The Truth About My Weight Loss

In this episode, I’m getting real about my entire weight loss journey—from the messy beginnings and childhood struggles to losing 100 pounds and keeping it off. I share what I learned about mindset, emotional eating, and why ditching the “diet mentality” changed everything. 

We’ll talk GLP-1s, hormones, food sensitivities, motherhood, and finding balance without restriction. If you’ve ever felt stuck, overwhelmed, or like you’ve tried everything, this one’s for you.

Plus, a little “closet catch-up” at the start, because yes… I really do record these in my closet 😂

Join my weight loss course - The Body Confidence Academy (referenced in podcast)

This is the telehealth clinic I personally use for my hormone journey. Get your first month free when you use my link. 

Replay of my Emotional Eating Masterclass!

All of my FAV products are linked here: Shop My Favs!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

You're listening to Real and Naturalish, the podcast where we evolve and own the glow up in real time. I'm your host, Natasha Pearson. I feel like I need to have a neon sign on my closet door that says like on air or recording or something. Cause I'm not gonna lie, like I kind of like doing this in my closet. I kind of like the confined, cozy space. And now my closet is very like organized and color-coded, and it looks beautiful. And I hung up all of my workout stuff. I got out all of my fall sweaters. It is looking great in here, and we have a really good episode in store for you today. We're actually gonna dive into my weight loss journey. I'm gonna give you all of my thoughts on GLP ones, the bit what I would do differently if I had to start everything over. But we always like to start these episodes out, but we like to start them out with a little like cree, deep stuff banter. I don't know what, I don't know what you want to call it. Just, oh, I forgot closet ketchup. That's what it's called. But before we started recording this episode, we were actually like talking logistics. And one of the things that I was saying to Betty, Betty the Baker, was that I really like it when podcasts, like I feel like a very nosy person. I like it when podcasters or YouTubers, when they share the behind the scenes of everything. Just because I like like I'm nosy, but also if you ever think about starting a podcast, maybe this will help someone. But one of the things we were talking about was how like I my vision for this podcast is I really want the episodes to be in as real time as possible. Meaning, what you hear on Wednesday is what I recorded two days before on Monday. However, I mean, this is new evolved Tasha. I know that that might not always be realistic because life happens, things come up. I was talking to Betty the Baker about making sure that we have kind of a backlog of episodes, but we can stay in real time as possible. And today's episode actually might just be that. I mean, we're talking about my weight loss journey. This can kind of fit in wherever we need it. Oh, and by the way, I don't think I mentioned this. Season one is going to be 10 episodes. That is how we plan this kind of to just launch it, get the hang of things, figure out a format, get a flow going, and pause for Christmas break, and then come back in the new year with season two kind of more evolved, figuring out how we actually want to do that. So I want to just thank you for being here, being flexible. I know we've been like all over the map trying to figure out like what segments do we want to do, what formats do we want to do, and I know I must have, I know myself, so I know I must have said this in episode one. My mantra, this it was like two years ago, and it still sticks with me. Messy action is better than inaction. I knew I just needed to start because if I did not start, I would be planning this forever. So you get the messy version of this podcast. Thank you for being here. We're gonna clean it up season two, but we're still having fun right now. This is actually, let me open up about something because this is something that has been on my mind lately. And if you have advice for me, I would love to hear it. Just because I'm always trying to figure out how to make things work, and I will try new routines and new things, and if it doesn't work, I know I need to adapt. But one thing that has been a big struggle for me lately is my daily calendar and my daily to-do list. Or maybe I just need a dose of reality and need to know that it's like this for everyone. My life is very chaotic, and I am doing different things every single day. Now, this year we're throwing in homeschooling, so every single day looks a little bit different. I mean, two days a week, I'm working out at 5 p.m. One day a week, I'm going to tap class in the middle of the day. There is not a lot of consistency to my schedule, and it is kind of starting to stress me out a little bit. I do not know what I am doing tomorrow until the end of the day today, when I look at everything I have to do for tomorrow and like kind of create a plan for myself. That is just how my life has been recently, and I don't like it. I feel like I'm doing too much. I I want less on my plate, but on the at the same time, like I'm also very ambitious and I get really excited about work and I want to do