Corrine:
Hey, y’all, I have a special podcast for you today. There are over 300 episodes of the Losing 100 Pounds Podcast. And we’ve covered topics like, what to eat to lose weight, planning for vacations, and how to get your mindset right, so you can lose weight for good, but I’ve never gotten the chance to speak directly to you and answer your questions until now.
Corrine:
A new audio only social media app called Clubhouse has given me the chance to talk directly to you and answer your questions live and in person. Clubhouse is basically like a big party line where everyone tunes in. It’s awesome. You can drop in on conversations around topics you like, and even raise your hand to speak and ask a question.
Corrine:
And I’m holding a free weekly weight-loss Q&A session for the public every week with Kathy on Fridays at 7:30 AM Central Time. If you want to attend, all you got to do is download the Clubhouse app from the app store. You’ll know it because it’s the one with the black and white photo, and then register your username. You’ll need an invite from a friend to get in, but once you do, type corrine.club into an internet browser on your phone to find my profile, and follow me. Make sure to hit the bell and set your notifications, so that you never miss when I go live.
Corrine:
Now, the Clubhouse app is still in test mode and is limiting users. I know not every one of you can attend, so I’ve decided to record these special episodes, so you can hear what it’s like. And believe me, I’m going to need a new mic because I keep dropping it like it’s hot. Take a listen.
Corrine:
It was listening to our recording this morning. I was listening to some of my own self development, and there was something that was said that I was like, “This is so good.” A lot of us have a hard time taking action. So, we have a hard time with making our plan and following, asking ourselves, “Have I had enough?”
Corrine:
So, if you follow me, if you listen to the podcast, if you’ve done my free course over at nobs.club, you know that I teach you four basics to weight loss, but a lot of you have a really hard time being consistent with it and stuff. What most of you do is you plan those actions, you plan the things that you’re going to do around the idea that everything has to go perfect in order for this to happen.
Corrine:
And what I want to challenge all of you to do is to start looking at the things that you’re going to do and make sure that the shift can hit the fan, and I will still do it. That will help you get a little bit of clarity around a lot of times, what we’re doing is, I’ll say we’re planning in fantasy land. So, we’re going to plan to eat a head of broccoli for dinner, with maybe some fat free ranch dressing, as if that’s a good choice. And that we’ll want it on a day when we know we are stacked and jacked with kids that are sick and we got to show up at work and our boss was on a tirade yesterday.
Corrine:
I’m not saying you need to plan a hamburger and French fries from the Burger King. But sometimes what we need to do is think about a little bit more around when we’re planning things, “Am I actually playing this from the mindset of, I won’t want to do it and I’m probably going to be resisting it.” So, if I’m not going to want to do it and I’m going to be resisting it, what does that action look like today? What does that food plan look like today? How many times will I need to remind myself of certain thoughts today? What are those thoughts going to be today? I want you guys to start thinking about that as you are creating your plans.
Corrine:
We are in the middle of Basics 2.0 inside the membership, where I am teaching you guys every single day, a deep dive topic on the four basics, like how you implement them. Just like today, we will be going over weekends, celebrations and trips. How do this goes into that action?
Corrine:
Never plan a weekend, a celebration or a trip with the mindset of, “It’s going to be almost insurmountable, so here’s my plan.” Or, “If it was perfect and everything went right, this is what I would eat.” We really want to make sure that when we’re planning, we’re planning from doable, realistic mindsets. If I’m not going to want to do it, and I’m probably going to have resistance, can I still follow through, if the answer is likely to be no, you don’t have a plan, you have wishful planning. And so, we really want to start changing that.
Corrine:
All right. So, keep raising your hands. Let’s call on Deb first. Go ahead and unmute yourself. Ask your question and always start with, “My question is.”
Deb:
Good morning. I just wanted to say thank you for camp this past weekend. It’s really opened up myself and my accountability group, just on what we’ve implemented from following you. We all joined in last September. And my question is around the thought work.
Deb:
I really, like I said, I guess camp really got it stuck in my brain, how we actually control our thoughts, and it’s making it so that I can actually do that. And so, every day I journal or I write on my plan that I want to feel joy and contentment. And throughout the day, those words pop in my brain, but it’s almost like, I guess, I’ve been miserable for so long that I almost feel melancholy when I go to that point and think, “Oh, you can feel joy and contentment.”
Deb:
And I just wondered if you had any words of advice when I… I guess I feel like I’m in the middle, like I might come out to the other side where I literally feel joy and contentment without my mind going to blur, despair or whatever. So yeah, if you just had any words of advice on that period of time.
Corrine:
Yeah. Keep going. It’s working exactly like it’s supposed to. This what’s funny when we ask a question like that, we don’t think about, well, what would the alternative be? Go back to feeling miserable? Because if you don’t keep practicing, if you don’t keep your focus on joy and contentment, if you don’t go through the stages of… Especially for all of you, this is real interesting that you talked about this, because when we did all of the feelings work at camp, there were lots of people. And I want to say this in case you’re listening and you went to camp, I am not surprised by this at all. This is common.
Corrine:
There were a lot of people who could not feel their feeling in their body because they have spent a lifetime numbing out. It was new to them to listen. And it’s like their body couldn’t even let his guard down long enough to feel the physical sensation of what feeling they were feeling. Their brain was throwing up other thoughts like, “I’m not getting this. I’m not getting this. I’m not getting this.” They’re so used to not getting it that their brain was still on repeat even while they were observing, which means you’re not going to be able to sense those things.
