**Jim Hill:** Welcome to Weight Loss And, where we delve into the world of weight loss. I'm Jim Hill.

**Holly Wyatt:** And I'm Holly Wyatt. We're both dedicated to helping you lose weight, keep it off, and live your best life while you're doing it.

**Jim Hill:** Indeed, we now realize successful weight loss combines the science and art of medicine, knowing what to do and why you will do it.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yes, the “And” allows us to talk about all the other stuff that makes your journey so much bigger, better, and exciting.

**Jim Hill:** Ready for the “And” factor?

**Holly Wyatt:** Let's dive in.

**Jim Hill:** Here we go. Holly, today's episode is a little different because we're going to bring our listeners something really special.

**Holly Wyatt:** That's right, Jim. Today, we're diving into another listener success journey. I know everybody loves these. We spend a lot of time on this show talking about science and strategies behind weight loss, but I don't think anything connects like hearing directly from someone who's lived it, who's used those strategies. So we want to share real stories, the triumphs, the challenges, the unique path that everyone has. Success is different. We've talked about that for different people, but I think there's power in seeing what success looks like for everyone. And that's exactly what we want to celebrate and do today.

**Jim Hill:** Okay, without further ado, let's welcome Alexia to the show. Alexia, thank you for joining us and for being open to sharing your journey with us. Holly and I are so inspired by your story, and I know our listeners will be too.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yes, welcome to the show, Alexia. Why don't you just start out by giving us just a little snapshot of your journey? We'll want to ask you lots of questions. Just when did it begin? And give us just a little sneak peek of the journey.

**Alexia:** Hey, guys, thank you so much. It's so great to be here and to reflect on all of this. It's shocking to me that it really did just begin over a year ago and how much has happened in my life in a year from this. Um, it was just over a year ago, that fall of 23, when I joined the 12 week state of slim, uh, essentials program. And my initial goal had just been to, um, I really wanted to lose 20 pounds and, um, I was feeling miserable and thought if I could just lose 20 pounds, it would really help. And, and, and I was able to accomplish that in the 12 weeks. And, and that was, that in and of itself was amazing. But what was great was that I knew I wasn't ready to stop and just went on to continue with the State of Slim program and found myself just all of a sudden it just seemed to have happened. By July, I had lost 50 pounds, what I thought was a miracle, a normal healthy weight range and BMI and my cholesterol levels and my blood pressure levels were all healthy in such a seemingly short time looking back.

**Holly Wyatt:** I love it. You said, I started off, I just did the 12 weeks. You didn't focus on the whole goal. You said, okay, let me just do something for 12 weeks, had some success and then kept going. And that to me is a really key nugget for our listeners to think about. Sometimes I think people think about, oh my gosh, I've got to lose 100 pounds and it just overwhelms them. But it just starts out 12 weeks.

**Jim Hill:** Exactly. What would you have thought if someone had come to you beforehand hand and said, Alexia, you need to lose 50 pounds.

**Alexia:** Honestly, I didn't even think that was possible. I've spent my life, you know, being healthy or chasing being healthy. And I just literally believed that, I'm in my fifties, I'm postmenopausal, I was really sure that's not possible, and metabolism, I must have a slow metabolism. So, I wouldn't have thought that was possible.

**Jim Hill:** What a great story, Alexia. What were some of the tools or strategies that you found the most helpful in your journey?

**Holly Wyatt:** Yeah, especially when you just started, you know, when at the very beginning, if you can think back.

**Alexia:** I think what had happened for me when I first came in was that, even initially, Dr. Holly, you said part of being in the program was to be on Facebook. And I was like, well, I don't do Facebook.

