Day 2: Welcome Program

Mindset – Conspire For Your Success
With Amber Kay 

In today’s video, Amber is going to look at probably the most important piece of the success puzzle – your mindset. Because knowing what to do and doing the right thing on a consistent basis are two completely different matters, and it’s your mind that commands your body.

Amber also shares a simple strategy that will help you to prepare better mentally for what lies ahead and to deal with any fears or doubts that you might might currently have so that you feel more confident and at ease about the future.  

Getting started

We’ve included a simple activity to assist you to start to make some necessary mindset changes to help you adjust to the future that you want.  

You can download the resource here.

Tomorrow’s lesson

We’ll be back tomorrow, talking about how to deal with cravings and emotional eating.

 

You can read the transcript for this video below:

Transcript: Welcome Program - Day 2 (Mindset)

Hi it’s Amber here from Fresh Start and I’m back with Day 2 of your welcome program. You’re probably feeling excited about the possibilities that lie ahead after your surgery, and you may also be feeling a bit fearful and doubtful about it all too. 

Now, I want to help you with that, so today I’m going to focus on the area that we at Fresh Start believe is the most important piece of the success puzzle for you, and in many ways it’s what determines what the final puzzle looks like when all the pieces are connected together! 

I want to share a really simple strategy with you that’s going to help you prepare better mentally for what lies ahead, and also to deal with any of that fear so you can feel more confident and at ease. Now this strategy will also help you to experience better results after your surgery so that you can make the most out of this new opportunity to create a new healthier lifestyle, so that you can enjoy life even more.  

Now as you can see. I’m starting your welcome program with mindset, not nutrition or physical activity, and that may be surprising for you because most people focus on the eating less and moving more approach to getting rid of unwanted excess weight. Most popular TV weight loss and quick-fix programs are all about what people eat and how much they move their bodies, which is definitely part of the solution however those programs and diets are missing the most powerful piece of the puzzle. 

Although strategies around nutrition and movement are clearly important for you, they’re not the place to start. Why? because most people know what to do already. Knowing what to do and actually doing it on a consistent basis however are very different matters. This is why so many people  don’t sustain their results after they’ve reduced some of their excess weight. Why people yo-yo diet and why so many have experienced the pain and the frustration of years of getting lighter and slimmer and then regaining what they’d worked so hard to get rid of, sometimes even gaining more than they started with.

So what determines what we do? Exactly, it’s our mindset. And when we look at what’s ahead for you and how you’re going to navigate the coming days, weeks, months and years, what’s going to determine what YOU do? Your mindset. your psychology.

And that’s the missing piece of the puzzle  that perhaps you haven’t been aware of, or you haven’t known what to do about until now. And what I mean is that it’s how you see yourself and think about yourself. It’s what you unconsciously think you’re really worth. It’s your beliefs about health, nutrition, being active, and what’s possible for you. It’s about where your focus is and what’s important to you. It’s about knowing what you want and most importantly, why you want it. 

It’s about the feelings and emotions you most often do and experience, and it’s about how much ownership and responsibility you take for your results, even if they’re not the results you want. It’s about whether you put your energy into problems, and obstacles, or into solutions and possibilities. It’s how determined and motivated you choose to be. It’s how you handle stress. It’s how you achieve the feelings that you want and how you meet your natural human needs for safety and comfort, and connection. It’s the patterns and habits you’ve built over time that are now automatic and effortless. It’s about how you approach this next chapter of your life, with your intentions for creating lasting and healthy change.

Your mind is the control centre of your life, so it makes sense to harness that power for good, doesn’t it?

I want to be clear here. WLS is physical surgery, not brain surgery, and maybe you think that I’m stating the obvious. My team and I have however had hundreds of conversations with clients who have really struggled with this concept, because no matter what the physical effects of their surgery are, their brain is the same. Same beliefs, same fears, same habits… Which is why Fresh Start places so much value on the mindset side of things with our  tools, resources and support. 

Now remember, struggling with the mindset side of things is not compulsory. You might find that your mindset is totally primed to make all the necessary changes you need to achieve your health and weight goals. The surgery alone can have many positive benefits for your psychology and many patients experience very positive emotional results after their surgery – research has shown consistent uplifts in self love, self care, self confidence, how people see and value themselves and their bodies, body image, and feelings of attractiveness, as well as decreases in anxiety and depression. Other related health benefits – for example, coming off diabetic and blood pressure medication for some – also have a great impact on how great life after surgery can feel.

