Stop "All or Nothing" Behavior to Reach Your Health Goals

In this episode of Modern Body, Modern Life, I’m talking about something that held me back for years — and keeps so many women stuck: all-or-nothing thinking.

If you’ve ever felt like you’re either on or off, good or bad, perfect or failing when it comes to your eating, workouts, or health habits — this episode is for you. I share how I broke free from that exhausting cycle and how you can too.

I’ll walk you through why perfectionism and diet culture have trained us to believe that being “all in” is the only way to see results — and why that couldn’t be further from the truth. You’ll hear real examples from my own journey and from clients who’ve found peace and freedom by focusing on progress, not perfection.

💬 What you will learn

• How the all-or-nothing mindset sneaks into our thinking
• Why perfectionism feels productive — but really keeps us stuck
• The mindset that helps my clients lose weight and think about food less

🌟 My Big Takeaways

• Trying to be perfect is a big part of the problem.
• You can become the healthiest version of myself without being perfect.
• Dessert tastes better when it’s not served with a side of shame.
• Choosing my discomfort on purpose — that’s where the growth happens.

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 104 stop all or nothing, behavior to reach your health goals, thinking and behaving in a way that is very all or nothing is so common. I know for myself, I used to be this way, and for many of my clients, they feel this way, that like they have to either be fully all in or they're all out. And so I can't wait to dive into this podcast, because that type of thinking and behaving is really possibly prohibiting you from reaching your health goals, God knows it is prohibiting you from finding more peace and confidence and thinking about food in your health less. And that's what we want at the end of our health goals, we want to just not think about it so much anymore. We want to just be a person who lives better and not thinking about it so much so this is going to be a really powerful podcast for you, if you resonate with that, with you, if you resonate with the title of this podcast, stop all or nothing behavior. But first I want to read a beautiful testimonial I just received. It's a Google review I just received by one of my clients who she and I just completed working together. I care about her so much, and I'm going to read it to you, because I just think it is so powerful. So she said, at 74 I believed I was just stuck with an extra 10 to 15 pounds of weight, despite being active and eating fairly well, fortunately, I found Courtney and her amazing program, and learned to challenge that kind of thinking with compassion and wisdom. She is giving me strategies, tools and an improved mindset. The results are steady weight loss, 13 pounds so far, and improved energy. And she could have gone on, I told her, keep it short, don't you don't have to go too long. But there are so many other results she has had in her life by giving herself the gift of going all in on herself, without being all or nothing, without going on a diet. I am so grateful to you. You know who you are, who gave me this beautiful testimonial. I'm so grateful to you. And I think over the next few weeks, I'll read a few more testimonials. I haven't been reading any testimonials lately, so I just wanted to let you hear someone else's experience doing this work. So let's dive into the podcast. The problem I see with so many people is that they are all or nothing. They're either on or they're off. They're either like hot or they're cold. They're either being good or being naughty, all or nothing. The reason I love giving you a whole bunch of different ways of saying it is because my clients say it in different ways. I have some clients that say I'm either doing really well or I'm being naughty, or I'm being good or being bad, or I'm hot or cold, or I'm either all in or all out. So do you identify? Do you resonate with that and what? How do you speak to it. It's the same thing, all or nothing. Behavior can be said so many different ways. And so it's classically the way we think of it. Is doing good or doing and I say this in quotes, doing good or doing bad, eating good or eating bad, either working out good or not working out, which is bad. And I think one of the classic, or I guess I'll give you a few classic examples, is is doing good. And every time I say good and bad, imagine I'm saying that in like quotation marks, right? Doing good all week, and then the weekend comes, and then you're doing bad, or you're on all week, and then the weekend comes and you're off. Another way to think about is like, good meals or cheat meals. I'm never a fan of cheat meals. I don't even like that when I say I'm never a fan of cheat meals, I don't like the term cheat meals. There's nothing wrong with eating french fries. There's nothing wrong with having a big roast beef sandwich, you know, with horseradish on it. There's nothing wrong with eating and indulging and having some of your favorite foods. It's not a cheat, because when we think about it that way, when we think about it cheating, what we're saying is you shouldn't be having this you're doing bad. You're acting bad, and then, really at a subconscious. Level, you are bad. You're making a bad choice. And sometimes this can be a little bit hard to understand, because you've heard me so many times on this podcast saying you need