**Holly Wyatt:** What did I say?

**Alexia:** It's an essential part of the program. And if you want to be part of the program, we do Facebook. And so it was like right from the beginning, I started becoming very aware of how much resistance I have to doing things a different way. And I made a decision like right then I am going to like this expression that I love has come all the way in and sit all the way down. And I am going to be willing to try new things. And it came up over and over when you asked us to do planks. I'm like, I cannot do planks. That's ridiculous. You know? And every time I would notice that resistance, I reminded myself that I had a choice and I just really leaned into this program. So there were so many tools all the time, but you can't use the tools if your mindset is already set.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yeah. So the idea that you caught yourself, I'm uncomfortable, but I'm not going to let that stop me, right? Really that great awareness that maybe that's what stopped me in the past. And I may not, you don't know what you don't know. I'm uncomfortable, but I'm still going to lean into it. I love that.

**Jim Hill:** So many questions. She brought up mindset, Holly. I think you and I've understood that's the one thing people forget when they start talking about losing weight. They go right to eating and exercise. And I think you and I over the years have learned that maybe mindset's the most important of any of those.

**Holly Wyatt:** I think you got to start with it. And that's why I love that she brought that up first, right? That's where she had to start. And then there's lots of different strategies that work. We can talk about the strategies, but lots of strategies work if you do them. And so the mindset around I am willing to try something new that's uncomfortable to me is really a core part, I think, of any success story. So what else do we want to know? Let's talk a little bit about, well, what did you do for your nutrition? Now, I think we talk about there's lots of different ways to restrict your calories. But what did you use for the weight loss phase?

**Alexia:** Okay, so what was interesting to me is that I have spent my life being pretty much a whole foods person. And most people that know me would say, you eat healthier than anybody I know. But I wasn't eating. What I came to realize in SOS pretty quickly, which was so helpful was I wasn't really understanding and thinking about how much in the different categories. State of Slim helped me to understand, really to think about just the variety of foods I was eating, what category they fit in, proteins, fats, what types of carbs I was eating, vegetables, and really, once I could understand kind of the basic overview of what like the phase one of State of Slim looked like, or the phase two, and I understood what amounts to be eating of what things started to really change for me.

**Holly Wyatt:** You know, I always say, you can eat too much of healthy foods, right? Because it is about calories. So portions are important, even of really, really healthy foods. It's both what you're eating and how much you're eating. And so for you, it sounds like you probably changed maybe what you're eating a little bit, but really the portions and maybe combinations of foods played a role.

**Alexia:** My proteins were really low and my carbs and my fats were too high for the status one program. And so realigning those and finding proteins, I like to eat primarily vegetarian. And so finding proteins that worked for me was really helpful.

**Jim Hill:** How hard is it now to maintain your eating plan?

**Alexia:** It's not at all. Part of what was helpful with that is because we, you know, I got really good at learning to think forward about what I would be eating in a week or in a day and to have meals ready. And, you know, part of it is I really look back. I felt so clumsy the first several weeks in State of Slim, just trying new things out all the time. And but once I got routines with what types of breakfast I like to eat, what my meals might look like during the day, it just became a lot easier. It's like I was learning a new language or a new way to a new way to just organize. And now it's pretty much second nature.

**Jim Hill:** Wow. All right. Turning to my favorite topic.

**Holly Wyatt:** I knew it. I knew it. I wondered how long he would let us talk about this before he's going to shift it. Here he goes. Go ahead, Jim.

**Jim Hill:** What role did physical activity play in your journey?

**Alexia:** Well, I came in and always felt like I had an advantage that I love physical activity. I love to move. There's very few physical activities I don't like. I didn't think I liked planking. Now I like planking. But what would happen to me is I'm so busy all the time that I would run out of time in the day, or I would have the best intentions and my exercise minutes were diminishing all over the place. Once I got the, the memo that I needed about 70 minutes of exercise, six days a week, I just started scheduling that first. I guess that was a big part of this whole program for me is State of Slim helped me put my healthcare needs like first. I planned for those first every day. Those were always on the schedule, so to speak, and everything else had to plan around them. So it wasn't like I was just like going to exercise if I could. And I really stuck to that number 70.

