Every Last Thing I Did to Lose 18kg (and the Mistakes You Need to Avoid)

If you’ve ever wondered exactly how some women lose weight and keep it off, this episode is the full, unfiltered answer.

In this episode, I break down every single thing I did to lose 18kg, not just what looked good on Instagram, but what actually worked when motivation disappeared, emotions were loud, and no one was watching.

This is not a highlight reel.
This is the operating system.

I share how I ate, how I handled emotional eating, the identity shifts that mattered more than calories, and the mistakes that would have completely sabotaged my results if I’d kept making them.

If you’re tired of starting over, negotiating with yourself, or feeling like weight loss should be easier by now, this episode will hit home.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• The exact eating rules that created my 18kg weight loss
• Why eating only when hungry changed everything
• How stopping at 80% full actually works in real life
• The truth about emotional eating and why soothing yourself with food keeps you stuck
• The identity shift that stopped binge eating long-term
• The unsexy parts of weight loss no one talks about
• The biggest mistakes that would’ve ruined my progress
• What I would do differently if I started again today

This episode is especially for women over 40 who feel like they should have this figured out by now, but secretly don’t trust themselves around food anymore.

Weight loss wasn’t the real win.
Keeping promises to myself was.

If this episode feels confronting, that’s usually where real change starts.

Get Kylie's exact weight loss Blueprint
Get Kylie's Free Weight Loss Course
Follow Kylie on Instagram

BOMBSHELL BLUEPRINT WEIGHT LOSS FOR EMOTIONAL EATERS

Transcript

What is up, you gorgeous, fabulous creatures, and welcome to another week of the Losing It podcast. You're here with Kylie Pax, Australia's emotional eating coach, and this week we're talking about something so exciting. I'm going to be talking this week about every single thing that I did to lose 18 kilos last year and, and, and, wait, there's more, the mistakes and the pitfalls that I fell into along the way.

So basically, I'm not just going to give you a highlight reel, I'm going to give you the full operating manual, including the dumb ass things that I tried and the traps that I fell into, and then I'm going to show you what actually moved the needle. Now, before we get started today, I just want to say thank you to all the new listeners that are joining us and for my OGs. If you're loving what you're hearing and you want to hear more, please remember to hit that subscribe button and, or take a moment after you've listened to this podcast and just write me a review.

I, I just don't know why I have to do this Disney rhyme every time, but I do, I would be ever so grateful to hear from you. And that is your Disney rhyme for the day. So honeys, without further ado, let's dive in because I have been procrastinating on this podcast.

It was actually due to come out probably about 10 hours ago now, and I'm actually just starting to record it now because I could not come up with a topic and I couldn't get motivated and I couldn't get my head in the zone. I have been caught in the back end of the bombshell app for the last, probably I think we're going on day four now, potentially even day five. I am creating something so incredible for you all based on your feedback.

Every female that I have spoken to, both those that have used the app and those that have not yet dived in have said, what I want is for things to be simple and streamlined. I don't want to have to think about it. And at the same time, I want to feel validated and like, I'm not a lunatic here, that this is normal for me to be still be feeling cravings and tackling with this at my age.

And so, and I'm thinking, yes, sister, it is freaking normal. So we are creating something incredibly groundbreaking and I can't wait to give it to you all. But because my head has been caught up in those clouds, I couldn't bring myself back down to earth to think, what am I going to share with all of you today? And I finally got my ass off to the gym.

It was like one in the afternoon today. I'd been putting it off and procrastinating, putting it off and procrastinating because I wanted to get this back end finished. And I finally thought this isn't going to work.

If it was meant to be finished, it would have been finished by now. And I shut down the entire window, shut the computer, went to the gym. And while I was there, I thought, you know what people need at this time of year? We don't need more high part motivation.

Yay, girl, you can do it talks. We already know where the ball. You're a badass bitch.

You know your superpowers. You don't have a problem knowing what a badass you are. You have a problem stepping into that persona.

(2:41 - 3:03)

So I'm going to share with you everything that I did that helped me step into the persona of a woman that was 18 kilos lighter than what I previously was. And just FYI, I'm so pissed off with the 18 kilo thing. I am a girl who likes round numbers.

I like to round things off. And this is my year for just finishing the job. I want to make it a clear 20, 20 kilos sweep.

