Slowing Things Down & Processing Desire

The goal is not to eat perfectly.

The goal is to feel in control, not think about food so much. 

To be in a body you feel good in, like yourself!

Today I am teaching you how to slow things down when you feel desire for food, the food that you know will taste amazing, but will leave you feeling yucky and not moving you towards your weight loss goals.

Enjoy!

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Transcript

Unknown: 0:02

Welcome to the Courtney Gray podcast the show for women who are ready to lose weight permanently, and love their body love the way they feel. And look, I'm going to teach you how to stop overeating and obsessing about food and your weight, so you can be more confident and empowered to then create an even bigger life. I'm life and body coach Courtney Gray. And each week, I'm going to be teaching you how losing and maintaining your ideal weight can be so much easier than it's been in the past. In my taking care of you and achieving your health goals. You will live in even more amazing life than the one you have lived so far. Let's get started. Welcome to the podcast episode 87, slowing things down and processing desire. And specifically we're talking about desire for food. But before I jump into the podcast, I want to give you a little update. I spent about five days last week in Dallas at a mastermind. Now if you feel like you've been listening to the podcast every week, and you're confused, because I'm constantly saying I'm traveling or I'm at a mastermind, you are not confused. I have been traveling so much and I've gone to four masterminds this year. So two of those masterminds I have worked at for my coach Stacey Boehm, and I work for her and so I was working those masterminds. But the other two were just for me, and I'm telling you girls, oh, doing an in person event being around other women that are wanting more and bigger things for their life is all fun. If you ever get the opportunity, definitely give yourself that gift. I was in Dallas with the Life Coach School. It is the school I got my coach certification from and the one and a half day conference was awesome. But even better was all the women and friends new friends, old friends, I was able to really mastermind over dinner and at the pool and over cocktails with that was really the best part. It's where you really start realizing that there are other ways to do things in the world. And there are other ways to think about things. And it just was amazing. So I'm, but I will say I'm happy to be back as much as I have loved all the traveling this year, I've done a little bit too much of it, I realized that now sometimes you have to go all in and realize oh, okay, so you know, three long trips in one month is not does not a happy woman make. So I'm happy to be home. And I'm happy to be here with you. What I want to talk about is slowing things down, and processing desire. And the reason I wanted to talk about this is this is one of the ways you can feel in control around food is being able to understand how to want something, how to process that want or desire, and how to still what I call show up for yourself, meaning still be the woman you want to be and not eat the food or also eat the food and be curious and figure out why you ate it and not beat yourself up. But the best part is if you can actually if I can teach you to want the food, have desire for something, and still, you know, show up for yourself, be true to yourself. And in that moment, live from the woman who you want to be in order to get the health that you want in order to lose the weight, maintain the weight, all of the things I want you to imagine for a moment, if you could go throughout your day and want something and not eat it. And this is something a lot of times when I talk to my clients about they've never actually thought about that they a lot of us are living from a place where we want something we eat it, we want this we want that we want we don't want to work out we don't we want to watch TV we do. We want to eat the things we eat it we don't think about actually doing what is really what is best for our future goals. So that's what I want to teach you today. And what I'm going to teach you to do is acknowledge, acknowledge the desire and feel it and be okay with it. Not have to get get rid of it. I'm going to teach you talk about being curious about it, giving yourself a moment and what that would look like having a conversation with both of you in your head. And there's often two very different ideas in our head of what we want to do. I think of it sometimes in terms of like the angel and the devil on each shoulder that's always there for us, and then also how to make a decision and allow the desire to still be there. And so let me talk about that one first. Even it's the latter, even though it's the last one. I think that there is a misconception that if you want something if you desire, something that that's it like we have to get rid of the desire in order to not eat the thing. And I just want to say that that's actually not true. And