social media but don’t use your account
There are plenty of people who have social media accounts but never use it to post anything. Instead, they watch from the background, too scared to share their opinion, post photos of themselves or allow themselves to be tagged in other people’s photos or posts. These behaviours are because they fear judgement.
You take things personally and avoid asking for help
Ego often gets in the way of people having the life and the body they crave. People are often afraid to ask for help because they see it as a sign of weakness. However, working with a coach is the only way you’ll be able to overcome the issues that are holding you back, as they can see things that you can’t. We call these blind spots and you can read more about them in our blog Well-known, little-understood weight loss blind spots. Another sign that you fear judgement is taking things personally — even if it’s constructive criticism that you have asked for.
You carry emotional baggage such as shame, embarrassment and guilt
The majority of people focus on losing only the physical weight and ignore the emotional weight that they carry. However, this only leads to weight gain, because it’s the emotional baggage that has caused you to become overweight in the first place.
Here’s how emotional baggage manifests in your life.
You’re ashamed and embarrassed
According to Brene Brown, a research professor who studies shame, it is “the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.”
If you’re ashamed, chances are you’re also embarrassed, because shame and embarrassment go hand-in-hand. Embarrassment is that feeling of self-consciousness or awkwardness that makes you feel exposed and vulnerable.
Shame and embarrassment will cause you to hide or pretend your further’ along the journey than you actually are, or know more than you really do. This means that you’re always pretending and trying to cover up your perceived weaknesses and flaws, and never asking for help because you’re too embarrassed to admit where you really are. You can read more about this in our blog Struggling to lose weight: The real weight you need to lose to change your body shape.
You feel guilty
Do you feel guilty a lot of the time? Guilty that you’re overweight, guilty about putting yourself first, and guilty about the food you eat? Research suggests that guilt around weight and food may actually cause you to gain weight, as it causes a metabolic slowdown. This guilt, and the stress around feeling guilty, negatively impacts body image, which then increases the likelihood of binge eating or excessive drinking, as a way to feel better.
Fear of failure
Setting out to achieve something can be a daunting task, especially if it’s something you’ve struggled with in the past, and there’s no guarantee that you’ll achieve your goals. Instead of focusing on what could go right, most people focus on failing, and ask themselves what happens if they fail, or put in all the work and still don’t’ succeed? Common questions they ask themselves include “How will I cope if I fail?” and “What does this failure mean about me?” Fear of failure is also closely linked to fear of judgement.
Here’s how fear of failure manifests in your life.
You’re afraid to try new things
A lot of people are scared about not being able to do something, so they stay in their comfort zone where it’s safe. They never take chances or commit to learning something new. Their fear of failure paralyses them and prevents them from taking action because if they’re going to fail, they don’t want anyone to see them do it.
You’re complacent
People who are complacent, or who settle for what they have usually do so out of fear. That’s because the next step they need to take seems too hard, or too scary, so they retreat and tell themselves that ‘everything is okay’. Fear of failure is what stops a lot of people from working on and achieving their goals. We explain this in more detail in our blog “But I’m happy!” Why being complacent will ruin your whole life, not just your weight loss.
You self-sabotage
Many people associate self-sabotage with sabotaging your weight loss. But there are many ways people sabotage that doesn’t necessarily lead to weight gain. For example, skinny people can still overeat, binge eat, emotionally eat and binge drink and smoke, but it doesn’t reflect in their weight, even though it reflects in their overall health and wellbeing, including mental health. Other ways people self-sabotage that has nothing to do with weight loss self-sabotage include perfectionism, procrastination, complacency, toxic relationships, and people-pleasing. We explain this in more detail in our blog How to stop weight loss self-sabotage.
Low self-worth
Unfortunately, low self-worth is very common. It’s the belief that you are not valuable, worthy or loveable as you are. Low self-worth will affect you in more ways than you realise and will have a profound impact on your weight. People with low self-worth are often high achievers who place value on what they do and achieve, instead of who they are. You can read more about this in our blog How low self-worth affects your weight.
Here’s how low self-worth manifests in your life.
You struggle to put yourself first
If you don’t value yourself, then you’ll find it difficult to put your needs first. Instead, you’ll invest your time and energy in doing things for everyone else, and leaving your own needs at the bottom of the list. You can read more about this in our blog How to put yourself first without feeling guilty.
You’re a people pleaser
People-pleasing is often found in those who lack self-worth. They believe that saying ‘yes’ to everyone will help them feel accepted and liked. Sometimes the habit of people-pleasing is a result of being mistreated in the past (e.g. bullying), and so making others happy is a coping mechanism to protect themselves from being mistreated again in the future. It’s also very common to confuse people-pleasing with “being nice” or “being kind”. We explain this in more detail in our blog Are you too nice? Why people pleasing if making you overweight.
