Ep. 256: Wanting MORE

Ready to change your mind about weight loss? Grab The 5-0 Method to lose all the weight you want and keep it off forever.

Want a practical solution to the problem of wanting MORE? Then you’re in luck, because that’s what we’re serving up on today’s episode!

You’re serving up a meal (or a snack) and think to yourself, “I want more.” Or you’re enjoying a workout and think, “I wish there were more like this.” Or you’re not getting the results you wanted from a program, and you’re disappointed because you thought there’d be “more” to it.

Are you tired of generic advice to “embrace and be grateful for what you have” and want a practical solution to the problem of wanting MORE? Then you’re in the right place, because that’s what we’re serving up on today’s episode of the Fitness Matters podcast.

What You’ll Learn


👉  What you REALLY want when your brain asks for “more”
👉  The uncomfortable PROBLEM with “more”
👉  The SOLUTION to wanting “more”
👉  An ACTION PLAN for having enough

Transcript

You're listening to the Fitness Matters Podcast with Pahla B, and this is episode number 256, "Wanting MORE". Welcome to the Fitness Matters Podcast, where every week we talk about the fitness matters that matter to you. I'm Pahla B, YouTuber, certified life and weight loss coach, soon-to-be author, and your best middle-aged fitness friend. Are you ready to talk about the fitness mindset that matters to you? Me too. Let's go.

Before we dive into today's topic, here's a quick message about the Pahla B Wellness Over 50 Book Club in partnership with Chirp Audiobooks. Our latest pick is The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion by Christopher Germer, which you can grab at a steep discount with no monthly subscription fees at chirpbooks.com/pahla, that's P-A-H-L-A. While you're there, be sure to click the follow button to get exclusive access, updates and register for the live Book Club event on Friday, October 21st. I'll see you there. Hello, hello, my friends. You guys, it just occurred to me while I'm sitting here in the dark, recording today's podcast, because it's really early in the morning because that's what I do, it just occurred to me that I am going to have to record a new intro very soon. And in fact, oh my gosh, I'm going to have to record a new intro, well, not before you hear this because I'm not doing it today, but I'm going to have to record a new intro really soon because by the time you actually hear this podcast, I'm going to be done with my book.

I'm going to literally be an author, not a soon-to-be author, which is an argument that I've had with members of my Get Your Goal Group, which is a whole other conversation, but I'm going to be actually done writing my book. Not finished, I'll be done, but not finished. My book doesn't publish until next July, by the way, July of 2023 depending on when you're listening to this. My book publishes in July of 2023, so by the time you hear this, I'm going to be done with the writing when I'm recording it. I still have more writing to do, but then there's more editing back and forth, and publicity, and actual publishing, and waiting, and all the kinds of things that go into actually publishing a book. But I will have finished what I think, because I don't know, what I think is the hardest part because I will have finished the actual writing. So far, from what I can tell, the editing process is not going to be super painful.

My editor has already edited some of my book, and she had a really gentle touch and/or I'm a lot more editable than I realized. I think it's a combination of both. I think that by the time I send her stuff I have edited, edited it a couple of times, just so that it meets my own internal standard. And I'm also simultaneously not married to any of it. I like what I've written, as long as she doesn't want to change the content of what I'm saying, I don't care how she wants me to say it because I do think that editing is going to help it, on a line level, I think it's going to help it be an easier book to read. By the way, do you know that I'm writing a book? It just occurred to me that I've been talking about this for quite a while. And if you're one of those people who skips over the intro, you might be like, "Huh?" I'm writing a book and I'm almost done with my book and I'm going to be a published author in July of 2023.

And I'm very excited about that, and it has absolutely nothing to do with our topic today, which is wanting more, which is something that's been on my mind for a while. For numerous reasons, this is something that I feel in my own life, on a deep soul level, but that I get comments and hear your stories. I mean, the way that I get content for every podcast ever is by being on Facebook and YouTube and in my email inbox, and listening to what you are saying, what you are asking me for, and what seems to be a sticking point for you. And generally speaking, I will make a podcast because it's something that I deeply relate to, in that it's something that I've struggled with and fixed, or it's something that I've seen other people struggle with and been able to help because I understand the big picture of it.

And I think that's where I want to start with this concept, is that when you understand the big picture and then learn how to hear it, how it shows up in your head, that that will be the way for you to help yourself. Here's where I'm going with this. On the daily, I get comments on my YouTube from somebody who will say something like, "Oh my gosh, I love this video. Please make more just like this." Where it shows up for me personally is every single night when I am dishing up my dinner and putting a spoonful of whatever it is onto my plate, my brain's like, "You could have more, maybe I'd like more. I don't know if that's enough, go ahead and put more on there." No, I don't always get comments, I have gotten one question recently that was asking me about the Get Your Goal group, which is my membership group that I absolutely love, it's a lot like the podcast. And this was the question that I got was, "Well, but I'm already listening to the podcast. What more could there be?"

