Corinne:
Hi, I’m Corinne. After a lifetime of obesity, being bullied for being the fattest kid in the class and losing and gaining weight like it was my job, I finally got my shit together and I lost 100 pounds. Each week, I’ll teach you no bullshit weight loss advice you can use to overcome your battle with weight. I keep it simple. You’ll learn how to quit eating and thinking like an asshole. You stop that, and weight loss becomes easy. My goal is to help you lose weight the way you want to live your life. If you’re ready to figure out weight loss, then let’s go.
Corinne:
All right everybody, welcome back. Today, I have a special treat. I want to welcome my friend, a colleague of mine that I’ve gotten to know through the life coach school, Judith Gaton. I’m going to let her introduce herself, but I just want to say she is getting ready to do a lot of very good, powerful work for my No BS women. I have asked her to help us out on how to be a fucking lady, how to style ourselves, how to dress ourselves, and really just how to love ourselves on the physical aspect. If you’re a no BS woman and you’re listening to this, you know that the month of July, we are pretty much dedicated to Judith Gaton and in her caring hands. But, I want to bring her on and let her introduce herself so she can tell us all about herself and how she began and why she does what she does. So take it away, Judith.
Judith Gaton:
Yeah. I’m so excited to be here. The excitement that the No BS women are having in the group is like just to be in there like I have my own little hype team. I just go in there and they’re so excited. It’s so fun. I’m Judith Gaton. I am a style coach for curvy women and my motto is really just helping women love and dress the body they’re in right now. But really, the overarching bigger picture is just creating an environment where women are confident so that whatever they’re doing in the world, the ripple effect of that confidence is felt by everyone around them, because the confident women change the world, confident women create legacies. And I think that’s really the overarching, the big why of what I do. In response to your question of how I came to be a style coach, I was originally a fashion design major.
Corinne:
How did you get here?
Judith Gaton:
Yeah. How did I get here? Which I think is such a great question to ask all coaches, because usually there’s a story. There’s a journey that most of us have gone on. And for me, I started as a fashion design major, then got chickened out and thought that might be too hard. So I decided to become a lawyer, which makes perfect sense, of course. Then I ended up double majoring. So I have a minor in fashion design and a major in legal policy studies, went to law school, was a lawyer for a number of years litigator and had my own struggles with eating my way through law school, which I think a lot of people who have graduate degrees can totally understand that journey like eating to stay awake, eating to stay motivated, eating to get through.
Judith Gaton:
I had an interview one morning and I realized my pants didn’t fit, and that was a triggering moment for me like some shit has got to fucking change. This cannot continue. I found coaching and then round my way back to marrying all of my favorite things together, which is helping women, helping badass women be more badass with style through coaching and talking about people’s thoughts and feelings. So we had made a brain baby and now we have style coaching, which is very cool. I’m very lucky in that regard. So that’s the minute version of the tale.
Corinne:
Well, I think that your work is so important because one of the things that I really work hard on teaching the no BS women is… So it’s one thing to want to lose weight. Obviously, I’m a weight loss coach. I think that losing weight is great, but not because I think that people are going to be happy when they’ve lost weight. I love the opportunities that weight loss gave me. So when I was losing weight, I for the first time in my life had figured out, I was going to have to love myself. I was going to have to figure out how to like my body, especially because I had been overweight all of my life. I knew my supermodel days had escaped me. They were just not going to happen. It was like I was going to have a mom body.
Corinne:
I mean, even when I was losing weight one of the things that I knew that my weight loss wasn’t going to change is my boobs. I mean, my son nursed. I was going to have mom boobs. There was just things that were going to be and I used weight loss as an opportunity to say like, “Okay. I’m not going to like count on losing weight to be happy, I’m going to count on being proud of myself and all the changes that I’m making and look forward to myself all along the way.”
Corinne:
I will tell you one of the things that really helped me that I think you can speak to the listeners on is when I first started, I was walking and I was going to the gym to do my walks. I was wearing my husband’s clothes because I, literally at my size, I just never thought that I deserved to wear anything cute, that clothes for my body, it was like, “Well, cute clothes are not meant for you.” Unless you lose your weight you can’t have them. So one of the things you always talk about is janky clothes.
Judith Gaton:
Yes.
Corinne:
I was definitely a janky ass mindset back in the day, but as I was losing weight, I started realizing if I wanted to keep going, I couldn’t just keep enshrouding myself in shameful clothes. That was not going to help. So can you talk about janky clothes and why you care so much about that and exposing that to women?
Judith Gaton:
Oh my god. That’s near and dear to my heart and I think that’s really where I start everyone on the journey. And I think really where everyone starts is somewhere along the way. They look down whether they’re like washing their hands in the bathroom one day, sitting on the edge of their bed and their pants so they can’t button up or someone’s like, “Hey, did you know you have a hole in your shirt?” And it’s like your one good favorite shirt. We all have this moment we look down and we’re like, “What the hell is going on down there?” A lot of it, I think janky clothes and getting like a janky closet meaning items that have holes, have stains are past their prime, we get a wardrobe that looks mostly janky because somewhere along the way we stopped paying attention to ourselves.
