Is Losing 15 Pounds by January Possible? HELL YES! Let's GO!

🔗 Join Courtney’s Free Live Webinar: Lose 15 Pounds by January (Without Dieting) → https://mailchi.mp/422ea818fdaa/15poundsdown

In this episode of Modern Body, Modern Life, body and life coach Courtney Gray shares exactly how women can lose up to 15 pounds by January—without dieting, restriction, or guilt.

You’ll discover how to:

• Break free from the “I’ll start in January” mindset
• Lose weight during the holidays while still enjoying food and celebration
• Stop people-pleasing and emotional eating
• Build lasting self-trust and confidence
• Create sustainable weight loss through mindset, not restriction

✨ This episode is for women who want real, lasting results, especially if you’re ready to feel powerful, healthy, and confident in your body—at any age.

Interested in speaking with me about how we can work together? Click here to head to my website: https://www.modernbodymodernlife.com/ and schedule a free consultation with me.

Transcript

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Bob, welcome to modern body, modern life, the podcast for women who want to feel powerful, healthy, strong and confident, inside and out at every age. On this podcast, we talk about becoming a woman who is fully in control of her eating and movement, so weight loss, strength and energy become permanent. We also talk about something bigger, becoming the woman who takes her deepest desire seriously and goes after more in every area of her life. I'm body and life coach Courtney Gray, and I believe you can get in the best shape of your life at any age, and when you do, it becomes a catalyst for everything else, your relationships, your confidence, your joy, because when you feel like you and your body, all of life gets better. Let's get started. Welcome to the podcast. Episode. 101 is losing 15 pounds by January. Possible. Hell yes, it's possible. And if you saw that title and you're like, uh, that sounds amazing. Yes, please. I'm so glad you're here. Last week was episode 100 which I was so excited about, very celebrate, celebratory in my body when I recorded that podcast, and it was all about your 90 day transformation. Because right around that time that I was recording that podcast, there were 90 days left in the year. And so if you listen to that podcast and you are thinking, Gosh, my 90 day transformation, I really want it to be weight loss or moving my body more or getting healthier, then this is going to be a wonderful follow up podcast to that podcast. Consider this podcast a sneak peek for my live webinar coming this Thursday. This episode is dropping October 14, and I have a free live webinar on the 16th, and I would love to invite you to join me. It's going to be about an hour and a half for this webinar. I'm giving myself a little bit more time because I want this to be an experience. I want to really have time to talk slowly. You could tell I'm a very fast talker, and I get sometimes when I give myself an hour, I feel like I have so much information, and I feel like I'm kind of clipping myself short. And sometimes I'll even when I'm doing a webinar, like, cut things out as I'm going along. And I just want to be able to have, you know, luxurious amounts of time, to be able to really explain the concepts, and to really teach you what it is going to take for you to lose 15 pounds by January, because it is possible 15 pounds by January without dieting, with being able to celebrate the holidays in a beautiful way, where you can have some cookies, can have some eggnog, whatever, but yet you're eating better. You're enjoying yourself more. You're really actually kind of diving back into what matters the most around the holidays, but it is possible for you to lose 15 pounds by January. But this isn't for everyone. This podcast isn't for everyone. The webinar isn't for everyone. There are some people that they don't want to challenge themselves. There are some people that might think that making a plan to eat less and eat better on Thanksgiving sounds horrible, and that's totally fine. I'm speaking to the people that are intrigued, the people that want it to be possible, that people that are up for a challenge, and the people that the women that know that when I talk about changing you is going to be the way you lose weight permanently and get healthy permanently, that you lean forward, you resonate with that, because I'll tell you, you know, again, back to the people that think that sounds horrible, to restrict myself in any way which I trust me. I have in years past, I have felt that way, so there's no shame for the people that feel that way. But to me now, horrible is feeling how I used to feel at the end of every holiday season long ago, before I did this work to get my eating under control, get my weight where I wanted to be, get my health where I wanted to be, before I became a coach and I understood everything I'm teaching you, I would spend most holidays, just really in a vicious cycle of overeating, where I told myself it didn't matter, and then as my and then I would eat all the things, drink all the things, and then I would be feeling my clothes getting tighter and tighter, and then I would be shaming myself. But the whole time, there was this story also of, well, I'm just going to wait till January, because I was so busy. Just like you, we are all so busy. I was so busy, you know, as a stay home mom, and then I was running a multiple six figure jewelry business out of my garage. I had employees at some point down the road. I mean, I had so much going on, and I just really didn't have the mind management skills that I do now. And I was just would go through this loop of, okay, I'm going to eat better today because my clothes are not