And I have also received a comment from somebody who was in the Get Your Goal group who'd left, and said, "I just thought that there would be more." And I find this fascinating from every aspect of it because before I tell you that there's always more food, let me say that if you are a person who struggles with food scarcity, I do apologize for the insensitivity of that comment because I don't mean that you personally maybe have more than enough food. In the world, there is enough food to feed everybody. I mean, that is half of the food scarcity problem is that there is also tons of food waste. But when your brain specifically, when you are dishing up whatever meal is, I'm making an assumption and I do hope that this applies to you, that there is more to be had. And I mean, gosh, in the case of, for example, my YouTube videos, every time somebody says, "More like this, please," I'm always like, "I already have more."

I already have well over a thousand videos. And you're absolutely right, that some of them don't apply to you. I mean, there are some old videos that are not moderate, not meant for weight loss, they were very appropriate for me when I was in my early forties, which is how long I've been on YouTube, because it's been 10 years. And so no, there might not be a lot more for you, there might not be thousands of videos for you. But generally speaking, I mean, I can't think of a single piece of content that I have made that was really truly one and done. Like seated videos, if you have an injury, I have well over a month's worth. I have 36 seated videos. Anything like low-impact cardio, I definitely have hundreds of those. Strength training, hundreds of those. Dynamic strength training, hundreds of those. Maybe not hundreds, definitely dozens. Dozens up to a hundred. Push days, dozens up to a hundred or more. Recovery days, recovery days, I don't have a million, but gosh, I bet you I have, again, dozens up to a hundred. Eh, probably not a hundred.

I bet I have up to 50 recovery-type days like stretching, gentle, something very simple. 10-minute videos, dozens up to hundreds of those. Longer videos, I mean, you know, maybe you don't know, my philosophy about moderation. I don't make a lot of longer videos. I do have a generous handful, maybe dozens of longer videos. I used to make longer videos a lot more often than I make them now because I mean, the last time I made a video that was over 30 minutes long, oh my gosh, that was well over a year ago. And that was only because it was a paid request because it was against my better judgment. I did not want to make a longer video. Y'all, the reason I make videos that are 20 to 25 minutes long is because that is my sweet spot. That's what feels best to me. That's why I acknowledge that as being really good for moderation is because it's what works for me. You should always pick what works for you. For some of you, it's going to be a lot less.

For some of you, it might be a little bit more. Your body knows, and it's sort of where we're going with this, sort of. Oh, but let me finish telling you that when your brain is asking for more food, your body probably isn't. There's a big conversation to be had here about hunger and hunger cues and how they work, and how hunger is not 100% reliable because A, you can lose your hunger cues when you are exercising too much and eating too little, and B, there's a psychological component to hunger. When you eat at the same time every day, you do condition yourself to be hungry at that time of day. And there's also just the simple fact of when you think about food, that you can create a feeling of hunger in your body from thinking about food. Hunger, in that sense, is a feeling, an emotion, the same way that other emotions are. You create it in your body, the feeling in your body, by thinking. It also has an automaticity to it that you don't have to be thinking about food in order to feel hungry.

But because that's not the only way that you can create hunger in your body. That's why I say that it's unreliable. But here's the thing that I'm going to tell you. When you are hitting your calorie target for the day, it actually is, and I'm going to use the word enough food for your body. You are meeting your body's caloric needs when you are hitting your calorie target because if you have weight to lose, you have stored energy on your body, on your person, that your body can convert into fuel. You have enough energy to exist, to go about your day, to do the things that you are doing. Your body always has energy in reserve. I mean, worst-case scenario, your body could access stored fat, it could also, and unfortunately this is what happens sometimes, it could access energy from your muscles. It could literally break down your muscles to have energy for what it needs to do it. Unfortunately, it chooses that sometimes.