Judith Gaton:
You hit upon something really powerful like this is our relationship with ourselves and our eating habits, our reflection of that. How we dress ourselves is a reflection of that. So if we kind of take stock and we look around, the janky clothes are just a reminder of maybe how far away from a relationship with yourself you have gotten. How far away from yourself you have gotten because to get a janky ass wardrobe means you have ignored yourself. You have ignored yourself for quite a bit of time. You stopped paying attention to what fits. You stopped paying attention when things get stained.
Judith Gaton:
You didn’t even have the wherewithal to even replace the items as they’ve got worn down. And that’s not a criticism, that’s just telling us a lot about where you’re at with your relationship with yourself. All of that is fixable and you’re not alone in that, whoever is listening. To some degree, Corinne’s walk that journey, I’ve walked that journey so you’re definitely not alone in that. But understanding just taking stock of what you’re wearing is a great indicator like a barometer of maybe what the hell has gone wrong.
Corinne:
I think that’s so key and I think even for… I think this show is up even with people who… I basically divide my clients into about three buckets. There’s the person who’s getting started where they’ll look at their clothes and be like, “Shit, I don’t have anything that fits or nothing fits.” With me it was, “Well, I’m not going to buy myself anything so I’ll just wear whatever, Chris has.” And part of my problem in the very beginning of my journey, I don’t know how much… I was in a lot of body shame, but I was also in a lot of mother shame.
Corinne:
I just felt like all the stuff I was going through the first year when Logan was alive, I thought I was a terrible mother. It wasn’t anything like anybody told me it would be. So I was really depressed and I think it was coming out and just like I’d given up on clothes. I’d given up on everything. I just said basically given up on having an identity other than just whatever the world is going to give me, whatever my brain happens to think about.
Corinne:
Second bucket is my women that get about halfway to goal. They’re very hesitant to buy the clothes. They’re very hesitant to get rid of clothes. Speak to that part of the journey. For those people who are on a roll or well on their way, how important is it for you to start examining your wardrobe with that stage. What could it be telling you if you’re hanging onto things and stuff like that?
Judith Gaton:
It’s so interesting. I have sort of a similar way of thinking of my clients depending on their undies drawer. So if I have clients who are walking around in butt munchers, wedgies, they’re clearly holding on to this idea that I have to wait until I finish this journey in order to buy new clothes. But the problem with that line of thinking is like if we’re always waiting and our brain is in this habit of always waiting for that to come off the list, but the homeostasis for your brain is that it’s always on the list, your brain will ensure that your weight loss remains always at the top of your list.
Judith Gaton:
So for those ladies, I just want to say what if, just for this exercise, we removed weight loss from the top of your list and it’s not the, if then, then I’m allowed to. So if I lose weight then I’m allowed to do X, Y, or Z. If I lose weight or get to the right size, then I can buy new undies, new jeans, et cetera. If we remove that first clause and we just say, “I’m allowed to buy new jeans, I’m allowed to buy new undies,” then what would you go buy? What would you allow yourself to wear? If we didn’t factor in your weight, your size, your shape or your body is some sort of problem that we need to fix initially.
Judith Gaton:
It’s not a problem that needs fixing. You can love your body and decide to lose weight while also buying clothes that fit. We can hold space for all of this, but I think a lot of us tether these ideas to each other, and I think weight loss industry, the way women are socialized, we’re taught from an early age that we have to do X before we’re allowed to do Y. We have to finish our chores before we’re allowed to go play. We have to clean our plate before we’re allowed to leave the table. So we’re sort of socialized to do this sort of thing, but I think the beauty of what you and I teach is like, “No, no, no. Let’s break these things apart.”
Judith Gaton:
You can if you want, but it’s not predicated upon some other activity. So that’s what I would say to your first ladies. We don’t want you to be wedgied out, butt-munched out, running around with stuff that doesn’t fit you. And then for the ladies who are in the middle of the journey, I find that they come with like the droopy drawers. Their panties are falling off their ass. I had a client once, God bless her, she refused to get rid of her strapless bra. The woman had lost like over 100 pounds, so she’s like, “You can’t pry this thing out of my dead cold hands. It’s my favorite bra. I got it from Torrid. You don’t understand.”
Judith Gaton:
It’s like, “No, no. When you’re ready, boo, I’m here.” So she goes into a meeting and she’s in the meeting and she’s in front of the crowd in front of the meeting and the bra just falls off. It ends up around her waist. It’s like chilling there. She’s like, “I think it’s time.” I’m like, “Yeah, I think it’s time.” But for her, she was so afraid of regaining the weight that that’s how she held her body hostage. When I finish the journey, then I’m allowed to. Not recognizing that everything is literally falling off around her. And when you wear clothes like that, what does this thought cascade that starts in your brain when you’re wearing clothes that are too big and you’re pulling bunches of fabric out of your crotch all day, or you’re having to like pull your bra up, or like stick your titties back in the cup? When you’re doing that, it’s not going to foster thoughts that are going to help you stay on your plan for the day. It’s going to make you feel like shit about your body, which is the exact opposite of what you want.
