Your Weight Loss Starts in Your Brain

This is an important podcast.  As I edited it, I thought, "Everyone needs to listen to this," so I am glad you are here.

To permanently change your weight- body- LIFE....you must change your brain.

I am laying it all out for you, as the first step in real change is understanding why what you have been doing is not working.

I've got you, happy listening.

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

Transcript

Unknown: 0:06

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 73 rewiring your brain to make your weight loss permanent. I have been working on some new curriculum for my clients in order to help them reach their goals faster and easier in a more lovely way. Do you like how I said that faster, easier and in a more lovely, beautiful way? Because really permanent weight loss can be an amazing, transformative experience when you do it right. And so I want to teach you about how your brain is wired to keep you right to where you are. We're taking a little walk back to college, a little conversation about your brain, about your prefrontal cortex, about neuroplasticity. But I promise you, my goal, my intention, for this podcast, is by the end, you are really understanding some of the concepts that you learned when you were in school, and you're understanding how it applies to you right now, as you're walking around, walking your dog, with your coffee in your car, all the things, I have a little bit of a cold you might hear at my voice. I think it sounds kind of sexy. I'm hoping that you're in agreement with me, but we're going on with it. We're going on Okay, so I want you, I want to teach you how your brain is wired to help keep you right where you are, which really is to your brain the safest place you getting better in any way is potential risk to your brain, is potential conflict, is potential danger. And so you staying at the weight you're at, staying making the same amount of money you're making in your same relationships, same daily routines, everything. The same is the safest place to your brain, to a part of your brain, and we need to rewire that part of your brain to create permanent change. So I want to dive into neuroplasticity again. You probably learned about neuroplasticity in college, and if you were like, yeah, yeah, yeah, let's talk about something more fun. But neuroplasticity is basically your brain's ability to change and adapt throughout life in response to feelings and teachings and learnings and different things happening in your environment and but I really want to break this down kind of more coffee chat style into a conversation that makes sense to you, that really makes you apply it to you right now, as you're walking around, as you're driving in your car, so you can really understand what's happening in your brain and how it is potentially limiting what's happening in your body. So think about your brain for a second, and think about we have all these neuro pathways in our brain. And the definition of neural pathways, if we Google, the definition is networks in your brain that enable us to move our bodies, share information, do things like tasting and touching and learning new things, and, you know, helping us breathe, helping us move. All these neural pathways, they're like little. I like to think of them as little. I mean actual pathways in your brain. There's trillions of them in your brain, and the things that you do on repeat. I love the example of brushing your teeth. Usually you probably use the same toothbrush, same hand, you start at the same tooth. You usually take about the same amount of time you usually have these very habitual things in your life. Those all equate to neural pathways in your brain. When you put your shoes on, it's quite possible that you put the one foot on before the other foot. That is a neural pathway. It's like, we should put our shoes on. We do it. We have feelings about it. They're probably not very strong feelings, because it's a pretty neutral experience. But we have all these pathways in our brain there. If you think about it, it's like we have habits that we do, like brushing our teeth and putting our shoes on, but in our brain are the same habits, and so we have the putting your shoes on habit of doing it in. Action in real time that is also a little neural pathway in your brain. So I like to think of everything we are doing in our lives, when we think something, when we feel something, and when we do something that constitutes a little neural pathway in our brain. And so when we think about the habits we do, often, they are stronger neuro pathways in our brain. If all of a sudden someone invites me and says, Hey, do you want to go, like, hit golf balls? And I'm like, yeah, that'd be great. Well, I don't golf I've probably hit golf balls five times in my whole life, so there's not a strong neuro pathway in my brain for setting up like having someone say, this is how you hit a golf ball, sitting there, thinking about it, hitting it, and experiencing the emotions I'm feeling, and I'm the muscle memory, all the things that go into hitting a golf ball. It's a very, very thin, thin, tiny neural pathway in my brain, because I haven't done it a lot, but yet, the neural pathway for brushing my teeth is strong. It is well worn. So when we talk about you becoming the woman who does things differently, we are talking about you creating and strengthening new neural pathways in your brain. In order to create new neural pathways in your brain you we need you to engage in activities that challenge your brain, such as learning something new, exercising, meditating, you know, changing your thoughts and your feelings and your actions and this all changes your brain. And so if I went out to the golf course with a friend, and I actually started practicing every single day, or even three times a week, or once a week, I would have a neural pathway in my brain, and I would