**Jim Hill:** Oh my God, Holly, I love this. This is what we have been preaching. People say, oh my God, where am I going to find 70 minutes to exercise? And they watch what, five or six hours of TV a day and everything, you have to prioritize it. You can't get up in the morning and say, oh, what am I going to do today? You have to plan ahead.

**Holly Wyatt:** And not everybody does five or six hours of TV. We're busy, but I just think you can prioritize it. That's the key. And it's only 4%. We use that number now. 4% of your day basically is an hour.

**Jim Hill:** But as Alexia said, this is putting yourself first. This is putting your self-care as a priority. And all it takes is 70 minutes a day.

**Alexia:** Well, and like what you guys have taught me too, is that sometimes it's just like all of a sudden I ended up with like 20 extra minutes somewhere. Why wouldn't I get up and walk around and get 20 minutes done? It's seeing things differently, seeing time differently.

**Holly Wyatt:** Opportunities to move. They're there. Are you aware? And do you take advantage of them? Yeah. So let's talk then about your physical environment because, yes, you've made changes to your diet. You've made changes to your activity. Definitely have made changes to your mind state. Yeah. Making changes long-term can be difficult because anything new is difficult. Have you changed your physical environment in any way to help you with the new you, basically?

**Alexia:** The two biggest things I changed were, one, the initial one, which I think we did early on in the beginning, was I really was honest with myself. I went through everything in our kitchen, everything, all the foods in our house, and was like, what needs to be in here and what doesn't? And then I'm the main grocery shopper. I also just kind of quit physically bringing things into the house for other people, for my husband or for whoever. And just was like, why? Why does it need to be here if that's not the lifestyle that I'm trying to live? If we are planning for a treat or something, we'll go out and get it. So physically, we just kind of kept the house a safe space or supportive space, I guess is a better word. I'm a therapist. And so I sit and sit and sit for my job. And what I started doing was looking for creative ways to not sit so much. And I ended up getting an exercise ball to sit on, which helps with core. I got a wobble board to stand on to be able to do my Zoom sessions on and just started creating ways to be at least a little more active in what seemed like a kind of a hopeless situation of sitting nine hours a day.

**Jim Hill:** Wow.

**Holly Wyatt:** I love it. What can you do? What can I do and still do my job, basically. So let's go back to the family or your husband. Did they support you in that? Or, okay, they wanted you to bring something home. Suddenly you weren't bringing home the food? What was the response there?

**Alexia:** No, it's really funny. My husband is the kind of person that doesn't gain weight. And he can sit in bed and eat ice cream or whatever and just not gain weight. But when it's not in the house, he doesn't care if it's not in the house at all. And he was excited because he was losing weight too. And I mean, not that he needed to lose much, but he just was like, I feel so good. I felt grateful that that I had a partner who thought this was pretty cool.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yeah.

**Jim Hill:** That's really great. Good for him. I want to explore that a little more. We talk about changing your physical environment. We also talk about taking a look at your social environment, those people you spend time with who may or may not share your values. Tell us a little bit about how if anything has changed there.

**Alexia:** Yeah. I think a lot of that might've been in my head too. At first, I almost didn't want people to know I was changing my lifestyle. I was kind of self-conscious about it. And I wanted to appear normal in my eating around when I was with other people. And it started making me feel anxious and self-conscious that I was trying to stick with the program, but yet appear normal. And so at some point, I just started just being really straight up and saying, you know what, I'm changing my lifestyle and this is what I'm doing. And I can meet you guys for dinner there, but I will probably not be eating or I will be grabbing something else. And it just doesn't fit the lifestyle that I'm working towards. And it was so crazy because I don't think I had anything other than complete support when I would say that. I had really built it up, though, that it was going to be sort of a problem. And none of it was.