Corinne:
When your clothes are just all over the place on you, you’re sit… I want you to think about what you are triggered to think about. I’m thinking about like if I was wearing clothes that were too big for me and I had had all the success, if I’m adjusting my clothes, I’m not thinking I am such a baller. I’ve lost weight. This is the only reason why it’s too big. It’s like, “No, you’re sitting there thinking when the fuck will the journey be over? I can’t wait until I’ve lost all my weight so that I can wear clothes that fit me.” That’s some of the bullshit that it’ll trigger, and it will irritate you every single time. And most of us are never going to… Nobody says, “Hey, I just can’t wait to lose all my weight so I can live a life of irritation.” It’s not helpful. It’s just not. The third group are my maintenance-
Judith Gaton:
I love that you brought that up. That’s so funny.
Corinne:
Oh, go ahead.
Judith Gaton:
No, no, no. No one signs up to be irritated and distracted and annoyed all day. None of us sign up for that when we start our journey so I love that you said that.
Corinne:
Yeah. It’s like the number one question I get all the time is like, “Corinne, how do I stay motivated to lose weight?” “Well, I will guarantee you fucking like with your clothes all day long because they don’t fit anymore is not the recipe for your motivation.” So the third group though is our maintenance girls. What I watch them do, you kind of already touched on it with the group in the middle, which is they’re buying clothes, but I find that they have such attachment to their old clothes. They just do not want to get rid of them. Talk about prying them out of my dead cold hands. They’ll have their whole… The just-in-case wardrobe.
Judith Gaton:
Yeah.
Corinne:
So is it kind of the same mindset or do you have any kind of words of wisdom for our girls that lose their weight? How do you get over the separation anxiety around those clothes?
Judith Gaton:
I think we have to do it in stages because for a lot of women I find and just talking to them, they have stories associated with their clothes. I’ve had some clients who like the panties they had when they’re water dropped with their first kid, they’ve kept them. And I’m like, “What is happening there?” Or I’ve had clients like this T-shirt I wore when I was in the seventh grade to this rock concert where I got my first… Women have stories wrapped up in all of their clothing. So I think to be fair to them, it’s not necessarily like telling them get rid of it, get rid of it is going to be particularly helpful if they’re in that state of anxiety about letting go of the clothes.
Judith Gaton:
So we do it in stages. First, we’re just going to remove it from your line of sight. And I really mean this. For the quote-unquote gold clothing barf, but the gold clothing that’s too small for you, the stuff that’s the just-in-case clothing, we want to remove it from your line of sight. So wherever you store your clothes if you’re a laundry hamper girl and you know you ain’t putting that shit away, anything that’s too big, just take it out of the hamper. In your closet, take it out of your line of sight. Don’t keep space hoard in your drawers.
Judith Gaton:
I mean, we really want to just get it out of your line of sight. And then the second stage is we’re going to store it like we would every precious little memento that we have. So if you really are committed to keeping these items, which I don’t recommend that you do, but I say that with all the love in the world, but if even getting them out of your line of sight, you still sort of find your brain tracking back to them, then we’re going to store them like we would a museum archive. You’re going to wash everything. You’re going to button it. You’re going to press it. You’re going to carefully package it, carefully sew it away.
Judith Gaton:
We’re not putting in trash bags, putting them in your attic for rats to eat later. We’re going to treat this like museum quality pieces. And if you can’t be bothered to do that shit, then you don’t really want them with them damn clothes. You just don’t. And that’s okay. That’s okay. Then we can parse out from there like what is going to be something that you want. It’s like a memory keepsake, which we don’t store with the garments we wear. We put it with our photographs, our little trinkets from days gone by. That’s where we put those items, but they don’t go with our clothes because we don’t wear them. We just start to make that differentiation in our brain. These are not clothes that I wear. These are not clothes I will ever wear.
Judith Gaton:
It’s safe for me to let these go. It’s completely okay for me to let these go. It’s time for you to start practicing like the thought work as well as doing the separation slowly out of your line of sight until you can get that place with that piece of, “Okay, it’s time.” But that might not happen all at once and that’s okay.
Corinne:
So let me ask you this. So one of the things that I know that you talk a lot about in your book, How To Be a Fucking Lady which I advise all of you to read. Number one, I just have to say this personally. As you tell your stories especially when you tell your stories about the women in your life, it reminds me so much of my grandmother. My grandmother was always dropping wisdom in the most unconventional ways. She was saying it like a boss all the time. So your book, I literally enjoyed every… It was not only insightful, but I enjoyed every page of it, so people should read it.
Corinne:
But you talk a lot about confidence. What do you think is the biggest mistake women are making right now around confidence, that you could help them with? Because you speak very well about it all the way through the book. It’s like a fabric that you weave through there.
Judith Gaton:
Yeah. I think the number one thing I think that trips most women up is that we’re sold this bill of goods. That confidence is like this arrival point. It’s the last stop on a long train, but once you’re there, you’re there for always. I think what is so disheartening for a lot of women is let’s say they are brave and they’re courageous and they do this thing and they’re confident in that moment, but they can’t seem to muster that same level of confidence for the next event, outing, excursion, whatever they had planned. So they think something’s gone horribly wrong.
Judith Gaton:
And then the beating themselves up that comes afterward erodes whatever shred of confidence they had left. It really just all comes from that little poison thought that somehow it’s an arrival point as opposed to like a lifetime of practice. Just like any art, this is not science, this is art. And if we thought of it that way, and it was more fluid, we’d have such an easier time on ourselves when things don’t go perfectly according to plan all the time.
