Weight Management Retreat AGENDA

THURSDAY
8am BREAKFAST
9am Arrive and get settled in.
10am DISCUSSION: Getting Started, How to Lose Weight, Where to Start
11am SNACK and MOVEMENT / ACTIVITY
NOON DISCUSSION: Values & Natures Wisdom
1pm LUNCH
2pm DISCUSSION: Motivation, Nutrition Part 1
3pm SNACK and MOVEMENT / ACTIVITY
4pm DISCUSSION: Nutrition Part 2
5pm DINNER
7pm FIRE PIT ACTIVITY

FRIDAY
8am BREAKFAST
9am DISCUSSION: Mindful Eating
10am SNACK and MOVEMENT / ACTIVITY
11am DISCUSSION: Well Done! Giving yourself Credit for a change, Exercise
NOON DISCUSSION: Stress
1pm LUNCH
2pm DISCUSSION: Internal Family Systems Approach
3pm SNACK and MOVEMENT / ACTIVITY
4pm DISCUSSION: Sleep
5pm Dinner
7pm Fire Pit Activities

SATURDAY
8am Breakfast
9am Emotional Eating PART 1
10am SNACK and MOVEMENT / ACTIVITY
11am Emotional Eating Part 2
Noon Self-Compassion
1pm LUNCH
2pm DISCUSSION: Cognitive Flexibility Part 1
3pm SNACK and MOVEMENT / ACTIVITY
4pm DISCUSSION: Cognitive Flexibility Part 2 and Problem Solving
5pm Dinner (PARTICIPANT PREPARED)
7pm Fire Pit Activity

SUNDAY
8am Breakfast
9am DISCUSSION: Barriers to Success: Food Addiction, other factors: hormones, medications, body dysmorphia, etc.
10am SNACK and MOVEMENT / ACTIVITY
11am DISCUSSION: Bolstering Success: GRIT
NOON DISCUSSION: From Retreat to Home
1pm Final Lunch Together and Farewell

SESSION DESCRIPTIONS

Getting Started: Ground rules, introductions, how to use your notebook, resources, how to focus your time and energy to get the most out of the retreat, and the agenda.

How to Lose Weight: Behavior changes that actually work for long term weight loss, letting go of the old model of weight loss (i.e., keep eat less until you’re satisfied with your weight), eliminate weight cycling, focus on eating the RIGHT amount in the right way, and the benefits and costs of making these changes. Determining a realistic calorie goal and macronutrient to support health fat loss sustainably. We will set out objectives for attaining this goal and the strategies we will be learning to get there this weekend. Participants will have clear directions and expectations in order to make the best choices about how to engage those options that honor your needs and wants as best as possible. Finally, we will discuss how the pathway to any change is repetition of the behaviors you want to reinforce and eliminate practice for those you want to extinguish. Simply put…you want to start practicing your ‘Resistance Muscle’ and stop practicing your ‘Give-In Muscle’ (i.e., resist giving in to off-plan eating, and encourage resistance for this).

Where To Start: Collect your baseline data! This lets you know what you are currently doing so you can accurately determine what is serving you (“Well Done”) and what is not (these are opportunities for change). Baseline data includes body composition, eating and moving behaviors, mood, quality of life, self-efficacy and more.

Values Clarification: When making changes in our life it is often a good idea to review (or establish as the case may be) what is important to focus on. We may think we know what is important to us, but if what we are currently doing is not resulting in living a healthy and meaningful life we may need to question it. The fact is, everything can’t be important at the same time, so we need a way to point us in the direction of doing things that we are going to get the most out of. After all, if what you are doing is not bringing you more health and fulfillment what does it provide you? Whose value is it really (if not yours)?

Nutrition Part 1: Why track nutrition? This right number of calories to consume. Fluid intake.

Nutrition Part 2: Balanced diet, macronutrients (carbs, fat, protein), environmental changes, barriers.

Mindful Eating: Mindful eating refers to being consciously aware of the food you consume, attending to the sensorial information, savoring, and noticing how your body responds to the food. We discuss the differences between hunger, desire and craving and how to respond to each differently. Practical steps for building a mindful eating habit are provided.