You always attract toxic relationships or the wrong romantic partners
Do you always seem to be in toxic relationships? Are you always having trouble in your romantic relationships? Do you always seem to end up with the ‘wrong person’ – someone who uses you or isn’t interested in long-term commitment? If so, this is a key sign that you need transformation. You see, the reason that you’re not attracting the right people into your life is that you don’t believe you deserve them. You most likely have developed limiting beliefs and an identity based on your relationship status or the kind of friends you have. And unless you change that, you’ll always be in the same cycle of attracting and breaking up with the wrong romantic partner or continuing to attract people who use you. Fortunately, we can help you drop your limiting beliefs and develop an identity that will help you attract the right people into your life.
You undercharge in business
Are you afraid to charge your worth in your business? Do you undervalue your time, expertise or services? Perhaps you’re afraid to ask your boss for a pay rise. Undercharging in business or being afraid to ask for a rise is a sign of low self-worth which is a problem that will impact your whole life. For example, if you undercharge your goods and services, you’ll have to work longer hours to make enough money. This extra time spent at work is time you miss out on spending with your partner, kids and family. It also means you have less time for healthy meal prep, regular exercise and sleep. This results in you feel stressed, burned out and more likely to be overweight, or become sick and run down.
You’re a workaholic and are always busy
Many people with low self-worth work all the time. This is because they find value in what they do and achieve, instead of who they are. This equates to working long hours, volunteering to help out with community groups, or taking on lots of projects around the house. Being busy and getting things done is how you feel good about yourself. It’s also a very common excuse why people never prioritise themselves and put their health first. While they promise themselves that they’ll do something about their health or their weight ‘when things settle down’, the reality is that they never find the time. If you often complain you’re too busy, you’re probably using ‘busyness’ as a way to distract yourself from the things you find difficult, confronting or scary. You may also notice that you procrastinate a lot, and often put off doing things until the last minute.
You’re a perfectionist
Trying to get everything perfect or ‘just right’ is a sign of low self-worth. It’s the fear of not being good enough and being afraid to make a mistake. Signs of perfectionism include an ‘all-or-nothing’ approach, following food rules and diets, people-pleasing, inability to delegate tasks and perfectionism. You can read more about this in our blog Why you’re not losing weight despite being perfect.
You procrastinate
Procrastination is a product of fear of failure or not being good at something because your self-worth or value depends on succeeding. This fear of failure paralyses you from taking action or causes you to second-guess yourself, which causes you to procrastinate. When you put off doing something or put in less effort, it’s not because you’re lazy, don’t care or don’t want it, but because you’re trying to protect yourself from failure. If you fail it isn’t because you’re not good enough, worthy, smart, cool, talented, capable, or perfect — it’s because you just didn’t invest enough time in it. You can read more about this in our blog Why you procrastinate and how you can stop.
You can’t accept compliments or celebrate your success
Low self-worth means that you will find it difficult to accept compliments from other people or to acknowledge and celebrate success. Instead, you’ll tend to brush aside any forms of praise and focus on what you did wrong, or what you haven’t already achieved.
Self-doubt and lack of confidence
Lack of confidence has wide-reaching consequences for your entire life, not just your weight. It’s also one of the key reasons our clients decide to undertake a transformation journey with us because they know how much it limits their life and their ability to be the role models they want to be.
Here’s how it manifests in your life.
You compare yourself with others and doubt yourself
When you’re not confident you often compare yourself with others, and always find yourself lacking. You might also copy what they do, believing that they know better than you, or they are more successful or ‘better’ than you are. This self-doubt means that you are not able to make decisions for yourself, and are more likely to do what’s popular, or what others want you to do, instead of doing what’s right for you.
You’re not your authentic self
Lack of confidence is why so many people wear masks, pretending to be something they think they should be. We call this imposter syndrome. You can read how it impacts your relationships, career, mental health, and weight in our blog Why imposter syndrome will ruin your whole life
Make assumptions and tell yourself stories
Do you make assumptions about people and situations and tell yourself stories about them? For example, you might arrive at work and your boss is in a bad mood. You automatically assume it’s because he isn’t happy with the report you wrote for him yesterday, so you do everything you can to avoid him all day because you believe he’s upset with you and he’ll probably let you know. However, the truth is, there could be any number of reasons why your boss is in a bad mood, none of which are about you. Yet it’s your lack of confidence in yourself that causes you to think it’s your fault.
Avoiding your emotions
Many people avoid acknowledging or dealing with their emotions. Instead, they use other means to distract themselves or cover up feelings of trauma, emptiness, sadness, anger, stress, frustration, shame, guilt or embarrassment.
Here’s how avoiding your emotions manifests in your life.
You mask your emotions with food and alcohol
A lot of people try to mask their feelings by engaging in emotional eating (which can also turn into binge eating). They also try to cover up emotions using alcohol. Food and/or alcohol may be used to soothe stress, to comfort sad or hurt feelings, or to fill an emotional void. Why not take our quiz and find out if you are an emotional eater or a binge eater?