Corrine:
It is the same thing for you, Deb. It’s your brain is very used to thinking sad, terrible, worst case scenario. Anytime something good happens, let’s poke holes in it and figure out why it’s not so great.
Corrine:
Here’s a common example. Sitting around in Nashville, can not wait for spring and summer to get here. That’s all I’ve talked about all winter long. The second it starts getting warm, my brain didn’t just go like, “Joy, joy, happy, happy, joy, joy.” I wasn’t like running through the streets. I’m outside going like, “It won’t be long before it’s humid. It’s going to be real hot. I better take this in.” There was no like what I thought would be me running outside traipsing through the daisies in a rainbow, springing up in a meadow, because the summer had arrived.
Corrine:
When we’re used to poking holes at things, finding the negative in things. And that is what the human brain does. Then when we get what we want or when we even focus our mind on what we want, when we become aware to start shifting gears, our brain is going to offer up its habitual default thoughts.
Corrine:
95% of your thinking is natural habitual thoughts. Our goal is to get to the 5% of the time that we’re paying attention, that we’re paying attention when our brain is just running on autopilot and saying like, “I think I want better right now. I think I would like to think something different, now that I know that that’s an option.” Or that’s such a waste of time thought, I don’t even need to trick change it. I know that’s a shit thought. I don’t have to think something great. I just need to stop thinking one. It’s not worth my time. That takes time.
Corrine:
What ends up happening is, there’s a painful period for a lot of us that I want you guys to bypass, which is, I find you in the stage where you’re just super unconscious, where you’re like, “I didn’t even know I could pick my thoughts. What do you mean? If I want to feel good? I got to think different. It’s not like I need to go get a new job. I don’t need a new car. I don’t need to eat something to feel better. I don’t need somebody to tell me they love me to feel love.” You may know that I can literally go through my life and handpick thoughts and feel different. And then they’re like, “Holy fuck. Holy grail. This is amazing.”
Corrine:
And that’s usually what happens when you join No BS or like you did, you took camp. But then you get really aware. It’s like, “Okay, so now that I can do this, holy shit, no wonder I’ve been so miserable. I keep thinking these things.” In that moment, we have a choice. The choice is to be grateful that we have a lot of thoughts we can change. And we can say, “I could really see my life being so much better and so much more fulfilled because now I’m catching so many thoughts. I got a lot of things I can work on.” Versus, “Oh my God, I’m so broken. This sure is a lot. I wonder when this miserable ass part will be over.”
Corrine:
If you pile a bunch of do-do thoughts on catching your thoughts, you’re going to feel bad and that’s you down-regulating again. And eventually what happens is if all you do is judge those thoughts, you’ll just encourage your habitual thoughts and you’ll go back to them, because you won’t actually be giving your brain anything positive to shift to. The brain, loves a reward.
Corrine:
So, if you find thoughts and then you resist them and judge them, and tear yourself down, you give your brain no incentive to ever think something different. You give it no incentive to keep paying attention. The only thing you do is you give your brain more reason to shut itself back off again, to go back to how it always thought.
Corrine:
And so, the key is to make sure that you’re grateful now for enlightenment. You’re like, “I’m so glad I’m looking at my thoughts. I have tons of thoughts that I’m going to be able to work with. And I bet are only have to change a few to feel immensely better. I bet I can get good at this. If I can hear them, then I have a direct path to what needs to be fixed.” That thinking already has comfort. It already has confidence. It already feels better. It’s up-leveling and it gives your brain a reward for changing how it perceives things. And then it motivates your brain to keep going. Does that help?
Deb:
Yes, definitely. Because I don’t want to get stuck and down-regulate. But you’re right, that’s exactly what it feels like. It’s almost like putting on a comfortable pair of pants. When I go back to the blog thought, I’m like, “Oh, okay. That feels…” But then my other part of my brain is like, “No, that doesn’t feel better. That’s not what you are wanting.” So yeah. Thank you for that.
Corrine:
And I just want to say to everyone and thank you, Deb, is we all do this. Even when we were at camp weekend, I know you guys think I’m the mental ninja, and I must just be walking around all the time with amazing thoughts running through my brain. That is not how it goes.
Corrine:
And every day I would ride down the elevator and have to walk to the ballroom with my best friend< who’s a master coach, and the girl that takes care of me when we’re at camp to make sure I get everywhere I’m supposed to go and just all the things. She’s also a life coach. There is nothing worse than having a good 15 minutes first thing in the morning with food masterful life coaches to point out every shitty thing that you say. It happened every morning. They’re like, “We’re not self-deprecating Corrine.” Our brains are just wired to do it. But the good news is, is that you can auto-correct so much of it just don’t worry about some of the ones that you’re doing. Just be so good at catching them. All right, Sarah, is back to you.
Sarah:
All right. Thank you so much, Deb, for your question. We’ll just going to keep moving on this morning. Next up is Jacqueline. Jacqueline, Do you want to unmute? And we’d love for you to start with, “My question is.”
Jacqueline:
Thanks, Sarah. My question is, how do I find the thing to focus on when I have a lot going on? I do journaling and assessing every day, but I’m still, have been spiraling out this week just because it’s the end of the school year. My kids have been virtual. They’re not doing too good. Plus high school graduation, have people coming into town, have a lot of planning to do. And I’m still trying to do my doable foundation. That’s it.