Judith Gaton:
I also think that there’s this sort of mythos that confidence is like an attitude and then that’s it. I’m like, “No, no.” It’s like I like to teach it like it’s an equation. So there’s confidence meaning like your belief in your capability like your belief in your ability to do something and then there’s confidence in terms of availing yourself of that capability. So a lot of women profess confidence, but they never do anything with it.
Judith Gaton:
Then we have ladies who are taking fuck ton of action and don’t believe in themselves. We want both parts of the equation because that’s what’s last. So that whatever happens, even if it goes according to plan, it doesn’t go according to plan, you will always have your back because your belief in your capability is high and your belief in your ability to avail yourself of that capability is high. So whatever comes your way, you’ve got you. But I think sometimes we think confidence is this like bravada that is lasting and then you either have it or you don’t. I think that just does us all a disservice if we think of it that way.
Corinne:
Yeah. I kind of teach it in a similar manner. I call it the difference between self-confidence and confidence. So there’s like the belief in yourself. So I think for me when I look back throughout my life, I think I never really had self-confidence. I thought that somehow I was going to evolve into a confident person. I didn’t understand that the first step to get there was really, I need to number one decide I’m going to do this. I don’t have to be confident that I’ll know something, but I can be confident that I’ll try something.
Corinne:
I don’t have to be confident that I’ll lose my weight, but I can be self-confident that today I can do these things. So it was like this whole evolution. And then the way that I like to teach it is most people get confident at things once they’ve done something enough times, made enough mistakes, re-jigged it around enough times like a Lego piece or a Jenga tower. Then things fall into place and there’s like, “Oh, now I know how.” I think that’s where confidence eventually arrives. But it’s that self-confidence in, “Well, I know I messed up, but it’s not that bad.”
Corinne:
Well, I know that it didn’t work this time, so tomorrow I’ll try this. And that’s where the self-confidence eventually turns into confidence. But I love what you said in terms of, it’s not an arrival point. I think we’re always supposed to be doubting things. We’re always supposed to be questioning if something will work, things like that. I just think that’s the normal course of events is when we think those natural things aren’t supposed to be there. I must be doing it wrong because everybody else out there looks like they know what they’re doing. It’s like, “No, they probably just believe they’re going to try something.” It gives off the appearance of confidence because they’re taking some action.
Judith Gaton:
Yeah, 100%.
Corinne:
Go ahead.
Judith Gaton:
I talk a little bit like the model on the runway. So she has confidence that she can walk. She’s capable of walking. To use the dichotomy like confidence versus self-confidence. But when that… I was going to say a rude word. When that lady falls on the runway and she has a moment in time where she has to decide, I either slink off the edge of the stage, never to be heard from again or I have enough self-confidence, confidence in me that I can get my ass up, walk the rest of the runway, slay the shit out of this and now I can use this for great dinner party fodder in the future, I can tell about when I fell in front of all these people.
Judith Gaton:
We’re capable of walking. We’re capable of so much if we would just see that in ourselves. But sort of the test comes when when you fall on your face, like you said when you fail a dozen times and you get back up, you’re like oh, “This is how this works. That is how we build it.” Building a rapport with yourself that you’re going to have your own back, that you’re going to get your ass up when you fall because you’re going to fall over and over, and over, and over, and over again. And that’s how we cultivate it over time.
Corinne:
For sure. I think that during those falls, I just think it’s normal to… You’re at the crossroads. Am I slinking off stage or am I getting up? There’s a mix of emotion in that moment. Your brain is just lit up like, “You fail, this sucks. I don’t know. Well, we could keep going.” We have a, I don’t know how I want to say it, but a shitty definition of what confidence is supposed to look like. I think that for women if we would sit around and we would define for ourselves what we want confidence to be for us, not defining what we’ve witnessed or what someone’s told us, we’d get a lot further in the journey here these days, which brings me to my next question which is, so what role do you think social media is playing right now in a lot of just our common issues, not just with style and our body but our confidence? Where are we at in social media these days and just media messaging all together?
Judith Gaton:
Well, it’s interesting because I’ve seen a lot of hashtags I think were meant for good turn real weird. For example, if you used to follow body positivity as like a hashtag that I love to follow. But now, I’ve seen it sort of overtaken by the fitspo crowd. So women who are not necessarily professing actual body positivity or even body neutrality have sort of taken over the hashtag. So what was meant for good may not be so great anymore. I’m seeing a little bit of that in like the body positivity space. I think it’s a little disheartening for women who were really committed to normalizing everyday bodies, unfiltered bodies, bodies in real life.
Judith Gaton:
We’ve done ourselves a collective disservice by commercializing what was really a helpful hashtag. So I’m seeing a little bit of that in the space. I’ve been coaching a lot of clients on this recently… It’s the idea of like body positivity shame. So someone telling you repeatedly you should love your body and you don’t, so then it’s just like another way of shaming yourself. So I’m seeing a little bit of that and it’s fascinating to watch and a little disheartening in some ways.
