Sarah:
Good morning, everyone and welcome to our weekly weight loss question and answer session here with Corinne Crabtree, the host of Losing 100 Pounds With Corinne podcast and also the CEO and founder of the No BS Weightloss Program. We’ve got Corinne up here today and also Kathy Hartman. She is the co-host of the Losing 100 Pounds podcast and both Corinne and Kathy are just the best weight loss coaches you can find. They’ve been talking about losing weight on the podcast for years and helped thousands and thousands of women lose weight for good. They are here to answer your questions this morning.
Sarah:
So before we get started, I just want to tell you about the etiquette of our room today. If you’d like to ask her and Kathy a question, go ahead and raise your hand. Anyone can come up here on stage. If you’re a No BS woman, we’d love to see you. If you’re just new and joining us, we’d also love to answer your weight loss questions today. So you’ll raise your hand if you have a question and then we’ll invite you here on stage. Clubhouse, the settings is for you to come on stage un-muted. So please be prepared to mute yourself as soon as possible. We are recording and today’s recording will be released in the Losing 100 Pounds podcast here in a few weeks, so it’s really important to keep the lines clear for communication.
Sarah:
Then, when it’s your turn to ask a question, please have your question ready, written down so you can say, “My question is … ” Our coaches don’t need a lot of backstory today, but if they have questions, they will go ahead and ask. I think that’s everything to kick off in the room. Does anyone have a question, raise your hand? With that, I’ll let Corinne and then Kathy introduce themselves as well.
Corinne Crabtree:
So I’m, Corinne I’m the founder and CEO of the No BS Weightloss Program. I wrote that program as an homage to my own weight loss journey. I had been on so many diets where I had fucking failed over and over again, and tried a lot of bullshit tactics to try to lose weight, that when I finally was able to figure out my shit, I wanted to teach other women how to do the same. Because what I did to lose weight, nobody else was doing that. There were no plans, there were no coaches. I didn’t even have Google. I’ve had my weight off for 15 years, so it really was a journey of me sitting down with myself and figuring out what is it that you want out of your life? What do you want to be eating? How do you want to be living? And taking my time to get there.
Corinne Crabtree:
So I wrote the program for that. I also have the Losing 100 Pounds podcast and I just show up every day. In fact, a lot of these women are going to see me in an hour from now talking about how to include good ass food into your daily plans. So, I’m all about eating all the things, just learning how to not eat them emotionally, eat them because we actually want to enjoy them, not eating them because we had a bad day. So I’m going to turn it over to Kathy.
Kathy Hartman:
Good morning, everyone. I am Kathy Hartman. I am the co-host of the Losing 100 Pounds podcast. Corinne, I saw, I guess it was on Facebook or somewhere, we’ve been going for four years, podcasting for four years. I’m so grateful to be a member of the No BS Weightloss Program and to be on the team and to have lost my weight. I met Corinne and 2013, lost 80 pounds in about 18 months and my life is so different. My life is just so different, not just from losing the weight, but from learning how to think better, feel more things, and do more things that are pleasing to my body and that make me feel amazing. So with that, I will turn it back over to Sarah.
Sarah:
Thank you. I’m Sarah and I’ll be your moderator here this morning. If you’d like to ask Corinne and Kathy a question, please feel free to raise your hand and we’ll get you up on stage. Just be prepared to mute yourself, we are recording this for the podcast today. All right. Let’s just go ahead and jump into our first question. Good morning, Joanne. You want to unmute and tell us your weight-loss question? Joanne, are you there? Your unmute is at the bottom right of your phone.
Corinne Crabtree:
I’m not really sure what’s going on. I’ve never seen that little phone icon, so I’m not sure if that’s going to work. Why don’t you just ask us a question, Sarah, if you’ve got one and we’ll figure out Joanne.
Sarah:
Okay. I’m really curious. I named the rooms here every morning and I’ve named this room, “How to lose pandemic pounds.” Now, as we’re coming out of the pandemic and people are starting to get back into their communities, what’s your biggest tip for reentering the world and especially if we’ve gained weight?
Corinne Crabtree:
So this is funny because this keeps coming up inside of our own membership. I think the first thing is realizing for my members first and foremost, let’s start with you guys. You are equipped to go back into the world. I think a lot of you have a thought that, “It’s going to be so different and I haven’t been out to eat in a long time and I haven’t been around friends.” All of that thinking drives anxiety, overwhelm, confusion, and a host of other emotions that what do we do when we feel them? We eat. We fuck ourselves over, we go out … I want you all to think about this.
Corinne Crabtree:
If you’re about going back out and you’re worried what other people are going to think about weight you may have gained, then you’re going to feel scared and then your brain is going to populate really shitty answers about what people are going to think about you. You will be dancing around assuming that everyone thinks you’ve gained weight and all this other bullshit. If you don’t think that I decide, “I’m going to go out. I’m figuring out my shit. This is happening.” Your brain. Doesn’t sit there and feel scared and hopeless and defeated. It’s going to sit there and think about, “All right? How do I go to this meal? How do I stop at enough? How do I order things that I know I want to order?” Your brain will operate on a different level.
Corinne Crabtree:
So I think the first thing is you’ve got to get really clear on how am I currently thinking about all this? And you know me, I’m going to tell you all the journals. You need to write down on a piece of paper, if you’re worried about what other people are going to think, let’s say you’ve gained some weight. First and foremost, write down what are you your thoughts about the weight gain and what do I think other people will think? Just know what you’re thinking first, because that’s the most important.