Corrine:
Okay. Let’s just say, what do you got to do to lose some weight this week? Tell me what you think has to happen this week. And let’s put some time parameters on it.
Jacqueline:
Well, I’m in maintenance, so I just been doing good with that.
Corrine:
Okay. All right. To maintain then this week. What else has got to happen in order for you to maintain?
Jacqueline:
Well, I still need to keep up with the thoughts because I still live in fear of gaining all the weight back.
Corrine:
Okay. So, how long will it take you to each morning write one thing you’re afraid of and one thought that’s better than that.
Jacqueline:
Oh, that’ll take like a minute.
Corrine:
Okay. So, we have one minute this week that you need to spend on getting your brain accustomed to thinking a new thought. Then how many times a day do you need to remind yourself of that thought?
Jacqueline:
Maybe before each meal.
Corrine:
Okay. So, before each meal. And how much time will it take you to remind yourself of that thought?
Jacqueline:
That’ll probably just be 30 seconds. Do you have any tricks or-
Corrine:
Set an alarm on your phone, let it go off. And then when you walk over there, on your phone alarm, you can tell it to flash a message.
Jacqueline:
Okay.
Corrine:
So, go to your phone. You don’t have to do right this second. But are you in the Facebook group?
Jacqueline:
Yeah.
Corrine:
Go in the Facebook group today and say like, “Hey, can somebody screenshot how to set an alarm on my phone?” Are you Android? Or are you iPhone?
Jacqueline:
iPhone.
Corrine:
That will even be easier because a lot of them are iPhone here. Just say like, “Hey, I need somebody to screenshot how to set an alarm on my phone that has a message on it.” And then somebody will literally show you how to do it. And then that’ll even save you more time. And let them do the heavy work for you. That’s why you’re private member, so that you never have to solve these things on your own.
Corrine:
So, we’re up to, so what I would do is I would have my phone go off. So, when it’s around the time you would normally eat, it doesn’t have to be exactly when you’re going to eat, but it could be, if you know you get hungry between the hours of 5:00 and 6:00, or 5:00 and 7:00, have your alarm go off around the time that you’re going to normally eat. And then that way, when you have to turn it off, you have to see that you’re like, “Oh, I’m supposed to remember, blah, blah, blah, about maintaining.”
Corrine:
So, we’re up to two and a half minutes of your day dedicated to maintaining your weight. What else do you need to do this week in order to maintain your weight?
Jacqueline:
Well, my baseline is 20 minutes of exercise.
Corrine:
Okay. Are you going to do that every day or is that something during an extremely busy time of your life that you wouldn’t do? For me, I’m just one of those people that’s going to exercise every day, no matter what’s going on in my life. I’ll get up at 4:30 in the morning. But that’s me, not everybody is like that. Most of my team, never exercises. And if they ever exercise, they’re definitely not doing it during the busy times. When I have a super busy week, I only exercise or I only do things that I know I’m going to want to do, not stuff I have to make myself do.
Jacqueline:
Yeah. So, I definitely, I just do at least a 20 minute treadmill walk because that way I can do some thinking, and I not having to worry about breathing and movement to much.
Corrine:
Okay. Then I would just say right now I’m up to 22 and a half minutes a day dedicated to maintaining my weight this week. Anything else that you have to do?
Jacqueline:
Well, I mean, I don’t have to do these things, but I do a journal which can vary from probably five to 10 minutes, and then I plan an I assess for the day at night.
Corrine:
Okay. So, basically, and the reason why I’m having you do this, and I think a lot of you need to do more of this is when we say, “I don’t have time. I’m so busy. I’m juggling so many things, and I’m trying to maintain my weight.” We want to get really specific what that even means. It’s 35 minutes every single day of your time to maintain your weight. And then you’ve got 23 hours and 25 more minutes in the day to do everything else.
Corrine:
And the way that you’ve broken it out, it’s not even like you’ve got to find a 35 minute time block. It’s like, “I need probably 10 minutes, first thing in the morning to get my mind right.” We can even chop off a minute because probably part of the maintaining, when you’re journaling, you’re just going to slap a thought in, “Here’s what I want to think today about maintaining weight.” I wouldn’t even talk about why you’re scared. I would literally just like, if…
Corrine:
Let me ask you this, this is when you know when you need to do a lot of deep thought work. Do you know that your problem is, is that you think like, “Oh my gosh, it’s going to be so hard to keep my weight off.”
Jacqueline:
Yeah. I mean, well, there’s a lot of other thoughts with it.
Corrine:
Yeah. But I mean, do you pretty much know them?
Jacqueline:
Yeah. Right.
Corrine:
Yeah. You probably don’t have to write about them anymore. You probably need to spend all your time writing about why this is very doable, why you can keep your weight off. You don’t need to keep reinforcing thoughts that you’ve uncovered and thought about for a long time. A lot of us need to move along in the thought work cycles.
Corrine:
So, if you’re brand new to thought work, yes, you need to uncover your do-do thoughts and stuff. But if you’ve been doing this for a little bit, and you’re just noticing like, “Here are the top five repeater thoughts that I believe about my maintenance and I already know them.” I don’t need to keep digging around in those. I need to start amplifying what I actually want to think. Did you come to camp by the way, this awesome camp?
Jacqueline:
Yeah. I was having a hard time concentrating with all my thoughts though.
Corrine:
That’s okay.
Jacqueline:
I missed the feelings workshop, which I was really disappointed, because I know that’s what I need the most is to be able to feel feelings.