Corinne:
I agree. One of the things that I’ve been really trying to teach my clients to start doing is really diversify their feeds. I think especially for us in the weight loss side, most people listen my podcast are wanting to lose weight. If they did an examination of their social, I think a lot of times what we’re doing is we are looking at people who are in that fitspo category. We’re associating fitness or weight loss or whatever with tan perfect muscular bodies. People who are doing it all. There’s so much perfection messaging that goes on inside of weight loss, it is ridiculous.
Corinne:
I have seen both sides. It’s like if you want to find a more, what I would just call just, I don’t know, normal fucking people. I mean, I hate to say it that way, but normal fucking people. You can find it out there. It’s like people talking about their bodies like this is what I look like. This is what most of us are looking like. I think that social media has such a powerful presence that it could be that way, but then you’ve got this whole other side. I think one of the suggestions I always make my clients is go through your feed. You feel terrible? Stop following it. Just stop following it. We can do thought work all day long, but most of us just don’t need to leak those hurdles right now.
Corinne:
It’s kind of like what you were talking about with the clothes. I’m always saying like, “We can think anything we want. We can do all these things, but sometimes you got to get some stuff out of your line of sight. Let’s just start with that.”
Judith Gaton:
Hell, yes. I mean, cleaning up your visual clutter whether it’s the clothes in your closet, the shit you see on your feed that’s making you feel janky. Any time I cut my clothes… But it’s inspiring. I’m like, “Oh, let’s double check that.” Because if it’s truly inspiring, you’re going to feel this expansive feeling in your chest. You’re going to suddenly feel like you can do all the things, run mountains and leap tall buildings. That’s inspirational. But if suddenly you feel yourself like contracting and you have this yucky feeling in the pit of your stomach and you feel like your heart has dropped, that’s not inspirational, boo-boo. That’s not doing what you think it’s doing.
Judith Gaton:
It’s time to clean up our visual feeds. Take out the clutter. Then if we’re going to add things back in, we’re going to add it intentionally. So we’re going to color our plates just like with our food. We’re going to color our visual palette the same way. I really recommend ladies who are bigger than you, ladies who are smaller than, people with different skin colors, different hair textures, people’s freckles, people with stretch marks. We want all of the human family on your feed, women with gray hair, women with white hair, women at different ages. All of it, we want to make room for all of it so that you normalize to your brain this is what human bodies look like. So you’re not such a shock to yourself when you look in the mirror.
Corinne:
I will tell you, so I used to follow a lot of like workout accounts because I always like to just see if I can find new workouts. I always constantly looking for new lifting techniques. But what I noticed was about a couple years ago, I wasn’t really paying attention to how they were lifting anymore. I was having these thoughts of like, “I should look like that.” That’s what fitness looks like. I cleaned all of it out. I was just like, “That’s a no.” I didn’t lose 100 pounds to sit around thinking I still should look like something else.
Corinne:
That’s just a shitty ass present I was giving myself every time I would scroll the feed. So I think that thinking of… I love the way you said it. It’s like when you see more bodies and you see such a diverse amount, your own image now doesn’t look so shocking. I think that’s what’s happened for me. I’ve been getting coached by our friend, Bev Aron going on three years now. We talk a lot about body image. I talk about it in terms of my own work. I talk about it and how I can teach my clients and stuff because it means a lot to me.
Corinne:
I just don’t want any woman to be in her body and to be miserable in it. I was that way for long enough and it’s like… I mean, you’re going to spend all your time with yourself every single day. Anytime that I can, I don’t know, do anything or say anything to help women just free themselves from that internal prison they put themselves in that they should always look better, be better, do better, eat better, all that stuff, I’m all in. But I’ve been talking to her about it and I’ve noticed, it is so much easier now for me to like what I see because I’m not now comparing myself to what I used to look at.
Corinne:
Now, I have seen all these different bodies and women is so proud in wearing the clothes that they want to wear and being unapologetic about it. It’s like it’s helped me tap into my confidence and my own bravery to be like, “Fuck, I don’t care if I’m 47. Crop top here we come.” I’m not joking. I swear to god. Like Memorial Day weekend, I had bought these little crop tops and I would only wear them in my gym. Actually I’m like, “Corinne, you’ve got great boobs. I had a tummy tuck three years ago. I might as well do something with it.” So I told Chris, I was like, “I’m bringing these crop tops to Vegas and I’m wearing them out. I’m not just going to wear them to the gym.” We went to breakfast one morning and I wore my first crop top with a pair of jeans. You couldn’t touch me. Girl, I felt like I have been-
Judith Gaton:
And to use your own words, you didn’t die and you didn’t get pregnant. Everything turned out okay, right?
Corinne:
I actually liked it more than I thought I would. I had it built up my brain that everyone would look at me. My story was Stephen King novel worthy of what was going to happen in that crop top. And it was not. After I got the initial walking through the lobby with it and noticing what I was thinking, I started calming down. The next thing you know I was enjoying it. I was sitting there thinking, “You were 47 and you’re wearing the clothes you like. Good for you.” It only took 47 years.