You’re not fulfilled
There are a lot of people who appear to have everything — money, a nice house, a big car, a great family — yet they still feel like something is missing. This missing ‘something’ is a fulfilling and meaningful life. Often people who feel like this start things and don’t finish them, or jump from one thing to another. This is because they’re constantly looking for the thing that will give them meaning. If you find yourself jumping from one thing to another and never finishing what you start, there’s a good chance that you’re not fulfilled with the life you have, or you don’t believe your life is meaningful. Instead of delving deep and looking at why you feel that way, you try to fill the void by distracting yourself with something else.
You’re always stressed
Everyone gets stressed but if you are constantly stressed there is a problem. There are always things that will cause us to feel stress but for some people, stress is a normal part of their life. In other words, they suffer from chronic stress. While stress management techniques can help, the most effective way to get to the bottom of your stress problem is to deal with the root cause of your stress.
You’re a control freak
If you’re a control freak who needs to control everything, you need transformation. As human beings, we have a deep need to feel in control. We believe that being in control keeps us safe, causes us not to worry about things, helps us predict the future, and protects us from something bad happening to us. But control is closely linked to low confidence, low self-worth, perfectionism, lack of trust, fear and people-pleasing. You can read more about control in our blog How to feel in control when everything is out of control.
You have a victim mindset
Unfortunately, many people feel like a victim. They blame other people for their circumstances or for the difficulties they have in life. Unfortunately, when you play the victim you are powerless to take any positive action to change your circumstances, which means you’ll always be stuck in the same, unhappy place. You’ll also find people around you will soon get sick of your continual complaining and blaming, and you’ll end up unhappy all on your own.
Here’s how not taking responsibility manifests itself.
You’re often angry, resentful and jealous
There will always be things that cause us to feel angry or frustrated, but if these emotions are a regular part of your life, you have a problem. Chronic anger and frustration can be a result of unresolved trauma, low self-worth, and feeling out of control. As well as impacting your relationships, these two emotions can lead to serious ongoing health problems such as anxiety and depression, high blood pressure, digestion problems, chronic headaches, heart attack and stroke.
Jealousy and resentment are two emotions that will do more harm to you than the person you’re directing these feelings towards. While it may feel good to direct your negative feelings towards someone else, you’re only damaging your relationships and making things worse for yourself. Signs that you may be resentful and jealous include gossiping about others behind their back, celebrating when someone fails, feeling inferior to someone else and constantly watching what others do. We explain this in more detail in our blog How resentment impacts your weight and happiness.
You have a fixed mindset
People with a fixed mindset believe their abilities, attributes, habits and beliefs are set in stone and cannot change. They believe that everything from their talents, intelligence, earning power, and body shape are set in stone, and there is no room to grow and evolve. They also discount small changes as unimportant or irrelevant. Having this kind of mindset will mean you’ll never succeed at losing weight or having the life you want. You can read more about this in our blog Why mindset is everything.
Stop solving the wrong problems
The reason so many people struggle with weight loss is that they are busy trying to solve all their problems (habits, mindsets, beliefs and fears) with diets (e.g. food and exercise) which of course, don’t work.
For example, you can eat better and train better, and even cut out alcohol and sugar but this won’t change your mindset, stop your people-pleasing habit, help you let go of the need to control, or help you manage your emotions, etc. – which are the real problems that need solving.
If you want to succeed in losing weight, you have to stop seeing diets and exercise programs as the solution and start addressing the real problems that are at play. Because no amount of nutrition and exercise will solve problems like low self-worth or fear of failure.
How DATSTM Program helps
The DATSTM Program will help you solve your personal problems (habits, mindset, beliefs and fears) so you can not only lose weight and reclaim your health but your vitality, confidence and freedom. In short, it will help you improve the quality of your entire life, and those around you.
The biggest influence over your weight isn’t what you eat, or how much you exercise. It’s why you eat what you do and move how you do. And that comes down to your habits. Your habits are your thoughts, beliefs, mindset and behaviours.
Our program is based on habit and mindset change. It will help you uncover the habits that have led you to gain weight, and give you the tools and strategies to change them into habits that support long term weight loss.
Because when you have the right habits and mindset, weight loss takes care of itself, and your entire life gets better.
In summary…
- People don’t have weight problems. They have personal problems (habits, mindset, fears and beliefs) that reflect throughout their life.
- Overweight people aren’t the only ones who have personal problems. Skinny people can have personal problems that manifest in poor relationships, alcohol dependency or parenting difficulties.
- Skinny people often need transformation more than overweight people because, unlike their overweight counterparts whose problems are exposed, they can easily mask and hide their own. This leads to their problems snowballing into bigger ones.
- A transformation program isn’t about changing your body or about before and after photos. It’s about changing the habits, mindset, fears and beliefs that have led you to be overweight, so you can finally lose weight and live a happy and fulfilled life of confidence.
- People struggle with weight loss their whole life because they try to solve their personal problems with diet and exercise instead of addressing the personal problems.
- Our DATSTM Program gives you the knowledge, systems, tools and skills to help you lose weight and keep it off, so you can improve the quality of your life.