Corinne Crabtree:
Then what you can do is you can sit there and you can look at it and you can decide, “All right, I need to be aware of when this kind of thinking starts so that when it does, I’m going to shut it down because it’s not useful. It feels bad. It jacks me up and if I’m going out jacked up, feeling bad, I’m more likely to just eat shit so I don’t feel jacked up and feel bad.” So it’s really important that you guys do that. You don’t need to come up with new thoughts yet. You don’t need to do anything other than when the volume turns up on your shitty thoughts … and the only way you’ll turn the volume up is to get to know what you’re already thinking. When it happens, you can turn it down. You can just say, “Not useful. That’s not what I’m going to think. We’re just we’re going to sit here, we’re going to order the food we said we would order.”
Corinne Crabtree:
You know how I get you to make a 24 hour doable plan? That’s when you just fall back on, since my brain is acting like an asshole right now, the best thing I can do for myself is fall back on my plan, not sit here and listen to it like it’s the God’s honest truth. So, figure out those thoughts, do the same thing with, if you’re worried about going out and eating and you haven’t been there for a long time, you need to write the same story down.
Corinne Crabtree:
You need to ask yourself, “All right, what have I been thinking? What do I think about this? Is it jacking me up? Is it driving anxiety? Am I asking poor questions like, how am I ever going to not overeat?” A lot of us wonder why we go out and we end up overeating. If you let your brain ask shitty questions, you will always get a shitty answer.
Corinne Crabtree:
So think about this. List everything that you’re thinking about going back out and then challenge each one of them and be like, “Is this what I really want to be thinking? Is this how I really want to set myself up?” Because you want to set yourself up to be able to go and you want to be able to be calmer, feel assured, confident, at least neutralized. We don’t want to go in like a scared jackrabbit.
Corinne Crabtree:
If your brain’s asking, “How am I going to go out to eat and not eat my face off?” Then you need to say, “What’s a better question here?” Any question that’s going to have anxiety behind it is what I would call the shitty question. You could be asking, “How can I go out to eat, enjoy myself and include things that I could lose weight with?” Your brain is going to populate very different answers. When you sit down and you look at the menu, if you’re asking that question, your mind automatically goes to the foods that you will enjoy and you could lose weight on. If you’re looking … I want you all to think about this, just imagine yourself thinking, “How am I not going to eat my face off?” You open the menu, then you probably flip straight to desserts, or you go straight to your favorite stuff and look at it and go like, “I wish I could eat those things.” And you sit there and you talk to yourself like jackass again.
Corinne Crabtree:
So we have to be mindful, so before it’s … For me, a lot of the pandemic work is all done before you go. You get your mindset straight, you do it on paper. You give your brain new direction, clarity, what to listen for, what to change and stuff. Then when you go out, you’re just more prepared. It doesn’t mean that you won’t be freaking out a little bit. It doesn’t mean that you’re going to be perfect, but I guarantee all of you, you stand a fucking better chance at going out and it being a better experience for yourself than sitting around, scared of it and hoping for the best. Hope is not a weight loss strategy. And that’s what I’ve got and this is Corrine.
Kathy Hartman:
So, I just want to speak real quick to the women in the room and who are listening, who were in the middle of their weight-loss journey when the pandemic hit, or who were in maintenance or close to it when the pandemic hit, and you ended up putting on a little bit of weight during the pandemic. So for you, this is one of the very, very few times I would recommend looking at your past. When the pandemic hit, if you were on a roll, if you are in the right mindset when you went out to eat, when you were eating at home, think about, “What was I thinking back then? How did that make me feel? And then what was I doing to be kind to my body, to lose my weight, to stay on plan?” Put yourself back in that mindset and think about it in those terms. Bring those thoughts back into today and say, “You know what? I remember thinking, ‘I’ve got this.’ I remember thinking, ‘I don’t know what’s on the menu, but I’ll figure it out.’ ” Think about what you were thinking then that was creating success and start there.
Kathy Hartman:
If you’re just new to losing weight, absolutely, what Corinne said is what I would do. But if you had success, I would draw on those memories. I would draw on that evidence that you can actually create more success now.
Sarah:
Thank you so much, Corinne and Kathy, that was some great advice about the pandemic and getting back. A thought that I think is, I did the best that I could, and I took the best care of myself that I could, and there’s nothing to be ashamed of if I did my best. So, that’s the thought that I’ve been thinking here lately. With that, we’ll go ahead and get to some questions and answers. Let’s see. Joanne, are you there?
Joanne:
I am here. Hi, everybody.
Sarah:
Hi, what’s your question this morning.
Joanne:
Okay and thank you, Corinne. I think you’re terrific. I follow you. I’m starting your free stuff. My question is this, I’m an emotional eater and basically I’m a healthy eater. So if I’m pigging out, I am pigging out on tofu cream cheese and Ezekiel bread. So what I want to ask is, do you have any kind of key where I’m a binger, and I know there are times what to do to stop it, but sometimes I actually plan it out. I mean, I’ll make a salad with, of course, salad dressing, a sesame, oil or something like that. Everything is caloric. I read one thing that you said when you talk … I don’t eat junk. I haven’t eaten junk, I mean, in … if I tell you how long, you’ll know how old I am, that’s okay.
Joanne:
So, the question I’m asking is, when you are that emotional binger, because that’s what I am. I can go to a restaurant, I can go out, I can go to parties, but it’s when that little trigger comes and that little, whatever you want to call it, and I plan it. How do I stop myself from planning it?
Corinne Crabtree:
Okay, so there’s a couple things going on here. In our podcast, Kathy, if you can, I don’t know, go to iTunes real quick and see if you can find the podcast where we talk about good, better, best. We’ve got some podcasts where we talk about food and villainizing food, or morality, glorifying food. So, one of the things that you said that super interesting is, “When I pig out, I don’t eat junk.” We don’t talk about in my program, we don’t talk about food, it’s all equal value. The reason why this is important is because what your brain does is when you say, “It’s tofu cream cheese and Ezekiel bread,” it’s like, it’s your brain saying, “And it’s okay. We can overeat this.” When we apply virtue and morality to food, it’s signaling to your brain, that there’s permission here and the last thing that anyone who’s a binge eater or an emotional eater needs is to tee yourself up for an excuse that starts allowing permissive emotional eating.