Corrine:
That’s all right. The replays will be out within a week. I mean, and you can just go straight to that. Whatever you missed, just watch that one thing. I would just that one thing. And I would just make that part of your… Break it up into, first, watch the portion of the video, where I just teach feelings, and then that’s it for that day, because you don’t have a lot of time. Then the next day, do the part where I have you journal, and then do the feeling exercise. Then the next part is going to be the second part of feelings, where I have you do something else. I’m not going to give away the magic of how we did everything. But I think you’ll find it very beneficial, because we actually do a lot of worry workshop stuff in that. I would just break that out over four days, where you’re only spending about 20 minutes each time doing any of the work. And I think that’ll be beneficial.
Corrine:
But when we were at camp, remember how I said about a thousand times amplify what you need to hear, turn the volume up on what you need to hear, turn the volume down and what you don’t.
Jacqueline:
Yes. That’s been working for me as well. I did set a reminder for midday to check in what things I have to be proud of from the morning. That way when I get to journaling at night, I don’t forget.
Corrine:
Yeah. Well, and that’s what I would do, is just make sure that when it comes to maintaining your weight and your thoughts is turned down, anytime you notice yourself getting scared or fearful, or whatever. You want to go to not being able to maintain your weight. A lot of times when we have a lot of things going on in our life, “My kids are trying to finish up school and we got to get their grades up. And I’ve got one graduating. And I’ve got these things going on.”
Corrine:
It’s real easy for us to panic that we’ll go back to funneling our favorite problem as a distraction. It’s like, you would probably rather be in fear that you’ll gain your weight than to be in fear that your kids will fail. A lot of us do, it’s like, “Let me pick the scary thing that I’m used to being scared of.” It’s a lot easier to think about that than it is to get focused with helping my kids. Be in the discomfort of helping them and do all the other stuff. It’s a lot easier to sit around and act like we don’t know how to maintain our weight.
Jacqueline:
Yeah. I guess, it’s crazy how me feeling these other feelings is creating, amplifying the fear in my weight loss at the same time.
Corrine:
Yeah. It’s just tapping on… So, when we talked about this week on self-sabotage, if you hold onto this idea that you can’t lose weight, then anytime something is scary, guess what? Your brain is going to be like, “See, it’s going to be really hard to maintain our weight. We have all these scary things going on in our life. We have all these busy things. We have all these unknowns. You know that’s why it’s so hard to keep your weight off.”
Corrine:
Versus if you were doing more of the believing. So, we want to amplify the believing. If you’ve really… It’s just like me. I’ve had my way off for 15 years. When terrible things happen, I don’t go to, “Oh my God, it’s going to be so hard to maintain my weight. And what if this happens? What if this happens?” My thought is always, “I’m so glad I know how to eat healthy and stuff and be able to take care of myself.” My brain wants to prove that I’m really good at maintaining my weight. So, it will see, like Logan has to finish homeschooling today. He got way behind. We’ve never homeschooled before. He wasn’t doing very well in a couple of subjects, so we have been having to turbo jam him through stuff this week.
Corrine:
Not one time did I think, “Oh my God, it’s going to be really hard to maintain my weight this week.” Because I’ve been working on for so many years, showing myself, “Hey, you’re somebody who really shows up for yourself.” I’m so glad that we’re somebody who prioritizes a 20 minute walk every day. You having that conversation and all the things that you’re doing that are maintaining your weight, that’s what starts shifting that inner belief, so that when shit does hit the fan in life, it’s not tapping on that.
Corrine:
Your brain won’t go to looking for evidence to prove why your weight will always be your problem. It will go to looking for same shit, but it will look into your life to find out, “And here’s all the ways that you take care of yourself. Here’s all the ways that you’re really good at keeping your weight in check no matter what happens.” So, that’s coming from making sure that each day when you’re doing your journaling, that you’re telling yourself, “Here’s the reasons why, even if you can’t believe my weight will never be a problem again, here’s the reasons why this week, my weight won’t be a problem. Here’s the reasons why this week I can get this done.”
Corrine:
And then as you show up for your world, say, “See, here’s another piece of evidence.” People who keep their weight off, keep their promises to themselves and do their 20 minute walks. If that’s something that you’re easily going to do, when you go to eat. And if you, let’s say you follow your plans, you always need to be telling yourself, “See, this is evidence of someone who is really good at following through. I’ve made the changes.”
Corrine:
Whenever you see yourself… Like for me, if I go out to eat and I decide to get a salad, I always tell myself, “I love that I’m the kind of person that would rather have a salad than eat French fries now.” As much as I love French fries and I will get down on me some French fries when they’re planned, but when I go out to eat like for a business lunch or I travel, or something, I generally just eat like salads and healthy things that are going to give me energy. And I’m always telling myself, “I love that I’m the version of me now, that doesn’t go out to eat and the only I’m consumed with is what I’m going to get off the menu. I’m here for the experience.” I tell myself those things on purpose, so that I identify as someone who maintains their weight. So, that in the moment when life is hard, I fall back on the story that I take care of myself. I’m not falling back on the story of I’m so afraid I’m going to go backward. Does that help?
Jacqueline:
Yes. Thank you so much.
Corrine:
And you’re welcome. You’ve got this just each day. And here’s the other, I will just throw this one out there for you. Quit telling yourself that you have a lot to do, and you have a lot going on. Tell yourself, “I’m smart enough to figure out every day to get the things done that have to get done today.” That is way better. Because here’s what’s going to happen. You are going to do that every single day. You’re not going to go to bed at night and be like, “Well, the kids failed because I just had to watch Netflix.”
