Before you try the latest idea, here’s a question to consider: Do you need more weight loss wisdom, or is over-achieving actually making weight loss harder? In your quest to achieve success, are you creating overload and overwhelming yourself? It’s an important question, because this can create a big overeating and weight trap for busy women with high expectations.

I recently heard a great comment from someone about overwhelm. She said that even accessing the highest quality help, information, and ideas can feel like being hit by an avalanche if we have too much of it.  If you’ll excuse a food-related metaphor: when the portion is too big, even the best help isn’t digestible. And yet, if you are someone who expects a lot from yourself, you are likely to be haunted by a question that can get you into trouble:

“What else can I do?” or “What should I be doing?”

Are you always adding to your weight loss to-do list? Taking action is a strategy that we use to be effective when we feel out of control. And while taking action is the first step in creating success, taking too many actions creates overwhelm. Are you falling into this trap?

Here are some signs that you are an over-achieving emotional eater:

• Are you an emotional eater who has a bedside table heaped with the latest books on the topic?
• Do you know so much about nutrition and weight loss science that you can’t make a decision about what to eat anymore—because you’ve heard so much contradictory advice?
• Do your attempts to lose weight turn into life overhauls and plans for change that quickly overwhelm you and that feel much too hard to stick with?
• When you finish a task or arrive at a “pause” in your day, do you automatically ask, “what should I do now?”
• Do you have a hard time doing nothing?
• In spite of all your effort, are you feeling stuck or ineffective when it comes to losing weight or eating the way that is best for you?

Over-achieving causes overwhelm. It increases the overall level of stress in your life. If you are an over-achiever in the area of health and weight loss, it could easily be preventing the very goals that you are trying to achieve. Women who are trapped in a cycle of constant activity and “always doing more” end up being exhausted and less productive in the long run. Not only do overwhelm and stress lead to overeating for many women, there’s another problem with over-achieving: constant activity can keep you from seeing the real solution.

Here’s what happens when we over-achieve. We can get so focused on “getting it right” and “figuring it out” that we aim all our energy in the wrong direction and we create a cycle of working very hard but not getting anywhere. That’s what yo-yo dieters are experiencing. They are caught up in a cycle of taking drastic action to lose weight, but they are so busy “achieving” that they haven’t created a blueprint that will allow them to create lasting success.

Stay tuned for my next post. I’m going to share my tips for how to break out of the over-achiever cycle and create a path for change that will last–and not burn you out!

Take good care,

Are you an emotional eater ready to make these changes in your life? The Emotional Eating Toolbox™ Take Action Series starts soon. This six week program is all about creating a lasting blueprint for successfully taking control of emotional eating—in a do-able way that fits with your unique life. You can find out all about the program here.

Spring Cleaning: Sprucing up

What in your life could use a fresh coat of paint or a complete overhaul? What “spruce up” would make your life fit better?

Are you wearing clothes that make you feel good? Do the places where you spend your time create the mood you want them too? Do you take the time to cut flowers from your yard, light a candle for yourself, or sit down to a well-set table? Is that pile of papers on your desk driving you nuts?

What about relationships? Are you getting the support and friendship that you need or is this an area of your life you’d like to renovate? How’s your physical health? Do you have a healthy lifestyle plan and is it one that puts a smile on your face or is it feeling boring and tired? How could you spice things up or rejuvenate your passion? Could you use a mentor, a partner, or a new approach? What sounds like FUN?

Now’s the time to think about the new stuff you might want to bring into your life.  Don’t let this be stressful. Start by noticing what you want and make a list of all the “spruce ups” and additions that you’d like to make. Save this list. It’s fine to tackle this one step at a time.