Corinne Crabtree:
Now, let me say this for every room and the girl in the back. I want you to feel permissive around food. But what I don’t want you to do is to feel permissive around overeating because you’re moralizing food, not tackling your emotional need for it, which is two very different things. So since you’re newer to our stuff and you just started doing the free course, that is the first place for you to start, is to really start with some of the podcasts that we have around the way that I look at food, how we categorize food, how we break the chains of thinking that there’s some kind of goodness to some and bad to others.
Corinne Crabtree:
Let me just say this. The problem that ends up happening is when we think that there are really good foods, as if they’re better than others or they are … And I’m talking about on the morality stage. If you eat something bad, then you consume it and then you think you’re being bad. You start feeling as if you’re bad. If you eat something good and you think it’s good, your brain automatically starts thinking you are good. What you put in your mouth doesn’t … I’m pretty sure that when I go to heaven, the last question God’s going to ask me is, “Can I see your good food, bad food list first before you can gain entrance?” I’m not super religious, but I will just tell you, the good Lord’s not going to judge me based upon what goes into my mouth, maybe I shouldn’t either. So thinking about it from that perspective, number one.
Corinne Crabtree:
Number two, when it comes to planning your binges, we actually teach that inside of my membership as a way to say, “All right, when you make your plan, if you been binging or you’ve been overeating, one the first things we want you to do is plan it as if … exactly the way you would eat it, but you have to eat it consciously. You have to eat it at a table. You need to do it in a way that’s very different than how you normally do.” Most people that binge and most people that are going to be emotionally eating are going to do it while also simultaneously checking out. They’re not necessarily paying attention anymore, so the experience is very different.
Joanne:
[crosstalk 00:18:00].
Corinne Crabtree:
If you eat it at the table with just you and your brain, you invite what’s called the conscious brain in. I know this is going to be going … All of my current members, you guys will understand what I’m saying. You’re inviting the part of your brain that actually has your goals and what you want and your desires for your life into the conversation. Most of us, what we do is we just go into our default brain, which is just, “This tastes so good. This is okay, this is all healthy. We put it on a plan,” and then we just zone out with it. What I want you to do is to be able to do these binges first and foremost, where we turn up the volume of your conscious brain, so that you can ask questions like, in this moment, why do I need to keep eating? What is going on inside of me that says I should keep eating? Then you can also ask questions like, in this moment, if food is not my answer, is there anything else that could be? And just get aware of all that.
Corinne Crabtree:
Sometimes the binging doesn’t stop at first, but you start really understanding if you’re eating for comfort, to not feel so lonely. You start understanding your reasons. When you ask that question, if food’s not the answer and I’m really looking for this, why am I not giving myself that stuff? How could I start giving myself that stuff? When you do all of that work, then we start seeing binge desires going down, or the desire to binge stays with you but you have now the capacity to say no, because you’re giving yourself other stuff and you can reason with the binge voice. Whereas right now, most of us, we just don’t. We hear it and we rat to it, or we hear it, we get this and then eat, or we hear it and we try to fight with it and then eventually over time, give into it. So, is that helpful?
Joanne:
Absolutely. I think the most helpful, because this has been my lifelong whatever, is changing my venue, because I have been trying to stop it, which I have, pretty decently, exactly how you’re saying it, but what really just resonated with me is change my venue. What do bingers do? You open the refrigerator door and you stand there in the refrigerator, eating and eating and eating. Listen, my husband even accuses me of eating some brownies that I didn’t even eat, but who knows? I could have been sleep eating. So, that is going to be … Thank you, what really resonates is change my venue. When I’m sitting there and opening that refrigerator door, it’s like, “Okay, if you’re going to eat something now, sit down at the table.”
Corinne Crabtree:
Yeah. I will tell you for all of you that … So especially my members, you know I talk about this all the time. If you’re an overeater at night, don’t just sit in your normal … We call it the eating chair. All of us have a cozy spot that we like to saddle up with our chips and our ice cream or whatever it is. I tell people all the time that there are so many ways that you can break the chain when it comes to emotional eating, sometimes just a simple new cue allows that conscious brain to turn on and it gets to witness what’s going on. Just be mindful.
Corinne Crabtree:
I’ll just say this then we’ll move on to the next person, is all of you, when you start turning up the volume of your conscious brain, sometimes the habit brain will scream at you like an old shrill, like it’s your mother and she’s yelling at you that you shouldn’t be doing this and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You want to be mindful of that, turn that part down. That’s a natural occurrence that happens, but you do not have to judge yourself. You can always tell yourself, “It’s normal that, when I start seeing behaviors I’ve always judged as bad, where I’m actually looking at them honestly, it’s normal that my brain is going to revolt. It’s normal that it’s going to yell at me. It’s normal that it’s going to act like this is so terrible.”
Corinne Crabtree:
It’s just your brain’s way of trying to protect you from changing a pattern. So let it yell, but then just say, “And that’s normal and that’s okay. I still want to find out my information.” But what I don’t want you guys to do is that voice come on and then you’re just like, “Oh my God, this is so awful.” Because if it feels bad, guess what you’ll do? You’ll quit looking at the very information that you need to find out, in order to not feel bad because of that voice. We need to get the information. We want that information, so make sure that when that voice comes in, that you’re like, “And that’s normal.” Turn it down again and just say, “We’re getting our information here. We’ve got to find out why we’re eating, we got to figure this stuff out to get to the other side.”
