Robyn Spurr

Personal Health and Weight Loss Coaching For Women

Simplify

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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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Ignoring the Pressure to Be Productive

COVID-19 has effectively blown through our lives like an F5 tornado and completely uprooted our sense of safety and normalcy.

This is a situation unlike any we’ve experienced before. Most people are feeling a combination of unprecedented fear + uncertainty.

When will I be able to (safely) fly and see my Mom again?

Will my sister/husband/friend lose their job/business?

Will there be toilet paper at the grocery store today?

Will school reopen in the Fall?

Another consequence of COVID-19 (and contributor to anxiety) is that we’re being urged to use this time to learn a new language or train for a half marathon or improve ourselves in some way.

The pressure is convincing. I fully admit to moments where I considered starting a garden or cleaning + organizing the basement.

Ultimately, I didn’t do either of those things.

It’s okay to opt out of COVID self-improvement/hustle culture.

Hustle culture is the societal standard that you can only succeed by exerting yourself at max capacity. Every single day. Hustle culture does not take lunch breaks. Hustle culture does not slow down. Even when faced with a global pandemic. Especially when faced with a global pandemic.

No more two-hour daily commute? You better fill that time with something productive.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been invited to not one, not two, but THREE workout accountability groups on Facebook. A virtual home for posting quarantine workout plans and Peloton stats and miles ran or meters rowed each day.

While I believe it’s important to take care of our physical body right now, I quietly removed myself from each and every group.

Taking time to do things that aren’t necessarily productive, or part of a pages-long to-do list, reminds us that there is more to our time on this planet than just getting things done.

If it feels good to set big goals, have at it. But if the basics are all you can manage, that’s okay too.

There is no right way to “do” a pandemic.

I am safe. I am healthy. My loved ones are safe and healthy. And that’s all that matters to me right now.

I am grateful to be privileged enough to even consider participating in COVID hustle culture.

The internet wants you to believe you aren’t doing enough with all that “extra time” you have now. But staying inside and attending to basic needs is plenty.

💙 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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Eating With Structure + Freedom

Meals. What on earth are we doing if we’re not eating meals?

I will tell you: We’re doing things like…

  • bingeing 
  • grazing
  • fasting
  • picking
  • snacking
  • dieting
  • starving
  • and eating all day long

Fifteen thousand years ago (or thereabouts) our ancestors stopped grazing all day as they roamed. They settled down, sowed crops, and developed a pleasant schedule of getting together regularly to eat. We went from eating all day long, berry after berry, to sitting down to lunch.

Regular, repeated mealtimes is a human design pattern that stayed in place until kids had to get up at 4am for swim practice, and bagels or Pop Tarts were consumed while driving.

Until we were forced to take jobs that don’t even allow us bathroom breaks, let alone meals (never mind that’s illegal).

Until parents had to work late and kids had rehearsal and families found it hard to get together at the end of the day.

That’s how eating meals disappeared.

You can still see people observing this human eating pattern in places like Mexico, Japan, Spain and France.

I love eating regular meals at regular-ish mealtimes because it makes it easier to answer the following question…

Should I eat this?

If it’s mealtime: Eat.
If it’s NOT mealtime: Don’t eat until mealtime.

Important note: When I say “meal” I mean “an interval of eating”. This doesn’t have to mean “square” meals, or a certain number of courses, or any prescriptions that you don’t want to follow. It could look like a “square” meal, or it could look like a snack, or it could look like a latte. You could be sitting down or standing up.

By “meal” I just mean a time when you consume nutrition.

I highly suggest finding a meal “structure” that generally works for you most days of the week.

This might be breakfast, lunch, snack and dinner. It might be tiny snack, medium snack and giant dinner. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you…

  1. establish a pattern (which helps calm and restore hunger hormones)
  2. that works for your life and your schedule
  3. and provides you enough food to get to the next meal

Note: Meals have a beginning, a middle and an end. There’s a gap before you eat again, and it is important to build in a gap.

And if you have a giant craving or feel a binge coming on, tell yourself you’ll satisfy that craving at the very next meal. The main thing here is to create a structure of your own design and stick to that structure.

This is how we dismantle grazing. This is how we eliminate diet mentality (i.e. I was “good” so I can have this treat, I was “bad” so no breakfast tomorrow).

This is how we end the constant…

Should I have a cookie? Maybe just one. But I know I’ll want more if I have one. How about I have a few today and then tomorrow I’ll go for a long run. Or skip lunch.

This balance of structure and freedom has been used successfully to treat binge eating disorder. But it also works beautifully to eliminate grazing + create a healthy relationship with food after years (or decades) of on-and-off dieting.

Will you get it right immediately? Hells no. This is an experiment, and of course you’ll want to adjust as you go. And by “as you go” I mean take note of what’s working and what’s not working and try to improve timing and amounts and types of food at your very next opportunity, which is the NEXT MEAL. 

Don’t spontaneously decide to extend the meal by going back for more helpings. Have an idea of what the meal consists of from the beginning. If you don’t, your hey-let’s-eat-more habit will kick in with some reasonable-sounding arguments about just this once. Don’t force yourself to eat at the previously scheduled time if you really don’t want to. Eat later! No big deal. Adjust the day’s schedule as needed, and maybe try a different schedule tomorrow.

Don’t force yourself to eat more than you want at a meal. You can have more soon, because the next meal is coming within a few hours. You’ll make it even if you don’t finish this meal.

Don’t force yourself to wait for the scheduled mealtime if you’re gonna perish of hunger. But get back to some kind of schedule as soon as you can, and maybe be more generous with portions.

A rule of thumb that you might use is to schedule meals no more than about four hours apart.* You might have breakfast at 8, lunch at 12:30, a snack at 4, dinner at 7:30 (just for example). That will both keep you from getting too hungry and make it likely you’ll be ready for something.

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Creating Space for Change

Americans spend north of $60 billion annually trying to lose weight, on everything from gym memberships to weight-loss programs to fat burning shakes.

I think it’s safe to say the approach we’ve taken so far isn’t really working out for us.

But why?

In order to achieve lasting results, we need to transform our deeply rooted habits. And changing our habits requires space + time + energy + engagement.

Learning and assimilating new + healthier habits is tricky if you spend your days and weeks running from one thing to another with barely enough time to sit and enjoy a meal – or prepare a meal – or get a good night’s sleep.

You can’t learn and do better when you’re always adding more + more + more to an already overloaded plate.

If you want to improve your health, don’t do it in a way that will actually interfere with it.

Begin by taking an honest look at how you currently spend your days and ask…

  • What can I let go of?
  • Where can I create space?
  • Is now the right time?

Changing your habits – and ultimately achieving your health goals means giving yourself time to notice + reflect + process + experiment.

Even when we’re only working on one habit at a time.

My most successful clients are fully engaged. Coaching isn’t treated like something to be “gotten over with”.

The recipe for success has nothing to do with how much you know about nutrition or exercise.

The “secret” to success?

Create space. Change one thing at a time. Commit. Take action.

XO ~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.