33 - Is Your Comfort Zone Actually Comfortable?

In today’s episode, Courtney builds on last week’s tough-love message (“Enough is Enough”) and dives into a powerful mindset shift: most of us aren’t actually comfortable in our comfort zone, we’re just familiar with it.

She explores why we stay stuck in places that don’t feel good, how “fine” becomes the new normal, and why one small act of courage can lead to a life that feels far more spacious, supported, and genuinely comfortable.

This short, impactful episode will leave you rethinking the way you define comfort and motivate you to take the small steps that build resilience, confidence, and a life you actually feel good in.

In This Episode, You’ll Learn:

• Why the “comfort zone” often isn’t comfortable at all — it’s just predictable
• How staying where you are tricks you into believing you’re “fine”
• How building resilience works the same way as training a muscle
• Why doing hard things (even tiny ones) expands your capacity in every area of life

Links:

• Intuitive Eating Masterclass — December 2nd
  A live 90-minute class to help you trust your body, ditch food rules, and reconnect with your intuition. 
• Connect with Courtney on Instagram: @healthywithcourtneyy

If You Enjoyed This Episode…

Please subscribe, leave a rating or review, and share with a friend who might need a little encouragement to break out of their “comfortable” but not-so-comfortable patterns. It helps this podcast reach the women who need these messages most.

Transcript

0:00

Welcome to the Nourished Living Podcast, where we go beyond diets and quick fixes, and reconnect with what it really means to feel good in your body. I am Courtney Podany, nutritional therapist, personal trainer, energy worker, type one diabetic, and mom here to guide you toward health that feels simple, sustainable, and aligned. Each episode will explore how to nourish your body. Balance your energy and strengthen your intuition so you can thrive and actually understand what your body is telling you. So grab your favorite drink. Take a deep breath, and let's jump into your new nourished life. welcome back to the Nourished Living Podcast. I am your host, Courtney Podany. Today I am building on what we talked about last week, which was a little bit of a tough love episode, but since then I have had this huge. Realization or epiphany and it needs to be talked about. If you have not listened to episode 32, which was titled Enough is Enough, go do that real quick, then come back to this one. 32 was a short episode, and this one will be short and sweet as well, so you have time to go back and listen real quick. But before we dive in, I would like to invite you to my live intuitive Eating masterclass that will be taking place on Tuesday, December 2nd. If you are exhausted from second guessing what you should or shouldn't be eating, if you are tired of trying to follow a million rules from a diet and still don't feel good, then this is your sign. In 90 minutes, I will teach you how to trust your body again, how to stop obsessing over food. And how to finally feel confident in what, when, and how you eat all without dieting. If you'd like a healthier relationship with food and a calmer relationship with yourself, this class is your next step. So you can sign up through the link in the show notes. I would love to have you there. It's gonna be amazing. I'm going to lead you through a meditation that will awaken your intuition so you'll be set up with all the tools on. Understanding what your body is telling you and actually trusting that intuition because these diets that we follow and the rules that they set forth are really disconnecting us from our bodies. So the whole point of this class is to reconnect you with your body because nothing can replace your inner wisdom. Okay, so let's get into today's episode. We talk about comfort zones a lot. Am I right? But I want to challenge something. Are you actually comfortable in your comfort zone or is it simply familiar? Because for most people, the comfort zone isn't actually comfortable. It just happens to be predictable. And predictable can feel safe, but it doesn't necessarily mean it feels good, but that is what we are telling ourselves. Think about it like this. If you walked into work tomorrow and were handed an unexpected, you know, a hundred K per year raise, would you feel less comfortable? No. You would feel supported. You would feel spacious. You would feel at ease, you would feel way more comfortable, but the act of asking for that raise. The part that actually gets you to being more comfortable, feels uncomfortable, so you decide to stay where you are. Trying to convince yourself that you are fine. The same thing happens with your health. Maybe you've lived with knee pain for so long, you've just convinced yourself that it's normal. But maybe taking steps to begin working out to lose a little weight would actually completely eliminate that knee pain. Wouldn't you physically be way more comfortable there actually not even just physically, mentally as well, or maybe you've lived with constant bloating and have just accepted it as your baseline. Well, this is not normal. It might be common, but it is absolutely a sign from your body that something is off. Something needs to be taken care of, and it could be something as simple as you're eating your food too quickly and you just need to slow down so you're not ingesting so much air when you eat. However, this is what many people call their comfort zone. But nothing about any of this actually feels comfortable, and this is where resilience comes in, something that I've mentioned prior. Just like lifting weights, builds physical resilience, doing things that scare you, builds emotional and mental resilience every time you step outside your comfort zone. Even just the tiniest bit. You train your nervous system to expand, to be able to handle more, and to trust that you are capable of so much. The reps you put in at the gym make you stronger and the reps you put in challenging yourself in life make you stronger too. The more you practice doing the things that feel uncomfortable. Like the workout that you didn't want to do, the healthy habit you've been avoiding, or the boundaries you've never set, the more equipped you become to handle anything that life can throw your way. So if losing 20 pounds could eliminate your knee pain, if slowing down during meals could resolve your bloating. Wouldn't that be more comfortable than where you are now? Your comfort zone isn't the place that feels good. It's the place that feels familiar. Real comfort is built through resilience, through tiny acts of courage, through choosing even one small action that shifts. Your life forward today, I want you to ask yourself or maybe journal on it if that feels better. Where have you accepted comfortable where you aren't actually comfortable? What would more comfort look like and what is one step, just one step? That you can do today to start building the resilience that leads you to the life that you actually want. You don't need to be fine anymore. When there's good, there's great, there's incredible out there and available for you. Whenever I hear the word fine, I think about the movie, the Italian job, because they said that fine actually stood for, freaked out, insecure, neurotic, and emotional. So let's get out of that fine area. There's better options and you deserve a comfort zone that actually feels comfortable. And you are absolutely capable of creating it. Okay, so we've kind of gotten off of the nutrition path for a little bit, but you know, mindset is good for our overall health as well. So I hope you've enjoyed the shift. If you have, please. Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast and leave a review. It helps me get in front of the right people and the people that need to hear this message. So I truly appreciate it and I appreciate all of you. I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving with your friends and family and eat some good food and don't feel bad about it the next day. Until next time, stay nourished. Thanks for hanging out with me today and tuning into the Nourished Living Podcast. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and found something you can start implementing right away to kickstart your nourished transformation. If you loved this episode, don't forget to subscribe, leave a review, or share it with someone who could benefit from these insights. You can also connect with me over on Instagram at Nourished Living for more resources and support. Until next time, stay nourished.