so I'm going to talk about a personal experience of mine from when I was in in Dallas at a fancy amazing restaurant. And I want to talk about I am in an amazing place in my body, I've been the same weight basically, for years now. I feel more in love with my body than I ever have I feel sexier than I ever have. I feel confident. And I still have goals. But I feel good. Even though I have those goals, and I'm not there yet. I'm still working to get stronger. And I'm still figuring out how can I do that with the time I've given myself to get stronger. So I feel like I'm in an amazing place. And it's all of the work that I have done and that I'm teaching you how to do. And I'm teaching in my workshops, and especially for all of you, of my clients. It's all of this work that I am in such a great place. I've said before on the podcast that I think back to my you know, 23 year old self when I was in college, and I feel like when I look at her, I think God, I should have been a nudist, I looked absolutely amazing. But man did I not think I was amazing man, it was I in a constant loop of if I could just lose five pounds. And then later on, if I could just lose 12 pounds, life would be so much better if I could you know, once I lost the 70 pounds I gained when I was pregnant. You know, it's just this constant state of misery that I wasn't good enough where I was. And the only way to feel happy and feel better and feel sex are sexier would be to lose that weight. Gosh, it makes me so sad for her. Because I you know, now that I'm older, my body doesn't look the way it did back then. But I feel so much better about myself now. So the first step in really slowing things down and processing desire is acknowledging the desire, feeling it and being okay with it. So let me tell you a story. So when I was in Dallas, one of the nights I went to this beautiful restaurant with about I think there were about 10 of us there. And it was just a wonderful dinner, and wonderful restaurant, wonderful conversation I was with my coach. And I was also with a bunch of other coaches who I had not met and who I was just so impressed with. And these were amazing women doing amazing things, making millions of dollars, helping people in all varieties of coaching. It was just awesome. And I don't eat pizza. I can't I don't think I've eaten pizza. In years. It's just one of those things I don't eat because I really don't eat bread most of the times and bread is in pizza, so I just don't eat it. And it's usually not a problem at all for me. I got my dinner, I had a little bit of an appetizer that was presented to the table and then I ordered my dinner I ordered a pork chop. And with carrots, I like a pork chop. I don't love pork chops at home. But when I go to restaurants, I do love a pork chop. So and then I had my sparkling water and I was completely content, the pork chop was truly one of the best pork chops I've ever eaten. So I was very, very satisfied. And I only even ate half of it. I wasn't even hungry for the rest. Oh, and I also had a beet salad. I love me a beat. So I had a beet salad. That was really great, too. And the portions were pretty big. And we were all kind of sharing so I had how much I was going to eat of my beet salad. And then I said to the ladies around Hey, have this this was amazing. So they all took the rest of it. And the girls next to me ordered dinner and then they also ordered a pizza to share. And the pizza came and it was a pizza. I had one like this years ago, it was a pizza with like goat cheese. I love goat cheese. It was goat cheese and fig. And like arugula. I mean, it was literally looked absolutely amazing. Now I don't eat pizza. So I don't often want pizza, I don't even consider it. It's totally not a trigger for me. But there was something about this pizza that I wanted it. And that was interesting for me to want this. I want things all the time. I want cookies, I want alcohol sometimes. But this was interesting. I was sitting there. And so number one, I acknowledged my desire. And I was kind of questioning a little bit Oh my god, I really want this pizza. And you you know how it is when you want something if you take time to stop before you just consume it. And you take time you can actually feel the desire in your body. You can feel it. And so this is the first thing is acknowledge I in your head. I want this and I did that I thought wow. Wow, this is this looks amazing. I really actually want this. And I was okay with it. I felt it in my body. And I said to myself, I want this pizza. Fascinating. I don't usually eat that. Why do I want it and I thought back wild fig in a regular and Fetta it makes sense. I love Fetta. And it made sense to me. And I just sat there and I was number two. I was curious about it. I literally said to myself, I wonder what it is right now that is making me want this pizza because I've already had my food. I'm not hungry at all. What is going on? And so I'm going to jump already to the number three thing I want to teach you and I'm kind of moving fast here but I'll then I'm gonna go back. But I always say it's