Corrine:
We always are going through life, prioritizing and getting things done. We may not be doing it to our faults perfectionistic standards or what we think we should be doing, but most of us are going through life with our kids live and they survive. And they’re well fed. They’re taking care of. They got a roof over their head. Shit does happen. We just don’t give ourselves credit for it. We’d rather sit around and think we don’t have time and we’re not doing a good enough job and stuff. That is such a lie. You can find evidence for it, or you can find evidence of, “We’ve made it this far. I must’ve learned how to prioritize some because here we are.”
Corrine:
So, letting yourself understand that you will get the most important things done. You may not enjoy everything right now, but you will get the things done. Okay?
Sarah:
Thank you so much, Jacqueline for your question. And what’s really interesting is that your profile picture has a quote from Corrine and it says, let your brain endure that working on your goals is a sexy proposition. And I think that really brings them your question and Corrine’s answer full circle here. So, thank you so much. And we’re going to move on to Dana. Good morning, Dana. Do you want to unmute? And start with, “My question is,” please.
Dana:
Sure. Good morning. My question is, what to tell myself, self clock works very well for me, what the tell myself… So, we had to put our dog down a few weeks ago. And I find myself grief eating. And I joined in March and I’m one of those people who I went through the modules, I did all the things, and I had momentum. I lost like four pounds. And now I weighed in this morning and I’m up three and a half pounds from what I started at in March. So, and I know it’s a natural thing, but I feel like the mental part of me is needing a reboot.
Dana:
And I’m just, what kind of things can I tell myself to when I forget to plan? And I’m just, when I first started, I was religious with the planner, but I didn’t even do anything last week, but this week I was better. But [crosstalk 00:30:03]
Corrine:
So, let’s do this number one. I love the way you told your story. You told the story about everything that went wrong instead of starting with, “Hey I noticed that I quit planning and guess what? This week I’ve been better at it.” You can always lead with that. And that would feel way better than, “Well, Corrine, I’m one of your March girls and I was doing so good, but…” We all want to do that. It’s like, I need to let you know what the shit show of me is all about. It’s like, instead of, “Hey, I noticed I wasn’t planning, my dog died. I noticed that was a grief eating. And guess what I did this week? I got back to planning.”
Dana:
Yeah, but now the weight, now that it’s showing on the scale. So, and I know that’s not reflective of this week.
Corrine:
This is the thing, you’re wanting to make that three and a half pound gain a big problem. Let me ask you this. When you think I’ve gained three and a half pounds, what do you feel?
Dana:
I just defeated. But I think it also motivated me to be like, “You have to get back on track.” Which is not-
Corrine:
No. The thought you need to get back on track was motivating. The thought you’ve gained three and a half pounds after your dog died, felt defeated. And that defeated thought had you contemplating planning, had you contemplating not planning, had you confused about what to tell yourself when you want to eat over grief. That thought is the one that’s sucking the wind right out of your sails.
Corrine:
Now, when you moved over to, “I need to get back on track.” How do you feel? Motivated. When you’re motivated, you probably take your planner out, then you do it. There’s probably not a lot of contemplating going on. There’s not a lot of deliberating and negotiating and wondering if it will work and all that other kind of bullshit.
Corrine:
This is important for all of you. You all feel very justified and married to your terrible thoughts as if they’re very needed. And they’re just not, because if they’re going to lead you to feeling defeated and unmotivated, they do not spur action. All they do is spur wondering, negotiating, dwelling, sad reflections on how you have been failing and what you’ve not done, comparing your motivated self to your unmotivated self. That thing feel do cycle never begets any weight loss, never begets any 24 hour plans made. It never gets that stuff. It gets a lot of stalls.
Corrine:
And I want you to move into the land of, “All right, so what are we going to be doing this week?” The first thing I want you to do is, we’re going to plan. “I’m getting back on track.” Here’s how I would think about it, “I already got back on track this week by starting the planning, what’s next?”
Dana:
Well, and last night I did go through and pull out some new recipes to try. So, that’s motivating.
Corrine:
Yes.
Dana:
And I put that on my plan as one thing, I’ll add, the part where it says one, what will I add more of? And I put in that box, one of the new recipes that I ripped out on a magazine.
Corrine:
Yeah. I want you think about this. If you stayed more in the mindset of what you’re doing for yourself and how you’re already improving, and you’re already making strides, you will make more strides. And if you will allow yourself to think about this last month like, “I was doing really well. And then my dog died. And I hit an emotional roadblock. And what I learned from that is that when I hit an emotional roadblock, the next time I need the thoughts that I’m going to need to make sure like, I need the thoughts and the actions of what it looks like when life isn’t as motivating, excited and easy to lose weight.” What does that look like?
Corrine:
And you can learn from this last month. But you’re going to look back, not from the place of, “Well, I really screwed up and I was doing so well and blah, blah, blah.” You’re going to look at it from, this is part of my weight loss journey. What this taught me is that when something big happens, my brain wants to go to what it’s always done. So, let me pull apart what would have liked to have thought and what would I have liked to have done during that time, knowing that I was going to be grieving and sad and all these other things.” How would that look like in the future? Because it’s not that another dog is going to die, but you are going to have times where you’re going to feel anxious, or like last year we were all going through COVID. There’s just always going to be something. Life is always going to be throwing something at us that we have to emotionally contend with. Instead of contending with like, we feel our first emotion and we’re like, “All right, let’s contend with it with food.”
