1- Introduction

Hello, and welcome to the Regain Reset Guide.

My name is Sabrina, and before we begin, I want to tell you a little about why I created this Guide, who I created it for, and what I hope it can help you change.

Because if you’re here, there’s a good chance this isn’t your first experience of trying to lose weight.

You may already have years of experiences behind you. Some good, some difficult, and probably some you’d rather not repeat.

And those experiences matter, because this Guide isn’t asking you to forget everything that came before and simply start again.

In fact, we’re going to do something quite different.

We’re going to start by looking at where you’ve already been.

Because if you’ve lost weight before, only to regain some or all of it and find yourself back at the beginning again, you’ll probably recognise at least some of what I’m about to describe.

Maybe you’ve started again on more Mondays than you can remember.

Maybe you’ve told yourself you’ll enjoy the weekend and get back on track afterwards.

Maybe, as the end of the year approached, you decided you might as well enjoy Christmas and start again properly in January.

Maybe you’ve had the “one last takeaway”, the “one last blowout” or the foods you wanted to get out of your system before starting again.

Maybe you’ve gone from feeling completely focused and determined to emotional eating, comfort eating, boredom eating or eating in ways you hadn’t planned.

Maybe one meal that didn’t go to plan became a day that didn’t go to plan, and before you knew it, you were telling yourself you’d start again tomorrow.

Or Monday.

Or when life calmed down.

Maybe you’ve promised yourself that next time you’ll be more disciplined, more consistent or more committed.

Maybe you’ve wondered why you can’t just stick to it.

And maybe, after losing and regaining weight more than once, you’ve started to wonder whether the problem is actually you.

I know what that feels like.

For years, I lost weight and regained it over and over again.

And every time I found myself back at the beginning, I carried a little more evidence against myself with me.

Another reason to question whether I could really do it.

Another reason to believe I needed to try harder next time.

Another reason to wonder why something that seemed like it should be so simple felt so difficult for me.

Over time, those experiences can change more than your weight.

They can change the way you think about weight loss.

They can change the way you think about yourself within it.

And they can change the way another attempt feels before you’ve even begun.

When I talk about changing your mindset, I’m not going to tell you to think positively.

I’m not going to tell you to believe you can do it.

And I’m certainly not going to tell you that you just need to want it badly enough.

Because one of the things I learned was that those things can be outcomes.

They’re not instructions for how to get there.

And I know that because, for years, I was told that I needed to change my mindset around weight loss too.

I was told I needed to believe in myself.

I was told I needed to be more confident.

I was told I needed to stop expecting to fail.

But nobody ever showed me how.

No matter how many times I asked, or how many “experts” I turned to, I kept being given advice about the outcome I needed to achieve rather than being shown how I was supposed to get there.

You can’t simply tell a woman who has spent years building reasons to doubt herself to believe in herself.

You can’t tell her to feel confident without understanding what taught her not to.

And you can’t expect another fresh start to automatically change everything she now thinks and feels because of all the starts that came before it.

Eventually, that led me on my own journey of discovery.

And it wasn’t one course, one conversation or one lightbulb moment that changed everything for me.

It was years of separate experiences of learning, studying, expensive therapy, paid-for coaching, asking questions, looking for answers and slowly connecting pieces that I had never been shown together before.

I started trying to understand why I thought and felt the way I did about weight loss, why the same things seemed to keep happening, and what I had never been taught to look at before.

And those discoveries completely rewired my brain about weight loss.

They changed the way I understood my history.

They changed the way I understood myself within it.

And they changed the way I approached weight loss from that point onwards.

Now, as a weight transformation specialist, it has become my mission to share those discoveries with other women.

The things I wish somebody had told me when I was struggling.

The things I wish somebody had taught me when I was blaming myself.

Because if I had understood then what I understand now, I genuinely believe I would have changed my life years before I did.

And that is also why I made the decision to give this Guide away for free.

When my own struggles began, I was a single mum, living on a council estate and relying on benefits.

I didn’t have access to all of the things I was eventually able to access later in my life.

The therapy, coaching, education and separate pieces of learning that eventually helped me came over years, at different times and from different places.

You’ll learn more about that journey, and about me, as we travel through this Guide together.

But one of the things I have never forgotten is the woman I was when I first needed this help.

And I wish somebody had handed her what I am about to hand you.

Not another instruction to change her mindset.

A collection of the discoveries that could actually help her begin doing it.

I can’t go back and give this Guide to the woman I was then.

But I can give it to you now.

That is why I created the Regain Reset Guide.

This Guide has been designed to help you change the way you think and feel about weight loss before you approach it again.

To help you look back at what has happened through a different lens, so that you can begin to change some of the conclusions you may have drawn about yourself along the way.

Because what you believe about yourself can influence what you expect from yourself.

What you expect can influence how you feel about trying again.

And all of that can influence the state you are in when you do.

So this isn’t about pretending the past didn’t happen.

It isn’t about covering difficult experiences with positive thinking or trying to convince yourself that this time everything will be different.

It is about understanding those experiences differently, so they don’t have to keep meaning the same thing about you.

And that is the change I want to help you begin making here.

But I do want to be clear about what this Guide is designed to do.

This Guide’s purpose isn’t the transformation itself.

Its purpose is to help create a shift in the mindset and the state you bring into whatever you decide to do next.

Because the mindset you bring into weight loss can make the difference between whether you struggle or whether you succeed.

So that the next time you decide to lose weight, you don’t have to approach it thinking and feeling exactly as you did before.

You can approach it with a new understanding of what has happened.

A new way of looking at your history.

A different way of thinking and feeling about yourself within it.

And, perhaps for the first time in a long time, a genuinely different place to begin from.

And that is where we are going to start.

In Part One, I’m going to begin taking you through some of the discoveries that changed the way I understood my own experiences with weight loss.

I’m not sharing them because I expect you to have lived the same life as me, struggled in exactly the same ways or recognise yourself in every part of my story.

Your story is your own.

But in all the years since that I have studied and worked with women in the weight-loss field, I have seen something again and again.

The stories can be different.

The circumstances can be different.

The eating behaviours, struggles and experiences can look completely different on the surface.

But the mechanics underneath many of those struggles can be remarkably similar.

And as I take you through my discoveries, I’m going to help you begin looking for those mechanics within your own story.

This Guide has been designed for you to navigate at your own pace.

You might want to read each part in one go, or you might reach something that makes you want to stop for a while, think about it and let it sink in before you continue.

There is no right way to move through it.

Whenever you want to continue, you can return to this page and use the contents menu below to pick up where you left off.

Because ultimately, my hope is that what you begin here changes what happens the next time you choose to lose weight.

That instead of finding yourself pulled back into the same cycle of regaining the weight and starting over again, this time can become the beginning of something different.

A time when you don’t just lose weight.

You finally lose it for life.

Now, if you’re ready to begin, let’s start with Part One.