all of this stuff and I, you know, I want to do all the homeschooling. I'm just kind of in a season right now where I'm going with the flow day by day, not really sitting great with my nervous system. It just feels really chaotic. So I guess my whole point is if you have advice, give it to me. If this is your life too, also let me know that I'm not alone. I would very much appreciate that. But I'm actively working on having more free time, relaxing more. I know that that is like a huge part of mental health and handling stress is actually giving yourself downtime. But I'm realizing that's something that I probably should be more intentional about. And making sure that I do it every day and giving myself those breaks also in the middle of the day, I think that it's so important that you slow down. In fact, you know, we're gonna transition into talking about weight loss in a second. But I coach women and help them lose weight. And I would say one of the most common things that I hear, and I did this myself, is you're so busy during the day that like you don't even think about eating. But then by the time 6 p.m. rolls around and you finally start to slow down, you realize like, oh my gosh, I'm insanely hungry. I mean, have you ever had that moment where literally like you don't realize it until you take that first bite of food and you're like, oh my gosh, I am starving. And then what happens is you end up overeating. And now you're in this really bad cycle with food. You are overeating when if you just would have taken some time to slow down during the day, that might not be happening. And I think we all just need to slow down a little bit. But can we all collectively agree to do it together? I think that's the thing. Like, I can decide to slow down, but when I'm sitting there like trying to relax and I see all these people passing me, I'm like, I can't sit here. I think we all need to collectively do it. Can we agree to that? Like, let's just collectively chill every day. All right, let's get into weight loss. I don't think that I have ever shared my entire weight loss story in one place before. I mean, I've shared snippets of my story on Instagram stories, on reels, on YouTube. I've shared them before in the past in some of the groups that I've run, but I don't think there is a single place where I have like the whole story. And you are gonna get that today because my weight loss journey, I mean, it's been I've been struggling with my weight. Like, no, I don't want to say that anymore. I don't struggle with my weight anymore. I think a huge part of why we struggle, and this is one of the biggest lessons I've learned, is mindset. It is your mindset. If you are telling yourself that you struggle losing weight, what you are going to do is your brain is going to look for evidence that you struggle with losing weight. So the first thing you need to do is start rewriting that story. I am no longer someone that struggles with losing weight, but it was a struggle of mine for a very long time. And we're gonna get into that story. So let's let's dive in. This story dates all the way back to I wanna say I was in second grade, but I remember I was having a birthday party at my house, and we used to live on the lake, and it was so much fun. We were all swimming, we were going in the hot tub, and I remember I was so hungry. I don't think I had breakfast that day, and we were about to have birthday cake, and I told my mom that I was hungry, and she told me no. She's like, No, you can't eat anything right now. Like, we're gonna have cake soon. And I didn't know how long that was, but for me, I was genuinely like starving. Like I was so hungry, and so that was the very first time I remember walking into my pantry, closing the door, and eating like five Pop Tarts in private during my birthday party because I was so hungry and I didn't think I was gonna get to eat food. But from my perspective, it was that feeling that I'm not gonna get food, and I think that is all, you know, last week I actually hosted um a workshop on emotional eating, which I'll link that in the show notes. There's a recording if you want it. It was so good. But one of the things we talked about is we have these different parts of our brain, and that primal part of our brain that has not evolved really thinks that, like, if I'm not gonna get it's food, I'm gonna die. Like, our primal brain's job is to keep us alive. And so it makes sense that when we are in these moments where we see food or we feel hungry, or don't even get me started on sugar, there's so many factors at play. But one of those being this part of our brain that we we need to survive, and I need to make sure if I feel hungry, if I have food available, I need to eat to ensure my survival. So, uh for a living, one of the things that I do, I have a company called Body Confidence and I help women lose weight. I have a weight loss program called the Body Confidence Academy. It is step-by-step how I lost a hundred pounds. We have a membership group monthly where we do QAs, um, we have fun challenges, and that's part of what I do for work. And I really love it. And sometimes I get pushback on that because I'm not a trainer and I'm not a nutritionist, and I am not claiming to be. I have done my own independent research on a lot of things, and I