Dana:
Yeah. And that’s what I’ve always done. So, it’s going for a walk and being able to walk further now because I don’t have the senior dog with me. That’s really sad. But realizing, oh, I can do a half hour walk and not a 15 minute walk, but-
Corrine:
Yeah. Go ahead.
Dana:
Yeah. Oh, I was just saying like, I almost feel guilty there too, because I’m like, “Why am I enjoying this? Because he’s…” So, it’s very much I think a mental block, even there just feeling guilty.
Corrine:
Well, this is why I wanted to address this, because guilty is a feeling, and where to all feelings stem from? Go back and listen to module two of No BS. I know you’ve listened to it once, but it sounds like you could do a second dose of module two.
Corrine:
Here’s the good news. In June, we are actually adding a couple of new lessons to module two, and we’re going to go through as a membership, all the calls will be focused around thought work next month. So, we’re going to do weight loss thinking versus diet thinking. So, that’s what we’ll be studying in module two in depth next month. But they always come from your thoughts.
Corrine:
So, guilty isn’t coming from you walking for 30 minutes without your dog. It’s coming from a thought you have about that time. And your thought of, “Well, I can go further now that I don’t have my senior dog.” If that makes you feel guilty, that feeling is probably actually coming from the thought, “And I shouldn’t think that.”
Corrine:
But I want you to imagine what if it’s okay to have enjoyed every walk you had with your dog. And it’s also equally okay to enjoy your walks now, versus one having to be bad and one having to be good.
Dana:
Yeah. They’re both good.
Corrine:
Yeah. This one’s just good in a different way. It doesn’t mean you loved your dog less because you’re enjoying a 30 minute walk. It means I’m smart enough to appreciate that I can take a 30 minute walk now, and I also loved my dog. You can have both. You don’t have to feel guilty. There’s nothing wrong.
Corrine:
It’s just like when people lose… Like when my grandmother died, well, both my grandparents actually, they died in hospice after really long battles with cancer. And we had to do a lot of taking care of them, just really hardcore taking care of around the clock for months. And there was some relief when they passed. And I will just say it was harder for my mother than it was for me. And I don’t think it’s because it was her parents versus my grandparents. I think I’ve always just had a different mindset of me feeling relieved that I don’t have to wipe their ass, clean up vomit, give them MiraLAX, and all the very uncomfortable things that I had to do while they were sick. I don’t think feeling relief from that is a reason to feel guilty, because I know I did all of that through love and I still love them now. That was always my guiding thought, is that what I feel now never took away how much I loved them, even relief from some of the things that weren’t so fun.
Dana:
Yes. That really helps.
Corrine:
Yeah.
Dana:
Oh yeah, because he was sick. I mean, he had diabetes. I mean, he had a whole counter of meds in our kitchen. I was like his nurse. And yeah, so it was a rough… but yeah.
Corrine:
Sometimes I will just give you this and then we’ll move on to the next person. But sometimes what we need when we are experiencing a wide range of feelings, very often grief is such a powerful emotion that it’s so full of sadness and things that we often go to things like guilt and avoidance to not feel better. It’s almost easier to feel guilty for having some relief.
Corrine:
And one of the thoughts that’s always worked for me in like, yeah, I’ve worked on a lot of guilt from around Logan and his condition and stuff like that, is to think like none of my feelings are bad. They’re very natural. They’re just coming from my thoughts and that’s okay. To give myself compassion, it’s okay to feel relief. With all those meds and stuff, it’s like, yeah, it’s probably pretty natural to not have to do that anymore. It’s also very natural to miss your dog and allowing those things for yourself.
Corrine:
And that I think what your original question is, “Is how do I quit grief eating?” I don’t think you’re grief eating, I think your resistance eating.”
Dana:
Thank you.
Corrine:
You’re welcome. All righty. Bye, bye.
Sarah:
Thank you so much, Dana, for your question here.
Dana:
Thank you.
Sarah:
We’ll move on to Stacy. We have just a few minutes left. Good morning, Stacy. Do you want to unmute? And say, “My question is,” please.
Stacy:
Hi. My question is, I’m working on self-sabotage around good and bad foods. So, I’ve been practicing putting these foods I considered bad on my plan, but then when I’m in the moment faced with choosing to eat them, I feel like I don’t really want that. I want the healthier food. So, do I almost like force myself, I don’t want to say force, but do I eat it even though I feel like I don’t really want it right now, or do I just keep putting on my plan until I want it in a certain moment?
Corrine:
Okay. So, this is an interesting question. Let me make sure I’ve got it phrased up right, so that I don’t answer this wrong. So, you’re making your plan. You’re making the doable plan and you’re putting on foods that you think you’re going to want. And it typically is foods that maybe you’ve been afraid to plan before and that kind of stuff. Is that what’s happening so far?
Stacy:
Correct.
Corrine:
Okay. And then what’s happening is in the moment when it’s time to get down on a hamburger or something, you’re like, “Oh, I don’t know if I really want a hamburger.” And you might want say a salad or something like that.
Stacy:
Yeah, like a grilled chicken, I just don’t feel I want it.