to be really radically honest with yourself about your behaviors, about what you're doing. But we can be radically honest with ourselves, and we can get to a point where we say, tonight, I want to make cookies and I want to have a few. There's nothing wrong with it. It's not a cheat night. I'm not cheating anybody. I'm just having a few cookies. I'm not doing it because I've been I've earned it by being so good. I'm just trying to do better. And every once a week, having cookies is actually better than I used to do. This is one of the things I went through many years ago, is I was eating dessert most nights. I was baking cookies a few times a week, and it was always Cookies, cookies, cookies. It was how I was emotionally eating. But now it's to the point where sometimes I bake cookies and I have them just because I want them. And I now know that I can be the weight I want to be. I can have a few cookies without having to have a bunch of cookies, and it's just so much more peaceful. I'm not all or nothing. I'm just living my peaceful life. Another way this kind of shows up is if you're the type of person where you're like, dialed in when you're at home. So when you're at home, you eat really well, but then whenever you socialize, you over indulge and you feel like, Oh, if I could just stay home. I had one client tell me, one time for the for our time together, I'm just not going to go out. I'm not going to eat out at restaurants. Like, Ooh, no, no, no, no. That's not what we need to do. We need to get you eating better at restaurants. We need to get you eating better when you socialize. We need to get you believing that you can go to a girls night and actually do better than you used to do. It doesn't have to be so all or nothing. Here's another way. This kind of shows up dieting two weeks before a vacation, and then once you get on that vacation, permission granted to, like, eat whatever you want, and then dieting when you get back home if we really think about it, even if this is something you've done, this is a very stressful and mean way to think about living your life. What is the subconscious messaging here? You're either doing good or you're doing bad, and what that means is you're either good or you're bad, right? You're if you do really good before your vacation, you can be naughty or bad when you're on vacation, because then you're going to do good again when you get home. It also lets us know there's either good or bad food, but food is neutral. You get to decide what you want to eat and what you don't want to eat. And of course, there's food that serves us better than other food, but it's not inherently bad. When we're in the all or nothing, thinking and behaving. There's also a subconscious message that we're either having fun or we're not having fun. It's like when we are totally restricting ourselves. We're not having fun, we're locked in, we're committed, but we're not having fun. And then when we're like, all of a sudden, allowing ourselves to have food, then we're having fun, right? We're like, Oh, this is, this is what I really want to get to having fun. And when you think about what the message is behind this, you can see why people are all or none. If you think to yourself that, like, if you're going to reach your goals, you can't have any fun. You have to be dialed in. You can't have any sugar, you can't have any alcohol, you have to be locked in. That's not fun. You can see why. After a while, you're like, I really want to have fun. I'm tired of doing this. I just want to enjoy my life, all or nothing. Behavior comes from all or nothing thinking. It really is an error in our thinking I have to be perfect to get the results I want. And if this is true, if we really believe that, if we have to be perfect to get the results we want, the problem with that is when life goes wrong, and I'm not being perfect, I'm not going to be able to get the results I want. For many people, this all or nothing, behavior really is only sustainable if their life is going really, really well. They don't have the mindset tools to be able to have something go wrong and still be able to eat well, because they only know what it's like to be absolutely perfect, and they and then when all of a sudden, emotions get high or things happen in their life, they don't have the skills to be able to still eat and move in a way that gets them to their goals, Instead of thinking you have to be perfect in order to get the results you want, here's a new thought for you to consider, I can become the healthiest version of myself without being perfect. Here's a few thoughts for you to consider, trying to be perfect is actually part of the problem I want you. See the truth in that without all or nothing behavior, I'm able to just focus on being better. I can become the woman that up levels her whole lifestyle and reaches her goals without perfection. So when we think of all or nothing behavior, what we really are saying is we have to be perfect. And so why do we do this? Why? Why do we feel like we're always caught up in this diet mentality, all or nothing, perfection type of behavior and thinking and behavior? So there's a bunch of reasons I'm going to give you. The first one is really, we really have learned this from diet culture. It's like the only option that has ever been presented to us, except for that. Now you have this podcast, so here's a second option for you. But it's not only what we have learned in diet culture, it's the whole idea of you want to lose