Transform Your Life After WLS: The Power of A Vision

Transcript:

Hi everybody, I’m Amber Kay, co-author of ‘Get Back On Track After Your WLS’ and co-founder of The Fresh Start Program, where we help you to get the best long-term results after your weight loss surgery.

I want to talk to you because I know you’ve probably noticed a lot of people out there getting incredible results after their WLS and you’ve most likely also seen people dramatically transform their lives. Maybe you’ve been wowed by  incredible before and after photos of people in their swimwear. 

Maybe you’ve seen people posting photos of themselves looking really confident as they go out in a new outfit and thought - I’d really like to enjoy new confidence like that myself. 

Maybe you’ve seen people enjoying their new freedom - doing things like horse-riding, skydiving, hiking up mountains, marathon running and more.

It’s really incredible what’s possible for people after WLS, and the opportunity for people who have WLS today is that they can use this tool to completely transform their lives. 

They can use this tool to gain more freedom, more confidence, improve their relationships and social life, and really re-engage with life.  They can make lifestyle changes to drastically improve their energy levels and health so that it  helps them to look after those that they are responsible for, and so that it impacts their own life in massively positive ways - with their career, their hobbies, their passions and how they live their lives and feel on a daily basis.

Now I know you’ve heard all that but the problem is people can be overwhelmed by what it actually takes to make those amazing transformations happen. 

Sometimes they see great results but they just don’t know how to keep the changes going after the initial weight loss starts to slow for them or maybe the weight loss never really started the way they hoped. 

How do you keep your eating on track when your body is allowing you to eat faster and more again and when old cravings and temptations start coming back and you can tolerate those tempting foods better? 

How do you find time to move regularly and exercise when you’ve got a family to look after or a busy career or you’ve got injuries to deal with? How do you keep the motivation going when you’re starting to plateau? What do you do when those doubts start taking over? And so what happens is, people stop believing in the possibilities…  and sometimes you can just stop believing in yourself.

We’ve been working in the health field for many years, and when we started working with people who have had WLS and assisting them to make the most of the opportunity their surgery had given them for a different level of health and happiness in life, we were doing what everyone else was doing - we were focusing on what to eat, and how to exercise. We quickly realised however that what we were teaching and sharing was not enough and wasn’t giving our clients what they really needed - because we generally all know roughly what to do. We all know that if we cut back on processed snacks and sugar, eat more healthy foods and vegetables and do more movement then we’ll improve our health and weight. The problem however is that knowing what to do and actually doing it are very different. I know this first hand. 

My husband Alex and co-founder of Fresh Start was a personal trainer for many years and he was always focusing on what to eat and doing lots of hard exercise workouts - but he also battled emotional eating. He would come home exhausted from work and then binge eat on certain foods even though he certainly knew it wasn’t the ‘healthy’ thing to do. He’d then punish himself with lots of exercise to try and make up for his overeating... and then he’d be exhausted and start all over again. His body was breaking down and he was a mess. This is when we both started getting into holistic health. 

Alex did a Masters of Health and Nutrition Education and as well as really learning about the importance of nutrient-dense wholefoods, he really learned about the power of balancing your exercise routine with your stress levels, and the importance of good sleep and stress reduction and how this is fundamental for controlling your appetite, weight and health. 

We also both studied coaching - and we learned about the power of mindset. We learned about the importance of goal setting and planning. We learned about how many of our behaviours, including unnecessary eating, are linked to us trying to meet some basic human needs, such as our need to feel safety or comfort, our need to have some variety and to avoid boredom and our need to connect with ourselves and others, and we learnt how to meet those needs in more resourceful ways that don’t involve food. We learned about how to break unsupportive habits, and how to create healthy daily habits and we learned most importantly about the power of limiting beliefs and how to change our beliefs so that they are more supportive of our success and the version of ourselves that we want to be and that gets those great health results that we want.  

It doesn’t matter if you know it would be good for you to be exercising more and eating more healthy foods if you’re exhausted because you’ve got kids to look after, or a super busy career or both or lots of other demands on your time, or when you’ve got powerful cravings and destructive habits that are stopping you from making the right choices. It doesn’t matter if you know what to do but deep down, maybe even unconsciously,  you have a belief that you’re lazy or you don’t have time or that it's selfish to look after yourself or make time for yourself or that you have a slow metabolism or that you’re not worthy of good health. 

We learned that the actual mechanics of getting healthy - what to eat and how to exercise are only about 20% of the equation. It’s your mindset that’s the 80%, and when you focus on that then THAT’S when you get the results. We both focus on this and we’ve seen our health transform. We’re both in our 50’s and we’re in great health for our age and any age in fact, when you work on the mindset first, it’s really easy compared to the way it used to be for us. This is especially true if you’ve had weight loss surgery. 

