Pleasure Swapping

SO many of my weight loss clients tell me they find too much joy in food.  They think about food all day and want it to take a back set in their life.

I created the concept of "Pleasure Swapping" to help you move some of the joy to other things.....this will enable to you lose weight, get healthy, and eat better forever.

AND life a more wonderful life.

Want to speak with me directly?  Schedule a consultation with me HERE

Courtney
-------

I work 1:1 with women to lose weight permanently, using mindset and strategy.  My process is exciting, life changing, and empowering.  Join me!

I have 2 bits of Exciting News! I have a NEW podcast called Modern Body Modern Life....here is the link to Listen...

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/welcome-to-the-first-episode/id1720478442?i=1000637985103

And Enrollment is NOW OPEN for my March Group Program, click HERE to find all the details,

Courtney

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. And by 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 94. Pleasure swapping. First of all, happy Halloween. How fun is this? I, I always loved Halloween growing up and I loved Halloween when my kids were little. Now as they've gotten older, it's not quite as fun. I'm gonna be honest, it's not quite as fun. But tonight, I'm excited because we've invited some of our really good friends who are also our neighbors, they live on our street just to come over and have drinks literally in our driveway, we get a ton like Can you hear it my voice ton of trigger tutors at our house in our in our neighborhood. And so we have our neighbors coming over and we're going to sit there we might have a fire if I feel like it's safe. And then we're going to have the candy like kind of out in front so the kids can all pick their own candy. And we can just connect in love on each other and chat it up. And the cool thing too about our neighborhood is we just know so many people that live in our neighborhoods that a lot of parents are gonna be out and about walking around. It's just a really fun night to connect with people. So So I am looking forward to it. It's not quite as fun as when my kids were like dressing up and running all over and so excited. But I'm making the best of it. It is so fun. The podcast last week was a really good one. It had a lot of downloads, more downloads, I feel like the normal during the first week, the podcast. And so what I'm teaching you today, pleasure swapping is a concept I've created and it is going to be in line with step three of my three step process on how to not eat that food you want or I think I named the podcast how to not eat that food you're craving. So the step three is deciding what you want more like in that moment. And this pleasure swapping is going to help you do that. And so what is the idea of pleasure swabbing is the idea of taking some of the pleasure away from food and putting it into something else. And I'm just imagining there's some people like if you're thinking that, but this podcast is definitely for you. And it goes in line with another thing I said, I don't even know whether I don't even know I might have gotten this from someone else. I don't know. But I've been saying it for a long time that it doesn't always have to be a party in your mouth. Everything doesn't have to be a party in your mouth. And I will tell you, I'm really stepping into talking about these kinds of things. Because what I hear in Gosh, that health and wellness industry and the diet industry and the health culture and everything is I feel like for a long time, we've been trying to make everything taste good. And I think this is part of the problem. We've been trying to make broccoli taste good. We've been trying to hide veggies and other things we've been trying to we've been trying to disguise you know, healthy things as things that taste really good. And I am all for things tasting good. I love good food. I love taking pleasure from food. So please do not get me wrong. I enjoy food so much. I'm making a delicious chicken and vegetable soup for dinner tonight. I can't wait. I love taking pleasure in food. But the way that food is designed this these days, that it is so hyper saturated with taste and flavor and fat and salt and all these things. I think that I think we've gotten away from us, my friends, I think we've gotten away from our health and from what life is all about. And I think that we could all do to take a little bit of pleasure away from the food and I will say the drink as well. It doesn't always have to be a party in your mouth. And in order for you to lose weight and get in the best shape of your life and feel like you really are in control of your body and your food and your thoughts about all of it. Pleasure swapping will help you the idea that some meals can nourish you they can taste good, but maybe not be so pleasurable is one I would love for you to consider adopting. I remember a few years ago a girl told me were friendly I don't know her that well but she told me she told me she was oh you always look so fit your weight never goes up and down and and she was giving me a lot of very nice compliments and so first of all I said first of