also am someone that has lived experience. I have lost a hundred pounds, and I know, like, yes, there are benefits to meeting with a nutritionist. I'm in fact, I've met with a nutritionist myself and gotten advice and have learned a lot of things. But if you have never lost weight for yourself, it is really hard to understand the actual struggle, the internal battle that you go through every single day, the feelings that you have about yourself. And I know I already mentioned this, but my biggest lesson that I have learned through losing weight, through being on this journey for so many years, it's all about your mindset. If you don't think you can do it, you're gonna prove that you can't do it. How you build your confidence, and why I named my company Body Confidence, is you build your confidence by building trust with yourself, proving that you are a person that can show up for yourself. But where it gets hard is following through. How do you show up day after day? How do you do it when life gets hard or you know, a wrench gets thrown in your plans and your whole day's thrown off and now you can't follow your meal plan? How do you handle those situations? How do you deal with your mindset when you step on the scale and you haven't lost weight and you think that it's not working? Because that's not the truth. It's just one data point at one moment in time. It doesn't mean that your hard work is all for nothing. And I have learned that when you can manage your mindset, you can lose the weight. You can be confident while you are losing the weight. It is not something that just magically happens one day you hit your goal weight, and now all of a sudden you have so much confidence. No, like you build your confidence during it, it is part of the process. And I say that all the time to my students is confidence isn't something that just magically appears. In fact, you need confidence in order to lose the weight. It's something that you need first if you want to hit your goal. So um, you know, one thing that's actually interesting about my story is because you get pieces of it, and this isn't why I wanted to have one place where I could share all of the things, because I don't share all the details all the time. I mean, so many different women struggle with different things, and with body confidence, I want to help women solve their problems. I want to help them grow and evolve and create a healthy lifestyle. Yes, I want to help them lose weight, but I want their weight loss to be a byproduct of them changing their life for the better. Because so many other things happen when you lose the weight and when you get healthy. It is not just about a pant size, it is not just about a number on the scale. I mean, you just show up to life differently. And I wish that every woman could experience that. And so a lot of times, like if I'm promoting a different product, I will speak to a very specific part of my story. It doesn't mean all the other things didn't happen. It's just I'm choosing to highlight this, but now you're gonna get the whole, the whole picture because yes, like I did struggle with my hormones, I did struggle with food sensitivities, I struggled with those things simultaneously, and all of the changes that I made had an impact on my ability to be able to lose weight. So it was all of these things together. All right, I'm going back to seventh grade because this is my next memory, and I might have shared this. I think this is the first time I can remember going on a diet. I was doing the Atkins diet because that is what my dad was doing. But I think, you know, I don't really know what the Atkins diet is. At the time, it was just no carbs. All I know is I was eating Caesar salad and bacon. Like that was all I was eating. And then, you know, when I got tired of Caesar salad and bacon, I would then eat a Costco muffin because I thought that was healthy. Like I had no clue what nutrition was. Like I had no good nutrition. I had no idea what that was. But I remember like being on a diet and sitting at the lunch table with my friends, and like they had, you know, their sandwiches and a bag of chips and like apple slices, and I had a Caesar salad and bacon. And I'm like, this is kind of weird. I felt weird. I felt like I was drawing attention to myself, and I didn't want to tell my friends I was on a diet. I didn't want anyone to know that I thought there was something wrong with me, that I thought I needed to lose weight. That was actually something that I kept private for a long time. And I'm not gonna lie, even while I was losing weight, it would make me uncomfortable when people would notice it. Because I didn't want them to think like, oh, well, if you're losing weight and you look great now, you must have thought something was wrong with you and you needed to change. I've never thought there was anything wrong with me. Like I've always loved who I was. Have I always felt at home in my body? No. Have I always taken the best care of myself? No. Okay, so seventh grade when I was on that diet was also around the time that I started puberty and my body started changing. I stopped growing vertically, I started getting boobs. I mean, I think we touched on that in my surgery episode. I had very large boobs in seventh grade and eighth grade. Um, I also started getting