**Holly Wyatt:** Ah, so we told a story in your head, right? That made it bigger than it ended up being, which we do so much, right? It's going to be harder or there's going to be more problems than it actually was. Very cool. So I wanted you to go back to really last year at that time when you were starting your journey. I know you maybe started a little bit in the fall but basically I know you won the transformation challenge that we did. Jim, I don't know if you know that she won the transformation challenge.

**Jim Hill:** I don't know that but after talking to her I'm not surprised.

**Holly Wyatt:** What was your motivation when you started like why did you decide to start? Can you remember back to what was fueling you at that point?

**Alexia:** I was so miserable. The one thing that really stands out that was just huge for me this year was that I live in Texas and we go to Colorado every summer with friends. The summer before starting State of Slim, I was miserable. I was miserable in my clothes, my body. I was self-conscious and hurt. And I was huffing and puffing and barely making it, barely making it on the hikes and in the altitude. And I was consumed in my mind a lot of the time about just all of it, and consumed with what could I do different? What do I need to do? I think that was part of when we got back after that trip and there was a whole lot going on in the news with Ozempic and weight loss drugs. And I was just thinking to myself, maybe that's the only thing possible. And I went to my physician and did blood work and started talking. And I just said, you know what, I really want to give myself a fair shot to know what's possible. And I want to know if it's possible to do this on my own. Inside of me believed it had to be possible. So that's when I decided to just bite the bullet and join the program and do this.

**Holly Wyatt:** I love it was about what you were feeling and you knew you didn't want to feel that way. That's what started it, right? I don't like how my life is at this moment and believing you could do something about it, really.

**Alexia:** It's like I just didn't want to give up hope. I wanted to believe so badly that it was still possible to do that, that I could do that.

**Jim Hill:** Many of our listeners may be thinking about weight loss as a New Year's resolution. What advice would you have for people that are... They were like you were. They weren't happy with things, but they didn't quite know what to do. What would you tell those people?

**Alexia:** Oh, that it 100% is possible. I didn't see anybody that didn't understand how possible that was once I was in the weight loss journey in State of Slim. I think doing it alone is really rough because you only have your own resources that you have inside your own head that you've been trying and trying. And once you join into a community, it's kind of to me, that was the biggest gift I gave myself was getting to have other voices in my head and think about seeing other people make this work and understanding how to make this possible for myself.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yeah. And what I think your stories is telling us is how much this motivation is important. I know everybody wants to talk about what did you eat and how much you move and we do all that. But to me, that is the backseat. It's really this motivation, how you're thinking about it, believing you can succeed, setting up this support network basically is what keeps you going and gives you that long lasting success. So we know kind of what motivated you at the beginning. What kept you going? What kept you strong? Because you've been doing this now over a year, very successful in the middle of your journey when you were still losing weight. What motivated you to stay going or what motivated you when things were low, when you didn't feel motivated?

**Alexia:** The top thing was that going back to the way that I felt before, I didn't ever want to go back to that. Part of what motivated me was, honestly, it was very freeing. It was a happy journey. I think being in the State of Slim community and having personal homework challenges every week and things that I knew I was doing for myself, I ended up just feeling really, really happy that I had something I was working on for myself that really didn't take that much time.

**Holly Wyatt:** So your journey was fun or had some joy in it, right? It didn't sound like it was suffering, sacrifice, gritting your teeth the whole time.

**Alexia:** No, it was a lot of fun. And it just felt like freer and stronger. It just kind of felt like it was building on itself. And why would I want to stop that? I want to see what's possible.

**Jim Hill:** Wow, that is so cool.

**Holly Wyatt:** So what's keeping you going now? So we can kind of hear the evolution. What I'm trying to say is kind of what started. I can kind of feel the middle now. You can kind of feel you didn't want to go back and it was feeling good. What's motivating you now, Alexia?

**Alexia:** Well, I still want to know what else is possible. What motivates me now is when I see that taking care of myself lets me free up a lot of other space in my head. There's a couple of things with that. One is I'm not consumed with feeling like I have a problem I need to address.

