A Surprising Weight Loss Mistake, and How To STOP Making it

Sign up for my FREE Training 5 Surprising Weight Loss Mistakes HERE, where I'll tell you exactly what they are AND how to stop making them so you can lose weight forever.

On the podcast, I dive into the first mistake I see so many women make (and I used to make myself long ago).

This mistake is common for women, but it will also surprise you.

This podcast and free training are for women tired of dieting, starting and stopping, and wanting to fix this area of their lives for good.

Enjoy!

Interested in working with me? Find my website here: https://courtneygraycoaching.com/workwithme

Transcript

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Music. Welcome to Modern body, modern life, the podcast for women who want to lose weight permanently, feel in control around food and learn how to stop obsessing about their body and food, a modern way of thinking about your weight, your body and your life includes mindset. I'm body and life coach, Courtney Gray, and each week I'm going to teach you the mindset tools that are necessary for changing the way you eat forever. We will uncover why you're eating when you said you were going to stop, what to do when you're really craving something, and how important it is to decide what you want to believe is possible for you. I believe we can get in the best shape of our lives at any age, a modern body, a modern life, all starts in your mind, and when you learn how to manage that, losing weight permanently becomes so much easier. Welcome to the podcast. Episode 63 a surprising weight loss mistake and how to stop making it. This is going to be a great one. I'm excited to deliver this podcast to you. I'm coming in hot early Saturday morning. I'm in my cozy clothes, I'm drinking my coffee, and I'm excited to deliver this podcast for you. Exciting things are happening here at Courtney Gray coaching. I am starting another group program in March for women who want to work with me to learn how to lose between 10 to 15 pounds permanently, of course, to go on to lose even more weight. After the program ends, you will be equipped with the tools and the mindset and the resources and the knowledge to continue losing weight if you have more weight to lose, to do this without dieting, but also to learn how to feel in control around food. Most of the women that I work with, they don't want to just lose weight. They want to lose weight and feel in control. They want to lose weight and feel like they have resolved this part of their life. So that's what we do here. Always in my programs, we dive deep with everything you are learning here on the podcast, times 100 you and I will work together with a group of other amazing women diving deep to learn my processes to change you forever. Enrollment is open now and space is limited, so if you are interested in working with me, head to Courtney Gray coaching.com/work, with me. And there's also going to be a link in the show notes. And I would love to have you join us. We are going to start the first week of March. It's a brilliant time of year to really decide to go all in on you and fix this area of your life, fix the way you eat, the way you move, your consistency, your thoughts about aging, and you and all of us. This is life and body, body and life. So I would love for you to join me in my March program and to celebrate this March group, I am putting on a free training that is going to be an expansion of this podcast. So after you have listened to this podcast, if you're like, that was a great one, I want more. I want to hear even more than you are going to want to sign up for my free training. It is called Five surprising weight loss mistakes and how to stop making them. That also the link to sign up for that is also going to be in the show notes, that will also be on my website and in my social media. It's a free training five surprising weight loss mistakes and how to stop making them. I will cover all five. And for this podcast, I'm going to do a deep dive into the first one. And so the first mistake, really, that I see so often that might surprise you when it comes to weight loss, is all or nothing thinking. And you can kind of I was, I was going back and forth. Do I call it all or nothing thinking? Or do I call it perfectionism? And I really am going to call it all or nothing thinking. And here is why, there are many people that experience this all or nothing thinking that do not identify with being a perfectionist. And so if I called it like perfectionistic tendencies or being a perfectionist, they you might not see yourself in that, but you might see yourself when I say all or nothing. You might be literally, like, that's me. And it really, literally means you're either all in or you're all out. And you vacillate between the two of them. And if you look back over the last few years with your working out and your eating and your weight loss and all that, you can really identify with you, yeah, I'm either like, all in or I'm all out. And so if you're thinking like, this is me good, like seeing yourself in what I'm talking about, really is the first step. I always tell my clients, one of the things we do together, I even have a training on this is awareness. Like the awareness, and increasing your awareness is so important. So if you are already like, Yes, girl. That's me fabulous, because awareness and being able to admit to ourselves that we have some natural tendencies that are not serving us is so important. So here is what I see happen. We intellectually know that we don't need to be perfect in any area of our life like we know that right, we're like, we don't have to have the perfect relationship. We know we're not the perfect mom. We certainly