be strengthening it and strengthening and strengthening it. And let me add on to this. Let me add on to this example. Let's say I worked for a year with my friend that that is better, a better golfer than me, but not necessarily that much better. So let's say she goes, Okay, this is what you're going to want to do, and she and I for the next year practice. So there is going to be a pretty well worn neural pathway in my brain. Of this is how you have to think about it. This is the feeling, and this is how you hit, all the intricacies of how you hit that ball. That's going to be a well worn neural pathway in my brain. Now, if, after a year I'm like, I'm really loving golf, I want to go to my next level. I want to hire someone to help me do this right? I want to, you know, before I, you know, go any farther. I really want to hire a professional to help me. And so I hire a professional, and that woman comes in and says, Okay, we need to tweak some of the things you're doing. Here's some things you're doing wrong. Here's a different way you want to think about it. Here's, you know, it's going to be challenging because you haven't done it this way. We're kind of unraveling some of the things you're doing, and we want to do things differently. So we are doing things differently in terms of the way I'm holding the ball, the way I'm thinking about it, the way I'm breathing, maybe the way I'm arching my back, sweet. I don't golf So, but all the things are going to be different, right? And then from that day forward, there is a new neural pathway being born, being developed in my brain, and it is very tiny and very not well worn, because it's new. And what I'm doing now working with this coach and having her teach me a new way of thinking and feeling and hitting and moving and all the things. That neural pathway gets more and more and more worn. The other neuro pathway, from my friend that was more of an amateur that I worked with for a year, that neural pathway, because I'm not practicing it anymore, gets smaller and smaller and smaller and less worn. So we're kind of swapping things out in my brain. I love giving a non food related example, because you can probably understand this. It's like there's so many of my girlfriends right now playing pickleball. I've many girlfriends lifting weights for the first time. My sister and I just decided we are going to start playing mahjong. Is that? Is that how you say it? Is it even playing is the right way to say it. I don't even know. It's like a tile game. We're gonna we're gonna do it. We're gonna do it. And I was thinking about this podcast, and I was like, oh, Mahjong. I don't even know if I'm saying it right, so you might be laughing at me, but I'm like, I there are no neural pathways in my brain, in my brain right now for Mahjong, and so I'm gonna start playing this tile dice. I don't even know what it is this card. It's not a card game, because it's with tiles, but I'm going to start playing this with her, and I am going to it's very exciting for me. I am going to be creating a baby neuro pathway in my brain, and the more and more we practice. And maybe I'll watch a few YouTube videos. Maybe I'll read a book on it, maybe the history of it, or something. I really like diving into things, I am going to be not only birthing a new neuropathway, I'm going to be strengthening it. And so when we think about you and thinking about for a moment, I want you to just take a moment and think about the woman you want to become. Now, sometimes we just go, I just want to lose 10 pounds. Courtney, I don't want to become a woman. But. I want you to go deeper, because I know that that's not true. I know that the reason you want to lose weight is you want to feel a certain way. You want to move throughout your life in a certain way. You want to look in the mirror and have it be different. You want to interact different. You want to the biggest thing I can say is you want to feel different and you want to feel in control. You want to feel confident, you want to feel empowered, you want to feel powerful. If we're going to do that, we need to create some new neural pathways. My hope is that this podcast is already doing that. I believe it is. I believe by you listening to this podcast and loving it and signing up for my workshops, and those of you that have worked with me or working with me right now, you are strengthening those neural pathways in your brain. You are not only listening, but you're thinking differently. You're trying things out differently. You're having some success. You're having failures and getting back on track. You are right now, girl, creating new neural pathways and strengthening those pathways in your brain. And so not only is this happening when you're doing new things, it's happening when you're stopping old behaviors. Because not only do you need to strengthen new neural pathways, you need to, I don't know. We call it de strengthen, or like desensitize or shrink, I guess the old neural pathways. I don't know, because I'm not a scientist. I don't know if the old neural pathways ever fully go away or die off. It's possible. But what I want you to do is, I want you to strengthen, create and strengthen new neural pathways. And let me just say, This is why diets don't work. This is why you know, so many of us, me and you, we've gone on diets. We've done a 30 day, a two week, a 10 week, a cleanse, all these things, and then at the end of it, we start going back into our old ways of eating, of course, right? And we then we're mad at ourselves, but then there's a part of ourselves that's like we knew this wasn't going to work, because we're intelligent. What is happening when you learn about your brain and neuroplasticity? It becomes so clear why it doesn't work. First of all, I think that we need more time. I think if we're gonna do anything amazing with our life and have any transformation, we need a little bit more time. And I think most