good to give yourself a moment. So I was sitting there fasten hated being curious doing the work that I teach my clients. And I decided to give myself a moment. Now first of all, let's just get totally TMI here. I drink a lot of water. And you know how they say like when you start drinking more water, your body gets used to it, and then you don't have to pee as much incorrect. Unless I'm a weirdo. Incorrect, I will tell you my IP all the time I have, I drink so much water, and my body's never gotten used to it. So I pee all the time. Usually during dinner, I will go and pee two times. So I'm sitting there and I thought, I need to give myself a moment, I need to get away from this pizza for a moment. And this is one thing you can do, especially if you're in a restaurant, instead of just saying I want that and immediately going for it. And then afterwards going what just happened to me, I felt like I had an outer body experience. When you acknowledge that you want something. And you're like, Okay, I completely want that I feel the desire in my body. Give yourself a moment to be curious. But give yourself a moment. And for a lot of you get away for a minute. So what I did, is I actually excused myself and went to the ladies room. And on the way walking to the ladies room, I went back to Step number two, and I was curious. And I was like, what is happening? I'm not hungry. I already ate this delicious pork chop, I feel completely satisfied, satisfied in terms of having something delicious. And there was even bacon wrapped on the pork chop. It was absolutely delicious. So what is going on with me here, I couldn't figure out what exactly it was, except for the fact that I love me a pizza with a regular fig. And there might have been pursued on there too. And Fetta I'm like, Oh, it's just from years ago, I remember having pizza similar to this. And it was absolutely delicious. But I give myself a moment I got away from the table to be able to then number four. Step number four in terms of slowing this down and processing this desire is enable yourself to have a conversation with both of you. I'm taking a moment to tell you that I work privately one on one with women to help them lose weight permanently, and create a body they love. This is not a diet program. This is a customized program to teach you how to eat the way you want to eat forever. No more restriction, no more willpower, no more losing weight only to sabotage and then gain it back again. The problem is not you, we women are so hard on ourselves. And we think if we could just get motivated or more determined if we could find the right diet plan or cut out certain foods, we will lose weight and be happy. But the answer is changing your brain and how you think and feel, changing your self image and how you talk to yourself. Learning how to trust yourself. This is how you lose weight permanently. It sounds too good to be true. But I promise you it's not. The work I do with my clients is powerful, exciting and loving. And it's hard work to but the result is change forever. The women I work with are smart and successful in so many areas of their life, they just haven't been able to figure out their body. This is where I come in, head to my website to schedule a consultation. And we can talk about all the details back to the podcast. Really having a conversation with your primitive brain that is telling you it just wants you to get all the desire in the moment it wants you to be happy. Get the dopamine feel the desire in the moment. That's the one part of me. And I'm kind of getting away from the table to slow her down. And then there's the other piden part of me, the prefrontal cortex that wants me to sleep well, later in the night. It wants me to maintain my weight. Because I've been maintaining my weight for a while. It wants me to maintain my goals and maintain the integrity I have around the way I eat the woman I am is a woman who doesn't eat pizza doesn't eat bread, I don't want to do that it really doesn't serve my body. It doesn't serve my overall health. And my prefrontal cortex knows that. And once that for me, if we think of the prefrontal cortex as the angel on one shoulder, we think of the primitive brain as the devil on the other shoulder. I took a moment away from the table walking to the restaurant, restroom having a conversation with the two of these. Wow, I'm curious, I totally want this pizza when usually I don't have desire for those kinds of things. I wonder what's going on. I really couldn't figure out what's going on except for the desire was there. And that was okay. I thought that maybe I could come up with something like Was I feeling uncomfortable? No. Was I feeling not satisfied with my meal? No. And then I just it boiled down to It just smelled good. It looked good. I looked at these two women that were eating the pizza that were in great shape. So I thought I had you know my primitive primitive brain was offering me things like well They're eating it. And they're in great shape. They're in good health, they make good choices for themselves. They're successful women. Why