all, that's not true. Like my weight I I feel like most of us even if we're where we want to be you go up and down a few pounds and I don't really weigh myself but I just know that's true. But it was a compliment that you said I was always fit. And so she's like, tell me what you eat. And I just laughed. She was no seriously like, I want it. I want us want to know what you eat on a day to day basis. So I started just kind of going into like, I have a few different things I usually have for breakfast, I have a few different things I usually have for lunch. And most days I try to shake it up, but I'm kind of habitual. And then I have a wider variety of things that eat at dinner. And she just goes that just none of that sounds good to me. And I was fascinated. And my my response really surprised her and I said, Oh, no, oh, no, no, a lot of this doesn't sound good to me either. And she's She literally was like, I don't understand. And I said I don't eat all of this for it to be a party in my mouth. I said the reason I'm able to stay at the weight I am feel good in my body feel like I consistently fit in my clothes and and feel good is because some of the meals I just eat to get it in. I just eat to fuel my body. I really what what I was saying in the moment, and I didn't I hadn't thought about this before. But I really was kind of swapping pleasure. I was swapping the pleasure from an a meal to the pleasure of being in a body I love. So she was like, oh, yeah, that makes sense. I guess. So yeah, that makes sense. And a lot of people I don't think really have ever thought about it that way. So that's why I wanted to deliver this concept to you. Who knows if she ever did anything with that concept, but I want to deliver it to you. So it does not mean no pleasure with food, it just means swapping some of it out. It means going into your meal saying this doesn't sound that good to me. And that's okay. Because it's going to be really good for my body. And it's going to make me feel good. It's going to make me sleep good. It's going to all those things, it's going to help me lose weight, and all those things. In order to lose weight and get healthy, we don't need to eat perfectly, we need to eat better consistently. And pleasure swapping is a great concept I've created because the amount of pleasure that most people put on food is pretty astronomical. It's pretty much every meal. It think about it, if you say or to yourself, or you hear people saying what sounds good. That's a very common thing. If you go to if you're at the airport and you look up at the menu at a Mexican restaurant, you're getting something to eat while you're at the airport and you look up what sounds good. If you go restaurants is definitely a place where you say what sounds good because we have so many delicious options. You know, when you look in your fridge, what sounds good, what you're really saying is what seems like it's gonna taste good. Nothing wrong with that. But can we swap it? Can we swap and go what is going to be the best for my body right now it might not really taste very good. But what's going to be the best for my body right now. Because this is the interesting thing, or where we've gotten in our society right now is not only do we use food to fix our emotions, in most situations, it's now pleasurable in most situations, right we eat because we want to find happiness and we want to celebrate we got an award we want to celebrate and engagement want to celebrate a baby share. We want to celebrate that it's Friday, we want to celebrate it's It's Wednesday, it's halfway through the week, we're finding ways to celebrate all the time with food and drink. And we use food and drink kind of really to find pleasure when we're sad when we have heartbreak. When we have anxiety when when we hear some bad news a lot of people turn to pleasure F for food. When we're bored. Am I've been talking to more and more clients maybe because I've been telling you that I that's one of my triggers is being bored. But I'm getting more and more people coming on to console saying that they really have been resonating with that because they eat when they are bored. And so we turn to pleasure when we're bored because being bored. It sounds like not, you know, you think about anxiety and stress. And that sounds kind of horrible. We feel like bored isn't that negative on emotion. But we still want to get out of bored and we turn to food because we feeling pleasure from food feels so much better than being bored. And a lot of times, I don't know about you, but when I'm bored. Other things come up. It leads me to say why like I say things like Well, why don't I have more hobbies? Well, maybe I should reach out to this person. And what are my friends doing right now? Are they together without me? So it's almost like when you're bored. Other things come from being bored. As you have to sit with yourself. You have to like yourself enough to sit with yourself. And then one of the other ways we turn to pleasure food and pleasure is when we're at like rage and we're mad. I was thinking oh my god one of my clients she is so funny. And she told me one time I'd never heard of this and I think she just made it up but she said she she was rage eating oh my god, it was so funny. Oh my god she's gonna laugh when she hears me say this. It was hilarious radiating um, is that a thing as she goes? Well, clearly it is. Oh my god. So funny. 