the time a diet, one two weeks, three weeks is just not enough time. But also, when you're on a diet, and like, I think back to when I went on hole 30, and I just cut out all sugar, all flour, all that for 30 days that I wasn't going to sustain that. So what I was doing in the moment was working on a neural pathway, a new neural pathway in my brain that I never intended to keep working at. When I go back in time. And I think about me going on whole 30 I'm imagining that first week I was creating a new neural pathway. The neural pathway of, okay, we're not eating any flour, we're not eating any sugar. I've got this. We're doing things differently. We're amazing. And so we did that. And then the neural pathway, because I would do it every day, it was strengthening, strengthening, strengthening. But then at the end of 30 days, I was done with all of it. I was done with all of it, and then I started doing new things then. Then what I started doing is I started going back to the way I was eating, very slowly, shaming myself as I did it, putting weight back on, and figuring out why I was spiraling out. So can you see it's almost like such a waste of time, such a waste of brain energy is such a waste of a neural pathway. What I want for you is, I want to create neural pathways that you can actually build on, build on, build on, build on, and become the woman who this is just who you are. Now. It's almost like you just do it. It is just who you are. The neural pathway is the new you? Okay, so let's say you've been listening to this podcast for a while, and you're trying to implement some of what you're learning beautiful. So maybe you're trying to catch the excuses you make. A few podcasts back I talked about excuses that we make. So let's say you're trying to be really more aware, heighten your awareness and catch those excuses, because I'll tell you the excuses that our primitive brain offers us, and I'll talk about the primitive brain in a moment, but the excuses the primitive brain your primitive brain offers you, are different than the excuses my primitive brain offers me. All of our excuses are pretty unique, but the beautiful thing is, our primitive brain sends these thoughts, these excuses to us, and they're very habitual. Again, they're neural pathways in our brain. So let me tell you about a neural pathway that was very well worn for me for years. I would eat well all day, and then right around four or five o'clock I would all of a sudden go, what? What are we doing here? I look fine. Why am I even worried about this? And then I would make some chips and salsa, make some chips and guacamole before dinner. Then I would eat too much for dinner than my body really needed. And then all of a sudden, I'd go, oh my god, I already, like, kind of blew my plan for the day. I'm just gonna make. Some cookies, or I'm gonna have a brownie, or I'm gonna have some chocolate chips right out of the bag. That was a neuro pathway that was deeply worn in my brain. It was the pathway of, what does this even matter? Life is too short. Then I would change my mind, eat whatever I wanted, go to bed and be like, Oh, my God, I did it again. That was a very, very rubber band thick neuro pathway in my brain. In order to change that, I needed to have be able to have that thought, oh my god, life is too short. What does it even matter? I needed to be able to catch that excuse, right? This is the work I teach my clients to go, oh my god, there it is again. I'm doing it again. That's the excuse that is my primitive brain. And to be able to say, what do I want to think instead? And be able to then stick to my plan. And when I started doing that years ago, when I was able to get myself to start doing that, I created a baby neural pathway in my brain. And every day that I got good at doing it again and doing it again and doing it again, it strengthened that neural pathway. And you've heard me so many times say that none of this has to be perfect. You don't have to be perfect in order to lose weight. Because what happened to me many times is my brain would say, Oh, my God, what does it matter? You're fine, or my brain then started kind of changing the message, the excuse became, you've done really well for four days. You deserve a treat. And then I would eat off. I would go back to that old neural pathway, and I'd be like, ah, and then I'd get right back on track. And so it was this continual going back, strengthening the new neural pathway and that old neural pathway of what does it even matter? Life is too short. It's so tiny that it doesn't have the same pull to me anymore, even when my brain says that to me, because it sometimes still says it, it doesn't even, it doesn't even affect me much anymore, because the neural pathway is so not well worn. I think it is still there, but it is not well worn. So for you, you might have the thought, oh, you know what? Just have a little bit. It doesn't matter. That's a very common thought for my clients. Oh, I, I wasn't planning on eating any Rhesus pieces, but then I had three, and my because my brain told me it didn't matter, right? And so the neural pathway is a well worn neural pathway is it doesn't matter, you feel kind of justified or rebellious, and then you eat, and that is a very, extremely strong neural pathway in your brain. What I want to offer is, in order to create a new habit on the outside, we have to kind of break down the old neural pathway and create another one. And we do that by next time your brain says, Oh my gosh, it's just a little it doesn't matter. You can go, Wait a minute. Whoa, whoa. Slow girl. Slow down. I always give myself this excuse. What do I truly want? Yes, I love me some Reese's Pieces or peanut whatever it is, peanut butter cups. I love them. But what do I really want? And can you actually stick to that feel empowered and stick to that plan of not eating it and build a new neural pathway and start to strengthen it in total. Side