Weight loss surgery is a powerful tool that can break unsupportive habits and also reduce physical hunger. It’s stomach surgery though - it’s not brain surgery. It doesn’t change the way you see yourself, it doesn’t change the way you talk to yourself. It doesn’t give you more time in your day or organise your life differently for you, or remove the stresses and challenges. It can reduce physical hunger but it doesn’t necessarily take away the cravings or the emotional hunger - where you want to eat to change the way you are feeling. So it’s really really important to start with the mindset first rather than just trying to push through with more willpower, because guess what, willpower doesn’t last forever on an ongoing basis. We know first-hand that this simply doesn’t work long-term and we’re passionate about sharing what we’ve learned - because it really doesn’t have to be such a struggle.

The 3-Minute Formula

So what I want to teach you is a simple process that you can use to start making this easier and that you can use to improve your results after WLS and to help maintain those results for the long-term.  It’s called the 3-Minute formula.

When we learnt the formula that I’m going to be taking you through today -  it absolutely changed everything. We apply this process consistently and regularly, and we share the foundations of the formula with all of our clients. Not only is this formula really powerful at creating change and building progress towards better results, it also works in all areas of life. I’m going to apply it today with you in the area of health but you can also apply it in other areas and experience the results - in the area of relationships, or parenting, or finances, or career,  or your hobbies, or helping your community, and any other life area you have. So I’m really excited to share this process with you.

What is this formula? It’s to create a simple plan that includes: 

• Firstly, clear goals, or what we call a ‘vision’ of how you want your future to be;
• Next, a list of  your reasons for creating change; and
• Lastly, a set of basic habits or behaviours that will help to get to your vision.

Once you’ve created this simple plan, you then regularly spend 1 minute looking at your goals, 1 minute looking at your reasons and 1 minute reminding yourself of the simple behaviours that you’re going to use to get there. So 3-minutes in total regularly looking at this plan.  That’s it! 3 minutes! And then you get to watch the changes take place as you take action!

There’s a bit of preparation involved of course so today I’m going to explain how to do the first of these 3 steps. Before I do that, I’d like you to go and get a pen and a piece of paper if you don’t already have one handy.

Okay, so let’s get started in setting you up for Step 1 - your vision.

To do that I’d like to first talk about the importance of having a vision for how you want your health to be. 

It’s really important to get really clear on what you want in order to experience long-term success.  We speak to a lot of people who have had weight loss surgery and who are struggling and generally they don’t have a clear vision of what they want. Instead they’re much, much clearer about what they don’t want. For example, they don’t want to go back to where they were, or to feel tired or to let themselves down or to feel embarrassed when they travel on a plane, or to have to buy clothes that are only in the shops catering for people who are larger, and so on. They know all this but they haven’t taken the time to get really clear on what it is that they actually WANT. And this part is absolutely crucial. Getting clear on what you want and where you want to go is the ONLY WAY  to arrive at your chosen destination.  

I like to use a simple metaphor to explain this. Think about the pilot of a plane who leaves Sydney Airport with the instructions “not to be in Sydney”  - the pilot will take off and not know where to go. The pilot could circle around for a while not really knowing what to aim for but just constantly trying to keep away from Sydney. Eventually the pilot will be forced to land to refuel, either in some random location, in Brisbane, in Singapore, in the outback, or right back at the start in Sydney! 

Compare that to a pilot who leaves Sydney with clear instructions to head to Fiji. The plane takes off with a clear target to aim for. That plane might be forced off track by winds or storms or a flock of birds or other planes on the same path, but with a clear destination in mind the pilot can keep readjusting the course back towards Fiji, and 99 times out of 100 will eventually land at the correct destination. This is the difference between knowing where you don’t want to end up and knowing clearly where you do want to end up. 

So if you truly want to enjoy long term success then the first step is to get clear on what that success looks, sounds, and feels like and have a goal or ‘vision’ to work towards. This is essential to be motivated and on track for the long-term. 

Okay, so how do we go about creating a vision?

I’m going to take you through a simple process to help you start to come up with a vision of where you want to go. In a moment, I’m going to ask you a few questions. I want you to think about the answers in your head rather than writing them down and then when I’ve finished asking you questions,  then I’ll get you to write down what came up for you.

If you sometimes find visualising or imagining a challenge that’s okay - just notice the answers that come up for you to my questions.

Sitting up tall, I want you to take a deep breath in and as you breathe out just relax. Then breathe in and as you breathe out, close your eyes. 

And to begin with, to put you in a great state, I’d like you to picture in your mind’s eye, someone you love and who loves you…. 

And now I want you to think of a happy moment with that person. A time when you laughed out loud or when you had a big smile on your face. 

Feeling into your heart what this person means to you… and how grateful you are for that person and how they have contributed to your life…

Now breathing deeply and  feeling great, I want you to start to picture where you want to be with your health. What would your body and health be like if you were at your BEST? 