hips, and even to this day, I am very curvy. Even at a size four, I think right now my waist is 27 inches and my hips are like 39 or 40 inches. Like I've always just been really curvy. That's my body type. But when I was that young, and I was the only one of my friends going through puberty at the time, the only other girls my age I could compare myself to were the girls in school, and no one looked like me. Everyone was super tiny, super short, super thin, and I just grew faster. And at the time, I thought there was something wrong. All throughout high school, I didn't know how to diet. You know, I knew about like fad diets and stuff. I didn't know what I needed to do, but I was just very aware of it all the time. And I wouldn't even think like, oh, I need to exercise, oh, I need to eat differently. I didn't even know to do that. And my weight was such a complex with me that I would avoid doing things with my friends because I was so insecure. I mean, springtime would roll around and everyone would go to the lake after school, and I would always make up a reason why I couldn't go because I didn't want anyone to see me in a bathing suit. Growing up, like I missed out on a lot of life because I was just so insecure with my body. Then I went to college. I ended up gaining even more weight in college. I was a little bit more active in college though. Um, I was going to school in downtown Seattle and I started doing hot yoga, which I loved. I would do it every single day, so I was getting exercise, but I wasn't really eating great, and I was also in a sorority, so there was like a lot of drinking and a lot of late-night snacking. Like a lot. I would say, like within college through those four years, I probably gained maybe like 30 pounds. And it wasn't until after college that I joined Teach for America. So I moved from Seattle to rural North Carolina. I was teaching high school math at the time. And I remember, you know, we went to Mississippi in the summer for like a training program. Then I moved to North Carolina. This was really my first time away from my family. And I remember I came home for Christmas and we did all the typical Christmas stuff, all the Christmas parties, all the things, and I flew back to North Carolina to start teaching again. And I remember, and again, this was back in the day where we didn't really have Instagram. This is this was in 2011. There was no, I don't remember there being a Facebook app because I was getting email notifications of like, I got an email that someone tagged me in a photo. I opened up my email. I was getting off the plane, like just landed in North Carolina, and I had an like I had like 80 emails. It was not one. It was like, your mom, my mom Kelly, it was like, Kelly tagged you in a photo. Kelly tagged you in a photo. And it was like 80 emails. There were so many of them. And my first thought that went through my head was, I need to get home as fast as possible. I cannot make any stops, and I have to untag myself from these photos. And I remember walking into the house. I did not even take off my shoes. I pulled out my laptop, opened up Facebook, and I just started untag, untag, untag. I wasn't even looking at the pictures. I was just untagging myself. And as I was sitting there, I had this moment where I was just like, this is so sad that I am so insecure with my body and how I look that I just raced home to pull out my laptop while my shoes are still on to untag myself from photos that I don't want other people to see. And I just remember thinking, I don't want to live my life this way. I don't want to be so insecure that I'm worried about that. And then I started like thinking about, you know, my future. Am I going to be so insecure with my body that I am not going to do things with my kids? Like, I don't want to be a mom that sits on the sidelines and just watches my kids at the beach because I don't want to put on a swimsuit. I didn't want to do that. And I had this moment where I realized, like I was saying earlier, fad diets don't work. I know what works. Eating healthy and exercising. It has always worked. And if I actually want to lose the weight, that is what I have to do. It was this moment where I just came to terms with the fact that it is going to be hard, but if I do it, it will work. And it's going to suck. It's not going to be fun. I'm probably not going to enjoy it, but I am committed. My thought to get an exercise was, oh, I'm going to go get like a dance DVD. I got on Amazon, I saw hip hop abs. It was like$10. I'm like, great, I'm going to do that. I'm on a teacher's salary, paying back student loans. Like, I can afford$10. And I did that workout twice a day, every day, for like three months. I still have the whole thing remembered. I have the whole thing memorized. But for me, it was something that I could do. Like it was fun. It wasn't doing push-ups. It wasn't doing burpees. It was dancing. And I I I've always loved dancing. And so I started doing that. I went on YouTube. I looked up how to lose weight. I saw this girl. She said, I drink a gallon of water every day. I'm like, great, I can do that. That sounds easy enough. I started drinking a gallon of water every day. I lost five pounds in a week just by drinking water. Then I was like, okay, I'm gonna just start eating foods that are