weight, cut out all flour, sugar and alcohol, until you've lost the weight, and then just don't go back. Which we we know we're intelligent women, we know that that's a recipe for a disaster, but it's the only option that's being presented to us. It's also often how we've seen adults in our life ahead of us doing this there, I have so many clients that have told them that they went on diets their parents put them on diets when they were younger, or their parents put them on a restricted food plan, or they didn't call it a diet, of course, a food plan from when they were younger. And so the messaging that we received, either from culture or from parents or people around you, maybe an older sibling, and that people actually saw temporary success from, was you can reach your goals if you totally restrict your food, or if you totally work out like a maniac. And the problem is, is we saw that people actually got results from that until they didn't. But here's the thing, here's the kicker, when people got results, they lost the weight and then they started slowly gaining the weight back. No one ever says, oh, it's the diet's problem, it's the methodologies problem, it's the strategy problem. They would look at the people and say, it's their problem. They couldn't do it. And people look at themselves that way, I couldn't do it. I always give up. I started eating those foods on me. Of foods again, shame on me. Shame on me. Shame on me. It's so interesting that we blame ourselves when really it's the strategy that's at fault. It's the idea and the strategy, the idea that being perfect for a short amount of time is going to change you, that it's going to be the answer when we are so intelligent, if we really look at the idea of doing that all or nothing behavior, we really realize, of course, that's not going to work. And then we do it over and over and over again through our life. And instead of looking going, huh, diets really don't make any sense, we look at ourselves and say, I always give up. It's so sad. And so I hope that you hear this and go, you're right. It's not a me problem. It's the strategy problem, and it's also the thinking problem. Thinking that this is going to work is a little bit silly. And now here's another reason why we get caught up in all or none, thinking and behaving. And this is going, some of you are going to be like, Oh my God, that's totally me. That's totally me, and some of you might not, but I know that I have a few clients that are very much this way. Some of you love a goal. You feel externally motivated if there's a program or a plan or an start and stop, end date, and like the feeling of going all in on something, you're very goal oriented, and this type of strategy can help you in all has helped you in all areas of your life. Now, there is nothing wrong with this. I'm very much like this as well. Like, I love a goal, I love a program, I love a 30 day to this to that. Yes, amazing. However, I can't tell you how many times over the years, I told myself I'm not eating dessert for three weeks that's going to be the answer. Or I wasn't going to drink till New Year's that's going to be the answer. Or starting January one, I'm giving up this and that that's going to be the answer. This all or nothing, thinking is going to be the answer for me, because I'm goal oriented and I'm all in this can look like like for the month of November. This is what I'm doing, or maybe you're going to track your steps for two weeks now, again, there's nothing wrong with this, but if this is you, I want you to really take a hard look at, does your goal or plan, or, you know, competition with yourself include being really, really all or nothing, or does it include mindset? Does it include radical honesty? Does it include evaluation? Do. Planning and understanding your brain better. So if you're the type of person that loves some kind of goal outside of yourself, can you do this and maybe do it for the first time where it's not all or nothing, where it's just you really doing better than you've done in the past, and maybe even planning for when you go off the goal, when you fail, what are you going to do? Are you going to go all the way to none? Are you going to say, oh my gosh, I was all in but then I failed, and so I'm done. What I would suggest for those of you that are really goal oriented is try to do it, possibly for the first time, where you have a plan of what you're going to do if you do fail. Because oftentimes, if, like, I know for me, when I would say I'm not eating dessert for three weeks, because this is going to solve all the problems. I'm going to lose eight pounds and all the whatever, right when I four days in, when I went off, then I would get the fuck it's and I'd be like, well, I blew that one, and I missed out on such an opportunity to say, Hmm, why did I eat dessert? What can I learn from this? Maybe I need to be a little more kind to myself. Maybe Courtney, I could actually reach my weight loss goals and my health goals by actually instead of just saying, No dessert. Maybe I can just have less dessert or better dessert, or let or more infrequent desserts. Maybe I could do this in a way that seems more doable. So if you are the type of person that loves a goal, loves going all in, loves a challenge, I encourage you to do your next one where you're a little less all or nothing, a little bit more kind to yourself, a little bit more manageable. And How amazing would it be if you could do 30 days, two weeks, whatever it is, and