The Real Weight Loss is in The Mind

This isn’t about food. It’s about what happens when you stop flinching from discomfort.

Photo by Tyler Raye on Unsplash

Diets are miserable.

They’re great for showing us how overpowering hunger is.

It’s Loud. It hijacks your thoughts and controls your mood. Hunger doesn’t shut up.

I love working out. I’m weird that way. And I love food. But my personal trainer,

Chris Davidson

, is always preaching that cardio alone won’t drop the fat. You’ve got to reduce your calorie intake.

Translation: You’ve got to be hungry.
And being hungry sucks.

I’ve been lugging around about 15 pounds of baby fat for over a decade now. I know it’s not about the number on the scales. We don’t even own scales. If I want to see what number I’m at, I have to strip down in my Mom’s bathroom and step on hers. And it’s usually not going to be a morning weight. Or on an empty stomach. So there’s no way it counts as accurate.

It’s not about the numbers anyway. We all know muscle weighs more than fat. It’s about letting the muscles I’ve worked so hard for actually show ▪ in the mirror, in my clothes, in the way I carry myself. Just for fun. Just to witness it. (And I want to do a pullup. But that’s another story)

The wires in this little noggin of mine made a connection recently. I love when that happens. And I realized: learning to be okay with hunger ▪ to actually sit with it ▪ is like learning to alchemize intense emotions.

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The Car Ride Revelation

So we were driving to pick up our daughter at the airport from a big overseas adventure. The plan was to leave early and have dinner in the city with our other child before the flight arrived.

But of course, we ran late. Again. We hit traffic. Again. And I was so tired of being rushed. All I wanted was to show up calm, holding our silly welcome signs, and just be there when she walked through those sliding doors.

We always have a bag of snacks on car trips. In fact, it seems like we eat most of our meals on the road. Van Cafe, home cooked meals in a bowl, is our favorite. Our car crew is notoriously hangry otherwise. But I’d been trying to stick with intermittent fasting ▪ no food from 5 p.m. to 11 a.m. It’s been a struggle. Or rather, it was.

That night, we picked our daughter up around 8 p.m. and I hadn’t eaten since afternoon. Normally I would’ve caved by then. My mind would usually win out and convince me to break down and eat. At least some nuts! But this time?

I didn’t.

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Riding the Wave of Hunger

Maybe it helped that I was the one driving. Maybe the snack bag was uninspiring. Maybe if there were carrot cake, it would be a different story here. But I stayed in my seat and I stayed in my fast. I just noticed.

I noticed the hunger.
I noticed the mind chatter.
I noticed the discomfort of things not being “easy.”

It wasn’t some holy, profound, mountaintop awakening. It was just me, a steering wheel, and a gnawing belly.

But we got home. I made food for everyone else (salmon melt to the rescue!) and sat at the table while stories from Costa Rica lit up the kitchen. And I realized something:

I didn’t die.

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Mindful Hunger as a Spiritual Practice

I didn’t escape the discomfort. I didn’t chew gum or guzzle water or scroll through my phone to distract myself. I couldn’t ▪ eyes on the road, hands at ten and two. (Hey, I'm trying to be a good example for our new driver!)

The hunger was shouting. Poking at my survival instinct, whispering, Eat something. Anything.

But underneath all that noise, there was something else.

The hunger wasn’t the problem.
The commentary about the hunger was.

That’s the thing about mindfulness. It doesn’t make the hard thing disappear. It just quiets the story we attach to it. The fear, the urgency, the drama ▪ we start to notice it runs nonstop.

And when we quiet the mind and strip away the commentary?
What’s left is sensation.
Pure, unjudged sensation.

That’s it.

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Intensity Is a Doorway

There’s definitely an intensity to hunger. But when we learn to go to the center of that intensity, something shifts. The desperation starts to dissolve. Not because we made it go away ▪ but because we made peace with it.

And this, I think, is where emotional growth and body goals intersect.

Losing weight isn’t just about food.
It’s about how we relate to our minds.
It’s about how we meet discomfort.

It’s about retraining our nervous system to stop flinching at every signal of lack or urgency or “I can’t handle this.”

That’s the real transformation.

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Becoming the Love Self

This, to me, is what true self-love is.
Not bubble baths and self-help quotes.
Although those are nice icing on the carrot cake.

Self-love is sitting with discomfort and not abandoning yourself.
It’s being willing to keep going deeper, even when it’s hard. Especially when it’s hard.
Even when you’re hungry.
Even when you want to crawl out of your own skin.

And slowly, over time, something else emerges:

The awareness that you are not your cravings.
You are not your panic.
You are not your commentary.

You are the stillness behind it all. The quiet witness, learning to hold all of it without running. To hold it and transmute it.

And we can learn to be this self-love all day, every day. In every situation. In the diet and workout and long car rides and family power struggles.

We are moving through the struggles of the day, learning to alchemize.
Practicing settling the mind, welcoming the pure feeling behind the emotion and retraining our way to enlightenment. One stomach growl at a time.

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And If Muscles Happen to Show Too...

I want to feel strong and look strong. I want to pick our kids up in a big (5’4”) Mamabear hug and not throw out my spine. I want abs and enlightenment.

But if I can alchemize the discomfort instead of dodge it?
If I can change my relationship with hunger ▪ not to conquer it, but to befriend it? And let it lead me to the stillness inside.
Then I’m doing more than losing weight.
I’m losing the layers between me and my truest self.

And that, my friend, is worth more than abs in a bikini.
(But hey, I’ll take those too.)

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Drop a comment if you’ve ever tried sitting with your cravings instead of feeding them. (Or if you just really love carrot cake.)