Judith Gaton:
And here’s the beautiful thing is like, “Now, you modeled it for the other women. So any other woman who was watching you was like, “Well, look at that badass bitch. If she could do what I could do, I’m going to give me a crop top too. The beauty of it is like when we show up for ourselves and yeah, there might be a few haters in the crowd, but there’s going to be so many more women who are just waiting for permission. And by you showing up as you in that moment, you gave permission at countless… I mean, you have a huge following. Thousands of women are like, “Well, fuck. If she could do it, I could do it too.” The ripple effect of that is amazing when you think of it that way like crop tops for all. That’s what we want to do. It’s so good, so good.
Corinne:
We’ll have to start a challenge in the Facebook group for our members, crop tops for all. But I will say this. You bring up such a good point which is one of the things that I tell the No BS women all the time which is if we want the world to change when it comes to body acceptance, loving our bodies, wearing the whatever we want, doing all that stuff, some of us have to go first even if we’re nervous, even if we’re scared even. If we don’t like have a ton of good reason other than I’m willing to go first. I think we do need more women.
Corinne:
Learning to dress how they want to dress, wearing the clothes they want to wear, showing up in life the way they want to show up. It’s not selfish or like you don’t give a fuck anymore, it’s more of, “I give a fuck so much about my own personal happiness, I’m willing to go.” You know what I mean?
Judith Gaton:
Oh, no. I love that. My relationship with myself is so tight that whatever comes when I rock this crop top, it’s going to be perfect. Then just being in the presence of someone who has a kind of like confidence in themselves that kind of self love, you can feel it. You can also feel it around when you’re with someone who’s like super self-deprecating and kind of weird with themselves and everyone feels awkward. You could be that girl or you could be the other gal who’s like, “I’m going to decline to nitpick on myself. I’m not going to engage in the pinching my fat kind of talk. I’m going to be like thank you when people give me compliments, and then I’m going to stop talking.” Just modeling those teeny tiny things for other women can be really life-changing in ways that you don’t fully expect or totally understand in the moment that it’s happening. That’s how we’re going to change the world y’all just showing up, just showing up.
Corinne:
Something else you talk about is like you talk about being stylish as fuck, and other than how you dress. You talk about poised gumption and plug. I was thinking about that when we were just talking in there are other things that make us not only just confident, but make us easy to be around. People love when someone has that quiet confidence. They’re not looking for you to be just like all out there, but women know when they’re with someone who’s at ease with themselves. When they’re not trying to be overly confident that they’re comfortable with themselves or sitting there like you said, “Oh, well. I’m still working on myself. There’s always this better place to be.” So other than how you dress, what would you tell us about like how do we come across stylish in the world?
Judith Gaton:
I mean, I kind of refer to it as like a quiet ferocity. So we can still be really fierce. We can still be really intense, but think of the lioness in wait. She’s quiet. She’s calm. She’s watching the room before she decides whether she’s going to pounce or slink back into the jungle, right? If we think about a queen on her throne, quiet, calm, delegating, [inaudible 00:35:08] like assured in herself, but not always having to be loud and yelling all the time. There could be a quiet ferocity, a quiet fierceness I think sometimes we forget about because we’re used to maybe seeing like the extroverts being out there loud and in charge.
Judith Gaton:
So I think the beauty of it is when we take action based on how we’re feeling, the thought feeling action cycle. So if we think about intentionally what kind of feeling we want to adopt before we take action, and we do we think of it just like we’re going to try on clothes deliberately. I’m going to try on this emotion before I take action then we can show up with pluck or gumption. We can decide ahead of time that we’re going to show up with a calm ferocity we can show up with a feminine fierceness. We can show up in sexiness and smoldering. We can decide ahead of time what emotion we want to drop into before we take action.
Judith Gaton:
I’m definitely attracted to the ideas of pluck and gumption because they’re like 1940s escorts and I like vintagey things. But insert the word that resonates the most with you. If you’re a gal, gumption and pluck, how do you show up in the world? What kind of action are you going to take from the deliberate feeling that you’re going to try on just like a well-worn garment before you go out? Practicing that can get really exciting.
Judith Gaton:
I think we spend so much time negotiating with our janky ass thoughts and feelings that we sometimes forget the inverse is also true. We can also deliberately pick some amazing ass thoughts and feelings and walk into a set of circumstances deliberately having chosen how we’re going to show up. And we forget we have that also extra secret special sauce and we just need to remind each other sometimes like you don’t have to live by default. We can make it deliberate too.
Corinne:
Yeah. I think that’s so important. So let’s switch gears to just some practical tips because since we do have a style expert here, we might as well get a few tips. What would you tell someone who let’s say you just don’t know your personal style or maybe you’ve never been one to be super stylish. If you wanted to just kind of get started, what would be the basic steps of that?
Judith Gaton:
Yeah. I think the first basic step is to realize number one you do have a personal style you just might not like it, which is okay.
Corinne:
We all got one.
Judith Gaton:
We all got one. You’ve got one, done. But it’s just a matter of looking at what you’re currently wearing and doing two things. One, finding what you absolutely hate about it and you don’t ever want to do again because there’s a gold mine of information in what’s not working. And not from a place of self-hatred or nitpicking, we’re doing this from an evaluative sense. What is just really not working for me? The size of the pants I’m wearing, the texture of this fabric is itchy as fuck. Any number of things. What’s just not working for me?