fitting the way I want them to. And then all of a sudden I'd get to the party, and I'd be like, life is too short. Why am I going to be the only one here at the party, worrying about this, when I probably wasn't the only one at the party, but and then I would eat all the things. I would feel so stuffed I would go to bed. And then the next. I would be like, I have to get, you know, I have to do something about this. And then halfway through the day, I think, I'm just gonna wait till January. And you can just even hear in my story, which I have to believe, there's parts of it you resonate with. But then also you have to hear the just the mental anguish, the amount of time that I was even thinking about my body, whether it was I'm going to do better right now. It doesn't matter. Oh, my God, I don't know what to wear because I'm not fitting in my clothes. I'm going to wait till January, and then I could keep going. I should just love my body. It doesn't matter. I mean, I was just, I mean, it's exhausting even thinking about that. So when someone, you know, someone who maybe isn't loving the idea of making a plan to eat less and and eat better around the holidays, that they think that sounds horrible, I think what sounds horrible is the story I just told you that I went through every holiday season. That sounds absolutely horrible to me. And then, of course, the problem is, is I would start out every January committed, and I'm saying this in quotation, but I hadn't changed my brain. I hadn't understood why I was eating in the first place. I didn't understand my excuses. I didn't understand how to prioritize myself. I didn't know understand how to say no to other people and to ask for help. I didn't understand about my emotional eating. And so I thought that I was going to start January and everything was going to change. Everything was going to be different, and then I'd be a few weeks in, and I'd lose a little bit of weight, and I'd be like, You know what, I'm fine. Or, oh, we have a party, or this. I mean, it just absolutely exhausting. That sounds horrible to me. So what I want to invite you to do is use this holiday season to get yourself so ready, not only physically ready, by losing some weight up to 15 pounds is totally reasonable, but also doing the mental work. So when January hits, you're at your goal weight. For those of you that just want to lose a small amount of weight, brilliant. Then you can create a new New Year's resolution, or for those of you that have more weight to lose, you're going to feel on fire. You're going to feel so excited starting the year out, like, Okay, what do I want to do next? So exciting. Let me tell you why the holidays really are the perfect time. Because many people think the holidays are the worst time to do this work, and I do understand it is a busy time, especially for us women who tend to not make our health a priority and say yes to too many things that we really want to say no to. But I'll tell you, the holidays are like a master class in overcoming obstacles. So let me be clear first, if you want to just go on a diet during the holiday season, like you want to put your head down. You want to take away all flour, sugar and alcohol from your house. You don't go out to eat, you don't eat any anything at the parties. And you lose weight, you know, and then you come up for air from that restrictive diet. I don't think the holidays would be a good time, because I think it's going to be so hard if you expect to never eat a Halloween candy, if you expect to never eat a piece of pie or on Thanksgiving, in order to lose weight, what you're doing is you're not really learning anything. You're losing weight, but you're not changing you, which again, that weight loss isn't sustainable, because then during January, you're going to say to yourself, well, you know, I'm going to start eating these things slowly, and you're going to gain the weight back, and you're going to have, really, haven't gained the chops and gain the skills to do this well, because you know how you are, you're a fun person. You've got fun stuff happening in January, even though the holidays are over, we feel like sometimes we talk about how the holidays are over, as if, like, all the partying stops, but if you're like me, we are fun we have fun friends. We like doing fun stuff. In January, the party doesn't stop. The party might ease down for a few weeks, until all of a sudden you want to start doing fun things again. So you're going to need to have the skills to be able to make good choices, make better choices without being perfect. If you want to become the woman who can get this done permanently, to eat better forever, understand herself at a deeper level so she lives differently. The Holidays actually are the perfect time for you to lose weight. Some of the biggest obstacles around the holidays are people pleasing. And think about whether you have people in your life or whether you're just are a people pleaser in general, but you're going to have that obstacle of people suggesting, oh, here's the food now, here's this, here's this. And maybe it's food that's very traditional in your family or your culture. Maybe you have food pushers that are around you, and maybe you're going to have people that are just like, it's time to celebrate. It's time to celebrate. It's the holidays. There's this assumption that you should eat all the things like you've done in the past. So people pleasing is going to be an obstacle for you to losing weight the way you want to lose weight you. You're going to have other people's opinions even more during the holidays. And so this is the work you want to do. If you think, I know that's going to be hard, good if it doesn't challenge you, it doesn't change you. And