Corrine:
Okay, so this is perfect. This is what I call weight-loss Mecca moment. The reason why I have you guys plan these foods is because when your brain starts realizing, “We’re going to get them whenever we want to plan them.” They lose their thrill. Before it’s like, when we think we can have them and we don’t ever plan them, they just linger in your brain like, “Oh my God, it’d be so good to eat a hamburger. Oh my God.” And you just imagine your life exploding in delight. And like every moment being, if you could just get that hamburger in your mouth.
Corrine:
Then when you’re actually doing it, what happens is the part, the fantasy around the food and the off limit stuff, when it goes, a lot of the energy goes behind it. So, then what happens is, you’ve been focused on, “I’m going to lose weight. I’m going to do it the No BS way, Corrine’s way just all this stuff.” I have you go through thinking about what your life is going to look like. And I start opening you up to, “Here’s what I’m grateful for today.” And as I do all of that work in your planner, what happens is, is suddenly it’s like your goals and what you really want for yourself are starting to have a louder voice than a hamburger.
Stacy:
Yeah. I mean, for me, I realized going to dinner at people’s houses or parties, and stuff like that, I would go in miserable because I’d have this very restrictive plan. And I realized I’m really missing out on life with this. So, I would put, “Oh, you can have the French fries. You can have the whatever.” But then when I get there, I am like, “I don’t want it.” So, I’m wondering like, am I better off forcing myself to eat it? Or is it okay that it’s on my plan but I don’t want it?
Corrine:
I’m getting to that part. I’m going to tell you exactly what to do. But the reason why I’m going into all this description is because there’s a lot of people sitting around thinking that you, never happened. They won’t plan these foods and stuff. But it’s important for you to understand what’s actually happening in your brain. Your brain is making the shift to being more focused on what it truly wants out of life, versus just what it wants in its mouth, which is two very different things.
Corrine:
So, here’s how I would start doing your plan, now that you notice this is coming up. The first thing that most of you can do is, although it’s going to jack your stats on your habit tracker, you will eat off plan. So, now what you will do is, if you truly don’t want the burger and you want to level up, you’re like, “I really would rather have something that’s going to help me.” Like piece of chicken, whatever it is, not because that food is the better food or whatever, but because it’s what you want. And you can see yourself eating it and being satisfied and truly enjoy it, and it not take you away from your goals. You’re not eating it because you’re uncomfortable. You fear you’re going to miss out. You’re worried you won’t ever get this again.
Corrine:
This doesn’t work in reverse order. We’re not going to go and have a salad plan and decide to get a burger because we’re going to reinforce some bullshit like, “I’m afraid I’m going to miss out. I may never get this burger again. Might be the best burger I’ve ever had.” We’re not doing that shit. In this case what she’s doing is she is like, “I really don’t want that. I thought I would want this. And what I’m realizing is I want more out of my life. And I would rather eat this. And this could be even be better for me.” She could have a thousand reasons why.
Corrine:
That’s not diet mentality. That’s No BS, weight loss mentality. That mentality would be saying, “Well, I planned a burger, but I’ll probably get fat tomorrow, so I’m just going to go ahead and eat a salad.” That would be like diet thinking. That’s still being afraid of a hamburger, but that’s not happening here. She just doesn’t want it.
Corrine:
So, what I would do is first and foremost is, I would just break my plan, count it as I didn’t follow my plan. I would do a discovery worksheet, but I would do it in reverse of, “It wasn’t an excuse. I’m learning more about my true wants and desires.” So, that you get the benefit of exploring, changing your plan from a good mindset, from the No BS woman mindset.
Corrine:
Then what you can do is you’ll probably start seeing yourself, you want to say like, “You know what? I think I might want a burger, whatever, but what history is showing me is I don’t really want these foods as much. I would rather go in and not have it planned, and just see if drama comes up, knowing that I can eat what I plan. And if I ever want to plan the burger again, I can.” So, you can do it that way.
Corrine:
And you’re just going to pick whichever one feels best to you. The last way that you can do it is say, “You know what? I’m going to play in both. I’m starting to see that these foods have way less importance. So, I’m going to plan both the burger plus the chicken breast and baked potato. And then when I get there, I’m going to decide what I really want.”
Corrine:
So, any of those would work. Me personally, I always err on the side of just like, well, honestly I do both. I either will plan for the burger and stuff, and then just break my plan if I want to level up. And then I give myself a good journaling session on, “That’s awesome. You decided in the moment that you really didn’t want it. You really didn’t need it. That you could plan a burger any time. You decided to go with a salad.” I would reinforce that mindset and just be like, “This is the kind of woman I want to be.” Or I would probably not plan the burger, plan the salad and go in. And if I wanted the burger at the time, teach myself, it’s not the end of the world, if I don’t get it this time. And then figure out, “All right, so when’s the next time I could plan it, next week, tomorrow, whenever it would be.” That would be the two.
Corrine:
But for some of you, you may just want to start with just to get easy wins, giving yourself the option and you go in and then you decide. Does that help?
Stacy:
Yeah. That’s great. What I’m getting out of this is that I want to analyze what my mindset is when I don’t choose to eat the stuff I plan like the burger or fries or dessert. I’m leveling up in my mind, but I have to do it for the right reason.
Corrine:
Yeah. So, there’s either, sometimes you guys will do it from a fear of like, it’s like, I’ll plan the foods, but then I get there, I’m so afraid to eat them. I won’t eat them. That might decrease desire in the want. I don’t want to say force you to eat a burger, be mindful of why you would want to switch.