Giving yourself Credit: We are exceptionally good at noticing and dwelling on our shortcomings, but quite neglectful of the healthy and adaptive decisions we make (called “Discounting the Positive”). Learning to give ourselves credit for are the helpful and adaptive behaviors we engage in. This is both more honest (not selectively choosing information that supports a particular position) and helpful (noticing there are some things you do well and other things that are more challenging).

Exercise: Being physically active is important to our physical, mental and emotional health. It is important to start where you are at (i.e., baseline data) and build from there. We start with more general movement (e.g., walking while talking on the phone), to planned movement (e.g., I’m going to take a walk after work), and this may culminate into structured exercise (e.g., going to the gym). We talk about barriers to adequate physical activity, as well as strategies for improvement.

Stress: Moderate, acute stress can be motivating. High levels of chronic stress can be destructive. We will be discussing your signs and symptoms of stress so you can learn to intervene early and effectively. Additionally, we will develop a proactive and reactive plan for dealing with stressors so you can maintain your balance more often in the face of pressures.
Internal Family Systems (IFS): IFS is a framework for understanding ourselves that accounts for internal conflict, competing demands, and helps us to understand why our behavior is not always in alignment with what we ‘say’ we want. The goal is to understand when a “Part” of you has been triggered, the “Part” has ‘hijacked’ you and is now making decisions that you don’t always agree with. Most behavior has the intention of protecting you from pain or rejection, and we want to understand it as such so we are at the mercy of “Parts” of ourselves that don’t always make good decisions. We will get to know and befriend our “Parts” (i.e., healing) so we can reclaim self-leadership.

Sleep: Adequate, restorative sleep is essential to good physical, mental and emotional health. Poor sleep is especially problematic for weight loss. We will discuss good sleep hygiene and practical strategies for improving this self-care behavior and work with your body to release unwanted fat.

Food Addiction: Here we will discuss what food addiction is, how trauma contributes to addiction, and how you can assess yourself and learn what to do to heal so this behavior doesn’t sabotage your success.

Emotional Eating: Emotional eating is not inherently a bad thing, it only becomes problematic when it is your ‘First and Only Stop.’ We will learn that emotions are just information from the limbic system of our brain about our current experience. For instance, anger lets us know there has been an injustice, guilt lets us know we have done something wrong, and sadness allows us to slow down and process a loss. The goal is to identify and understand what our emotions are telling us and deal with that, instead of trying to escape the discomfort by numbing.

Self-Compassion: Self-compassion is being kind to ourselves while we get through a moment of distress, not catastrophize or minimize, rather seeing things just as they are. There is an element of common humanity, or seeing ourselves as connected rather than isolating or over-identifying. From this perspective we can honesty and doing what will relieve suffering.

Cognitive Flexibility: The human brain is capable of processing information with perspective and accuracy. This can be compromised by natural human biases, fears, and habits. We will familiarize ourselves with the link between our thoughts, action/urges, emotions and physiology, identify thinking errors, and learn how to challenge our thinking. We also practice solving common weight loss related problems. We will also take a ‘deeper dive’ into core beliefs and their impact on our health and functioning.

GRIT: Here we will talk about the power of increasing our ‘grit.’ Weight loss will require sustained interest in and effort toward a long-term goal, and this is exactly what grit is. We will talk about how to cultivate grit as an additional means of sustainability.

Retreat to Home: This is where we will talk about how to use what you have learned during the retreat at home. This will include prioritizing, motivation, cues, scheduling, and more.

Activities: There will be a snack offering mid-morning and afternoon that will include activities in between seated discussions periods. These are non-discussion focused activities that will include movement (e.g., nature walk, yoga, stretching), art (e.g., non-verbal processing and communication), meditations, etc.

Firepit Activities: These will include semi-structured activities and discussion to consolidate the days materials and experiences and process these at a deeper level. This is a time for sharing realizations, insights, confusion, support, etc.