note, one of the ways you can strengthen it is after you do well, celebrate the shit out of yourself. So often, for some reason, as women, in the beginning of doing this work, we tell ourselves, oh, my God, what does it matter? It was just one time. I mean, yeah, I did a great one time. But I mean, like, I'm probably not going to do well tomorrow. What I want you to do is go, Hello everyone. I mean, you're going to say this inside your head, but look at everyone around you and in your head, go, you're welcome, people. I just did it. I did it. I'm becoming the woman. I've got a new neural pathway going. I'm doing it. You've heard me say, I want to help all the women become women who eat better and follow through and think differently and think bigger. When you change your brain, you create a habit that is a new neuropathway in your brain, and this is what makes you change you. This is what makes you become that different woman, literally. So now, continuing on with science class, I want to give you a little reminder about your brain. I want to remind you that early human beings did not have the intricate brain that we have today. We have evolved to have the amazing brain we have today, and we're still evolving all the time. But if we go back to early man. Early man didn't have all of the brain structures and all the brain capabilities and intricacies that we have today. So when you think about caveman days, all of us running around in cute little loin cloths and just looking amazing, we had a very primitive brain. And so when you were in college, you possibly heard. About the downstairs brain, or the primitive brain, or the monkey brain, all these different ways we can talk about, again, the caveman brain. We didn't have a prefrontal cortex. We didn't have as elevated of brain systems as we do today. Back then, when we're running around in our loin cloths, we have a very primitive brain. That brain was in charge really only of keeping us alive. And it did this, really in three ways. It kept us seeking pleasure. It kept us avoiding pain, which oftentimes is the same thing many ways, and conserving energy. And what this looked like as we're running around in our loin cloths. I love you getting the image in your head this looked like us wanting to have pleasure. So eating good, eating food, our brain kept us wanting food. That's why we probably have taste buds. It wanted to have us eating food, because that's what kept us fueled so we could live. It kept us wanting to have sex so we would be able to have babies and keep the species going. It kept us wanting to avoid pain. And avoiding pain is looks many different ways. It, of course, it made us want to find safety and get away from cold, because that would help us not freeze to death. Avoiding pain. It we didn't touch fire when we eventually figured out how to make fire, because if we touched fire, it would burn us. So we we have these sensors in our body that tells us fire doesn't feel good, and that was painful, and so we would avoid it. Our brain would also keep us alive by helping us conserve energy. And so we weren't running, running, running all the time. We slept. We conserved energy, so when we were being chased by a herd of elephants, we could actually get away. But another way I want to talk about that a lot of people don't think of when we think of us as early early man in our loin cloths, we were people pleasers even back then. And we don't think of people pleasing as a survival instinct, but it really is when you think of early man in tribes, being in the tribe really guaranteed your survival. You really couldn't wander the planes and survive back in those days, and I could go into it, but there's really no reason we don't have that much time. So in order to survive, you needed to be part of a tribe. You needed to make sure that you were well liked in the tribe. In fact, it meant certain death if you were kicked out of the tribe. When we think of people pleasing, we think of making, you know, accommodating ourselves to make sure that everyone else is happy is actually a survival instinct. We want to make sure people around us have good thoughts about us so we don't get kicked out of the tribe. So it's so it's so interesting how we think it's like, oh, we're just out to dinner and we're having another glass of wine because we don't want to hurt someone's feelings in a way that is a survival instinct. So you can give yourself a little a little slack there. But we think about our early brain, and our brain has now evolved. But here's the rub, we still have that primitive brain, that part of our brain that's at the back base of our brain is still very much there and still very much running the show for most people. So now that we've evolved, we have a prefrontal cortex, and our prefrontal cortex is a beautiful part of our brain that helps us set goals and make plans and feels feelings and is able to analyze data and do all these things, do all these advanced things that that our brain couldn't do long ago, but the primitive brain is still there. I like to think, and this really helps me as I navigate my day and my eating and my working out and and all the things I'm doing to up level my life, I like to think of my prefrontal cortex as the true me, as the real me, because when you think of the ability to set goals, make plans, have good intentions, analyze things, we think of our prefrontal cortex. We think of what we truly want when we say to ourselves, you know what? Tomorrow, I'm going to eat better. That is our prefrontal cortex talking. But we still have a primitive brain. And so I like to think of my prefrontal cortex at the very front of my brain, right right behind my forehead. That is the real me. It wants me to win. And then I have my primitive brain that is still with me. My primitive brain, remember its only job is to keep me alive by making me seek pleasure, avoid pain and conserve energy. Think of it this