Corinne Crabtree:
When you do that, you’re practicing compassion. You’re practicing, understanding. You’re practicing patience. You’re practicing all kinds of other feelings that will balance out fear and feeling defeated, or feeling hopeless, or feeling yelled at or anxious. So it’s a lot of balancing of those feelings. All right, thank you so much.
Joanne:
Oh no, and thank you. I may leave in 20 minutes, but I’m going to continue to listen and thank you so much, all of you.
Corinne Crabtree:
Awesome, thank you.
Sarah:
Thank you, Joanne, for your question. Oh, Kathy, you’re going to hop in?
Kathy Hartman:
Yeah, yeah. I want you to add just to what Corinne said as well. Something I’m learning about myself is that when I feel very urgey, like I want to eat whatever’s in the house, or open a bottle of wine, or something like that. That’s my signal to look at why I’m feeling urgey. What am I trying to distract myself from? Is it fear? Is it anxiety? Is it anger? Something like that. So when you have those urges, ask yourself what am I trying to run from here? And that, a lot of times, we’ll open up another door for you to look at. I have two podcast recommendations for Joanne. One is old school, it’s episode 96, How To Make Deciding What To Eat Easy. And the other one is more recent. Good, better, best, Corinne, is sprinkled throughout the more recent podcasts. But one that I especially love is number 203, The 10 Rules Of Weight Loss, so I’m done.
Sarah:
Thank you for those recommendations, Kathy. We will get those up on Instagram here in just a few minutes. So people can go and swipe up to listen directly to the podcast. Let’s move on to Jess. Good morning, Jess, do you want to unmute and say, my question is, and then tell us your question?
Jess:
Okay. Hi, my question is … it’s kind of loaded. I had a reservation that every time I lose people or stuff that’s very significant to me, it’s like I eat and I realized that I was giving myself permission because of those losses. I have recently realized that it’s like I’m just … I someone really close to me recently and it was over a month ago and I’m not giving up this time, I’m going to keep on planning. Because the last time I gave up on myself, I gained 65 pounds and I don’t want to go down that rabbit hole again. I know that I had a bunch of stuff that I want to say, but it was just one question. So there we go. So, I’m not sure what my question is, I’m sorry.
Corinne Crabtree:
Yeah, that’s what I’m wondering. So what is your question? You want to stop eating when you lose people?
Jess:
Yeah, I don’t want to use that as a coping mechanism anymore. I’ve been doing a lot of thought work over the last a couple months on that, because when COVID hit, I went down the rabbit hole and I was like, “Fine, then fuck you, I’m out.” And I ate and ate and ate. I have recently, in January, came back from overeating and I started by just doing the minimum baselines and adding and adding and adding until I’ve gotten to where I’m at. I’ve lost 30 pounds since January, but then in May, I lost my sister-in-law and I quickly went right back to that old idea that it’s like, “Oh, you’ve lost somebody, you get to eat.”
Corinne Crabtree:
Okay. So let me ask you this. Did you start eating again?
Jess:
I had overeats, but I followed them up with discovery worksheets so that I could discover what it was that was bringing me to that thought. I’ve also gone on coaching calls. Then recently, when you started doing the 2.0 calls, I also realized that when I lose somebody or when something happens, I start not sleeping properly. Then that not sleeping properly starts me into not drinking water properly. Then it doesn’t help because then I’m only relying on my habit brain, opposed to relying on my new thought brain.
Corinne Crabtree:
So let me say this. I want you to first and foremost … I think it’s important for all of you to understand this part. Whenever something huge happens in our life, something traumatic or a loss, or whatever, however we dealt with it in the past is what is the only evidence, unless we give our brain new evidence, it’s the only way it knows how to react. So if the last time you lost someone you ate and that kind of thing, it worked. I mean, I want you to think about this. You were probably trying not to feel sad and grieve, and your brain was looking for a way to protect you. We start eating and guess what? We’re protected. So, that worked. What you’re noticing now, though, is that for that plan to happen, it also requires weight gain. So you’re like, “Okay, that method, although it protects me, doesn’t have the consequences that I want. I want to be able to continue to lose my weight. I want to be able to take care of myself. I want to be able to do these other things.” So now we got to regroup.
Corinne Crabtree:
This is important for all of you. You already are showing and demonstrating signs that you noticed the last time, it’s like, “Not the way I want it to go this time.” So you’re giving your brain just consciousness. You’re saying, “We’re going to keep planning. I have had some overeats, but now I’m doing discovery worksheets. I didn’t just throw it all away this time.” So I want you to just give yourself that win, number one. Because I think, you know how I teach things. In order to lose weight, we have to focus on what’s going right and not just be like, “Okay, here’s all the things that are going wrong and we need to fix all the things that are going wrong. Unless we fix everything, we do not have the permission to feel good about ourselves just yet.”
Corinne Crabtree:
You got to feel good about yourself at the beginning and give yourself wins in the beginning. That permission has to be granted immediately, not after you’ve been a trained monkey and done all your performance acts. So, that’s number one. You’re already your own pattern. So, I think acknowledging that and giving yourself credit for it is going to be helpful so that you’re not over-indexing that, “This is bad, this has come back. I don’t want to do this again.” I think you need to talk more about it as, “I’m already disrupting the pattern. I’m already catching myself when I’m wanting to go back to what worked the previous time, and I’m doing all these things.” It’s a lighter conversation to have around the exact same circumstance that’s happening right now.
Corinne Crabtree:
I think the second part of it is, we always have to remember that when we lose someone, let’s just stay in the grief realm. It’s easy to say we don’t want to eat through it, but we need to acknowledge what trade we’re going to make eating through it allows us to not feel sad, to not grieve, to not experience our emotions. So if we’re not going to eat through it, we have to remind ourselves that means we’re trading it in for experiencing our truest feelings, for really being there for ourselves, which is hard. It’s like it sounds sexy to keep losing weight, but you’re trading in the full experience of your own emotions for that.