another part of the obstacle of the holiday is just the amount of food. I mean, gosh, we just have so much food around us all the time anyways. But during the holidays, your neighbors bring you cookies. Your neighbors bring you spiced nuts. I remember working at Hewlett Packard, and there was always people bringing things in for birthdays and celebrations. But around the holiday, I mean, it was wild how much food was brought in every single day, even more than throughout the rest of the year. So that is an obstacle, but it's an obstacle you can get good and stronger at handling for the webinar I'm hosting over zoom, on Thursday, I'm going to be teaching the four mindset strategies that are necessary to not only lose 15 pounds by January, but how to do it in a way that is lasting, without being on a diet, without perfection. And I'm going to go over one of those strategies for you here as a little sneak peek, teaching you the importance of the story you tell yourself. I love to think of the thoughts that we have in our head like stories, and oftentimes, when I start working with one of my private clients, I will tell them, do you see the story you're telling yourself about this? Whatever it is that they're trying to work on, I want you to write down the story you've been telling yourself, because that story has been producing the results you've been creating in your life. So we need to also then tell a new story. What is the new story you want to tell yourself. So many of our stories are automatic, and they are very consistent with what everyone around us thinks, whether it's society, whether it's our community, whether it's our family, and it's things like, let's say you go to a restaurant and they say that there's a 45 minute wait, and you think, oh my god, this sucks. Oh my god, I'm going to be so hungry, and what are we going to do? That's a story, and the story is optional, and it's possible that if you resonated with that example, that's a story. Maybe you've been telling yourself for your whole life. Maybe you saw your parents do that. Maybe when you were a kid and you would go to a restaurant and your parents or a partner, someone you dated, whatever would be like, Oh my God, that's a story you just kind of were introduced to, that you took on. But you could change your story. You might have a moment where you're like, oh my god, 45 minutes. That's a long time. But then you decide, hey, I don't want to make a problem. Story here, I want to choose a new story. Maybe the the story is going to be it's worth the wait. Let's go to the bar and get a drink and have some conversation while we're waiting. We've got nothing else to do tonight. It's not like we're going to a movie theater. We have, we we don't, and we're not on a time schedule. It'll be worth the wait. The story is going to dictate how you feel, and it's going to dictate the results you're creating in that moment and during that experience. Here's another example. Maybe you eat more than you had planned, and then your thought is, yep, I always do that. Why they always do that? That's a story, a story that's filled with shame. But you can choose another story. You can, next time you do that, you can say, Huh, interesting. Why didn't I stick to my plan? This is the story I tell myself when I overeat. Because I do overeat. Sometimes I'm not perfect. The beautiful thing is, you can hit your goal weight and live your healthiest body ever. And every once in a while, you're going to overeat. It's not a problem. It's a problem. If you say, oh my god, I always do this. Oh my god, I'm backtracking. But you can say, Huh, interesting. Why did I do that? What do I think was going on? Then you've turned something not ideal into a learning experience to understand yourself at a deeper level. And you might say, oh, you know what? I think I was a little bit stressed, and did I really need to do that? Did I really need to eat that food? Why do I think that food was going to solve the problem? And you can really start to understand yourself at a deeper level. Lately, I've been really doing a lot of work on the story I tell myself when my kids are struggling in the past, and I think many parents, especially moms, can resonate with this, but our kids are struggling, and there is this, oh my god. It's like a nervous system body reaction that we have as mama bears, right? All of a sudden our kids are struggling, or they're frustrated, or something's wrong, and we need we go into I'm going to fix this. I need to tell them exactly what to do. I need to say, Do this, do that. I'm going to make calls for you. I'm going to do all this. And depending on how old your child is, sometimes this is appropriate, right? If you got yourself a 10 year old, we want to step in and make sure we protect that child. But for me, knowing that I have 22 year olds and a 19 year old, it still comes up for me, the feeling when they're struggling in any way, but the new story. I'm trying to tell myself, did you hear me say? Trying to tell myself, and it's getting easier. Is okay? Courtney, this is so hard to watch. This is so hard to hear. But they have to learn how to deal with this. They have to learn how to advocate to them for themselves. I'm going to ask them, Do you want my thoughts and sometimes, oftentimes, they'll say yes, but when they say no, I think I'm good. Thank you for letting me vent. Then I need to tell a new story. It's okay that they didn't want to hear my thoughts. They are turning into the young man that can handle this on their own. Maybe they have a girlfriend they can talk to, maybe they want to talk to one of their brothers, but I'm telling the story differently because I don't want to tell the story. I have all the answers they need to listen to me. Oh, my God. Oh