(3:03 - 3:18)

I hate these little antsy-pantsy numbers of like I lost 18 kilos. Now, why don't you step into your whole badass villain era, be a baddie and finish the job, lose fucking 20 kilos and be done with it. So just to make it super clear, I did not lose 18 kilos by being more motivated than you.

(3:18 - 3:47)

What I did was I built a system to work for me when I wasn't motivated. Because please, how often are you motivated? Like, you should see me right now. I'm just rolling my eyes, like the eye roll emoji.

It's ridiculous. Motivation is so fleeting in my life these days. I am in my mid 50s.

For me to muster up energy to do anything is like a miracle these days. Most of you out there are not failing at weight loss because you're weak. It's because you're copying someone else's strategies without understanding exactly how they executed them.

(3:47 - 4:35)

So this is what I mean when I say if you want the same results that I got, you need the rules that I lived by, not just my highlight reel. So let's break it down. I'm going to start with the first few non-negotiables that actually kicked off my weight loss and gave me some momentum.

And let's just dive into the obvious, which is food. When it comes to your nutrition, I don't often talk about calories and macros, but it is important for you to be savvy enough to have an understanding of what yours should be. So I am aware that at my age, my height, my weight, and for my goals, oh, and my activity level, I should be eating around 15, 1600 calories per day.

Now that's fine, but if I want to also retain muscle, then I need to know what my proportions of protein should be, fats, and carbohydrate. That's what people are talking about when they're rabbiting on about macros. Now you don't need to go get a nutrition degree to figure this out.

(4:36 - 7:36)

ChatGPT can do it for you. That's how I was doing it. Or equally, if you want to just drop into my DMs, have a chat with me, I will get you started.

But essentially, I began only eating when I was hungry and stopped eating when I wasn't hungry. Don't worry, your metabolism isn't going to go into a coma. You're not going to end up looking like a beached whale.

I'm not talking about keeping yourself starving. I'm talking about the boredom eating that we do, or the emotional eating that we do, or the FOMO eating that we do. All that shit had to stop.

So firstly, I ate when I was hungry. I didn't eat when I wasn't hungry. Secondly, when I did eat, I stopped eating at 80% full.

Not when I needed my stretchy pants. Not when there was no more food left. I stopped eating at 80% full.

Now both of these first two steps require an immense amount of discipline. It's not even about the fucking food. It's about you creating an element of discipline in your life that right now is sorely lacking.

The third thing that I did was I started planning my food each day ahead of time so that I could reduce decision fatigue. I was not negotiating in real time. Should I eat this? Should I not? How much of this should I eat? I don't know.

I planned for this chicken teriyaki salad, but now Phil's bought home pizza. No, there was none of that. I decided first thing every single morning what I was going to eat for the day.

Was that so that I would be stuck with a particular diet that I didn't like? No, no. No, it was not. It was to teach me how to become a woman of my word.

When I said I was going to do something, I was fucking going to do it. I was so sick and tired of myself. I was sick and tired of being this woman who would say she was going to start and going to stick to something and never, ever did.

Never did. I've been telling myself for the last few weeks, do you see how everything bleeds over into every area of your life? The way you do anything is the way you do everything. I've been telling myself for weeks I'm going to organize my schedule.

I was going to have this done for January 1st. Still not done. Not.

So start with your lowest hanging fruit. If learning discipline and creating discipline around food in your life is going to be the easiest place for you to start because you'll see easy rewards at the same time, then start there. The fourth thing that I did then was to really focus on acting like the person that I want to become.

And by that, I mean no more perfection mentality. I didn't care anymore if I got it perfect. I was more interested in getting it done.

So if that meant some days it was a quick 10 minute walk around the block with Molly, then that's what it was because I was going to be a woman who exercised. I was going to act like the thinner, healthier, happier, hotter version of me would act. And I'm telling you this right now, please, if you take nothing else away from today's podcast, take this.

It is going to be incredibly hard for you to do this in the early stages. Not a little bit hard. Not kind of uncomfortable.

Fall breakingly, wildly smack your head against the wall painful. Why? Because you are still in real time at your heaviest, most uncomfortable, most bloated, most miserable self. You're going to hate every moment of this.