Corinne Crabtree:
I think it’s important to acknowledge it so that you’re prepared for that part. Because what I watch most people do is say, “Well, I’ve lost someone. I want to keep losing weight.” They try to lose weight and they also notice that they’re feeling really bad. Then they’re just practicing willpower to lose weight while sitting there trying not to feel bad. Then eventually you were down and you just go back to eating. So I don’t want that for you.
Corinne Crabtree:
We’ve got to have a plan for what is my grief plan? What is my sadness plan. When I’m missing my friend, when I’m thinking about my dad, whatever your person is and they’re gone, what do I want to think and feel in those moments, how am I going to feel my emotions and be like, “If I have a big story around I shouldn’t be crying, I shouldn’t be this.” We got to work through all that. That’s got to be a part of the process of well, why shouldn’t I cry? What could crying also mean? Does it mean I’m weak? Does it mean I’m strong? I’ve got to define all this if I’m ever going to allow myself to feel my truest emotions, because if you’re going to continue to lose weight during these times in a way you want to live the rest of your life, that means this is the training ground for learning how to also feel your emotions. Does that make sense Jess?
Jess:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I’m doing the laddering thoughts to get myself to that thinking. So I’m changing the conversation, I’m using the can I just method. Like, can I just get up out of bed today? Can I just do this? Can I show myself love today, opposed to, I need to lose this much weight. I’ve really changed since … that first 65 pounds was all about the weight loss. Do you know what I mean? And getting there, and this time it’s like, I’m really wanting to learn how to live my life the way I’m going to love living my life, the way I want to live the rest of my life. Part of that is learn … We have our day-to-day experiences. Like I have my day-to-day experiences and that fits into that normal thing that we do day-to-day. It’s so easy to do that and then these bigger things arise and it’s like, “Okay, I feel like a toddler again. And I’m learning how to walk through that new thing again.” For the longest time, it’s like, I either … and way, way back in my past I used drugs or I used food to numb out all feelings, even happy, sad, mad, bored. So now it’s like that reconnecting my emotions with me again, right.
Corinne Crabtree:
Yeah, so one of the things I might do-
Jess:
Yeah, sorry for going on, I [crosstalk 00:34:09]-
Corinne Crabtree:
No, you’re fine. I was just going to give you a resource inside the membership. Go to module two and look for the … I forget the name of the lesson, but it’s six or seven, but it’s the one where we are going to feel our feelings, where I walk you through the now process. You doing some of that work, especially if you’ve notoriously numbed out and stuff is … Any of you who are in No BS, this will be really useful for you, to set up a time where you’re going to … and I would do it this way. I would set up a time where you’re going to on-purpose journal about the people that you’ve lost so that you can basically create … You’re essentially creating a lot of your negative emotion.
Corinne Crabtree:
You want to create your sadness, your anger, your grief. You want to generate all of that on purpose. Then play that video and learn and teach your body about how to process an emotion and what it really is, because it’s just a physical response in your body, but we make it so much more in our head with all of our thinking. I would use that resource.
Corinne Crabtree:
The other thing that I would think that would be helpful for you and for all of you who are grieving someone, especially if you lost someone during the pandemic, is to ask yourself the question, “How can I honor the person I’ve lost today?” So, when we talk about continuing to want to lose weight while we grieve and not eat through it, I think sometimes what we forget is that what we’re really wanting to do is we are truly wanting to grieve.
Corinne Crabtree:
If you ask the question, “How can I honor that person today?” It puts your brain in a space of asking a really good question that makes it think. Sometimes it will be to not emotionally eat today and to cry as needed. Sometimes it might mean, make a super compassionate food plan today. That includes all the things that I do love because I don’t have the bandwidth to sit and make myself eat a salad and stuff. Sometimes those are the most compassionate things. At the root of that, I know some of you are like, “What do you mean put your favorite foods on your plan and stuff?” What I teach you guys with food is not that there are good and bad foods and that there are these right foods and stuff. What I really try to teach you guys is to truly think through the things that you’re putting in your body and why.
Corinne Crabtree:
Sometimes we are going to emotionally eat but if you’re going to do it, I don’t want you doing it out of reaction. I don’t want you doing it out of numbing or telling yourself, “I can’t handle my life,” or, “I can’t handle this moment,” or, “I just need to blow off steam.” I want you doing it because you really thought about yourself and you’re learning to establish a relationship with you as like, we may not have anybody, but each other for the rest of our lives and girl, I’ve always got your back. No matter what it is. I think that’s the most important relationship to ever have. It takes just asking the right questions and stuff. So I hope that was helpful?
Jess:
It was very helpful, thank you so much, Corinne. I am going to journal on this and I’m going to go to module two and feel my feelings. I appreciate everything you’ve said to me this morning. It’s been so helpful.
Corinne Crabtree:
You’re welcome. Enjoy feeling those sad feelings.
Jess:
Well, I mean, if you deny your sadness, you deny the happiness too, right? They all go together. So, I want to be a feeling person. I want to be a person of purpose, not a person of denial, right?
Kathy Hartman:
Jess, you took the words right out of my mouth. When we have this urge to overeat so we don’t feel the grief, we’re also denying ourselves the love that we felt for the person that we’re grieving. You would not grieve if you didn’t also love. So, I love that you came back around to that. I wanted to tell you that Corinne’s explanation of feelings is in module two unit six, Feelings 101 and then the exercise she talked about just follows it in unit seven. So good luck with that.
Jess:
Thank you, Kathy. And I hope you guys have a wonderful day. I’ll be listening.