**Holly Wyatt:** It sounds like possibility. You don't even know but you see that there's so much in front of you that you haven't even identified yet.

**Alexia:** That's a big part of it. It's like really mind blowing when you think the way that you've thought about something for so long, you realize how much you held yourself back in one area. What other areas have I held myself back in? And it all works together though. It's not just about weight loss. It's about when I'm taking care of myself, weight loss became possible. When I'm taking care of myself, other things are possible too. So it's not like I can just say, check off the list. I lost weight. I'm done with this part of my life. This is now part of my life. One of the things was that it can get really hard if you're sitting there only focused on, I just want to lose weight, and then every day you're looking at the scale to validate that you just lost weight. I kept thinking about this. You do so much in a day to support your lifestyle. And it's not like you get the change that day. But over a period of time, once that lifestyle becomes your lifestyle, the changes just start happening. And you have to keep your mind focused more on the lifestyle than on each day's data points. But when you look back over a period of time, all the data points added up and you can't believe how you got where you got to. It's like a big snowball starts happening.

**Jim Hill:** I want to explore this a little more. Alexia, you're a therapist, so I'm really excited to explore this next area with you. Holly and I have worked with a lot of people that have successfully lost weight and kept it off. And one of the things that we have noted, and we're exploring this in more detail, their identity changes, how they see themselves and define themselves changes. They're no longer thinking of themselves as an overweight person or a person struggling with their weight. They think of themselves in a different way. Is that something that you can relate to?

**Alexia:** Yeah, I think one of the biggest things that has probably changed for me about how I feel about myself is I think I might have said this a couple of times now, but I feel like I was so painfully self-limiting. I think there's a lot of negativity in that. And I often think about how negative that felt and how negative that probably was to be around. I was so consumed with being like my body state and not being happy in my body. And I was self-conscious and I was really carrying a lot of that with me. And I think a lot of my life energy was tied up in that, comparing myself to others, fears about what you really thought of me, and I just feel much freer now to genuinely be me. I don't think about that. I don't think about anything like that anymore.

**Holly Wyatt:** I like to say, I think it aligns with who you are. It's not that it almost changes, but your true identity now is out there. And that feels good. That feels right. That feels as it was meant to be. So who do you think of yourself when you say, who are you now? What's your identity?

**Alexia:** That's like back to my Colorado story is, okay, so when I was huffing and puffing just a little over a year ago up that mountain, I was like, who is this? This is not me. Where am I? I should be enjoying this mountain. How did I get here? And this year, I felt more like myself when we went back to Colorado because I was honestly really nervous. I guess it was like being in a new place for the first time. I was there in Colorado, 50 pounds lighter than the year before. And my friends all wanted to go climb to the top of Mount Crested Butte. And I was like, I don't know if I can do that. And I just took out on my own really early that morning. And I booked it up that mountain. And I was on top of that mountain in no time at the peak. And I just stood there and I was like, this is who I am. And that was so powerful.

**Jim Hill:** That's identity change, Holly. That is identity change. Sometimes, Alexia, people tell us that success is being the person on the outside that they've always been on the inside of aligning that inside person with how they're living their life.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yeah, that person was in there and then staying on that mountain, you were living it, right? You weren't limited now. You were let it go, right? You realized you could do it. And it sounds like you didn't fully believe it, but then you knew enough to keep to try, right? You believed enough to try. You did it.

**Alexia:** Always busting through these, these limited ideas that I think I have about myself of what I can do.

**Jim Hill:** Wow. That's incredible. One of the things Holly and I talk about a lot is maybe rethinking success for weight management. So oftentimes when people start out, their success is totally defined by the scale. And your transformation, it truly is a transformation. What do you see as measures of your success?

**Alexia:** The first thing that comes to mind is I'm not consumed. To me, it's like having more mental space for other things.

**Holly Wyatt:** So let me make sure we understand that. So what were you thinking about? Thinking about losing weight or what was consuming your thoughts?