do better than you've ever done before, by doing better and not giving up because you told yourself you were going to go all in and then you didn't. Another reason we get caught up with all or none behavior is because we believe that that's the way to faster results. It's like this frantic energy of, if I'm really good, and if I go all in and I don't do anything bad, my results are going to come faster. Sometimes I hear clients talking about wanting a jump start, a kick start. They just, they want to see results quick because they know that then they're they're going to get out of any of the short term pain from giving up any food, and they're going to jump into that pleasure of getting some weight loss under their belt. We as a culture are a little obsessed with fast results. We see this in every company that is trying to sell something. It's all fast results, fast results. And we see this with Amazon, you're going to order something, and you might get it tomorrow. Amazing, amazing. And I love me some fast results. But in our attempt at getting fast results, we are in a cycle of not really getting the results we want, because we go all in, and then we can't handle it anymore, and then we're all out, and we are living in the same body and same life year after year. So I'm going to suggest you give yourself a little bit more time to do it right, as opposed to going all in until you can't handle it all in anymore, and then going out. And I'm going to talk about this more in a minute, of how to actually do better than going all in and all out. I'm going to give you some things to think about. I want to suggest to you calm down a little bit and you give yourself a chance to do this the right way, and give yourself a little bit more time. And can it be okay that the results are going to be a little bit slower, but more permanent. I like to think of it this way, okay, starting today, when this podcast comes out, you can either go be all or all or none behavior, and you can between now and the next six months. You can start and stop and two steps forward, three steps back. You can shame yourself and be frustrated all in I'm always all that for the next six months. Or you can decide, You know what, I'm going to focus on doing, the steps Courtney tells me at the end of this podcast, I'm going to give you those, and I am going to focus on taking a little bit longer and doing it right, and then at the end of six months, you've lost some weight that you want to lose. You've built some skills. You've learned how to manage your mind, you've learned how to process emotions and change your emotions, and you've learned how to slow it down enough that you're doing it right from a peaceful and loving and connected way that would be so much better for you than losing five pounds, gaining seven pounds back, and then then going, going all in, in January, and then losing 15 and then going, it just, it's so chaotic. The reason we behave in this all or nothing way is we want to see fast. Your results. And in our attempt at wanting things fast, we're not really seeing the results that we want. And then we also carry subconscious shame if we are having the bad foods, and I say this, quote, unquote, if we're if we're either all or none, and we're in that moment of None, right? We're like, oh, I don't want to do this anymore. I just want to live my life right? There is a subconscious shame for having dessert, for having a cocktail, or any behavior associated with not being good. You've told yourself so many times that you should not be eating dessert, and then when you finally give yourself permission to eat dessert, and maybe it's it's doing better. Maybe you're eating smaller dessert, you're eating less dessert, you're being mindful, but there is this subconscious message that you're being bad, and then you feel like a failure. I went through this, and I see my clients going through this when I'm getting them to eat better and not eating perfect. Sometimes they feel like, even as I'm eating dessert, there's a part of me that thinks, oh my god, I shouldn't be doing this. And I'm like, I hear you, and I coach them around that I help them to see that they need to just give themselves time, buy into the process, and then they start losing weight. And they're like, I can't believe this is happening for the first time ever like my client, I told you at the beginning of this podcast, I read her, her Google review, she was like, Okay, we're gonna do this without dieting. Yes, you can actually have dessert. You can have a scone, or you can have whatever these things. And then when I see my clients actually losing weight in a sustainable way, it's kind of mind blowing, but it's something to be on the lookout for. Do you carry a subconscious shame whenever you're eating dessert or a cocktail or something like that, things that you used to tell yourself that you when you were doing you were all out, you shouldn't be having that. If you were being good, you wouldn't be eating that. If you were on a diet. If you really believed in your goals, you wouldn't be doing that. So interesting. To uncover those beliefs, let me tell you something that's amazing is eating dessert without those shaming subconscious beliefs. Dessert tastes so much better when you're at your goal weight, or in the process of getting to your goal weight, losing weight in a sustainable way, and you're eating a brownie sundae not backed with a side of shame. Oh my god, it's so much better. And for so many of my