Sarah:
Thank you so much for your question, Jess, and being brave and coming up and sharing what’s going on in your life. It’s helping so many women here. With that, I want to just go ahead and remind everyone, make sure to follow Corinne and Kathy here on a Clubhouse @corinnecrabtree and @kathyhartman, so you can get alerted every time we host our weight loss Q and A room every Friday morning at 7:30 AM Central. Don’t forget to invite your friends. You can ping people into the room by using the plus button down below, that way we can share this common sense, weight loss advice with every woman and help them lose their weight too. With that, we’ll move on to Shannon. Good morning Shannon. Do you want to unmute and tell us your question?
Shannon:
Good morning, ladies. I am a No BS member newbie for about a month and have plenty still to work on, but when I have an off plan eat, often the only reason when I’m doing my discovery worksheets or my journaling, the only reason I come up with is because I wanted it. It’s not that I’m in a particular emotion at the time. It’s not that something’s going on. Occasionally, it’s more of a habit thing, but as I sit and think, all I come up with is, I wanted it. I didn’t want what I planned or I wanted this item and it sounded good and I give into that urge. I feel like when I do my discovery worksheets, that when I put down, “The reason is I wanted it.” I feel like that’s a lame reason and will I be able to get past this and fix this if that’s my only reason? Is there some more in-depth reason that I’m just not finding, or is, “I just wanted it a legitimate reason,” I guess, is that really a possibility?
Corinne Crabtree:
It’s totally legit. It’s also the number one reason most of us overeat. Want is a huge fucking emotion. I mean, it is just like, when you want something, your brain is going to do all it can to get you there. So all of you, don’t poop on the idea that if you’re doing your discovery worksheets that, “I just want it,” is like there’s got to be more. There’s got to be all this other stuff. We can tackle a lot around just that one thing. So first, if you ever want to know if there is something underneath, I just want it, it tastes good. Don’t eat it for one day and then sit there and let your brain freak out and listen to every sentence that it has to say. That’s the fastest way to figure out why you just want something. The first thing you said was, “I don’t want it, this is not what I want to eat right now.” If you say, “All right, but we’re still not having it. So why do we want to change our plans so bad? What do we think it will … ” This is always a good one. What’s going to be so much better. What is my brain thinking that I’ll feel so much better, or this is what I think will happen if I get to eat what I want?
Corinne Crabtree:
Allowing yourself to answer questions like that around, “I just want it,” gets a little bit deeper into what might be going on. So it may just be like your brain has this fantasy island thought, that if you eat what you want in the moment, that you’re getting to live life, that you’re not being told what to do and stuff like that. Some of that stuff might be sitting there and if those are underneath the surface of, “I just want it,” now you know what you need to start talking to yourself about. You need to start telling yourself things like … If you think that you’re going to feel so much better, then the next time you hear, “I just want it,” you just tell yourself, “I know you want it, but here’s the truth. You’re only going to feel better in the moment you’re eating it but tomorrow you’re not going to feel as great. You’re going to have this, you’re going to have this.” We have to really start understanding why our brain rationalizes things. Usually, “I just want,” is a flare that you’ve got some other bullshit.
Corinne Crabtree:
The other thing a lot of times with people who are just with, “I just want it,” is happening is they have no counter argument to it. We just kind of sit around and just be like, “Oh my gosh, I need that thought to go away.” And yet, we’re not doing anything to get rid of it. We are just hearing it and thinking, “Fuck me, here it is, that thought again, guess I should just eat.” We don’t really sit there … if I think I just want it, usually I have a thought right after that, that says, “And I can have it tomorrow.” Then my brain will come back and be like, “We don’t want to wait until tomorrow.” I’ll say, “But I know we can practice patients tonight.” We ping pong back and forth with the argument for wanting it, with the argument for not having it.
Corinne Crabtree:
But what I hear most of you do is come and just say, “I just need the, ‘I just want it,’ thought to go away automatically so that I can finally start losing my weight.” It’s like, that’s never going to happen. Never going to happen. Erase your brain of that being a scenario. The faster you get to the point to where you can release the need to quit wanting things and release the need for your brain to act like a perfect little soldier, the quicker you’re going to get to where you can lose your weight, because the magic of weight loss is what do you say after your excuses? What do you say after the justification? What do you say after the old shitty that comes into your brain?
Corinne Crabtree:
The last part of the conversation is the most important conversation and we’ve got to have that part. So that’s the other thing, is you got to have some stuff you’re going to say back to yourself and it’s got to make sense, and you got to have a lot of them and it takes time. You’ll probably have your, “I just want it,” thought for the next three weeks and you’ll have your one comeback and you’ll notice that your brain always has a little slap back right after that. Well, for every slap back that it has, you got to have a comeback and you’ll learn them and you’ll let your brain … Eventually your brain, the more you come back with what you want, what you want, what you want, until you get to where your brain is like, “Okay, I am so fucking tired of arguing with this chick. I think I might just start with her comebacks instead.” Because your brain’s a lazy fucker. It literally wants to put stuff on repeat.
Corinne Crabtree:
Right now it’s on repeat because every time it thinks it, you don’t have much to say, and then you just eat. So it’s like, “It’s a good deal for me. As long as I keep arguing, she’s going to eat.” So it doesn’t mean that you’ve got to be perfect on the not responding and eating part, but we’ve got to get better and better at extending the conversation to, “I just want it.” If you can get it to where it’s 15 minutes of, “I just want it,” and I mean all in your head, “I just want it, but blah, blah, blah. I just want it.” Well, can you just wait five more minutes? “Well, I still really want to have it. It’s going to be so good. I’m tired of having this conversation.” And this conversation is not near as exhausting as I’m making it be. Having that ping pong conversation is everything. So it’s like, there’s that part. The third part that you can investigate is, if you are going to say … Let’s say that you’re going to not eat. What is your brain likely to argue with?