Take good care,

Spring Cleaning: What are you tolerating (energy drains)

Spring is a great time to look at your day-to-day life and routine with a fresh eye.  We are great at “accommodating” and “making do,” and, especially if we are busy, it’s easy for these tolerations to add up. Tolerations are those things we put up with and try to ignore. The things we “tolerate” even though they aren’t really working for us. Tolerations can be a major energy drain because they aren’t optimal to begin with and we can spend our valuable energy trying to make something that doesn’t really work do the job for us.

Spend ten minutes making a list of everything in your life you are currently tolerating—everything. Then keep the list somewhere handy where you can continue to add to it as things come up. They will. Include everything—that desk chair that hurts your back, the way your computer freezes up, the colleague who is often late, the sweater that itches, and the weight loss plan that failed you before you even started—you get the idea.  Don’t worry, this is not a to-do list. Instead, it’s a way of focusing your attention. Tolerations are things we’ve decided “not to think about.” By giving them your attention and acknowledging that they are problems, you will automatically start the process of change. This isn’t just “woo-woo.” Watch what happens when you start to take note of the things you are putting up with that really don’t work for you.

Take good care,

Spring Cleaning: Ready to dump the nonproductive habits that are holding you back?

Cleaning out a closet or a drawer feels rewarding, but what about looking at the habits and routines that are cluttering up your life and not getting you where you want to go? Take inventory of how you are really spending your time—that’s the true indicator of your priorities. What are the time and energy wasters in your life? Make a list. Include them all. Don’t worry yet about what to do about them, just take inventory.  Creating your plan of attack is the next step. If you don’t see an immediate way to fix the situation, I suggest you brainstorm. Could you delegate? Redesign the task? Eliminate it all-together? If not, how could you add more joy or make it more pleasant (never underestimate the power of good music while doing anything unappealing).

Look carefully for time wasters—activities that use your time and energy and don’t pay you back in any way. Are you spending too much time online, keeping up with email or doing mindless activities? Have you gotten out of the habit of going outside and into the habit of too much TV? Make a new list of the habits you want to eliminate AND the new habits you plan to replace them with.

Take good care,

Spring Cleaning: Beliefs that don’t serve

Some of the most bothersome life clutter is the stuff we carry around without even realizing it. This includes beliefs and attitudes about ourselves that don’t serve us, and that may even sabotage us or keep us stuck. Spend some time listening to your internal soundtrack (the way you talk to yourself inside your head). What is the tone of these conversations and what are the beliefs underlying your internal chatter? Try to capture that chatter in several key situations.

What does your internal sound track sound like when you have accomplished a goal? Are you your biggest fan? Are you all about the praise and celebration or do you automatically downplay it and focus on what you didn’t do? Does your internal audio register accomplishments or has it already moved on to the next item on your list?

How do you talk to yourself when you are taking on a challenge? Are you the “little engine that could” (“I think I can, I think I can”) or are you likely to remind yourself of all your shortcomings and the reasons that you are likely to fail? How’s the tone? Is your internal audio reasonable and respectful, a harsh task master, or too rigid or too wishy washy?

When the going gets tough or you get off track, what’s the conversation you have with yourself? Are you one to talk yourself back on the horse or do you beat yourself up and call yourself names like lazy, disorganized or something worse?

This conversation we constantly have with ourselves matters and most of us are rarely aware of it. It can take place almost as automatically as breathing. Here’s the litmus test: would you talk to your friend or your child the way you talk to yourself? If not, it’s time to do a major clean out. Raising awareness is the first step and the next step is crafting an alternate soundtrack. What are the words and labels and conversations that would really truly nurture your most brilliant and effective performance?

Take good care,

Gold Medal Excuses: Emotional Eating and Success Traps

This is the second in a series of Gold Medal Excuses. These are the excuses that win the gold. They are so compelling that they stop the game and leave women stuck and not getting where they want to go. Actually, that’s not quite accurate. These are the excuses that leave women working really hard but not moving in the direction that they want to go. You will find the first Gold Medal Excuse here.