way, if me right now, Courtney, on a random Wednesday, wants to seek pleasure, avoid pain and conserve energy. I am taking a nap. I'm binging Outlander in the middle of the day. I'm eating whatever I want on the couch. I'm certainly not getting a workout in certainly not going for a walk to get some fresh air. I'm just sitting in my house, pleasure, pleasure. Or pleasure. No pain. Nothing that could be risky, no nothing. Nothing that aligns with my goals, nothing that aligns with my future self. And so I want you to think about it this way. When you say to yourself, I'm going to start tomorrow. Tomorrow is the day I want to lose 10 pounds. I've still got time. Have you ever had that thought I still got time? I'm still in it. I'm doing okay. I'm still in it, right? And you make that plan awesome prefrontal cortex. Then tomorrow midday, when one of your girlfriends says, Do you want to go out to lunch? And you say, yes, and then you're sitting there, and the waiter asks you what you want, and all of a sudden, you say, You know what? It doesn't matter. I'm just going to have whatever I want right now, and I'll worry about this later. That is your primitive brain. Your primitive brain no longer cares about your 10 pounds that you want to lose. Your primitive brain doesn't care that you're going to be in a swimsuit in two months. Your primitive brain wants you to be happy in that moment, out of pain in that moment. And oftentimes when we think of pain, we even hear the word pain. We think of like a sprained ankle or a cut. But pain is any negative emotion. So if you're sitting there at lunch with your girlfriend, and she looks at you and says, What are you getting? And you think, huh, we just had a conversation yesterday about how we both really wanted to lose 10 pounds, and we were both really kind of getting tired of our excuses. If I she already told me what she's getting. If I order something better than her, I'm going to make her feel bad. It's a very, very common people pleasing type of rhetoric that is going on in our head. And it doesn't sound like pain, but to your primitive brain, it is pain, and so in that moment, your primitive brain is like, Don't hurt her feelings. You're in charge of her emotions, which we know isn't true, but your primitive brain is telling you that, and the fastest way out of feeling that, stress, anxiety, guilt is just ordering whatever you truly want to order in that moment. So can you see the two different brains at play? And can you see how, if you resonated with that example, there is a neural pathway tied to that experience of you being in the restaurant. There is a neural pathway in your brain that is well worn that says we had a plan, but now we have an excuse. We want to get out of pain. So we're just gonna eat whatever we want to in this moment, and then we're gonna shame ourselves after and make a new plan that overeating cycle is a neural pathway in your brain. And so what we need you to do is create a new neural pathway where you actually follow through, and you become the woman that can live for her future self and that can make a decision that is from her prefrontal cortex, really the real her, the real you. How does this relate the to the neural pathways in your brain? If you've been living from your primitive brain for a long time, the neural pathways that are really well worn are all pathways that make you happy in the moment. You don't feel like working out, you don't neural pathway, you had a plan but you're feeling stressed. You eat neuropathway, you had a plan, but you worried your friend's feelings might be hurt. Eat neuropathway. I used to have a pretty well worn neuro pathway where I would sit down to do my podcast, I would be confused and not sure of what to record for my podcast, and I would go have a snack. And now that neural pathway is nothing anymore, because now I sit down and I'm like, I don't know, and I'm like, I do know. And I write myself a little letter and say, Courtney, you're good at this. People love your podcast. This is what they need to hear. This is what's going to be transformative. They're going to love it. And I go and there's no snack involved. And now that is a neural pathway in my brain, and that is a neural pathway that not only makes me feel empowered in the moment, it continues to keep my body where I want it to be. In my coaching programs, I have been helping my clients really see that there is this duality inside of them, the duality of their prefrontal cortex versus their primitive brain, the duality of living for their present self and just eating whatever makes them feel good or living from their future self. It's really also your true desires, your prefrontal cortex, your future focused self against your false desires, your primitive brain and in the moment pleasure, I believe the true you, the real you, wants it all, wants all of it. And I also believe that you know you deserve it all. I know that you want to be in control of your eating so you can lose weight and feel so much better. It's both. It's not just weight loss. You want the both. You want the control too. You want the peace. So there are both parts of you, inside of you. You've got your prefrontal cortex, even though you have your primitive brain. You've got the well worn neuropathy. Pathways. But are you creating some baby pathways in there too that are the pathways that you really want to nurture and make more well worn? What do you need to do today to start practicing and making those newer pathways more well worn? And when you answer that question, what you're going to be doing is you're going to be becoming the woman who lives differently. This is so much more than just when you step on the scale seeing the number, this is you becoming a woman that lives differently, becoming a woman that feels differently, because this is your one life in this body, and you deserve it. 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.