Corrine:
And then, because what you could do is, if you find out what you’re thinking, then you can find out what you would want to be thinking in that moment or what you want to think about those foods. It just gives you a lot of good information. All right, let’s go on to Shannon. I’ll be seeing all the No BS women over in Facebook in seven minutes.
Shannon:
Okay. I’ll be quick. How old are you find the balance between the mental beat down, trying to motivate yourself through the negative self-talk and being the overly permissive, dismissive parent in your mind? Where’s the authoritative parent in regards to weight loss? I’m really working on stopping not enough. So, this week Facebook lives have been amazing and just what I need.
Corrine:
So, give me an example of what you mean.
Shannon:
So, like last weekend I went to visit my son in Pensacola for the first time since November. And every time that I ate, I ended up overeating. I overeat. And I don’t do negative self-talk anymore. If that starts coming in, I recognize it right away. And I’m like, “That’s not allowed here.” But I don’t want to be like, “Oh, well, it’s okay.” Does that make sense?
Corrine:
Yeah. Well, this is the thing, I never tell myself something’s okay. I don’t ever say it’s okay. I might say, I noticed, say I over-drink, that’ll be like one that I would probably write about the most. I’ll say, “Well, last night I had four glasses instead of three glasses.” And rather than saying it’s okay, because a lot of times when you say it’s okay, you’ll tell yourself all the reasons why. I don’t tell myself it’s bad either. I just say, “This is how I’m feeling today. This is why in the future, I’m going to learn to stop at three.” That kind of stuff.
Corrine:
So, we definitely, guys, you never want to be beating yourself down, thinking that that’s going to spur action or motivation, because that does not happen. So, you’re doing really good with that.
Corrine:
It’s important though, that you’re realistic with what happened. I just want to tell myself the truth, “The reasons why I drank more are because of this. This is what was going on. This is what I was feeling like. I was having a good time. Here are the thoughts I was having. Here are the thoughts I needed to have in those moments.” Really pulling it all apart that way is very helpful.
Corrine:
Now, if I catch myself trying to beat myself up, I might say, “It’s okay.” You don’t have to beat yourself up to take a good look at how to improve for the future. I may say some things like that. That would be the only time I would use the it’s okay language. But most of us, what we do is we say, “It’s okay, I’ll start tomorrow.” That’s a self-sabotage thought.
Corrine:
If you say I’ll start tomorrow, that has no reflection, no curiosity, and does not dig into what was going on today. So, it’s real important that you watch out. So, if you went to self-sabotage weekend, you know one of the self-sabotage thoughts is, “I’ll start later. I’ll start tomorrow. I’ll start Monday.” It’s this idea of lying to ourselves that there’s a better time in the future to start the perfect streak. And that’s usually what’s happening with that thought.
Corrine:
So, if I’m going to say, it’s okay, it will be it’s okay that it happened, but we do need to take a look at it. We need to figure out what was going on, what you were thinking, what you weren’t choosing to think, how many thoughts you didn’t decide to have. So, I talk to you guys all the time about the best way to make sure that you don’t overeat, is a lot of times you guys will say like, “Well, I just want it.” And you’re like, “Okay, well, there’s that shitty thought, I guess I should eat.” Or you’ll say, “I just want it.” And then you’ll yell, “Well, you can’t have that.” And then your brain will say, “Yeah, but it’ll be really good.” And then you just go eat.
Corrine:
It’s like, you allow yourself one counter-argument, maybe two, but it’s like how many of those positive amplified, “Here’s what we’re going to do.” Thoughts. And here’s where our goals, our thoughts, are you going to be willing to have in the face of when you want to over-drink, when you want to overeat or whatever. So, that’s a long answer to that, but does that help?
Shannon:
Yes. Just continuing the conversation and having the full conversation, and not just dismissing it, but okay. It’s okay, but, or, and. Not but, and.
Corrine:
Yeah. In either way, it’s like this idea of when it comes to, the comfort to me, when it comes to, when you’re looking back at an overeat or whatever, the conversation isn’t over until you’ve pulled it all apart and figure it out, what did you think that spurred you into the eating action, and what did you need to be thinking, and how many different thoughts did you need to have? And at what point did you stop thinking about what you most wanted? At what point did you stop countering the, “I just want it,” voice? Because at that point you’ve got to add about 10 more onto that one for the next time.
Shannon:
That’s good right there.
Corrine:
Yeah. So, it’s like really taking a look at those discovery worksheets and don’t just say like, “Well, I thought I just wanted it, so next time I need to tell myself, “No, I don’t.” Y’all quit doing that. Get specific. What is it going to take? And change it up a lot until you find some stuff that gets your attention in the moment and gives you pause, and makes you willing to sit through it not being comfortable, that you’re not going to respond to what you want in the moment.
Corrine:
And what are you going to think about that? Do you think that’s going to be super hard or is your thoughts like, “It’ll pass.” I mean, a lot of times we just there and we wonder why it’s difficult because we sit there and think about how hard it is, versus this will pass. I mean, it’s like the nuances of thought changes are everything. Okay. I know we got to go.
Shannon:
Thank you so much.
Corrine:
You’re fine. Sarah, you can go ahead and get us out of here. And I’m going to go ahead and leave the room, and you can close it out. And then, I’m going over to Facebook.
Corrine:
Thank you so much for listening today. Make sure you head on over to nobsfreecourse.com, and sign up for my free weight loss training on what you need to know to start losing your weight right now. You’ll also find lots of notes and resources from our past podcasts, help you lose your weight without all the bullshit diet plans. I’ll see you next week.