Success Traps that Sabotage: Exhaustion

Many of you ARE exhausted and you are paying a huge price. Sleep deprivation is a big problem for busy women and it absolutely will contribute to you feeling:

• Less effective
• Less focused
• Hungry
• Stressed and overwhelmed
• Tense, irritable, and not at your best

Exhaustion is not only the product of sleep deprivation. Exhaustion happens when we run out of fuel. So if you are busy and you aren’t taking the time to eat and to energize with regular activity and with the kinds of things and people that feed your spirit, you are likely to feel run down and exhausted no matter how much sleep you get.  The issues of exhaustion and “no time” are very interrelated and it’s essential that you solve them, because if you don’t you won’t just stay stuck. You’ll burn out.

Guard your sleep fiercely. It’s essential fuel and 99 percent of us need at least 7-8 hours a night. It doesn’t work to cut back during the week and try to catch up on weekends. Sleep is an investment in yourself. If you aren’t getting enough than moving in that direction is the first step you need to take. If you’ve been walking around sleep-deprived for awhile, you’ll be amazed at the difference in how you feel.

Take an inventory of the activities in your life that exhaust you. Are you saying no regularly? Are you doing things that you resent or that waste your time? Could you set better boundaries? Are you open to delegating?

Make a list of the things and people that fuel you. How often are you replenishing your reserves in these areas? If your automatic response has to do with not having enough time, check out the tips here.

Repeat after me: Staying up late doesn’t help. The number one trap I see for women with too much on their plates? Women tend to get into a pattern of staying up late at night in an attempt to catch up, “rest up,” or capture some time alone. Trying to pay yourself at the end of the day almost always backfires. You are likely to overeat (emotional eating and exhaustion eating in the evening are problems for many women), exhaust yourself further, and fritter away the time you do stay awake because you are too tired to do anything else.

Stay tuned for the next Gold Medal Excuse–and feel free to share your favorites by adding a comment.

Take good care,

Gold Medal Excuses: Emotional Eating and Success Traps

“I’m late, I’m late, for a very important date.” ~ The March Hare

Here’s a question I am commonly asked: How do I prioritize when I truly have too much to do? When you run a company called Too Much On Her Plate, women email you their to-do lists. Really. And you women are BUSY.

I hear about the businesses you are running and the demanding careers that you have, the aging parents and growing children you are caring for, the relationships and household demands, the health concerns, and the late nights. Many of you see the link clearly between the overwhelming demands of your life and the stress and comfort eating, the weight gain, the lack of energy to exercise, and the difficulty getting where you want to go with your personal goals. And you are feeling frustrated because you don’t know what to do and don’t have the time to think about it or start doing anything differently.

I have news. This problem almost never solves itself. Time will never just show up—and honestly, if it does, you’ll probably find yourself so glad to have it that you just collapse into it and don’t really use it in a way that will benefit you. If you want to get off the hamster wheel, you are going to have to CLAIM some time.

Claiming time means that for now (not forever), you say no to something else in order to claim some time for you. It doesn’t have to be a week. It might be ten minutes. If it is, that’s a great start. Ten minutes devoted just to you and your goal may be more than you gave yourself yesterday. So claim it. Write it in your schedule. Decide in advance what you will do with it. Somebody just emailed me that she purchased my Emotional Eating Toolbox™ 28 Day Program but hasn’t had enough time to do it. Ten minutes a day won’t get it done in 28 days, but it WILL move her forward.

Write this down: Taking ten minutes counts.

Here’s the thing:

Action (even ten minutes) perpetuates action. Getting started—whatever your goal—is a momentous step and just that one act will get you over a hurdle.

Once you learn to carve out ten minutes and really leverage that time you are likely to see what ten minutes can accomplish. Many of us dismiss small actions as “not enough.” When we do that, we stay stuck. I bet you will find ten minute pockets in other places you haven’t been looking—on your commute, before the kids get up, while you are waiting for your computer to start up or your tea to brew. You may also start to see ways you can claim bigger chunks of time (wait until you see what you can do in 20 minutes).