are you eating the pizza? Right? And so you're you I had this conversation. And I'm like, isn't that interesting? I'm assuming just because they're going to eat it, because they look like they're healthy when I really don't know. I assume they are. But I don't know that just because they're eating it, I should do it too. And then it gave me a chance, because I was slowing things down to say, Courtney, what do you want to do? Do you want to have the pizza? It's not the fucking end of the world if you decide to have pizza, but do I want it? I really don't want it. Because the only reason to have it would be was because I have this desire. And I'm trying to make it not a big deal. I'm trying to compare myself to these other amazing women. And that's not a good enough reason. And one thing you can always ask yourself is Do I like my reason? If someone would have said, Hey, everyone, I just want everyone to know, if the server would have come up and said, I just want y'all to know, I don't know if you know this. But this is the last time you're ever going to be able to eat pizza, because pizza actually universally in the world is going to be taken off the menu, you're never going to get access to it again. That reasoning, I wouldn't be like, I think I might have a slice. But that's not there's no, there was no good reason or reason I liked enough to not be the woman I've decided to be. And that might sound kind of corny to you like why does it matter being the woman you want to be? It does matter to me and something is insignificant to some other people is a big deal to me. So I slowed down and I had this conversation, I said to myself while I was going to the restroom, what I want to do, you can do whatever you want, you have complete autonomy, you can do whatever you want. And I said no, I'm not going to have the pizza, it's probably not even going to be a blip if I did have it. But to me, I've made a commitment to myself. And I just don't think I need it. And so I went back to the table and the desire, it was still there a little bit, but it had subsided a little bit. So that was comforting to me that it had subsided for a little bit. So then what you could do is what I did is I made a decision. And I allowed the desire to still be there. But you'll find when you give yourself a moment, whether that means walking away from the table, or going to the restroom, or going to the restroom is always a game changer for me. Because it's always socially acceptable. It doesn't matter where you are, whether you're out to dinner party, whether you're in your own kitchen, or whether you're at a restaurant, going to the restroom is as socially appropriate thing you can do, it can give you time to connect with yourself. I've said this before, but one thing you can do, if you're feeling a little out of control is put your hand like spread your palm out really wide and put it on your chest hard. And just be like, Whoa, because there's something about that, that we don't do in our everyday life. And it just brings you to the moment and you can even like slap it on your chest and go, Hey, girl, what do we really wanted to do here, it's totally fine, that you have desire for whatever it is. But I want you to take a minute you have two sides of your brain right now that is giving you different ideas of what you want to do, get present and make a decision. And know when you go back to whatever circumstance you go back to whether it's the table at the restaurant, whether it's your kitchen, whether it's your kids eating cookies, or your girlfriends all having another glass of wine, whatever it is, you can still want it and you can still make a choice for yourself. Or you can still honor the choice you have already made. So I did that I went back to the table, I wanted it a little bit less, which was comforting. And it was totally fine. One of the things I tell my clients is you want to celebrate yourself in some way you want to acknowledge your bad Asri you want to acknowledge that you did it that you made a choice. You're really glad you did. Because so often we make a choice and when done we kind of kick ourselves for it. So you have to do the opposite. You have to when you make a good choice, you need to sit there and say to yourself fucking well done, Courtney wouldn't have been the end of the world if you would have had that peace. This will this is the conversation I had with myself as I was going to bed that night. Fucking well done, Courtney, you could have had the pizza, you probably would have had a stomachache and you wouldn't have slept as well had bad dreams. I don't know about you but pizza always gave me bad dreams. That's one of the reasons why I decided not to eat it anymore. It was probably more of a pepperoni and cheese like Domino's type of pizza. They gave me the bad James But anyways, I digress. I said to myself, I was laying down you know what, Courtney? You did it you made a choice and I'm like going down I'm laying my head on his pillow. And I'm really glad I made that choice because he Here's what happens when you do that. This is why it's so