**Alexia:** I think I regularly thought about losing weight. I was regularly so self-critical. The biggest success feels like having overcome this thing that was holding me back. Yes. Oh, my gosh. Every day I feel like, wow, I physically feel strong. Kind of like, Jim, you were saying, I mean, I feel some of this just feels like, OK, well, I feel like myself. I feel really strong and light versus being so heavy and in pain. I feel just mentally open and willing and not consumed and stuck.

**Holly Wyatt:** Jim, think about this. We talk about food noise and food noise going away with some of the medications. Almost this is on, Jim, think about this identity noise. I think what she's talking about is these thoughts that about who she is and she was able to change that. And that space that she's saying. So we may need to do a whole episode on this.

**Jim Hill:** You've given us a lot to think about in that area because, again, it really struck me as important that you now have space in your head for other things. This isn't consuming your mental energy that it did before. That's huge.

**Alexia:** It's just the structure. It's just I've got that down in my life.

**Jim Hill:** I love it. All right, here's a tough one for you. On a scale of 1 to 10, how confident are you that you're going to keep your weight off?

**Alexia:** Oh my gosh, I really feel like a 10.

**Jim Hill:** All right.

**Alexia:** I don't even question it.

**Holly Wyatt:** When did that happen? When did that switch? I mean, you didn't start out in the journey being a 10 because you weren't even sure you could lose the weight. So when do you think that switch occurred from right now? I'm like, I can keep it off.

**Alexia:** Honestly, I think it happened really quickly once I knew I could do it. And I understood that it's very simple, that I was making it very complicated. It's not that hard. It's really just about aligning my life.

**Jim Hill:** Love it

**Alexia:** I don't question. I don't question keeping it off.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yeah.

**Jim Hill:** If I ask your husband what's different about you after weight loss what would he say?

**Alexia:** I think he would probably say I'm happier.

**Jim Hill:** Ah

**Holly Wyatt:** Oh my gosh you're hitting everything everything that we say.

**Jim Hill:** It really is. Holly, should we do some reflection here and advice for others maybe.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yeah let's do that in one second. I want to ask one more question because I just remembered she did win the transformation challenge that we do. I think it's a three month challenge that we do at the beginning of the year. We put it on. It's about weight loss but it really is much bigger than that. It's about transforming your life which you did and you won that challenge and you got a prize. I want you to tell us what you chose to do with the prize money and then the twist that you did with it.

**Alexia:** First of all, I just want to say, I love that you offer challenges and competitions. To me, it helped me just be part of a team that's all working towards this thing. I was truly stunned and blown away by getting to be the recipient of the challenge. That really meant so much. That reflection back was just truly, truly, it's the cherry on the top of this journey. The prize was a thousand dollars. And I got to spend it in any way I wanted. And then I also got to gift a thousand dollars to a team member, a super friend in the SOS community that I felt had been really helpful in my journey. And what I ended up doing with the thousand dollars is I was 100% sure I wanted to use it towards something with my lifestyle, to support my lifestyle. Because part of what's fun is getting to do new things and try new things and what I ended up doing was buying a bike. My husband and I both just bike all over the place, and, you know, just little things like when you would normally hop in the car, we just get on our bikes when we can. And then I also bought a paddle board a stand-up paddle board which we got to use several times this summer. And then I was able to give the prize to, I split it between my two super friends that I had in the program. A super friend is somebody that you just really can count on to reach out to and support each other and to be reached out to by. It's just this really great relationship where we're all supporting each other. There were two people that I just really stuck with and stuck with me throughout the journey and I was excited to celebrate with them.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yeah, I always say a super friend, the key with a super friend versus a best friend. You know, a best friend may always be there. But a super friend tells you what you need to hear. Sometimes when you don't want to hear it, but it always comes from a very good place. It's because they want you to succeed. There's no ulterior motive. The motive and intent is so good. But sometimes they are able to tell you what you need to hear. And you had a couple of great super friends. You were able to share the prize. And it was really great to see what you chose and how that just fit the new you and the new lifestyle and the transformation. And I was just thrilled to see you do that. So that was a great story.