Claiming the time you need for yourself and spending it on activity that is meaningful to you is rejuvenating. People who take regular breaks and who get the self care that they need have more energy.  They are more focused and accomplish more in less time. Claiming time will pay you back in ways that may surprise you.

Looking for time to claim will lead you to be more aware of how you spend your time—maybe not the big chunks of activity, but all the small pieces. It’s amazing the amount of time we give away to things that aren’t important, that we don’t really want to do, or to boredom, procrastination, or even difficulty getting started.

Don’t let not having time be an excuse. Set the timer and claim ten minutes. Today.

Take good care,

Life happens. Somewhere along the line you’re going to have a business trip, you’ll get the flu, you’ll fight with your partner, you’ll have a really tough day or week or month. When the going gets tough, the majority of resolutions fall apart.

Too many resolutions were created by people wearing rose colored glasses.

I’m all for positive thinking and optimism, but a plan that is going to endure has to include a plan for rough patches and even lapses in action—because they happen. Consider the challenges you are likely to face as you move forward towards your goal. Take note of the places you’ve gotten tangled up in any past attempts. Make a note of upcoming events that are likely to disrupt your schedule or interfere with your focus. Start to think proactively about how you want to respond to the realities of your life. Craft a “Plan B” for time-crunched days, find a support system for the areas you might not know how to address, imagine yourself re-starting if you stop. Be honest with yourself about your strengths and your vulnerabilities. Leverage the positive and be realistic about the rest. You’ll be amazed at the difference this makes.

Take good care,

It may sound silly when I write it this way, but have you ever:

• Overeaten at the end of the day and then decided that “now that you’ve blown it” you might as well eat some more?
• Lost motivation because you weren’t making it to the gym as often as you’d planned so quit going all-together?
• Decided that since you overate last night and there’s a party on the weekend you might as well wait until Monday to restart your weight loss plan?

These, my friend, are examples of perfectionism. They reflect the philosophy that you have to get it perfect in order to take action at all. Perfectionism also includes the belief that if it isn’t perfect, it isn’t any good.

The problem is, none of us is perfect, we’ll never hit one hundred percent all the time, and if that is our definition of success, we’ll always fall short. For most of us, that’s pretty discouraging—not a great motivator when you’re looking for making changes that you can stick with over the long haul.

My advice: instead of aiming for perfect, aim for doing your best. Know that even the worst choice can be followed by a good one. If you are someone who tends to think of “restarting” and “failing” or “blowing it,” start retraining yourself to think of the goals you are pursuing as long term. You don’t need every step to be brilliant, you just need to keep taking steps in the right direction.

Take good care,

The January “honeymoon phase” may be behind us, but this is actually a perfect time to tweak your plan (or revamp it completely) so that you can go the distance and achieve those goals you’ve set for yourself. The truth is, having things not go the way you had anticipated can be a great opportunity to learn how your plan holds up to real life and identify what changes need to be made so that you can stay on track for the long haul.

This week I’m going to share three reasons that even the most dynamic resolutions might not be getting you where you want to go:

Reason for failure #1: Failure to plan
“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” A resolution or an idea is not a plan, it’s an intention. Many busy people err by jumping into action—any kind of action–without investing the time to create a clear, do-able, sustainable plan. If your weight loss resolution fell apart because it was simply based on “eat less,” you might want to take a step back and craft a strategy that includes how you’ll address any triggers to overeat, how you want to respond to physical hunger and cravings, and what other strategies you can put in place to maximize your effectiveness.

Change is not a one shot deal. It’s never too late to reevaluate your approach and create or re-craft your plan of attack. Take a look at any areas of your life that aren’t moving forward and ask yourself what plan or strategy you’d like to use to get them into motion. Be as specific as possible and don’t gloss over the actual “what” and “when” of any actions that you are going to take.

Take good care,