Corinne Crabtree:
If your brain is going to call you names, some people have a very shamey voice when it comes to not eating something. It will say things, “It’s so unfair for you and if you had of never gained weight, we wouldn’t even have to be going through things like this. Normal people never have these conversations.” Sometimes what happens is when we have, “I just want it.” If we don’t respond to it, if our voice after that is really harsh, we have to work on that voice, otherwise you’ll never not eat. If your brain knows a beat down is coming if you don’t eat, it will always send the signal to eat up more hard because it wants to avoid your beat down.
Corinne Crabtree:
So the trick is to start consciously deciding, “Here’s what I’m going to think. When I am not going to eat, because I think I just want it. Here’s what I’m going to consciously tell myself, that’s nice, that’s motivating, comforting, compassionate. I’ve got to rewrite this conversation and be prepared for it, otherwise my brain is going to be really dead set on me eating to protect me from my own self.” So those are just some of the … So, go ahead.
Shannon:
I’m sorry, does that makes sense? I mean, sometimes I can work through that urge and tell myself all the right things, “Put it on your plan tomorrow. It’s not going to make you feel better today.” And I do okay. And then other times I feel like I just get consumed by the thought, and eventually I use the whole bullshit line, “I just need to get it out of my system. I’m just going to eat it and get it over with.” Then of course I eat it and I fricking eat twice as much as I needed because now I’m in this other little frenzy.
Corinne Crabtree:
So, do you have a come back for, “I just need to get it out of my system.”
Shannon:
Well, I mean, I know it’s a bullshit thought, but I don’t know that I have a good comeback.
Corinne Crabtree:
All right. So, this is what I’m talking about Shannon. You’ve already uncovered what the real problem is. It’s not, “I just want it.” It’s when I have all these other conversations, now my brain is like, “Well, the real problem isn’t that. Let me just send up this one. Because when I send up this message, that’s when I break this bitch.” It’s already found out, “If all else fails, go here. This is the rip cord, let’s pull it.” So now that you know that you can’t just sit there and act like the martyr anymore to it. It’s like, “Oh, I’m supposed to have a comeback for this one too.” Then what’ll happen is you’ll need to get yourself to the urge point of that and that’s your next level work is, “Okay, when we get here, I know my brain is really demanding it. So how do I make my brain feel safe? How do I relax myself in that thought? How do I not get freaked out?” because if it’s amping it up, you’ve got to be having comebacks that are taking you down, taking you down. And that’s your next level work. That’s all that’s happened. You’ll solve that one, and I guarantee your brain will have to get creative and have you a new one waiting in the wings for about three weeks later, and you’ll listen for that one.
Shannon:
Okay, I’ll give that some thought then and how I’m going to work on that because yeah, again, it doesn’t happen often, but when it happens, that is my answer. I’ll just get it out of my system.
Corinne Crabtree:
Yeah, and you just to know … and literally it can be this easy Shannon, “That’s a smoking lie. I got coached by Corrine, that’s not even true.” I mean, literally you have the thought, I mean, and you can laugh about it and just be like, “Oh, she called it. There’s my brain, with its book of lies.” It’s just wrong. Because if it was going to get it out of your system, every single … This is what I would do. I would plan literally a camp. I would say, “You pay X amount of dollars and you tell me all the foods you can’t control yourself over, or you’re just going to want for the rest of your life and we’re going to eat up for three days all together and get it out of our system, and we’re never going to need to deal with it again.” If I could do that for you guys, I swear to God I’d be selling them camps every weekend.
Shannon:
I’d be in a sugar coma.
Corinne Crabtree:
Exactly, it never works. Our system is like, “No, it’s not enough. Here I am, two weeks later.” You know?
Shannon:
Right, okay.
Corinne Crabtree:
So, but I will guarantee you, if you … You’re in the membership, right?
Shannon:
Yes, just a newbie.
Corinne Crabtree:
Okay, go to the Facebook group, literally post, “Who also thinks, ‘I’m just going to get it out of my system,’ and what are the new thoughts we can think when this old shitty likes to come up?” I guarantee you, it will be one of the most popular posts we will have today.
Shannon:
All right. Thank you.
Corinne Crabtree:
You’re welcome, bye-bye.
Sarah:
Thank you Shannon, for your question. I can’t wait to see that post in the Facebook group. All right, let’s move on to our next question from Maureen. Good morning Maureen, what is your question?
Maureen:
Hi, good morning. I’m also fairly new. I’ve been in the program for about a month. I’ve noticed people post different things about the Kathy method. I was wondering if you could explain the Kathy method for us?
Corinne Crabtree:
Well, I could let Kathy do it since she’s here, but I teased her not too long ago, I was like, “What the fuck is the Kathy method? Everybody’s talking about it.”
Kathy Hartman:
I am happy to explain the Kathy method. I did not name it. Our good friend Megan heard me give this instruction on a Zoom call one night. I was coaching someone on how to find enough. I seriously just pulled this out of my back pocket. And I said, “Here’s what I want you to do. I want you to serve up your normal amount of food for dinner tonight. Go to the table, no phones, no distractions. I mean, your family can be around, but focus on your food, eat half of it and then pause for 10 minutes in that 10 minutes. I want you to think about how does my stomach feel? How does my body feel? Am I reaching enough? Where might I be on this enough journey? Am I almost enough? Am I there? Am I not close? Take 10 minutes and really evaluate that. If you want bonus points, you’ll journal about it.”
Kathy Hartman:
So let’s say after 10 minutes you decide, “Nope, not there yet.” Then you eat half again and you do the same thing. You continue that on repeat until you found enough. Here’s why you wait 10 minutes, because it takes at least that amount of time for the food you’ve swallowed to hit your stomach and for your stomach to send that signal to your brain, that you don’t need anything else. So doing that and pausing and being super intentional, paying attention to how your body feels, how your food tastes, really allows you to evaluate where you are and how close you are to enough. Does that make sense, Maureen?
