Robyn Spurr

Personal Health and Weight Loss Coaching For Women

Awareness

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I Gained Weight

I gained a few pounds this year.

And this was the BEST GIFT for so many reasons.

I lost my weight 20 years ago. About 50 pounds. And since then, I’ve kept within my healthy range. But I recently crept into a place where I just didn’t feel good in my body. 

The last few months have been a bit rough. My father in law died in December + my Dad died three weeks later + COVID. 

Note: This is not a plea for sympathy. Life is just hard sometimes. And when shit gets hard, my husband bakes bread like he is feeding an army. FOR REAL.

Over the past few months, I was eating too much fresh bread + drinking too many gin and tonics + generally snacking more frequently than usual. 

This is probably a good time to share a “rule” I adhere to around weight gain. 

I never blame other people or circumstances for gaining weight. There is only person who decides what and how much I eat – and that person is ME. 

So, I got to work. I faced the weight gain with curiosity + a “let’s figure this out” attitude. And that’s why it was a gift. Because it put me in YOUR shoes + helped me generate a bunch of new ideas for helping my clients lose weight.

For the entire month of May I started doing the things (or thinking I was doing the things). Cutting back here and there. Less alcohol. Less bread. Hiking in the morning AND evening. And the scale didn’t budge.  

Sometimes it takes a minute (or a month) to figure things out. Sometimes we need to go from gaining to maintaining first.

But in the moment, my brain began swirling with…

  • Guess it’s just going to be harder to lose weight at 45
  • Maybe you just need to settle in at 140
  • But I don’t understand WHY I’m not losing. I’m doing ALL THE THINGS!

I put an end to that BS thinking FAST. Because it was in no way going to help me solve this.

What I did instead was get curious + shift into problem solving mode.

Then…

For a few days in a row in June, I crushed it. I stuck to my plan. And the scale went up. Here’s what I know FOR SURE after a decade of coaching women on weight loss.

The scale doesn’t always reflect our actions. Because hormones + weather + hydration + physiology. We have to stay focused + be patient and then BOOM, the scale moves.

No matter what that scale said, I was proud of the way I showed up and wasn’t going to let the scale steal that from me. I wasn’t going to throw away all those good feelings because I didn’t lose half a frickin’ pound.

But what we normally do is tell ourselves… 

  • This isn’t working!
  • It’s not fair. 
  • I’m broken. 

Which inevitably leads to a pity party with pizza and donuts and screwing ourselves over. 

I follow the same advice I give to my clients. Lose the weight in a way that is sustainable + you ENJOY. Losing the weight and keeping it off doesn’t have to be hard. But that’s what we’ve been sold by the diet industry.

Eat 1200 calories (HARD!)

Cut out the carbs (SERIOUSLY?!)

Count every calorie (SUCKS!)

Trade in all the foods you love for foods that taste like crap (NOPE!)

And what makes it hardest of all is while we’re trying to follow some hideous diet plan, we’re usually BEATING OURSELVES UP the entire time.

  • I suck
  • I don’t deserve food that tastes good
  • I’m disgusting
  • Look at that belly
  • There is something wrong with me

I’ve come to the conclusion that being mean to ourselves is the #1 reason we don’t succeed at losing the weight + keeping it off. Followed close behind by believing stories that aren’t serving us like, “I don’t have the time,” or, “But I just love food too much,” or,” My family will SUFFER if I make myself a priority.”

Our brain is wired to look for problems + what is WRONG, and it takes a bit of practice to unwind that pattern.

There are two questions I ask myself every single morning as part of my “Plan + Assess” routine. I’ve started asking my clients to do the same.   

(1) What did I do well yesterday?

(2) What is one thought I want to deliberately think about myself today?

My answer to question #2 today – I am a weight loss badass!

When we feel better, we do better.

💙 Robyn

Interested in a one-on-one coaching relationship with me? It would be an honor to work with you if and when the time feels right.

To learn more about Personal Health Coaching click HERE. 

To schedule a Discovery Session click HERE.

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You Probably Won’t “Conquer” Emotional Eating – and That’s Okay

Many of my clients tell me they want to eliminate emotional eating forever.

As someone who has struggled with emotional eating, I completely understand the desire to make this behavior go away forever. To never feel compelled to turn to food for soothing or stress relief or out of boredom again.

Some people get there, but most don’t – and that’s okay. You can make mountains of progress without conquering emotional eating altogether.

In my opinion, it makes more sense to work towards less frequent and less intense episodes of emotional overeating. Attempting to “end” emotional overeating once and for all sets us up for disappointment. Any time we overeat, we feel as though we’ve failed. And feeling like a failure is not motivating.

When we work on our emotional overeating from a place of compassion + “aim for a little better”, here’s what tends to happen:

* We build better ways of coping with stress in general. We start adding tools to the toolbox. Instead of JUST eating, we have many more options, even if we still keep eating in the toolbox as one choice.

* We start organizing our lives to remove the stressors we don’t need and can control (e.g. whether we write the holiday letter this year).

* We start realizing that we are less helpless, hopeless, and powerless than the story we told ourselves in the past.

* We cope less with food.

When we DO cope with food:

* We’re consciously aware of it and stay much more “checked in”.

* Eating episodes are less epic and less intense. We eat one chocolate bar instead of three + we’ll often be able to stop well before the point of fullness. We’ll often get to a “that’s enough; I got what I needed” place much more quickly.

* We’re able to recover from any eating episodes more quickly.

* We bring more gentleness, kindness, and compassion to ourselves in our difficult moments.