At the same time, remember that you are going on a journey. A journey where you will have to make changes. And change can be scary sometimes, and exciting at others. So it makes sense to be as equipped as possible doesn't it? Where you have options and choices for how you experience your life after your surgery.

So for example, depending on where your mindset is now, there may be a need for you to re-learn or recreate your relationship with physical movement  – to learn how to make it fun and enjoyable so that it simply becomes part of your lifestyle rather than something on your to do list, and I’ll talk more about that later in the program. You may also need to re-learn or recreate your relationship with food for example, especially if your strategy to achieve comfort, or to reduce stress or tiredness or boredom or something else in the past has been to eat. This is especially important If you feel that food controls you now,  because now is the right time to start to embrace the idea that it can be the other way around.

Remember, all of this can be achieved, step-by-step. There is no hurry and there is no rush – you can do this in your own time, at a pace that’s right for you. And we’ll be helping you to adjust your mindset with Fresh Start, giving you support, resources and inspiration when you want it. Part of this process is seeing how you do feel after surgery mentally, as it’s likely you will feel stronger, more determined and more positive – and if you’re listening to me now then you’re already taking action that is definitely going to reap results, even if it’s initially about being more aware, so that you can make different choices in the future, which will give you different results!

Right now you might be feeling fearful and doubtful about the future, even if you are also feeling excited about the possibilities that lie ahead. There is no doubt that your life will change significantly in many ways after your surgery, and it’s impossible to predict exactly how, so you may have questions such as:

• Am I ready for this?
• Can I sustain this pre-op and post-op diet?
• I’ve heard all sorts of things about life and eating in the first few weeks after surgery – how will I cope?
• What if I don’t succeed in getting rid of my unwanted weight?
• Or you may have other questions coming from a very understandable place of fear or doubt.                   

There is no way of knowing exactly what your personal pre- and post-surgery journey will be like, and it would be easy to get caught up in the uncertainty of it all. So a really simple strategy that you can use when you notice that you’re experiencing lots of doubts and fears, is to focus on what you want for yourself as a result of the surgery and your future potential healthy lifestyle, and even more importantly why you want it. 

When you’re experiencing and getting caught up in the doubt and the fear it’s because your focus is actually on what you don’t want – all the negative and unwanted ‘what if’ scenarios you can create in your head, which then makes you feel the fear, the doubt and the uncertainty. The fastest way to turn this around and to feel more calm, more relaxed, and more positive and empowered, is to focus on and think about what you do want and to stay focused on that.

One way to do this is to find a picture or photo that represents what you want to achieve so you might get a cropped picture of someone who has the health and vitality that you want, or doing an activity that you want to be able to do so you can't see who they are. You can even crop the picture and have your head on top as this helps to trick your mind into creating a new identity for yourself. So when you notice the fear coming up, you get your picture out, or you look at it, and you remember what you’re working towards.

Even if you’re not clear yet on what you truly want, the most powerful gift you can give to yourself and remind yourself of now and whenever you’re noticing the doubt and the fear is to connect with  WHY you’re making these changes. Why it’s important to you and what it’s going to give you. When you want something, and you have really important reasons for wanting it, then these reasons will drive you, they’ll motivate you and they’ll inspire you. It’s your reasons that are going to help you move past any of the challenges you may face on your journey to better health, AND they’ll help you feel so much better and more determined right now as your surgery approaches, enabling you to distract yourself, to refocus your efforts and move past the struggles you might be facing. 

So have a think about ALL of the reasons why you want to create a new healthy lifestyle for yourself. How is it going to improve the other areas of your life that are important to you, by being healthier and moving towards your ideal weight? So for example, maybe you're doing this so you have more energy to be with your children, or to be around to see your grandchildren, or to improve your career, or to have more energy to help others. Keep bringing your focus back to what’s important to you and how this is going to help you.

To help start that ball rolling, I’ve given you a simple activity today to get you motivated to do what’s going to be necessary on this journey, to overcome your doubts, and to assist you to make the changes that will really help now and afterwards. You can download it on this page and I trust you’ll find it really valuable.

If I was going to ask you to remember just one thing from this welcome program, then let it be the overall importance and power of your mindset, and of getting clear on what you want and why you want it. You’re probably going to need assistance and support so I want you to remember the importance of connecting with us and using your access to our resources and group calls early in your journey, so that you can ensure you are equipped and empowered to have your mind conspire for your amazing success. 

Enjoy today’s resource and I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow with the next stage of your welcome program.