Judith Gaton:
Then also looking at your current style because there’s some redeeming quality. We have to just tune our brain to it. What is working? What do I like about it? Is it that it’s comfortable? Because then we make sure that that’s an attribute that our clothes have going forward. Is it the color? Then that’s an attribute we want to carry forward. Is it that I really just love wearing jeans, and I’m tired of telling myself that I have to wear trousers all the time when I’m a jeans girl. Then we carry that forward. So we have to evaluate what the hell is going on first before we bring in a bunch of new stuff. What’s not working? What is working?
Judith Gaton:
Then as we start to develop our wardrobe or sort of clean it up or bring new items in then what is working becomes sort of the guiding post for the items we bring in next. It does need to fit me. I’m not going to spend a bunch of time trying to find crisp white button ups because there’s this must-have lips that says I have to have it. I don’t like white button-ups. I get everything dirty. I’m not going to do that to myself. We start to cultivate bringing in items based upon what we actually know we like when we stop to think about it.
Corinne:
That’s something you just triggered in me is one of the few colors I will ever wear in my wardrobe, you hardly see any of it is white. I wear, so much makeup and I love makeup that other day I actually wore a white shirt. I was getting ready for a call and I looked down, I just had foundation all over it. I was like, “This is why I don’t wear white tops.” Ii will be honest with you. A question that I have personally, and let me tell you one of my hang-ups when it comes to my own wardrobe. Now, I buy clothes, I love clothes. I mean, God there’s probably no problems with me and clothes. My issue is getting rid of clothes. I always say that if I bring clothes in, I’m going to take clothes out. I’ve probably given away more clothes in the last two years than I have in my entire life so I’m getting better. But my thought is always I haven’t worn it enough. And this is just personal coaching for Corrine since you’re here.
Judith Gaton:
Let’s do it. Let’s do it.
Corinne:
Rarely does the coach get coached on this podcast, but help me through this because I probably have quite a few clothes up there right now that I’ve worn like maybe a few. Maybe I’ve worn it for some photos or I’ve worn it for stage. And I don’t ever see me wearing it. I just am like I don’t know that I loved it, it served its purpose, but I still don’t want to throw it away.
Judith Gaton:
I’m so curious about what do you mean by enough? I haven’t worn it enough. Is there a set number in your mind that equates to enough?
Corinne:
No. I am pretty sure this goes back to my money issues that I continue to work on. There will be this imaginary time where I’m like, “Oh, you’ve worn it and you got your money’s worth out of it.” I think that’s where I go with it.
Judith Gaton:
Okay.
Corinne:
I’m going to even be talking about a pair of Target pants. I’m not talking like high end shit. I can almost tell you the price tag of every single thing I own.
Judith Gaton:
I think it’s because there’s this sort of mythos fallacy that there’s a bank that is keeping track of the number of cost per wear of our items. And this bank tells us how much we spent on every item and it’s keeping track. Somehow if we hold on to these items then we have all these credits in that bank of cost per wear. But there is no bank and no one’s keeping track. But we’re really raised to believe this. Especially, if you’ve been raised with the like nice clothes, play clothes paradigm, that will feed into that whole idea. “Don’t mess up your good clothes because we can only afford X number of amounts or X sets of clothes for this school year or whatever.”
Judith Gaton:
So it’s almost like this sort of neural pathway in your brain that has created this idea that there’s a bank keeping track of how I wear my clothes, how I use them and how much I’ve spent on them. And then I have to manage the nice clothes versus the play clothes and how I’m going to be good to them because someone’s keeping track somewhere, I’m going to get in trouble.
Corinne:
Right. Yeah, I think for me it’s like it literally… I will sit and think, well, what if this situation happens? You wouldn’t want to have to buy that again. I’m sure I have a lot of things to unwind there because it’s… I would say the biggest thing that… Even with my eating, one of the things that I run into is I’ll hear myself think I need to eat this week old food. I’ll have fresh food in the refrigerator and I will want to eat stuff that just… It’s not that it’s ruined, but I’m sure a lot of the medical people are like, “Oh, no. You shouldn’t eat something that’s a week old.” But I’ve been doing it a long time and I’ve not died yet, y’all. But it’ll come up there. So there’s definitely something where I feel like there’s the imaginary bank out there where it’s just sunk cost I guess. I don’t know.
Judith Gaton:
Yeah. And it is a sunk cost, but telling your brain that rationally, it may not totally register. If the record has been playing in terms of food and clothes for a long time that there’s a bank keeping track of how wisely you use the resources you have available to you, and that’s a record you’ve had playing for a long time, and it might be that’s-
Corinne:
That what you just said like have I used it? Have I used it wisely? That right there resonates with me big time.
Judith Gaton:
So if we’ve had that record playing for a long time and has been reinforced by circumstances in life like I know you’re raised by a single mama, so was I, so there’s like that shouldn’t play right. We can’t just tell our brain, it’s a sunk cost and my brain is like, “Okay.” Instead we’re going to have to start to introduce some sweet little melodies that will play in conjunction with that record of like what if the wisest use of it has already passed? What if that shirt was just [crosstalk 00:44:04] meant to be on stage? Yeah, what if it was just meant to be on stage one time. We’ve used it wisely. That resources sort of met it’s job. It’s done its job. I can let it go now.
Corinne:
Okay.
Judith Gaton:
We play in conjunction with that record.