This is why it's so fucking important for you all to have a coach or a friend or a bestie or somebody that can guide you along the way, because doing this on your own is wildly uncomfortable. And that is why we give up. Of course, it's why we give up.

(7:36 - 8:32)

We don't give up because chocolate's impossible to resist. No. It's some fucking chemicals and some lard and some other bullshit that they mix together in a tub and then they sell it to you for an exorbitant price.

That is not where the problem lies. The problem lies that in the beginning, you are this version of you that you literally cannot stand. Somebody out here, aka me, is telling you to start acting like the thin, happy, healthy version of you.

It is going to suck a bag of dicks. But honey, if you wait until you're emotionally stable enough and resilient enough to decide that, okay, I'm ready to move forward with this, you've already lost. Here is how I handled emotional eating in the beginning.

I stopped trying to fix my emotions around food. That was never the problem to start with. I gave myself permission to feel the feelings, let them pass, reminded myself that feelings only last for 90 seconds in your body, and three quick inhales and exhales actually shift the chemicals out of your bloodstream.

(8:32 - 9:15)

The only way, now just before you all come at me, the only way you continue to feel an unpleasant feeling is if you keep thinking the accompanying thought. Because I know a lot of you right now are thinking, Kylie, I've felt horrible feelings in my body. I've felt stress and anxiety and depression and everything for way longer than 90 seconds.

Yes, of course you have, because you have kept your mindset in depression and sadness and anxiety. We need to focus on our mind-first results later. Mind-first results later.

And for the people in the back, mind-first results later. Girl, I'm not going to be one of those coaches that's going to tell you to love yourself into a happy, healthier, healed body. That's not who I am.

You don't need more self-love. What you fucking need is more self-control. So start acting like a woman who doesn't binge.

(9:15 - 9:50)

Start making your decisions based on standards, not how you feel right now. And for the love of chocolate, stop starting over every single Monday. It's just reinforcing to your brain that you're a quitter, first of all, and that secondly, you think you can actually give yourself permission to start fresh every Monday.

Your life doesn't start fresh every Monday. No, it does not. It started the day you were born.

And right now you've been getting more miserable and upset every single week ever since. It is time for you to stop trying to feel ready before you decide to take action. Now let's cover some of the unsexy stuff that nobody wants to hear.

(9:50 - 11:21)

One of the first questions everybody asks when they say, Oh my God, you lost some weight. What did you do? What did you eat? Well, I can tell you what I didn't do and what I didn't eat. I didn't sit around, make excuses or tell myself I had to get it perfect.

And what I didn't eat was some kind of banquet feast every single day. I made the same meals. I made them on repeat and I ate them every single fucking day.

And I shut down the whiny little voice in my head that told me I should be eating something different every single meal. Now, just let me clarify, because I know some of you are thinking, Oh my God, how boring. No, no, no.

I ate pretty much the same couple of breakfasts on rotation and the same couple of lunches on rotation pretty much the whole time because I liked them and I enjoyed them and they got me great results. Now you're all thinking, well, what did you eat? She didn't tell us what you ate. That will come in another episode, probably the next one this week.

But I was more flexible in my evening meal. That's usually the time you sit down with family or your partner, or you at least want to have something a little different. So I had a menu of a kind of about eight or 10 different things that I would rotate through.

They're all inside of the bombshell blueprint, the menus and the plans in there are chef's kiss exquisite. And you're definitely not locked into one or two meal options like I'm talking about. You have every option under the sun in there because some of us do get more bored with food.

But even if you do have something different and now you feel like you've slipped and you're spiraling and everything is out of control. And now you're going on some big binge spree. Calming myself down on the days that I didn't get things perfect was my number one superpower.

(11:21 - 17:03)

Again, I just want to reinforce, I was going for consistency, not perfection. I wanted planned and executed over a perfect day of eating. What that means is I planned my food.

I knew what was coming. If I didn't execute perfectly, as in I accidentally ate a little more than 80% full. And you're thinking, how do you accidentally eat more than 80%? You know what it's like, you eat too fast because you're really starving.

And now you realize that, oh man, I ate too much, or something is uber delicious. And you're like ending up eating a little bit more than you intended to eat. That's okay.

Those are not the things that are making you 45 kilos heavier. It's not that it's not the Christmas meal. It's not the birthday meal.