my god. That just doesn't help anyone. So our stories really dictate how we feel, and it dictates what we do and don't do, the behavior we take or don't take, and it really dictates our results that we're creating. I was thinking of a great analogy to tell you about the stories we tell ourselves. This is also a story kind of based on resilience. So you, let's say you decide to start walking every single day. Let's say you're like, I'm getting my 10,000 steps. Have you ever done that? A lot of my girlfriends have done that. I've never actually tracked my steps, but I have a lot of girlfriends. They're like, I've really committed to getting 10,000 steps, amazing. But let's say you decide today, Tuesday, I'm getting 10,000 steps. And then let's say tomorrow it starts raining. Let's say then you're like, well, I'll just do my treadmill. You get on your treadmill, broken. Okay? This is a little dramatic, but you stay with me, and then let's say you your shoelace breaks. You're like, maybe I'll just walk in the rain. Maybe there's a break in the rain. And let's say your shoelace breaks. Most people will just decide to wait. Today's not a good day to do this. I'm gonna get my 10,000 steps tomorrow. But then you know how it is. You'll oftentimes it rains for three days in a row, and so then that 10,000 step decision has now been put off, and now it's been put off, off, off, and sometimes you never start. But what if you decided to walk in the rain? What if you decided that it was at the end of your day and you were just going to walk in the rain and then you were going to going to shower and wash your hair and everything. It was going to be no problem. What if you decided that you wouldn't die walking in the rain? What if you decided that you could go drive and get a new shoe lace at Big Five or dicks? Or what if you decided you could actually take one, a shoelace from another pair of shoes, or you can steal a pair from your partner of shoelaces, take them out of their shoes. Maybe they're like, they never wear this. I'm just taking these shoelaces. Or your kids shoes. God knows they've got tons of shoes and shoelaces. Or what if you decided you know what I've been meaning to join the gym. This is a sign. Now is the perfect time I'm joining the gym. Let's fucking go the energy that you would create by any one of these empowered decisions would change you. So it wouldn't just be you got your 10,000 steps in the moment. It would change you in terms of your self concept. It would change what you believe about yourself. It would change it would start to change some neural pathways in your brain by doing something that you in the past have not done. So in a way, it would actually be quite amazing if it was harder for you to do what you said you were going to do. What I mean is it would actually be amazing that you decided to start walking 10,000 steps, and there was a challenge put in your way, because you would learn so much more, you would grow so much more, you would get so much more resilient and tougher. This is how I like to look at the holiday season. It is, really is a master class in let's fucking go. There's going to be more challenges, and you are going to grow even more because of those challenges. It is possible for you to lose 15 pounds without dieting by January. It's totally possible. And the reason I highly suggest this for you is because of how it is going to change you. I also suggest it because of how much fun it could be to accomplish it. That doesn't mean it's going to be fun at every moment. There's going to be hard times, there's going to be difficult times you're going to have to go through. But I love thinking of weight loss as the ultimate, amazing fun, loving experience if you do it in a way that's not a diet. I had a few people say. I've never heard anyone talk about losing weight is fun, but I say, Why not tell the story and have it feel fun? Why not have doing something challenging be fun and exciting and also loving and being a gift to yourself? In fact, don't buy yourself a Christmas gift. Do. This for yourself, or a Hanukkah gift, or whatever gift it is that you buy yourself, give yourself this gift, this would be the ultimate gift to give yourself. And you're going to need to think differently this holiday season. You're going to need to eat differently. You're going to need to move differently. You're going to need to feel more discomfort than you have felt in the past over the holiday season. You're going to have to support yourself differently. You're going to have to learn to understand yourself differently. But all of those things are going to up level you in a way that any gift you could possibly buy yourself way better than any gift you could possibly buy yourself way better than any diet you could go on to fit into a dress for Christmas Eve or for New Year's Eve. So I have two invitations for you. First is the webinar. Definitely sign up. There is a link in the show notes, a link at modern body, modern life.com, it's a no brainer. It's going to be anywhere between an hour and an hour and a half long. It is free. I'm going to be teaching live. This is a brand new webinar. I'm going to be teaching live over zoom. I also invite you to schedule a consultation with me. I'm currently accepting new clients to work with me privately. So if you think that that support is what you need, if you love the podcast and you've been thinking about reaching out to me, now is a great time to do this work. I'd love to support you in losing 15 pounds by January. So fun. Have a great Tuesday for information on how we can work together. Head to modern body, modern life, calm to schedule a consultation with me. I'm currently coaching women privately, and I offer group coaching programs. You.