Your body makes choices for lots of different reasons, that's why I tell you, and I apologize for this left turn, but I think this is really good information for you, your body chooses where it's going to access energy from for its own myriad of reasons. And it has almost nothing to do with where you want the energy to come from. Meaning that you and I would always be like, "Yes, take it from my butt. Come on, I've got plenty of stored energy there." Or wherever, wherever you are storing energy that you don't care for. Yeah you would love to be able to say, "Please take stored energy from this particular part of my arm, or from this particular part of my thigh." Your body is almost never going to make that choice, your body's making choices based on what it feels like it needs. And lots of reasons that, I mean, scientists don't understand, that you and I don't understand, and that we don't have control over. Your body's going to do what your body's going to do. But where I was going with this from is that you have enough energy.
Your brain would like more energy, it would like more variety, it would like more videos like this, please, it would like more than the podcast. And let me tell you what the solution is here because have you noticed how low grade uncomfortable that is to want more? The reason your brain is offering you that you want more is because there's a quiet little thought behind there is that this isn't enough. And when you think that you can feel that low grade pain, that low grade discomfort, that low grade, for me, it brings up the word melancholy. And I'm not sure if that's always appropriate. Sometimes I'm sure it is, and I'm actually really curious now why my brain thought of melancholy with wanting more, and I'm going to explore that after I'm done with this podcast. I'm not going to spend too much time on it right this second, except for of course my brain's working on that in the background right now.

Point being, that you know what that feels like to think you don't have enough, that longing feeling of wanting more is uncomfortable. It's not a happy feeling, it's not a good feeling, which dun, dun, dun, here we go with the two-step tool I'm going to refer you to, I think it's episode 89, Mind Management, where we talk about the two-step tool. But here it is in a nutshell. Find your thoughts, decide if they're helpful. We just found a thought, that's not enough. And the way we know whether or not it's helpful is by asking ourselves how it feels. That thought doesn't feel good. A good feeling would be something happy, excited, surprised, calm, confident, compassionate, enjoyable. One of the good feelings is how you know that a thought is helpful to get where you want to go. A thought that doesn't feel good, the thought that feels bad, melancholy, for example, is not a helpful thought to get you where you want to go. So this isn't enough isn't a helpful thought.

And I will tell you that while I was taking notes for this podcast, what I wrote down as the solution, because here's what I normally do, on my notes I'll have the title and then I'll have a little section that I call problem and then some examples underneath that, and then a section that I call solution. And the first thing that I wrote down, and I wrote it down and I was like, "This is the dumbest solution you've ever written down, Pahla." And I mean, okay, that's not a nice thing to say, but I was kind of laughing at myself because it's not, it's not a helpful solution. What I wrote down was embrace what you already have. And then underneath it I wrote because it's true. That's not helpful advice at all. But this is the kind of advice that people will tell you, embrace what you already have. I mean, I already told you I have thousands of videos, I have thousands of hours of content in the Get Your Goal group.

You, more than likely, have enough food and your calorie target is enough fuel to get you through the day. I was already basically trying to tell you, "You have enough," but how do you feel when you think, "I have enough"? And you're thinking it in that way where you're trying to force yourself to embrace what you already have. It's not helpful, it doesn't feel good, it doesn't feel like enough. So here's what I actually want you to do. I have practical advice for something to do to help you feel as though you are embracing what you already have, to help you recognize the enoughness of the resources that you already have. And why don't you ask yourself? Because when your brain wants more, it's seeking pleasure. And when your brain thinks that you don't have enough, it's trying to avoid the pain of not enoughness. So we're going to ask ourselves two questions.

The first question is, what is the pleasure that you're seeking? And really dig into this. You might be thinking, "Well, food feels pleasurable." Okay, but really, honestly, why? Dig into what that pleasure is. What words would you use? And why do you think that pleasure comes from food? Because let me be really, really clear here, pleasure doesn't come from things ever. Pleasure is a feeling, which means that it comes from your thoughts, always, every single time. We all intrinsically think that food is pleasurable. It isn't though, it is food. Technically speaking, I mean, this is why fitness trainers will be like, "Food is fuel, think about it that way." And that's real nice except for the fact that we have billions of messages that have come to us from the minute we're born that food is pleasure, and here's what I'm asking you to do.

Figure out exactly what pleasure it is that you are seeking, and what the thought is that you associate with food that creates a pleasurable feeling for you, so that you can figure out how to create that for yourself without food or without more videos or without more content or without more. More is not a pleasure in and of itself. The reason you want more is because you are seeking some really specific kind of pleasure. And I would love to give you more, I would love to give you the specific example that would really hit the nail on the head for you. But this is so individual and it's so varied. It really does depend on where you are seeking more as to what that pleasure will be for you. I really encourage you to dig into this and really, really, really pull apart pleasure from things. Things do not have intrinsic, pleasurable qualities. Things help you access thoughts that create a pleasurable feeling. Figure out what the thought is because here's the thing, you can think that thought anytime. Anytime.