one ingredient, like chicken, eggs, oatmeal, lettuce. Like that was my goal is just eat real whole foods. And I was not very adventurous at the time. Like I was eating a lot of the same thing, but I was so committed to losing weight. And within six months, I lost about 55 to 60 pounds. I started training for a half marathon. And I remember going back to Washington for the summer. And again, remember, social media is not really a thing at this point in time. None of no one recognized me. My family hardly recognized me. My friends didn't recognize me. I mean, I went from 180 down, I was like one, maybe like 185 down to 130 pounds in like a six month period. I ran a half marathon just to see if I could. Like I felt so good. And like I said, it was the changes that happened internally that made more of an impact. I mean, that summer I met my husband. I met Dave. And I truly believe a huge part of that was I finally felt like I was worthy of someone else loving me because for the first time in my life, like I felt like I loved me. I mean, I've always loved who I was, but I was proud of myself. I knew that I was a person that could show up and follow through. It wasn't even about the weight. Like I just felt so confident that I had accomplished something so hard. I had proven to myself that I was capable of hard things. So I met Dave. I we date You get a little bit of our marriage story in here. We dated for two weeks before I moved back to North Carolina, and then we dated long distance for five months. Um, I actually ended up leaving my job early to move back home. Dave and I got engaged and we got married that next summer. I got pregnant right away. I was able to maintain my weight loss the whole time. During my pregnancy, things were rough. I was so sick, you know, I was throwing up at least five to ten times every single day for 25 weeks. The only thing that made me feel better was eating was eating. And if I wasn't eating, I was throwing up. I actually ended up gaining a lot of weight because I was constantly eating to try and make myself feel feel better, and I probably wasn't throwing up all of it. Um, I would also get nauseous from movement. So any like squats up and down movement, it made me feel like I was gonna throw up. And there were a lot of times where I would try to exercise and I would just end up barfing. And so I stopped exercising. I started eating lots of sugar, lots of carbs. I ended up gaining over 50 pounds when I was pregnant with Gretchen. After working so hard to lose the weight just to gain it all back when I got pregnant, I felt defeated. This is like my biggest regret. I remember after I had my daughter Gretchen and had so many pictures with her, and I just remember going through my camera roll and deleting a lot of the ones that I didn't like of myself. And then years later, I was looking back for pictures of my daughter as a newborn baby, and there are hardly any of us together because I was so insecure with my body that I deleted them, and I regret that to this day because not only do I not have those memories, but Gretchen doesn't have those memories either, and I feel like that was very selfish of me. And I realized, like, no matter how insecure I feel, I will never do that again. And so even after I had Claire and I was a hundred pounds heavier than I had ever been, I still took pictures and I have the pictures, and no matter how hard it is for me to look at them, I am so grateful that Claire has those. And I am grateful that I have them because even though it's hard for me to remember that feeling and remember what it felt like because I think that's why it's so hard, is I'm not gonna cry, is when I look back at those pictures, all of those feelings came back because that's still me. I remember what it feels like. I remember what it feels like to wake up in the middle of the night to nurse your baby and your joints hurt so bad when you push yourself out of bed because you can't really support your body weight. I remember what it is like to go shopping for furniture and having to check the weight limit on like an outdoor swing to make sure that you don't break it. I remember all of that, and I hated that. I hated those feelings, and that was really what drove me to want to change. It wasn't that I hated who I was. I didn't like the way that my life was playing out around me because of my weight. I didn't like having to consider my weight when I was sitting on a swing. Like, I didn't want that to ever be something I had to do. I wanted to be able to go into a store and be like, oh, I like that one. Let's get that one. Oh, let me try that one out and not having to actually physically look at the tag to see the weight limit. Okay, I don't want to keep rehashing these memories. You know, this is another reason why I feel like I am in this chapter of evolution. It's I love helping women lose weight, but marketing for all of this stuff and sharing my story, it's emotional and it's hard, and sometimes it feels really heavy, and it's not really a topic that I want to talk about every single day. It's not something that I want to relive every single day. I really want to embrace all of the hard work that I've done and move on to this new chapter while simultaneously inspiring other women and letting them know that there is another way.