Corinne:
Well, that’s what I think is missing for me is I tend to when I’m trying to change a thought, I definitely am not looking for those kinds of thoughts that are like common sense kind of things more. It’s either I have to get my money’s worth or like… And this is not a great thought. It’s probably why I never get rid of shit, or I have to waste my money and just throw it like it’s a sunk cost. I’ve set myself up essentially for the no win situation. You’ve got two shitty options. Which shitty option do you want? I don’t want to get too far into it. I don’t think I’m alone in this.
Corinne:
I think that there’s a lot of people who hang on. It’s just hanging on to clothes and then what ends up happening, you talked earlier about the ripple effect for me is I will deny buying myself something new that I really want that’s going to serve a great purpose right now because I’m sitting there thinking, “Yeah, but you haven’t worn this one enough yet.” And it’s not even in the same realm. So super interesting stuff. I think that-
Judith Gaton:
Just acknowledge like, “Hey, brain. I see what you’re doing there. That resource was already used to it’s max. Thank you for offering that, but we’ve already used it to its max. We’ve met its purpose. We’ve used it wisely.” Sort of just like agreeing with this record that’s been playing as opposed to fighting against it all the time to get a little traction with it and maybe break open some possibility that this line of thinking is not necessarily working for you. But it might not be turning the record off, it might be too drawing to your system. So it’s just going to start to introduce it to the idea that yes, and I’ve already been very resourceful. I’ve already been very wise. I manage my things. I’m a good steward to use that parlance.
Corinne:
Well, I think that that’s very helpful for the people who when you’re losing weight, your body starts… I remember when I was losing weight. My top half was always the first to go and I would buy some clothes for shirts and stuff and it wouldn’t be a month or two later. And those things were not fitting anymore because everything just seemed to always start up here. So I think even that thought about it served its purpose, it’s done the job it was supposed to do is helpful because I’ve watched a lot of people who are losing weight feel like, “Well, I’ve got to wear these clothes. I just bought them even though they’re not fitting anymore. I need to get my use out of them.”
Corinne:
I think that was a very useful conversation for not only just having that financial attachment to your clothes, but for even the women who are… Some of us are going to transition fast through a lot of clothes. I remember when my weight started coming off of my bottom half, oh my gosh, I was buying new shorts and jeans. It felt like every few weeks, it was just like when it started coming off my legs, I mean my clothes sizes change like crazy. It was hard even then for me to allow myself to spend money on clothes that would fit because I felt like I didn’t get enough wear out of the other ones. So I just think it’s helpful. So I appreciate that.
Judith Gaton:
I’m glad. Yeah. It served its purpose. It’s good. I want to leave with this analogy because I think sometimes this helps my clients as well is like when babies go through growth spurts or teenagers go through growth spurts and they need new sneakers every five fucking seconds, we’re not like, “Hey, baby. Stop growing. Stop changing your body. Hey, baby. Could you just like hold off so we can use this onesie a few more times?” We don’t do that to them. It’ll be a little weird, but we do that to ourselves. So if we could just sort of wrap our arms around that if that analogy works for you, then that might be something else to try on your brain and see if that helps.
Corinne:
It be like me sending Logan to school saying like, “Well, I know your shoes are two sizes too small, but we haven’t gotten our money’s worth out of it.”
Judith Gaton:
Right.
Corinne:
Which I would never do and let me just tell you, my son’s feet, when they were growing, they were growing like puppy paws. I mean, he was just exploding in the shoe department. Oh, all right. Well, this was fabulous as I knew it would be. You have just everything you’ve ever done with us and No BS has always been amazing. We’re so looking forward to seeing you in July and just taking all the members through everything. If you do end up joining us in August, one of the nice things about becoming a no BS Woman is you get access to everything. So once you complete your program, but the No BS Weightloss course, you will have programs like Judith Gaton and other guest coaches along with all of our other things waiting for you to help you along your journey. In case anyone isn’t going to become an obese woman, which they all should, but if they’re not, how can they get in touch with you? Where is the best place to find you? Give them all the details.
Judith Gaton:
Yeah. Easiest place to sort of enter into my world is to find me on Instagram. You can go to Judith Gaton, J-U-D-I-T-H G-A-T-O-N and then just click on the link in the bio and then all the goodies access to the podcast, the free little style course that I have is all there. So that’s probably the easiest way to enter into my world if you’re not a fan of the socials. You can just go to judithgaton.com.
Corinne:
That’s awesome. Well, I appreciate you being here. Anything else you want to tell everybody?
Judith Gaton:
No, I’m just so excited to do like July and No BS. I’m so excited. So it’s going to be good.
Corinne:
I’m telling you, it’s like you’re… I thought they all liked me, but they’re way more excited about you next month. I’m like mom coming in the room and they’re like, “No, no. Bring Aunt Judith. She’s so much more fun than you.”
Judith Gaton:
[crosstalk 00:49:58] vibe. That makes me happy. Thank you.
Corinne:
That’s right. All right. Thank you so much for being here and we will see you next week on the podcast.
Corinne:
Thank you so much for listening today. Make sure you head on over to no 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 podcast, help you lose your weight without all the bullshit diet [things 00:50:26]. I’ll see you next week.