clients, they don't even realize that they've been having shame every time they eat this way. And then they start going, Oh yeah, I was eating the other day, and I had to coach myself out of the shame and just enjoy it, because in the past, anytime they ate a cupcake or had a glass of wine, they told themselves they weren't, quote, unquote, doing it right. So what is the real goal? What is the destination you truly want out of your body and your health and your life? I want you to if you can pause this podcast and answer that question for yourself, I think that you might have some some different ideas that I might have, I present you with what I think you might want, but you might have some different ideas, and it's really important to know your why and your why can include the fact that you want to look great in your clothes, that you want to end the year feeling empowered, all that. But I think that the real goal is to get to a place where we have freedom from thinking about all of it. I had one of my clients this week say to me, I've heard you say that when I start losing weight in a sustainable way, that I'm actually going to start thinking about food less, and that it's going to open space in my life to do other things, and that has actually happened, and it's blowing my mind. What is the real reason that you really have this goal of the way you want to look and feel? It's because you don't want to be thinking about it all the time. What we want is to feel good. What we want is to look in the mirror and be proud of ourselves, not obsess be at the weight and health we want to be. And no, and I've never had a client that has said to me, I want to be perfect. They've all said I want to know that I don't have to be perfect and I can still feel good about myself. And the overall consensus for me and my clients, is we want to be done with this, knowing that we're going to still have to coach ourselves, we're going to still mess up and evaluate and we're never going to be done growing, but we're going to be done with the drama of the eating and the emotional eating and the feeling not motivated, and going back on our plans and all of the thinking that we do around food and our movement, and if this is the result, the end result that you want, all or nothing, thinking and behaving is not going to get you there. And we know this. We know that you could probably lose 10 pounds. By doing whole 30 for the next 30 days. And then at the end of it, you're going to feel amazing for about a week, and then you're going to slowly start bringing that food back in, and you're going to be telling yourself, oh my god, I said I wasn't gonna eat chocolate. I said I was only gonna have a cheat night on the weekends. Oh my god, oh my god, oh my God. And the stress and the cortisol level, and that's going to even fuel the fire of gaining the weight back, because you would have learned nothing. I believe this all in or all out behavior is mentally exhausting. And if we think about the brain and everything I've taught you on the podcast about the brain, we can think of all or nothing as the prefrontal cortex and the primitive brain at play with each other. When we're all in, we're like, the prefrontal cortex is like, yes, we're taking this seriously. Let's go and then all of a sudden, our primitive brain steps in and says, Oh, my God, life is too short. What are people going to think if you don't have a cocktail, you're making people feel insecure because you've lost some weight, and if you don't have a brownie, they're going to think you're stuck up. Right? We can see what happens is why we go all in and then why we go all out. It's literally the missed mismanagement of our minds. What I wanted for myself and what I want for you, and what I want for my clients, is I want you to do better consistently. I want you to upgrade your lifestyle consistently. And the cool thing is, is you will find is when you start doing this, you're going to keep growing and keep growing and growing, not from a place of, oh my gosh, I'm not good at this. I need more information. But from a place of, Oh, my God, I'm getting really good at this now what's possible for me. And so when I say to you, I want you to do better consistently. Your better today is going to be different than it is from six months from now, today, you're going to say, You know what, I'm going to focus on my snacking, or I'm going to focus on my eating at night, and then in six months, you're going to be like, Okay, that's amazing. I'm really feeling in control. Now I'm going to focus on lifting weights. Now I'm going to focus on doing yoga. Now I'm going to focus on I'm going to stack on to this new, better way of living. So what is the solution, how do you get out of all or nothing, thinking and behaving? There's going to be a few things. Strap in first, recognizing that this is something you do, and you're probably already there, if you're listening, if you even resonated with the title of this podcast, and you're still with me, you're like, I totally do this. So many people do. So you're already there. You're recognizing this is something that you do. I hope that I have sold you on the fact that it is not helping you. It is actually hurting you. But can you uncover the thoughts that are leading to all of this? Nothing, all or nothing? Behavior? What are the thoughts? Are you starting the morning like I used to? Are you starting the morning thinking, we have to be perfect. Let's not eat anything that includes