unknown 24:31

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 24:31

Oh man, this is gonna be a long episode. Okay, so after I had Gretchen, probably six months before I got really serious about losing the baby weight again. Luckily, by this point, I knew I was capable, I knew I could do it, and I knew exactly what I needed to do. And so it was just a matter of getting back into a routine, of exercising. I started working out at home again. I would do it while Gretchen ate breakfast, I started eating healthier, and I lost all the baby weight, and I got pregnant with Ralph. Luckily, my pregnancy with Ralph was like night and day different. I did not get sick at all. So much easier to stay active. I was walking a lot with Ralph, I was eating healthier, but I still gained about 50 pounds with him. Like I lost the weight faster though after Ralph. Um, cause same thing, you know, I knew what I needed to do to lose the weight. And we tried to get pregnant with baby number three when Ralph was two, but things didn't really work out. And in fact, there was a point of time, you know, I was almost I had almost lost all of the baby weight, and then I injured my back and I stopped exercising and I started eating a lot more Taco Bell and I gained 50 pounds between so this is between babies, and this is not a part of my story that I am proud of, but I lost the weight after Ralph, and then I gained it back, and then I lost it again before I got pregnant for the third time. Like, talk about yo-yoing. I have gained and lost the same 50 pounds so many times, and I was doing it all, you know, I was doing home workouts and I was following like a pretty strict meal plan, I would say, like checking the boxes, eat this, and yes, it worked. And that's the thing, diets work if you can follow them. But unless you can do it forever, and this is where things really started to change for me after Claire, because I realized after all this yo-yoing, unless I can stick to this forever, it's not actually a permanent solution. I had yo-yo'ed so much. So I got pregnant with Claire. It was the pandemic. We were moving from Arizona to Washington, or no, we were moving from Washington to Arizona. The day that we moved into our house in Arizona, the world shut down. I knew Dave was also still working in Washington. He was not gonna move to Arizona until um like end of June, right before Claire was due. And so I was by myself, didn't know anyone, stuck at home with two kids and a dog, pregnant. I mean, just remember, I was so exhausted. I was doing everything, like doing all of the mom things. I was running my business, I was pregnant. My pregnancy with Claire was like my pregnancy with Gretchen. I was very, very, very sick. And this time I actually ended up taking um my doctor prescribed Zofran for me. And I was really skeptical about taking it, but I was to the point where I could hardly function. Like I remember there were times where I felt so sick that it was hard for me to get myself out of bed and make a peanut butter sandwich for Gretchen and Ralph. Like I could hardly do that. I was just laying down all day, and finally my doctor was like, okay, I'm gonna give you some medication for this to help with the nausea, which it definitely helped. So I am grateful for that. And then, you know, probably around 27 weeks when we moved to Arizona, things got a little bit better, but I had gained a lot of weight by this point, and then I was so tired and exhausted that every single day we would go to Chick-fil-A. Well, not every day, Monday through Saturday, we would go to go to Chick-fil-A. It's because I didn't want to make dinner, I didn't want to do the dishes, I was exhausted, my body hurt, and I ended up gaining so much weight. And I remember at like, I want to say 25-ish weeks, I hit 200 pounds. That was the first time in my life I had ever seen 200 pounds on the scale. And I just thought I have probably like another 15 to 20 weeks of pregnancy, I'm just gonna gain even more weight. And that was a really hard pill for me to swallow because I knew I was gonna also have to lose all of that weight. I had Claire. I knew I needed to lose the weight. I was 100 pounds heavier than I had ever been, and so many people asked me, like, how do you have so many photos? How do you have so many like before and after photos? It's because I knew, like, I knew I could lose the weight. I had proven to myself by this time I lost the weight before I met Dave. I lost the weight after I had Gretchen, I lost the weight after Ralph twice. I had lost over 50 pounds four times. I knew I was capable. I knew it was going to happen. It wasn't a matter of if, it was a matter of when. And that is the level of confidence that you need to have when it comes to weight loss. Took all these photos after Claire, and I had a come to Jesus moment with myself where I really said, I have yo-yo'ed for so long. Yes, diets work in that they help me lose the weight, but they're not actually solving my problem. They're not helping me keep the weight off, and I need to do this differently. I'll just briefly cover it. So at the time, I was partnered with Body, and they came out with this new nutrition program called the To Be Mindset. And this was really my first introduction to losing