Maureen:
Yes, it does. Because I tend to be a very fast eater, so that does make a lot of sense to me.
Kathy Hartman:
Yeah, I do too, and that’s how I found that. When you really think about your food, even if you’re a fast eater, if you think about how it tastes, how your body feels, the texture of it in your mouth, it creates a real conscious … like an awareness, a real, I don’t know, awareness is the best word I can come up with for where you are and how much you actually need, and how much you’re enjoying your food. So, that’s all it did. The Kathy method just slows you down enough to pay attention.
Maureen:
That makes a lot of sense, thank you so much.
Sarah:
Thank you Maureen and Kathy for the Kathy method, I’ve tried it and it’s very effective in helping you figure out when have I had enough food? With that, we’re going to get to our last question of the day. We’ve got Sandra here. Good morning, Sandra.
Sandra:
Good morning. Thank you so much for allowing me to ask. I really didn’t know that I would be able to. Corinne you are definitely a huge operation and Kathy, you too. I’ve been listening to you guys for like three years and I recently just joined the membership in April. Here’s my question or situation. I own a bakery and I’m the only employee of the bakery, but I do have a pretty in-demand product because I am in grocery stores. So that’s one and it can be pretty hectic for me around, especially around the holiday seasons because I do gluten-free items. So around the holidays, it’s crazy for me. Since I had started listening to you guys and knew about the 24-hour plan, I started doing that. One of the things that I noticed though, was when things got really busy, even if I made a 24-hour plan that day that I woke up to start baking, it would completely be out of my head by the end of the day.
Sandra:
There will be times where I probably would not have eaten because I’m under so much pressure to get orders, especially around Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving for me is like a week-long baking time from hell, because everybody wants their pumpkin pie and cake, and pie, and pie. So that’s a time where I can be … It’s almost like I’m unconsciously baking and nothing else matters because at the end of maybe, say five days or a week, I have realized I have not journaled. I have not written down a plan. I’ve barely even had water because always the day after Thanksgiving, I have intense muscle spasms in my legs because I think I’m just dehydrated and I’m lacking sleep. So, that’s one thing but-
Corinne Crabtree:
Hey, can I interrupt you here?
Sandra:
Sure, sure.
Corinne Crabtree:
Let me tell you why part of the problem, you’re describing it as if you’re just telling me the facts of your life, that it’s hectic. It’s a crazy time, everybody just wants what they want and that kind of stuff. All of that is thoughts about baking during the holidays. This is what I would start with, number one, because what happens is when your thinking is, “It’s all hectic. It’s my busy time.” You’ll go into it anxious and you’re so focused on that part, you’ve not given any equal airtime to, “All right, how am I going to make this week easier on myself? If I was going to make this week easier than last year, what would I be doing?” Your brain is just thinking like, “Well, here it comes. Here comes my busy season where I’ve got to stand on my feet all day and not drink water.”
Corinne Crabtree:
So your brain is recreating the experience all the time because you’re describing it. Let me just tell you, I get that that feels true. So everyone, please hear me. Most of our shitty thoughts feel true. The problem is, is when they feel true and terrible at the same time, they’re thoughts and not facts. So, one of the things you can do is you can, especially in module two, you can write the story of this is how it is like at the holidays and let your brain … I call it the bitch and moan session. Let your brain literally tell it like you’re telling us, but probably even more colorful. You’re probably trying to tell it nicer because you’re onstage. But let it go crazy on it. Then, underline actual facts. How many hours you work in a day is a fact, a long day isn’t. Leg cramps is a fact but, “Leg cramps because it’s my hectic time,” is not a fact.
Corinne Crabtree:
So look for all that, there’s power in neutralizing your story, number one. So that you can just see like, “Okay, here’s why I feel so overwhelmed and anxious and stuff. And if I know that I’m feeling overwhelmed and anxious, I can see why I don’t make plans. I can see why my brain would deprioritize things that take care of me. If I’m only focused on how hard everything is. But when I just look at the facts of the story, are there other things that I can … New thoughts that I can include that empower me to write a plan down for the day, even if it only takes one minute and I don’t answer any other question other than, ‘Girl, this is when we eat,’ I’m going to take a minute to set some timers on my phone so that vibrates in my pocket when it’s time to eat and when it’s time to drink some water. When that alarm pops up, I know to check my notes because check a picture. I took a picture of my plan.”
Corinne Crabtree:
Then your brain is allowed to do some of that stuff to make things easier on you and to plan foods that will get you through a busy time, but it won’t go there and it won’t trigger you, and it won’t be … It won’t say, “Time to eat or do those things,” unless we clean up the way that we’re talking about the story. I unfortunately have to cut you off. You are No BS woman, please. I’m going over to the group right now for Facebook Live. We are doing Basics 2.0, and I know that there’s a bunch of people tapping their fingers, wondering where I am.
Sandra:
Okay, because I was going there too.
Corinne Crabtree:
Okay, well join me over there because I’m going to be talking about how to plan some good ass food for the 24-hour plan. Thank you.
Sandra:
Thank you.
Corinne Crabtree:
I’ll let you close it out, Sarah.
Sarah:
Great. Thank you everyone for being here today. If you are a No BS woman, head over onto Facebook, where Corinne’s going to be talking about planning good ass food as part of our self-study course this month. If you’re not a No BS woman, make sure to follow us here and the Losing 100 Pounds with Corinne club, follow Corinne and Kathy, because we come live every Friday at 7:30 Central to answer your weight loss questions, and this is open to anyone. So we hope you’ll join us in the future and have a great weekend. Bye y’all.