flour, sugar, chocolate. We're going to eat perfectly all day. Is that a thought error in your head, and then all of a sudden, at four o'clock? Do you think you know what? God, we ate so good all day. So I really didn't get very many calories in. I better just eat. I can eat more food because permission granted, because I didn't eat very much throughout the day. Is that the thought that's a problem recognizing your thoughts. And this is the power of coaching. Sometimes it's hard to see our own limiting thoughts. And this is what I do for my clients. I'll say, Why do you think that happened? Usually they always say, I don't know. And I'm like, let's if we can't say, I don't know, what do we say? What do we think? And we dive into their brain and we come up with the limiting thoughts that are affecting them in a negative way. So recognizing this is something you do, and uncovering the thoughts that are leading to this all or nothing behavior and these thoughts are very habitual, just like the way we brush our teeth, just like the way we floss or don't floss, whatever we have thoughts that are very habitual as well, and you need to be able to recognize these thoughts and then do the work to change those thoughts, and then that will change your behavior. That's why I gave you some of my thoughts. I wanted you to think on purpose about doing better consistently. So what is another solution that you need doing better than you've been doing consistently, not being perfect, giving yourself more time to do it right. We are in such a rush, and being in such a rush, we're not getting the results we want. What would happen if you slowed down and said, I'm doing it right this time, this is not working for me. It hasn't worked for me, and this time, I'm going to use mindset, and I'm going to do it right by just doing better and then being willing to be radically honest with yourself, I'm doing better. Okay? It's been two weeks of doing better. How can I do even better? What is another solution? Understanding yourself at a deeper level, you have to understand why you do what you do, and for everyone, it's different. Some of it was maybe what you were raised with. Some of it was the only things you ever learned as a child. This is how we celebrate the holidays, this is how we lose weight, this is how we grieve. This is how we celebrate. We have been taught how to function in the world. We have been taught our lifestyle. It's time to learn a new lifestyle, but you need to understand why you do what you do before then you can change to how you want to start living. You must be able to make a plan with your prefrontal cortex and evaluate yourself at the end of the day, from love, from Radical Honesty, from Curiosity, from from a viewpoint of not all or nothing, but just doing better. And you must choose your discomfort on purpose, recognizing that you are always going to be in some level of discomfort. Discomfort is part of being human, and let me tell you what. Most people walking around the Earth, most people are living in the discomfort of not being in the body and life they want to be in. They don't know this, but that's what it is. They are uncomfortable because they are not living in the body they want to be in. They're possibly physically not comfortable in the body they want to be in. They're certainly not living up to what they know they're capable of that is uncomfortable. They're comfortable in the moment because they're not moving their body like they know they're capable of. They're eating foods that they know are not helping them. They're not managing their emotions. They're not either processing their emotions or changing their emotions, which is totally possible if you learn how to do so, though, that is the discomfort most people are walking around in. But there's another option. There's the option of discomfort on purpose, of sitting there in the moment and saying, I'm having half a brownie, and then I'm going to want more, but I'm going to sit and want more and have it be okay. That's uncomfortable, I'll tell you. The beautiful thing is that discomfort gets more comfortable. The other kind of discomfort does not get more comfortable when you are eating whatever you want in the moment, drinking whatever you want in the moment, not moving your body and not living in a way that you're proud of that does not get more comfortable. It actually usually gets worse, because you gain your continue to gain weight, you continue getting your health even worse. You continue to get older and and in create more and more evidence that you are not the woman that is able to live the way she wants to live. But if you imagine yourself sitting in the moment and having one cocktail when you normally have three, and sitting there wanting another one, but saying, You know what, we're doing this, and this is uncomfortable, but I'm going to do this for my future self, that discomfort gets more comfortable because it gets to a point where, then when you're sitting there and you've been doing this work for a while, someone will say, Oh my gosh, why aren't you having another drink? Lighten up. Just live life to the fullest. You're going to be like, it's okay that they think that it's okay that they have different opinions of me and how I should live my life, that gets easier, and so your life overall gets more comfortable, because then you feel more proud. You up, level yourself. You up, level your lifestyle, your habits, you start getting really proud of yourself. You build resilience, and you increase your capacity and you blow your damn mind, there will be discomfort either way. The solution to all or nothing behavior, one of the solutions, is choosing your discomfort on purpose. This is the work I do with my clients. To me, all or nothing became no longer acceptable, because I knew it was keeping me from living the body and life I wanted to live. This whole in the morning, I'm going to do it perfectly, and then in the evening, screw it, and then going to bed. Frustrated. It got to a point where I was no longer wanting to live as that person. It didn't feel good for me to be that woman. And so let me give you a little like vision of where I am now, and I'm always growing and I'm always going to my own next level, but right now, I feel really in control. 