My guest is Jon McLernon, founder of Freedom Nutrition Coaching in Red Deer Alberta, Canada. He helps people say no to BS diets for good with his brain driven weight loss approach.
Jon has been a Nanotechnology Researcher, Marine Engineer (Navy), globetrotting English teacher (visiting 45 countries on 5 continents) and ran a Nutrition and Supplement store.
After experiencing a trauma while living in South Africa his weight ballooned to 328lbs, as he grappled with PTSD, binge-eating, and medicating his trauma with food. One morning he woke up and decided he didn’t want to be a victim to his trauma or his past anymore. He then embarked on what he says is the most challenging journey of his life.
One hundred pounds +/- a few later, we talked about his approach and why most diets don’t work to keep the weight off and what does.
Jon is not your typical guy coach. Though he used to live as a hyper masculine type guy that was not the truth of him. He’s sensitive, an empath, and well suited to coaching people on their weight loss journey not just because he’s been there and tried everything (before developing his program) but because he’s kept it off.
Lots of people lose weight by suffering through foods they don’t like and giving up most everything they do. Turning that into a lifestyle doesn’t work, it’s not sustainable.
So how do you sustain weight loss?
It’s definitely not imposing a bunch of rules on a person which many diets do
“Instead of diving into a whole bunch of rules right away, we say, let's start creating awareness around our behaviors because, really, that's the precursor to change.”
· I'm interested not just in what you eat. I'm interested in how you eat, why you eat, when you eat, and who you eat with.
· one of the very first things I have people do is take photos of their meals. When we take a photo of our meal that triggers our conscious awareness.
· Weight loss is a doorway, not a destination
About self-love Jon said “when my cup is full it's easier to offer the best to others.”
About intuitive eating (Which he does not recommend) “the idea of intuitive eating is appealing. And this is a simplification, but at its core, most people are going to interpret it as "eat what feels good" or "eat what I feel like."
What I feel like the problem is, our modern food products that we’re marketed to every single day, are deliberately engineered to bypass our ability to eat intuitively.”
We are a society that is conditioned to eat mindlessly, snacking while binge watching, because of the built-in irresistibility of these foods.
Bring awareness to the habit, educate people about what they are eating and how it affects them, they can then choose to eat the thing or not, they become informed eaters vs intuitive eaters.
How do you lose 100 pounds? One step at a time.
“It's so much a mental game because the biology or the physiology of fat loss, it's quite well understood. It’s not the science that’s complicated, it’s the human.”
The ultimate goal for the clients Jon works with both in his group program and one on one is to become a SLWM—successful long-term weight loss manager.
In order to stick with an exercise or movement program Jon suggests you create CMGs—can’t miss goals. What I love about this concept is that you set a daily goal that is attainable no matter what else gets in the way. And every day you check it off o a calendar or goals app. Eventually seeing those check marks will likely keep you motivate to “not break the streak.”
(Thanks Jerry Seinfeld for that)
Of course we talked about the importance of movement, self-love, eating what your body runs best on as critical to aging better.
Jon’s 4 phases of change
· Excitement phase—feel good hormones, we’re excited about where we’re headed
· Frustration phase—we hit a wall or plateau
· Acceptance phase—Ok I can do this, it’s not that hard
· Automatic phase-- we have new habits, we are in a rhythm, things are easy
Jon’s Lifestyle 180 program (People it’s really reasonable)
His website
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