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. But so one of the most common things I hear from people is that they don't want to find so much joy in food, they want to pleasure swap. So that's why I'm giving you this beautiful concept. They tell me they're all I just put so much pleasure into food, so much joy and food and I don't want to want it anymore. I used to think about food right away when I woke up in the morning. Like I would even think to myself, I'm gonna eat really good all day. And then I'm going to make chocolate tapioca pudding at night. I remember like that was my husband and I when our kids were really little, that was a thing we loved. And I would plan on it all day, like if I'm good. And I'd say good in quotation marks. If I'm good all day, then I will have deserved that tapioca pudding at the end of the night. And then of course, what would happen is I'd be so obsessed with food all day that I would end up being stressed out. And I would end up over eating, I'd be eating my kids leftovers and all that. And then at the end of the night, I would be like, Well, fuck it. I mean, I I've already eaten bad all day. So now I might as well have the tapioca pudding. It's almost like our brains just want to sabotage us in any possible way. They want to rationalize in any possible way, just to make us feel good in the moment. And remember, this is what our brain is designed to do. Our brain is designed to make us feel good at all costs, frustrated, let's make you feel good with food. stressed out, let's make you feel good with food, your kids didn't go to bed, well, let's make you feel good with food, your son is struggling, let's make you feel better with food. So that is what our brain is designed to do. That's why it's we have to do this work to kind of overcome override our brains instinct to want to make us in the moment, feel that pleasure and just be happy in the moment. In order for you to think about food less, we need to be willing to let some of the pleasure from food go like it has to be an active, I'm going to choose to not find so much pleasure from food. And you will find as you pleasure swap as you actually do this, it gets easier and easier. I'm not saying it's going to be easy from the beginning, it's going to get easier and easier with time. How do you pleasure swap, you can do this in two different ways. Number one, you can swap the pleasure from the delicious food in the moment to getting the body and the health and the weight loss and the aging well in warding off disease all of that in the future. It's amazing. If you can get yourself to do that sit there and think I am going to see the results from this in six weeks or two months, whatever it is. That is beautiful. But sometimes this is hard to care about in the moment. I'm in a place right now where I've been doing this work long enough that that works for me. But for a lot of my clients especially if you're new to kind of this work to kind of hacking your brain and choosing intentional thoughts and pleasure swapping number two is going to be a little bit easier for you swapping the pleasure to something else right in the moment. And at the beginning of this podcast I told you this is going to this podcast is really going to go hand in hand with the podcast last week. And the step number three was decide in the moment what you want more than that food in the moment swapped the pleasure out what do you want right now more than you want the food. Now, I want to suggest to you that you prepare this ahead of time you plan on what you're what you're going to be swapping your pleasure for ahead of time. And tonight, my friends is the perfect night to do this. Unless you have no candy in your house and you're like you know, bah humbug and you don't like it or maybe you're in a neighbor Read where no one comes to your house. But if you're in a neighborhood where are going to be knocking, people are going to be knocking on your doors, those little kids, and you do have candy in the house, I want you to in the moment plan on how you're going to pleasure swap plan if you don't want to have candy, or if you only want to have one piece or you only want to have two pieces, whatever you're deciding your brain, it doesn't matter if you if you're deciding that you're not going to have any, your brain is going to tell you to have some, if you're going to only have one or two pieces, your brains, it's not going to be enough for you girl you know it's not. So let's decide ahead of time ahead of time what you're going to pleasure swap for. Let me give you an example on how I do this. Because I also love using number two, the second example. So example Thanksgiving, used to be really hard for me, I just felt like I wanted all of it. My mom and my sister make amazing deviled eggs. And of course, my family. We started a long time ago a tradition and a love for cheese. And it's like cheese. It's like the brie cheese with the deliciousness over like the jalapeno jelly over with