It's not the Festivus meal. That is not why you're struggling with weight. It's all the tiny little compromises that you're making on a daily basis.

Oh, just a couple of M&Ms. What can it really hurt? Oh, they got the cookies or the Krispy Kremes at work. Oh, who cares? I'll start again tomorrow.

That is what's keeping you stuck right now. Now, let me talk to you about some of the mistakes that I had made previously in my weight loss dieting Olympics that I did not allow to fall into my routine this time. It's going to be gold.

So you're going to want to take notes, but I'm also going to be blunt because this is where a lot of you are struggling. And I see this and it breaks my heart. First of all, you're changing strategies too often.

Any plan will work, honey. You can do my blueprint. It will work.

You can do, I don't know. You can do paleo. You can do, I don't know what all the plans are out there.

Just pick a plan. Any of them will work. It's not the plan that isn't working.

It's you changing strategies like you change your freaking underwear. Choose something, stick with it. It will work.

It's not the plan. It's that you're not giving it enough time. The next thing that I had to realize very quickly was going to drag me off course was trying to add more rules and routines into my day instead of removing the shit that no longer held a place at the table.

What I mean by that is I would add rules all the time. Okay. Well, in the morning, I'm going to do this whole new morning routine.

And it was like a four hour routine. If I was really going to execute it properly, it was ridiculous. And I would end up getting so mad and so frustrated.

And then I would just drop the whole thing altogether. What I actually needed to do was remove decisions from my day and remove the things and the items and the areas of my life that were taking seats at the table where they did not belong. So I would remove decision fatigue, as in these are the four or five things that are going to be non-negotiables in my morning.

Drinking a liter of lemon water, reading a page of a book, doing a mind map, and then getting my booty to the gym. It could be as simple as that. And once I know I've ticked off those four things, I have won my morning, no matter what else happened.

You need to remove decision fatigue in every area that you possibly can. And if that looks like using an app like I use called Structured, I've been using this one for years. I really enjoy it, not affiliated in any way.

There is free versions and there's paid versions. I use the free one for years. I might even still be using it now.

I have no idea, but it's really, really good. And it gives you little reminders and you can structure it and change it every single day. The next thing that I previously would have done that I did not allow myself to do this time was overcorrecting after overeating.

Now, I know you all know what I'm talking about here. As in you ate a little too much the night before, so now you decide you're just not going to eat the next day. Or you ate too much earlier in the morning and now you're not going to eat dinner.

Well, that's ridiculous. Your heart and your lungs and your muscles don't say, well, I don't need any nourishment now because she overate 14 days ago. So, you know, we'll be right, no, why don't you shift the focus of your correction away from what you are eating and what you intend to eat next to who you were and who you intend to be next.

That's going to get you way better results. The next biggest thing, now I fell off track about partway through my journey last year and it's natural for that to happen. I'm not upset.

I don't care. It was a great learning experience because I was tired and no human being is meant to be focused and intense for extended periods of time. My problem, and this is going to save you loads of time, is that I was waiting for motivation to return.

Of course we can get motivated really easily in the beginning of something. We can stay motivated towards the end of something because we can see the results and we're very excited. But that middle part, it's just the drudgery of everyday boring ass decisions.

Nah, nah. I lost my mojo about halfway through. I didn't gain a bunch of weight back, but I stopped losing.

I was eating a little more. I was pretty much stepped into maintenance mode, but I hadn't finished the job yet. It probably took me a good two months to course correct out of that spiral.

So I could have shortened the journey by at least two, three months if I had stayed on track. Now, how could I have stayed on track without losing the mojo? I was focusing too heavily at that time on the scales, not on who I was being as a person. Here's why this is so important.

The scales are a lagging indicator of what you're doing. That's going to be the last freaking thing to show up. You have to get your win from who you are being and what you are doing, rather than the result of who you are being and what you're doing.

You have to know, I mean, know in your bone that what you want is going to show up because it's impossible to do the right thing and get a wrong result. Which means that when you are acting accordingly, when you are doing the things you know have to be done, when you are ticking off those boxes each and every day, of course the weight loss is coming. I don't give a freaking flying ass how long it's going to take to show up.