Rather than “I’m a weak sack of crap”, we think “Hey friend, you’re having a rough time right now, huh? What can we do to calm down and feel better? I’m here with you, you’re OK, we’ll get through this together.”

So rather than “all or nothing, conquer this forever”, shoot for “a little less, a little better, a little bit at a time”.

And maybe you WILL conquer emotional eating forever – but if you don’t, it’ll be way better than it was. 

💙 Robyn

Interested in a one-on-one coaching relationship with me? It would be an honor to work with you if and when the time feels right.

To learn more about Personal Health Coaching click HERE. 

To schedule a Discovery Session click HERE.

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Eliminating Triggers

The path to changing our behavior has very little to do with resolve.

We achieve control, not through willpower but by finding ways to take willpower entirely out of the equation.

The central force for eliminating bad habits, according to social psychologist Wendy Wood, author of “Good Habits, Bad Habits,” is friction. In other words, making bad habits inconvenient.

She cites the ways in which increased friction has produced a decline in smoking: laws that ban it in restaurants, bars, airplanes, and trains; taxes that have helped triple the price of cigarettes in the U.S. in the past twenty years; the purge of cigarettes from vending machines, and of tobacco ads from TV and the radio.

We can apply the same concept to eating behaviors. But first, I think it’s important to explore the science behind cravings.

In an ideal world, your desire to eat would only be triggered by the internal signals that come up from your body to your brain.

Hungry. Seek food!

Except we no longer need to seek food. And our desire to eat is triggered by so much more than physical hunger. We’re bombarded with food all day every day and images of food wherever we turn.

The main problem we face is that seeing + smelling + thinking about food creates an effect that mimics what we experience when we’re physically hungry.

When you see + smell + imagine food, all the same processes that happen when you need food occur. The signals that reach your brain through your senses activate a neurological cascade that result in a surge of insulin + a drop in blood glucose. Lower blood glucose tells your brain you need to eat. Additionally, your stomach relaxes so you have a bigger space for food + need more to make it feel full.

This happens in response to simply seeing, smelling or thinking about food. Which was super helpful back when food was scarce. Today though, not so much.

If you’ve ever wondered why using willpower to overcome a craving feels like pushing a boulder up a hill, this is why. When we don’t respond to the cascade of biological events with food – it feels kind of terrible. Even when we don’t need food.

The most effective way to control our cravings is to eliminate triggers as much as possible.

Since Halloween is just a few days away, here are a few tips specific to Halloween candy.

  • Don’t buy candy until the day before Halloween (or the day of)
  • Have someone in your family hide it if it’s already been purchased
  • Buy something you don’t like
  • Leave the leftovers in a bowl outside at the end of the night (they will ABSOLUTELY disappear)

Bottom line, make healthy options convenient + visible and unhealthy options inconvenient + out of sight.

💙 Robyn

Interested in a one-on-one coaching relationship with me? It would be an honor to work with you if and when the time feels right.

To learn more about Personal Health Coaching click HERE. 

To schedule a Discovery Session click HERE.

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The Unfillable Hole

In the minutes before yoga class a few weeks ago, I saw my friend Shana walk into the studio. Happy to see her, I jumped up and immediately heard a POP in my leg.

Not good.

But because I can be stubborn and willful, I decided to stay.

It’s not that bad.

You can make it through.

Come on Robyn, you’re tough. You got this.

As soon as I half attempted Warrior 2 pose, it became VERY clear I needed to go.

Tail tucked between my legs, I grabbed my mat and hobbled out of class.

Tim, my Godsend of a physical therapist, diagnosed the injury the next day (a strained gastrocnemius muscle) and set me up with a few weeks’ worth of PT appointments.

It wasn’t as bad as I feared, but it would take some time to heal.

With extra time on my hands, I did what I always do – analyze and overthink and ultimately, look for the lesson.

The lesson was a familiar one. I’d been pushing myself too hard. My body sent warning signals in the days before the POP, but I ignored them.

Why?

Because like so many women out there, I struggle with feeling like I’m enough.

You should be stronger.

You should be thinner.

You should be working harder. Volunteering. Socializing more.

A few days ago, I read this post by Seth Godin.

How big is your unfillable hole?

It doesn’t really matter, does it?

All of your bad habits (and some of your good ones) exist to fill that hole, or to protect it from being seen.

And as long as our mission is to fill the hole, and as long as the hole remains unfillable (and after all this time, if it’s not filled yet, good luck with that) it doesn’t really matter how small or trivial or unmentionable the hole is.

It still drives us.

The first step to living with it is to acknowledge it.

You can’t make it go away.

But you can learn to dance with it.

No amount of meters rowed on a rower or FitBit steps taken or pounds lost or success will lead to this elusive destination known as enough (or perfect). Being “enough” is my unfillable hole. For you it might be feeling lovable or safe or whole or seen. The unfillable hole might be a trauma you experienced or the loss of a loved one. Or – you may not have an unfillable hole at all.

What I love most about Seth Godin’s post is the line, “you can’t make it go away.” It’s the trying to make it go away that usually gets us in trouble, yeah? All the chocolate and wine and Prozac and marathons and Netflix binges in the world can’t fill the void.

We can’t make it go away, but we can acknowledge and accept it. We can increase our ability to practice self-compassion. We can build up our self-esteem. We can learn from missteps, forgive ourselves for being human and move forward with a bit more wisdom than before.

I like to say I’m a perfectionist in recovery. “Enough” will always be unattainable. I will suffer relapses (sometimes daily). And that’s okay.

The unfillable hole won’t go away, but my dance with it can become more graceful.

💙 Robyn

To learn more about Personal Health Coaching click HERE.