crackers. And I actually don't usually eat crackers, but those are going to be there. And then it's and then I have an appetizer that's there that's going to be there. That's amazing. I have there's all these things starting out with the deviled eggs and the cheese. It's it used to be a challenge for me because I would want all the things and then of course, by the time I used to eat so much, that by the time the Thanksgiving meal was delivered and presented, I really wasn't hungry at all. And so then I would overeat that because it's Thanksgiving, you're supposed to be full, right? We see all the funny videos of people full and all that it's kind of what we're supposed to do. So I thought I'm gonna do it as well. And then of course, dessert is amazing. And we have a lot of cheesecake and pumpkin pie. And I make an amazing bread pudding, let me tell you, it's like with sourdough bread. And there's a little cayenne pepper in it. Amazing. I always make it when my sister in law comes to visit she and I absolutely love it. Anyways, there's a lot to choose from. And by the end of the day, I would feel just absolutely sick. And then sometimes I would throw in a cocktail of vodka soda on top of that it was a mess. And so now I know there's going to be pleasure. With the food on Thanksgiving, I usually eat more than I do on Thanksgiving intentionally because there's so much good food that I want to have. But I don't want to stuff myself like that anymore. I don't want it to be a free for all anymore. I just don't want that for myself. So here's how I swapped the pleasure. A few years ago, I can't even remember when we started doing a white elephant gift on Thanksgiving. Because we just thought it would be more fun and more festive. And it's it's hilarious. In fact, I have to tell you, this is so funny. So last year for the white elephant gift. My husband seriously. He did the best out of all of us. He got a huge like eight by 10 I can't remember picture of himself framed. It was so funny to get this from a few years ago when he still had hair. Now he's pretty bald. But it was from a few years ago, he had it framed and then to the back, he taped a card and had like a $50 bill in there or something. The framed picture is still on my sister's mantle place because my niece got it. It was absolutely hilarious. It was so funny. We do this white elephant and it just makes the day more festive. I really look forward to it. Okay, it's not even Halloween yet. I already have my white elephant picked out. That's how devoted and excited and how pleasurable. This event is the white elephant on Thanksgiving. So we also play Pictionary, it can be a little bit aggressive. My mom takes it way too seriously, it gets intense. So Pictionary, I look forward to that. I also decide that I'm going to make a new side dish every year just because I love cooking. And I usually make it a healthier side dish, it's going to taste good, but it's also going to be healthy. I also really pleasure swap that I'm going there to connect with my family, to connect with my children, but especially to connect with my two nieces that are going to be there because I don't see them as much. And so here's what it is, you hear say all those things I'm excited about. Besides the new side dish I talked about. It's not about the food for me. The food is there and it's going to be great. But all day I'm going to be thinking about how I'm excited about this white elephant because I know I'm going to kill it this year. It is going to be Pictionary. I'm excited for it. I'm going to use it for my new side dish because I know everyone's going to love it. And it's connecting with family. It's I'm going to intentionally connect with my family. And so like I'll tell you another way that I connect with my family which is also I think pleasure swapping is like each one of my three boys has like a different love language. I should actually do a podcast on Love Languages. Many of you I'm sure like oh my god, I totally know what love languages is. If you don't know there's a book called The Five Love Languages. It's a game changer for every relationship in your life. I'll have to do a podcast on it. But I have three boys and each one of them He has a different love language. So as I move throughout my day with them when I am with all three of them, whether we are on vacation, whether we are at Thanksgiving together doesn't matter. I'm connecting with them based on their individual love languages. I will like so I'll tell you, for example, like one of my boys, his love language is gifts, which was really weird for me at first, because that's not one of my love languages. But since he was very, very young, it was gifts. And you could ask him like, like randomly like, hey, what Uncle Dave, get you for your birthday last year, he'll remember. Hey, what did you get for like your high school graduation for this? I mean, he'll remember. That's how it's important to him. And so I will tell him, I'll do things like, hey, this, this white elephant, I totally was thinking about you, when I when I got this done. I will tell him this side dish, I totally think you will love it. I want him to know because that's his love language, that I see that