good to celebrate yourself. Not only does it just feel good to tell myself, I'm amazing, which we all need to do more of. But I am proving to myself that that is the woman I want to be. I am proving that true. So, so many of you so many women, people out there, when they're making a choice that doesn't serve their future self, they're really voting for the fact that they can't do it. They're really showing and proving to themselves and gathering evidence for the fact that it's hard to do the things they want to do. They're showing that they can't be the type of woman they want to be. They're the woman they've been. So when you do the amazing thing for yourself by following through with what you said, you wanted to follow through, giving yourself a beat, giving yourself a moment to celebrate and say I did it. And proving to yourself letting it be evidence that you are becoming a new woman is so important. Even if it's little, do not negate it, we so often negate it. It's so funny. We negate it in ourselves, but we don't negate it in others. So think about if you have either a girlfriend, or one of your kids came to you and said and did exactly what you're trying to do. If you're let's say your son, maybe he's 19 years old, and he's told you he really wants to start going to the gym, and lifting weights with one of his buddies that that's been lifting weights. And he comes over for dinner tonight, and says to you, I'm really proud of my No, let's say he doesn't even say I'm proud of myself, let's say he says, Oh, I finally went to the gym today with my friend, I really just want to start lifting weights I did that. Would you just be like, No, you'd be like, nice. You've been talking about that for a while. I'm so proud of you. Don't you feel good about that, aren't you so glad you would try to convince him to feel good about it, you would be trying to convince him to celebrate himself. So please turn that on you and celebrate you. Because you know, as a parent, or if you're doing this for a girlfriend, you know that the better you feel about what you did, the more likely you are to do it in the future. But it's not just because it feels good. In that moment, you're finding proof that you're becoming a new person, or person who says I'm going to do this, and then I do this. And then I'll tell you what else happens. The sweet, you know, residual effect of this is that then when you have a day when you don't do the thing, if you've gone three days in a row doing what you've wanted to do, and then you don't, you're more likely to get back on the wagon in terms of you know what, that was a mistake. It's no problem. Tomorrow, I'm going to do the thing I'm going to do what I want to do. And what you're doing is you're building trust with yourself, you are creating a new identity of a woman who does things differently. This is what I did that night, I went to dinner with a bunch of amazing women, I had a moment where I considered not staying true to who I really want to be. I acknowledged the desire, I felt it in my body. I was okay with it. I wasn't mad at myself. I got curious about it. I gave myself a moment loving, always suggesting physically removing myself from the table or from the food from the situation. I had a conversation with the both parts of me that want very different things. I made a decision which really was confirming the decision I've already made. So I recommitted to a decision. And I allowed the desire to still be there and to be okay with it. So many people are waiting for this desire to go away. And I even hear people talking about oh, join this weight loss program or I'm going to teach you how to never want the food again. And I disagree with that. I think that the work we do to start to trust ourselves and to uplevel our identities is powerful. But a cookie is a cookie. And it's okay, that in two months, I'm going to want a cookie. It's okay, tomorrow night, I'm gonna go out and I'm going to want a cocktail. It's okay if I have one. But either way, it's okay that I want it. Because thinking that we're going to get to a point in our journey where we don't want anything bad for us. And thinking that we're going to get to a place in our journey where every time we say we're going to work out we're going to be totally motivated to work out is false. That's what I believe. So knowing how to slow things down and process the desire and allow the desire is so important. I know this one was powerful for you. If you hear this and think this would be amazing to really dive in and have the ability to do this, reach out to me, it's what I do. And I would love to talk to you about how I can help you have a great Tuesday. If you are ready to lose weight and keep it off permanently, if you have tried diets and you know they don't work and you're ready for real change, I would love to have a conversation with you. I coach women privately one on one, and I'm currently offering consultations to talk about working together. click my link in the show notes or head to Courtney Gray coaching.com Or you can find me on Instagram at Courtney Gray coaching