know our kids don't have to be perfect our family member. I mean, we don't hold anyone else to this perfect standard. We know intellectually, we don't need to be perfect. But yet, when it comes to our eating, when it comes to going, quote, unquote, like all in on our body and life and eating and losing weight, we literally think we have to go all in, meaning we have to be perfect. My clients hear me say this, that we are intentionally not going to be perfect. In my program, we are not going to be perfect. I believe you can go all in, quote, unquote, without being perfect, because we're not on a diet here. But all of the sudden, we intellectually know that we don't have to be perfect, but all of the sudden, when we fail, we kind of go off the reels. We think that we aren't doing it right. We give up. And so this fail can be so many things. See, if you resonate with any of these, maybe you're all in and then you eat the wrong thing, or then you listen to an excuse, or you tell yourself an excuse, and you actually don't end up going to the gym. And then maybe you don't go for a few days. Maybe you don't go to bed when you when you promised yourself you were going to go to bed on time, because you're trying to a lot of my clients want clients want to go to bed earlier, so they can get up earlier and do some exercise or some journaling before work. So you listen to an excuse and you don't go to bed earlier. Maybe you have that extra cocktail. Maybe you say yes to the chips or the cookie or the bread, you give in, and then it derails you. So even though you know intellectually that you don't have to be perfect, when you aren't perfect, things can go sideways. And so how does this like, let me expand on that. Like, how does this all or nothing present itself? Because it's different for different people. And so the first way it kind of presents itself is shame. What happens with a lot of people is they hear me say shame, and they immediately are like, I don't shame myself, but shame is a sneaky bitch. So let me talk about shame, even if you don't consider yourself a perfectionist. We, as women, most of us, tend to be, have extremely high standards for ourselves, and we are used to beating ourselves up for a lot of things. Now you might say, I don't beat myself up and I don't really talk to myself that bad, but I want to suggest that you don't have to say you're ugly and you're fat to necessarily beat up yourself. I've only had a few clients over the years be honest and say that they have thoughts like, You're disgusting. I think I've only had a very few clients that have admitted that most of my clients are like, I don't really beat myself up too bad. Yes, my my self talk could be better, but I really don't shame myself. But here is again, shame is a sneaky bitch, and so little thoughts like this are shameful thoughts. I did it again. It sounds no big deal. I'm not good at this. Sounds no big deal. I knew I couldn't do it. Sounds a little bit more mean. But all of those thoughts produce the feeling of shame, and I think why so many people do not allow themselves to admit that they do feel shame is, again, because we as human beings don't want to feel negative emotion. So we have these kind of thoughts, and then we just are like, it's fine, it's fine, it's fine. We don't want to actually go, oh, wow, I knew I couldn't do it. What does that mean about me? That means I'm a failure. That means I really am the type of person that can't get things done. It means that I'm going to be in this body forever. It means that I'm not as good at this as my other friends. So when we really actually dive into what these little, seemingly no big deal. Thoughts say to us, if we really allow ourselves to sit in that thought, the feeling is shame. And again, we don't want to feel it. We don't want to admit we're feeling it. And so we get out of it. Oftentimes we get out of it by eating. This is the overeating cycle. This is why, when it comes to all or none, you dive into the none. Let's say you told yourself you're just going to have one cocktail, and then you have two. Then you have that thought, I knew I wasn't going to be able to do this. And instead of diving into that and really going, what's really going on here, you don't want to feel those negative feelings. So in order to feel happier. Or you're like, you know what? I'm just going to start again tomorrow. And then you have more. And then you get into the not, the all. You get into the none, in terms of the all or none, you dive into the none. And then when you wake up the next morning, you start to think, oh my god, I can't believe I had another glass of wine last night. And then instead of again, looking at that and understanding what went wrong, you push those feelings down, and it's so much easier just to be like, You know what? It's a four day weekend. I'm just gonna wait until this four day weekend is over and you are still in the none, ultimately, when you're in the none of the all or none game. The none is protecting you from feeling negative emotion. So your primitive brain would rather you be in the nun. And then at some point, you know, I don't know what it is for you either. Two days a week, three weeks, you go back into the all, and you're like, Okay, we've got this now. And then that feels good, because you're back in the all. You're back. You're back in the game of all or none, but you're back in the all. In our attempt to not actually recognize that we're feeling some shame, we end up spinning off into not doing what we ultimately want to do, into giving up, into being in the when you look at the all or none game, into being in the none. Shame does not lead us to anything productive. And admitting that at the very, very, very base of