95% of the time I'm not perfect. There's going to be times when I emotionally eat, and when I do, I'm usually extremely aware of it, that I'm doing it, and I'm like, Oh, love what's going on with you. And I take it as a moment to really understand myself at a deeper level. It doesn't affect my weight. I don't even really weigh myself anymore, because it just it's not on my. Mind. In fact, every once in a while, if I'm trying to gain muscle, I will put a sticky note on my mirror and say, weigh yourself, because I will forget, because it's not even on my mind. I ended up doing one of those. Is it called, like a DEXA scanner? I don't know. It was a there's different types of things where you can test your muscle to fat to bone. I did one of those because I'm like, I keep forgetting to weigh myself, and I want to be able to at the beginning of December, see, have I been able to put on muscle? How are we doing? But I trust myself to eat. Well, 95% of the time, I trust myself to be in a negative emotion and not turn to food because of it. And what I do with that negative emotion is I either process it. This is what I teach in my program, how to actually feel negative emotion and process through it, which we were never taught how to do. This should be taught in the school system. Maybe someday I'll do this, how to process that emotion or get out of that emotion by identifying the thoughts and thinking. Do I really want to be frustrated right now? Do I want to be stressed right now? Is there a way to think differently about this? I go on vacation, and I understand what the vacation is really about, and I trust myself to eat well, I enjoy dessert more than I ever have in my whole life, because I'm not eating dessert with a side of shame. My husband's choices are irrelevant to mine. That's a big one. I should do a whole podcast on this, because this is a hard one for a lot of people. My husband can be sitting next to me on the couch and eating dessert, and I don't eat it, and now I don't have to be all or none if I want to eat it. I can eat it. But a lot of times, his choices are different than mine. The man can have a whole nother meal at 930 at night, and he looks like a fucking supermodel. I don't know. I think men are just different. I can't do that. He can sleep well. I can't sleep well eating that late at night. So I can choose to not eat what he's eating. And I can either choose to have a bite. I can choose to have some of it, or I can choose to have none of it, and I feel good about all of it. I understand my brain and the different areas of my brain that try to influence my behavior. I go throughout my day, and I understand when someone says something to me, when it triggers me. I know why it triggers me. I know why I might have a tendency to overeat, if something's going on in my life that is a little bit stressful, and I prepare for that, and I take care of myself, and I know how to coach myself. I get coaching from my coach and my friends who are coaches when I know that I'm kind of struggling, and I need someone to help me identify my own limiting beliefs, and I know how to create a plan and stick to it 95% of the time. I now know that I love dessert, and if I say I can't have dessert anymore, Courtney, you can't have dessert anymore. Do whatever that. I know that I'm going to lose my mind. I know that I'll go a few days, and then I'm going to be using willpower, and I'm going to eventually give in, and I know that if I do give in, I'm going to go a little bit crazy. I'm going to have five cookies. So for me, I know Courtney, I love dessert, so I'm going to dessert every other night, and I'm going to and I can do it, and I can be the weight I want to be, and be the health I want to be. But I think that the most powerful thing that I have created in my own body and life is the understanding that it's not about the food that my life at the end of my life, when I look back and I think about Halloween and I think about Thanksgiving, and I think about my business and my clients and and all the fun nights I watched TV with my husband, none of it was about the food. It's about the relationships. It's about feeling good in my body and feeling proud of myself and living life to the fullest. Is not about eating sugar, joining the party, is not about having drinks. It's about being the woman I want to be and being able to make a decision and showing up for that decision, and all or nothing behavior, all or nothing thinking is not going to get us there. I hope you have a great Tuesday for information on how we can work together. Head to modern body, modern life.com. To schedule a consultation with me. I'm currently coaching women privately, and I offer group coaching programs. I.