**Jim Hill:** That's awesome. Okay, a couple of questions for Alexia, Holly. I'll do the first one. So your story is incredible and it's so inspiring. But no journey is without some bumps in the road. Is there anything looking back that you wish you had done differently?

**Alexia:** Yes, there are definitely bumps in the road. And I think the difference in we're going back to mindset again for me is that prior, I could have told you the story about how all the bumps keep me from my goals. And I think what I kind of started learning, I think one of the terms we learned in SOS is curveballs and how our curveballs, the curveballs that we get or the bumps along the road become opportunities for us. And I think the biggest lessons I learned with the bumps along the road is to take them on and to learn from them and to use them as extra little challenges that just give me give me an extra little workout to get stronger from.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yeah. I mean, you learn from everything, but would you change anything?

**Alexia:** If I was going back, I have wisdom now. And I would say things like certain food things, if I substituted this for that, maybe I didn't see a weight loss on the scale and that it worked better for me when I literally did just stick with the plan.

**Holly Wyatt:** So little things, individualizing it basically.

**Alexia:** Yeah. I mean, again, back to the biggest thing was just that anytime I had resistance, it didn't feel good and it felt a lot better just to try.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yeah. All right. So, what's next? Your journey is evolving. This one thing I always say, right? You're never, you hit a goal and then it's what's next?

**Alexia:** I think now that I've started thinking about other things besides my weight, I'm in a PhD program right now that I had wanted to do for decades. And I had thought, I had just felt like I was too old to be doing this and I deep in it right now. And a lot of the feedback I get is that I'm not having enough confidence in myself. It's kind of a similar thing where I'm just trying to really be not limiting my beliefs, not limiting what I may have to offer through thinking, I guess, through limiting thoughts. I kind of can't wait to see if this much in my life changed in a year. I can't wait to see what else can change.

**Jim Hill:** Oh, wow. That's incredible. Okay. We're going to end on this one, Alexia. We're going to give you, what is the one takeaway from your story that you would like people to understand?

**Alexia:** I think the biggest thing is that when you get fixated on the day-to-day of a weight loss journey, it can feel kind of consuming. But when you shift your focus to what, you know, one of the things we talk about is focusing on not what we're giving up, but what we're getting. When you shift your focus to the lifestyle that you want and really, really focus on growing that, the weight loss does take care of itself.

**Holly Wyatt:** Love it. What you get to do, adding, not taking it away. Yes, so many good nuggets in there.

**Jim Hill:** That's a good one.

**Holly Wyatt:** Yeah.

**Jim Hill:** Okay. Well, Alexia, thank you so much for sharing your story with us. It's stories like yours that remind us of the power of persistence and personal growth. To our listeners, if you have a successful journey you'd like to share on the show, we'd love to hear from you. Reach out to us at hello at weightlossand dot com or visit [www.weightlossand.com](http://www.weightlossand.com/) to tell us your story. Remember, by sharing our journeys, we all rise together. So wonderful episode, Alexia, you're so inspiring. And see everybody next time.

**Holly Wyatt:** Bye, guys.

**Jim Hill:** And that's a wrap for today's episode of Weight Loss And. We hope you enjoy diving into the world of weight loss with us.

**Holly Wyatt:** If you want to stay connected and continue exploring the “Ands” of weight loss, be sure to follow our podcast on your favorite platform.

**Jim Hill:** We'd also love to hear from you. Share your thoughts, questions, or topic suggestions by reaching out at [weightlossand.com](http://weightlossand.com/). Your feedback helps us tailor future episodes to your needs.

**Holly Wyatt:** And remember, the journey doesn't end here. Keep applying the knowledge and strategies you've learned and embrace the power of the “And” in your own weight loss journey.