our gut we are feeling a little bit of shame. If you actually can get there, it will help you get out of there, get out of the nun even faster. What also happens is we get the fuck it's and then we fail even harder. We literally, all of a sudden get triggered in some way, because this is hard work, we get triggered in some way, like we're doing well, we're doing well, we're doing well. And then something happens, and we're like, fuck it. And then we literally throw in the towel until we decide to start again. This idea of all or nothing has been taught to us in the form of diets. No one actually sat down and said, Let me teach you about a diet. Let me teach you how we're going to do this. Can you imagine someone sitting down and going, Okay, you're 13 now. I mean, for some people, it starts a lot earlier, but let's say someone says, Okay, you're 13 now. So now you're going to start. You're going to introduce yourself into the the world of dieting. And this is how it's going to work. You're going to start dieting, you're going to lose weight pretty quick, because you're going to give up everything, and it's going to be hard at first, but then you're going to start losing weight so quickly that it's actually going to be, like, empowering. You're going to be this is amazing. This is amazing. And then while you're dieting, you're going to be telling yourself that once the diet is over, like, you're going to be fine, you're totally never going to go back again. And then as you get to the end, you're going to be feeling so good. And then after the diet's over, you're going to celebrate with one of the things that you used to eat because you did it. You lost 10 pounds, or you lost 15 pounds, you're feeling great because you're not going to go back. You're just going to have one cookie or one burrito or one order of fries, and then you're gonna have one, and then you're gonna have one two days later, and you're gonna be like, but this is no problem. I've got this. And then you're gonna start having more and more and more, and you're gonna be tiptoeing back into the land of really, the way you hashtag normally eat, all the while shaming yourself because you knew, really, you weren't going to be able to sustain this madness. So welcome to the class on dieting. That's what you're going to do. And you're going to do this over and over and over throughout your life, the whole time feeling shame, but really not trying to feel shame. And so you're going to be constantly in this all or none battle. Welcome, right? It's, it's so sad, but like, that's what's happened, right? We have learned to be all in on a diet program, eating perfectly, losing weight. Maybe it's a six week boot camp while you're lifting weights for six week, while you're eating well, you're all in or you're out, and here's what I want you to see. When you're out, you're back to your normal, you're back to doing what you usually do. You're back to your baseline. You're living like you normally do, being the normal you. So you're on a diet, or you're being the normal you. This is a problem. In order to lose weight permanently, you need to change your normal, you you need to change your baseline. How can you possibly lose weight and keep it off if you aren't changing your normal, you if you aren't changing your baseline forever, and this means your habits, your tendencies, the way you deal with life, your thoughts, your routines, your patterns, the way you turn to getting support, your thinking, your eating, your being and living you can't you can't possibly lose weight and keep. Off if you don't change your normal you I'm taking a little break to let you know, if you are loving the podcast, you have to grab my free course lose weight for the last time the mindset and strategy you've been missing this free course is available right now. It is for women who are tired of dieting only to gain the weight back. It is for women who want to lose weight permanently and feel like themselves again. I spent years wanting to lose weight every morning. I would promise to eat better that day, and then by four o'clock, I would completely change my mind. I would think I don't care. It wasn't worth it. I should just love myself. I'm getting older. This is normal, that my body is changing, and it shouldn't matter, but it did matter, and it did matter to me. I lost weight permanently by learning how to feel in control around food, eat better consistently and follow through. And this course will help you do the same. So the link to get immediate access to this free course is in the show notes. It's also on my website, at Courtney Gray coaching.com you are going to love it now. Back to the show. So all or none thinking is a mistake if you want to lose weight forever, which that's what everyone who is listening to this podcast wants. That's what you want. It's what I want for you to make this part of your experience in life, like your life, different in your body, starting now, in order to stop the mistake of all or none thinking and acting, you need to first recognize that this is your pattern, that you're an all or none person. You probably have already recognized that, and then you need to create an eating plan that is more doable. In my program, I teach you how to create a food protocol that is doable so you don't feel like you're losing your mind and overly restrict yourself. You need to create a plan that is doable, but yet better than you're eating now because you're changing your normal this is what teaches you how to eat better forever. And then the third step in getting out of this all or none thinking is recognizing why you get into all or nothing. Thinking I've been talking a lot about on this podcast lately, about understanding why you do what