it's even though I won't tell he knows it's his love language. We've talked about it a lot. But I will connect with him and make sure he knows that I see him in those situations. Because I know that that's important to him. One of my other boys love language is touch, which is very convenient, because mine is touch. So I'm going to be cuddling the shit out of that kid all day. And he cuddles me back. 20 year old cuddling me back. Yes, please. I'll take it any day. Then I have another son who his love language is quality time. So the whole day I'm going to be spending quality time with him. But I will check in with him throughout the day. And I will ask him about, hey, what's your friends doing? What's going on this? Are you doing anything fun later tonight, I will really try to make sure that when he thinks back over Thanksgiving, he remembers him and I connecting, even if it's just moments of quality time. So this is all to say. Thanksgiving is historically known in our society as a food holiday. Did you hear all the things I talked about excluding the side dish that had nothing to do with food. That is pleasure swapping. Let me give you another example. Halloween, I told you already, my friends and neighbors, some of my best friends really live on my street, we've grown up, we've raised our kids together, we've grown up together. And we are having them over. And we're going to sit in our driveway with them. And we are all going to have warm drinks and connect with each other while we let the random kids around the neighborhood grab candy out of the bowl, we put the bowl like 20 feet ahead of us. So not that we don't want to see them. But we want to connect with each other. We want to be there. But I don't want to have to engage with every kid. I want to engage with my friends. And another thing I'm doing also to pleasure swap for Halloween candy is I bought my twins who they don't live with us anymore. I bought them I went to the local candy store. We have this awesome candy store in our town that has like, like old school candy like you know the rat, you know that those candies where it's like a thin, almost like a two inch piece of paper. And then there's like those candies stuck to it like little it's like the size of a pencil eraser. And there's little sugar candies. They have those like old school candies that we had when we were young growing up. So I got my twins a bunch of candy and I gave it to them to take to their own house as like Halloween fun for them. But I don't want it in my house. I don't want it around me. So that was something that I was really excited about because I wanted to do something for them. So that's another example of pleasure swapping. So think to yourself, when you think of, especially this time of year when food is even more heightened. Think about how you can pleasure swap is one of the easiest ways to do when you look at your day. When is the easiest time for you to eat. For a lot of people it's breakfast. They don't find themselves like binging during breakfast very rarely does someone get on a console and say breakfast is a struggle every once in a while. But most mostly it's like from three to five or after dinner. So breakfast is an easy meal for you. Make sure that your breakfast is serving your weight loss and body goals. Like is it getting you where you want to go? And is there a way if it's an easy meal for you? You can pleasure swap a little bit. Is there a way you can pleasure swap maybe with your coffee? Or can you pleasure swap with maybe your lunch? Is there something about lunch where you're like you know what I don't need to have like a delicious lunch I'm going to have it be just like okay, kind of palatable and I'm really going to instead you know just have a quick lunch and really get get my work done and so I can get home earlier whatever it is in that moment. So I know I gave you some holiday examples. But what I want you to encourage you to also look at your every day and think how can I pleasure swap during my every day. So I want you to give pleasure swapping a try. And I want you to see if you can look at some things you're eating throughout the day and think you know what, how can I I find pleasure in other areas, whether it's in the moment maybe connecting with people and not worrying so much about the pleasure from the food, or doing that first one, I talked about swapping the pleasure to I'm going to be proud of myself tonight, I'm going to be losing weight, I'm going to be getting in healthier. And I will tell you, what ends up happening is, when you take some of the pleasure away from food, it gets easier and easier and your life actually expands. You actually start putting more value in other things. You're going out to dinner with friends, and you start going. I'm really excited to see these runs, and I'm excited to connect to connect with them. And it's not just about what can I taste in my mouth. It's about loving the body you're in. And that being more important than any sweet potato fry or any Lemon Drop drink or any cookie. So give it a try. And let me know how pleasure swapping works for you. Have a great Tuesday, happy Halloween. 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