What could you create if you were absolutely committed – what would you want? 

• How would you stand if you were at your best in terms of your health? What would your posture be like?  How would you hold your body?
• How would you look and how would you feel every day? What would be the emotions you would be enjoying feeling on a daily basis?
• What would you be wearing? What sort of clothes? How would they fit and feel? 
• Allow your imagination to take flight and create and dream of what you truly want.

• What could you do physically if you were at your best? What sort of activities would you do and how would you feel doing those activities?
• How would your energy levels be every day, if you were at your best in terms of your health?
• What would people around you be saying and how would you be interacting with people?
• What would you be saying to yourself?

• How would it affect your confidence?
• Add as much detail as you want to this picture…

• Take your image and make it bigger, and brighter, and bring it closer.
• Now I want you to lock in that image and then open your eyes.

Well done and welcome back! Okay so on your piece of paper I’d like you to write out your wellness vision using “I am statements”.

E.g. I am standing in this way… I am wearing… I am feeling …

Add as much detail as possible so that if you gave your vision to someone else, they could see you exactly as you did in your vision, with all of those amazing I AM statements. I am feeling, I am doing, I am hearing, I am seeing…

~~~~~~~

Well done for creating your vision, or starting to create it, knowing that you can go back to it whenever you want and adjust it and update it however you want. As an extra tip to help bring your vision to life I’d highly recommend finding some photos that represent what you’re working towards e.g. picture of someone wearing an outfit that you like or doing an activity that you want to be doing e.g. someone hiking on holiday, someone dancing in a dress with confidence, someone playing with their kids or grandkids with energy and having fun. YOu can even stick a photo of your face over their face, which sounds silly but it actually works to trick your mind into thinking that’s you and that’s the reality you’re working towards!

So, just noticing how you feel after doing that simple and quick visualization practice. I trust you’re perhaps feeling more inspired and motivated. 

That was to get you set up for Step 1 on the 3-minute formula. Now that you have your vision, or the beginnings of one, the first part of the 3 minute formula is to regularly spend 1 minute focusing on and connecting to your vision. This simple act will remind you of exactly where you want to go. This is such a powerful way to get back on track. 

I’d recommend finding some music that inspires you and then reading at your vision statement, looking at yourphotos and really imagine yourself with these results. See yourself wearing that outfit or doing that activity or being confident and really feel it. This sends a powerful message to your unconscious mind and will impact you throughout the day. It guides you to make better decisions that support you. It will guide you through every decision you make and will keep you on track to where you want to go. It’s simple but incredibly powerful!

Before we finish I want to give you some more context just in case you’re wondering or feeling unsure about what benefit this mindset stuff has. You might be wondering, How is goal setting and visualisation going to help? Isn’t this just a bit ‘woo woo’. You night be saying to yourself I just need to be more disciplined or to have a meal plan! 

Let me address this real fast - in my experience, having a meal plan is rarely the solution to long-term results. A meal plan is definitely very useful but if a meal plan was all it took then everyone who has had WLS would have the results that they want - because usually everyone is given an individualised meal plan when they have their surgery. Maybe you’ve done programs in the past where you followed a meal plan in order to get specific results with your health or weight.

It’s your mindset though that determines whether or not you follow that meal plan. 

It’s your  mindset that keeps you looking for a meal plan that works for you if your current meal plan isn’t working. 

It’s your  mindset that determines whether you adapt and you make the right choices when your environment makes it very difficult to follow that meal plan. 

One of the most important parts of your  mindset is seeing yourself being successful. If you think visualisation doesn’t work, if it’s just ‘woo woo’ then why does pretty much every top olympic athlete visualise? Why does every top business in the world have detailed goals and visions for how they want their business to perform and evolve? 

Visualisation and goal setting really does work and it’s powerful - if it’s put into practice and if it’s applied consistently. 

One approach that tends to work really well for a lot of people  is to have their vision written on a note on your phone, and add pictures that inspire you and then you can take it with you and use it easily.  

From my experience, visualising  will give you a great deal of motivation, happiness and stress reduction. 

You’ll actually really start to enjoy doing this process and look forward to it. You can also find some great music to play when you do it so that makes it even more enjoyable if that’s something that works for you. 

In my next video, I’ll look at the next step of the 3 minute formula which is  all about connecting with your reasons for creating change and getting back on track. This step is going to take your motivation to a whole new level - where you’ll feel even more inspired to create that vision.

And look  if you like this - please do me a favour and share this video with someone, maybe in your family or a friend, maybe someone who has also had WLS and who would also like this and who would need this or get a benefit from this. I’d love it if you could please help me share the message. Obviously this is a free video and I’m just trying to get the message out because I know how much of a difference this can make, so I’d be super grateful for your help in sharing this page. 

So, that’s it for today - thanks again for being here and  I look forward seeing you in the next video.

Here’s To Your Fresh Start!