you do. It is the magic. So why do you do well? Do well, do well, and then give up like so why are you all, all, all and then none? What happens in that moment? This moment teaches us so much. Do you not feel motivated? I have in my program, I have a training that teaches my clients how to follow through without being motivated. Because for some people, they don't feel motivated, and that's that's why they get into the nun. So I teach my clients how to do that when you're in the nun, like, what happens? Do you feel like you're experiencing negative emotions that need to be processed, but you don't know what to do with your emotions? I get it. We were never taught how to have a negative emotion, how to have a bad day and not turn to food. In my program, I have an emotional awareness process that teaches my clients how to actually process through negative emotions. I truly believe this should be taught in schools to kids like even at like the fifth grade, fourth, fifth grade level kids need to know how to be frustrated and what to do with that, because we adults don't know how to do it. How are we supposed to teach them if the adults don't know how to do it, the kids don't know how to do it. So I have a process that walks you through identifying your negative emotions, which most people cannot do. I actually just had, I had a group of women start with me in January, and so we're on our What is it like? Probably third or fourth call, and we were talking about recognizing our negative emotions, and many of my clients were like, I don't even know. Is it frustration? Is it guilt? I don't even know. I'm like, Yeah, I know. That's why I'm teaching you. And I taught them about why it matters? Why it matters to be able to go I'm feeling guilty right now, or I'm feeling frustrated or I'm feeling anxious. So much in society, especially with the younger kids, everyone says they have anxiety. No, it's not all anxiety. It's a lot of other negative emotions, but anxiety is the thing. It's the thing right now. It's the word we all use, but you need to be able to understand what is it you're really thinking, to be able to diagnose where it's coming from and how to deal with it. So do you know how to process your emotions? Are you discouraged? Are you frustrated? Are you guilty? You need to understand that. Do you need to learn how to have a desire for food and still not eat? I have a three step process that we work on for 12 weeks with my clients to help them understand how to want a cookie and not eat a cookie. It's brilliant. It's probably one of my favorite processes I teach, and that helps you get out of the none in the all or none thinking when you understand. Why you slip into none. You can get back on track faster, and that's what you want to do, shorten up the time that you're in that none space, right? When it comes to all or none, we're all gonna go into none. We're all gonna go into Oh my God. You know, I'm having a day where I'm just not feeling myself. I'm not eating like I normally want to, I skip my workout. That's the reality of life. We're all going to get there. And here's the beautiful thing I'll tell you, you can lose the weight you want to lose, and maintain that weight and still have a bad day and not eat that great. You can lose all the weight you want to lose. Become the woman who eats better, thinks better, lives better, works out better, loves the body she's in. Have something go wrong, sit on the couch watching Outlander eating more than you'd like, and still maintain your weight and live a beautiful life. It does not have to be all or none. One of the things we do those we shorten up that time. So instead of you sitting on the couch for a week and get and going off. We shorten that up. If you join my March group program, I can help you with this one of the trainings you get access to in my online portal with all of my trainings. It teaches you how to be in the middle of this all or none continuum. Again. All is the diet. None is your normal. We need you to be in the middle where you are doing better, but you're not perfect, where you're doing better, but you don't have the fuck it's life gets really good in the middle. Life gets really good when you can have dessert, but you don't feel like you need to overeat. Life gets really good when you feel like you can have a cocktail. Want another one, but you have the skill to not have another one and be so proud of yourself that you didn't. It's such a beautiful life to be able to have a piece of cake and fit in your genes, to be able to mess up and get back on track quick, learning how to stop the mistake of all or none thinking is such a huge answer for so many people. So if you are listening like, yes, this has been helpful. Yes, I'm all in. Definitely join my training that is going to be happening? Oh, I don't, I can't remember the exact date, but the link is there for you in the show notes. The link is in my Instagram, on my website is going to be I'm going to teach you all five weight loss mistakes and how to stop making them. And they will surprise you. Some of this one maybe surprised you. You know, a lot of times people think like the weight loss mistake is you're eating too much carb that's not it. So I'm going to teach you the five mistakes. I'm going to teach you how to stop making them. I can't wait for this awesome training. Join me. It's going to be over zoom and I can't wait. Have a great Tuesday. If you are ready to lose weight and keep it off permanently and feel confident and at peace around food. I invite you to head to Courtney Gray coaching.com to learn about how to work with me. I work with women privately, one on one, and I also offer small group coaching. There is a link to my website in the show notes you.