It's available to you without more videos, it's available to you without more content, it's available to you without more food. And far more important for most of these examples that I've already come up with is to ask yourself, this is the second question, what the pain is that you are avoiding. Because here's the thing, when you are wanting more food, the pain that your brain thinks that it is avoiding is a feeling of emptiness, deprivation, not enoughness, not having enough melancholy really specifically in whatever example popped into my brain that I haven't accessed yet. Your brain would like to seek a feeling of pleasure and avoid a feeling of pain. And I say pain, sometimes when I say pain, I think that you think or that you are picturing something that's physically painful, literally breaking your leg or falling down and hitting your head. The discomfort of your feelings is not necessarily physically painful. There's an emotional discomfort that your brain is trying to avoid.

And when you ask yourself what that is, well, let's be really clear here, you're going to feel the discomfort of that feeling that you're trying to avoid. Your brain's not going to want to answer this question, your brain is going to try to avoid this question because it thinks this question is painful. But here's what I want you to know. The thing that you're avoiding is a thought that's creating some kind of painful or uncomfortable feeling. And further to that, you can feel that you're perfectly capable. I can feel melancholy. Really specifically, in the case of wanting more content like this, whatever video that you just enjoyed, I suspect that the pain that you're avoiding there is something along the lines of, "I don't know how to do this for myself." Something along the lines of helplessness or powerlessness, or if you're my brain, that feeling of, "I'm too stupid to figure this out for myself."

That feeling that you would like to avoid by just looking for more, getting more, doing more, more, more, eating more, finding more, binging more, not necessarily food, but content, like podcast content. The more that you seek, you don't have to. You can feel the feeling that you are trying to avoid. And let me tell you what waits for you on the other side of this. I have a friend who has just recently started the 15th round of the Body Shaping series, which may or may not apply to you. I'm not telling you to go seek out the Body Shaping series as though this is the answer for you. That's not where I'm going with this. But she was telling me how every time she does another round, that she listens to what I'm saying and she's doing the workouts, and every time through it, she finds more, she finds pleasure in doing the same thing because there's a thought there that there's more for her. It's not a matter of seeking a different kind of more, it's finding the pleasure in what you are doing. Whatever that is.

Maybe it is new and different, maybe it is more, but recognizing the pleasure to be found and understanding that you do not need to avoid some sort of emotional pain, that whatever pain your brain thinks it is trying to avoid, you can simply feel that. When you embrace feeling all of your feelings, good, bad, ugly, indifferent, everything in between, all of them, you will be able to intentionally choose what you do. Instead of being, and I use the phrase at the mercy of, and I'm going to work on that one because I don't love that, and yet it is very appropriate. We very often are at the mercy of our automatic thoughts. We seek out the pleasure of more because of those automatic thoughts that simply haven't been examined. When you examine what your brain is offering you, you can do things intentionally that get you where you want to go. And that, to me, is, as far as I'm concerned, the ultimate pleasure.

And it's what I offer you, that the pleasure of getting where you want to go and embracing all the parts of that journey to get where you want to go, which for me, hey, let's bring this back around, embracing all the parts of my journey of writing a book, all the discomfort of thinking of myself as somebody who is capable, all the intense discomfort of having a deadline that's coming up very soon that I have not met yet, but that I know that I will. The seeking of pleasure, the avoiding of pain, the wanting more, it's all part of your journey that you can focus on intentionally to create intentional results for yourself to, haha, Get Your Goal. Because ultimately, that is what I want for you every time. All of these podcasts episodes are about helping you achieve what you want to achieve. And the way to do that is through intentionality, asking yourself questions, figuring out what pleasure you are seeking, what pain you are avoiding. I do hope that this was helpful for you, my friends. Thank you for listening, and I'll see you again soon.

If you are getting a lot out of the Fitness Matters Podcast and you're ready to take it to the next level, you are going to love to Get Your Goal coaching and accountability group. We take all the theory and knowledge here on the podcast and actually apply it in real life on your real weight loss and fitness goals. It's hands on, it's fun, and it works. Find out more at pahlabfitness.com/get-your-goal, and let's get your goal.

Listen to the full episode here, and be sure to leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts.

Originally aired October 2, 2022
Want a practical solution to the problem of wanting MORE? Then you’re in luck, because that’s what we’re serving up on today’s episode!
  • Spotify
  • Soundcloud
  • Apple

Meet Your Host

Mindset expert and certified life coach Pahla B knows a thing or two about changing your mind to change your weight and your life. She’s the creator of The 5-0 Method, Amazon-best selling author of the book “Mind Over Menopause,” and former yo-yo dieter who has cracked the code on lifelong weight maintenance. Join Pahla B each week for the personal insights, transformative mindset shifts, and science-backed body advice that can help you lose all the weight you want and keep it off forever.