It can take a year if that's how long it wants to take. I will not give up. I will not deviate because I am in the process of becoming a woman who gets everything she deserves and I will not be held back, least of all which by a clunking ass piece of metal on the floor we call a bathroom scale.

Now, finally, I just want to talk about what I would do differently if I had to start it all again today. I can tell you I definitely would have made the system simpler, straight off. I wouldn't have made everything so complex.

(17:03 - 21:18)

So when you do things like choosing the same meals on rotation, that is going to make it simple for you. If you think you're going to get into the kitchen and cook a banquet three times a day, forget it. It's not going to happen.

Likewise, if food prep is not your thing, don't do it. But keep it simple. I'm not one to necessarily cook up huge meal batches, put them in little containers and mark them Monday to Sunday.

But I am a person who will cook a big ass pot of soup or make a big pot of steamed veggies and some protein and I will just keep that in there for the next two, three days and I will pick from that. Keep it simple, keep it easy, reduce decision fatigue and you will see results a lot faster. The next thing that I would do differently is I would stop tolerating my own BS.

Me, myself, my thoughts are my worst. I will get up in my head and once I'm in there, it's very hard to come out. It's like some kind of maze up there and I get lost and I can't figure the way out.

It's like a whole Raiders of the Lost Ark situation. I feel like I'm in this tunnel. I'm dodging boulders.

I don't know what's going on, but I'm certainly not focused on who I am and what I should be doing. The thing that made the biggest difference for me in mastering my mindset and staying focused each day was using the sleep tracks, the talk tracks and the guided visualizations inside of the Bonchel Blueprint. They were unbelievably helpful and I have recommended them to particular clients as well who struggle with their mindset and they've messaged me the very next day saying that these are game changers.

So I will not give these up without a fight. These are in my pocket all the time. The second thing was I made sure I did some kind of mindset work every day.

So whether that was just a five-minute visualization and a quick recap of who I intend to be for that day before I set out in the morning or whether you've got time to read pages of whatever novel you're reading, listen to a podcast, whatever you need to do. But you need to shift your focus from all the shit you hate to the shit you're moving towards. What I mean by that is there's a very different energy that exists between trying to escape something as in I've got to get this weight off my body, I hate being this fat to moving towards something.

I'm so excited about who I'm becoming. I cannot wait to see these next wins on the scale. This is so incredible.

I'm excited for my new life. Both options are wanting the same result but they're coming at it from completely different directions. One will extend your journey, one will get there a heck of a lot quicker.

The third thing I would do if I had to do this all over again is I would stop outsourcing my success to willpower. Thinking that I need to feel vibey in order to achieve it is just not realistic because some days I feel vibey and it's great. Those are the days where I absolutely crush it.

But six days out of seven, probably seven days out of seven, I'm not vibey. I'm not. I'm struggling every day.

Which means I just have to follow my plan and not my mood. Follow my plan and not my mood. You'll see the results eventually.

Of course you will. Like I said earlier, it's impossible to do the right thing and get a wrong result. But you have to position yourself as the woman for whom that is inevitable.

I want to tell you this as a closing word. The weight that I lost is not what changed my life. What changed my life was that I became a woman who kept promises to herself.

My body was just the receipt. So if this episode feels a little confronting to you, I mean, I'm just going to say sorry, not sorry. It's usually the moments like this when everything changes.

Thank you so much for joining me here today. As always, if you've loved what you're hearing and you want to hear more, please remember to hit that subscribe button or take a moment after this podcast and just leave me a review. That would be so, see, I didn't give you my normal Disney rhyme.

I'd be ever so grateful to hear from you. Please leave a five-star review or whatever review you feel is appropriate. I'm so grateful to have you in my world.

Thank you. Please message me over on Insta. I love hearing from you.

And until next week, as always, remember the only person has the power to change your life is you. When you step up, stop listening to your own sad-ass excuses and start listening to your badass reasons why you should be moving forward in a way that feels good and aligned without any more BS from anybody in your life, most especially yourself. That is when you've truly got what it takes.

I'm sending you love. I'll see you again next week. Until then, gorgeous ones, bye for now.

Thank you so much for tuning in. Remember to shimmy your butt over to KyliePax.com and join me inside of the bombshell blueprint so you can stop emotional eating and start losing your way now. You'll also find helpful notes and resources inside my past podcast that will help you lose your way without losing your sanity.