weight in a different way. And this program was not restrictive at all. Um, in fact, I'm really good friends with the creator of the program. Like I love her. Um, but it really taught like a different way of eating and a different way of thinking. And that was kind of what got me down this path of starting to look at things differently. And while I learned a lot from that program, that was not 100% of the reason why I was able to lose the weight. It was so many other things because, like I said, it's you can have this plan, but how do you follow through? How do you show up for yourself every single day? And so I really just changed my approach to weight loss. I had struggled for so long and I asked myself, I literally asked myself, would I rather gain and lose the same 20 to 30 pounds four or five times over the next year? Or would I rather take it, take a year to lose 30 pounds, but know that I will never gain it back? And I decided I need to take this pressure off myself. I need to approach this differently, and I really need to focus on changing my lifestyle. It's not just about how I'm plating my food, it's really my entire life. What I did was I slowly started changing my habits. I knew from the very beginning of my weight loss journey drinking water works. So I started drinking water again. I got really consistent with that. And when that felt easy, I added on a little bit more. I started tracking the food that I was eating. I wasn't eating a specific way. I literally just started writing it down for accountability and to see what was happening. And then I started walking a little bit every single day. And then I started adding in more vegetables and it it was a slow progression. But what happened was over time, I started to feel better and better and better. I started to lose the weight. I realized what it actually felt like to feel good. Because I feel like I should throw this in here because this is this is the ish part of this show where I am not on one extreme or the other, but I feel like I'm kind of in the middle. I feel like what has kind of happened, like diet industry is bad, and then it started to go so hardcore into body positivity and like being overweight and loving your body. And while I do believe that you don't have to hate your body if you're overweight, I also don't think that you truly love yourself if you are eating yourself to death. I and I know that might be hard to hear, but for me, like body positivity is doing positive things for your body, and doing positive things for your body is taking care of your health, giving your body what it needs, like exercising, drinking water, eating vegetables. I mean, when you are that overweight, you are headed towards diseases that can cause death. And to me, that is not loving yourself. But again, like I'm I feel like I'm in the middle. Like, I you don't need to be extreme diet either. Like, there is a time and place for everything. You can love yourself while you are working on becoming the best version of yourself. You don't need to restrict yourself to be worthy. Anyways, that's just how I feel about that. After Claire, I really focused on changing my lifestyle. But here's the thing I spent an entire year working on changing my habits and ever working on everything. And I had lost 20 pounds in about a year. Only 20 pounds. And I say only 20 pounds because I know how to lose weight. I know exactly how my body should be responding. And I knew I was like, I am doing everything that I know should create weight loss, but I am not losing weight. And I that was a sign to me that something was going on. I wasn't going to accept that, you know, being 210 pounds was my new normal. So I decided to go see a naturopathic doctor. I decided to get my hormones checked. I decided to get tested for food sensitivities to see if there was anything else going on. Turns out my hormones were like way, way out of whack. So I started, you know, working on regulating my hormones again. Simultaneously, I found out, and I, you know what? I intuitively knew that I should not be eating dairy. I just knew I didn't feel great with dairy, but I also love dairy so much that I but I also love dairy so much that I told myself I will not stop eating it until a doctor tells me that I shouldn't eat it. And guess what? A doctor told me I shouldn't be eating dairy. I literally got my food sensitivity test back. I think they tested for, I want to say it was either 87 or 167. I don't know. It was a lot of foods, but the ones that came back as the worst were dairy and gluten. And it was-I learned that these foods created so much inflammation in my body. I was chronically inflamed. My body was fighting against the foods that I was eating. And at the time, I was eating so much dairy because it it was I was trying to get in more protein. And how do you get in more protein? Dairy. Got all these results back, and this was about a year after I had Claire. I started regulating my hormones first, and then a couple months later was when I did the food sensitivity thing. I cut out dairy and I cut out gluten and I lost 20 pounds in a month. That was the only thing I did, and I felt so good. Like I felt, I felt how inflamed I had been because it was all going away. And you know, after six weeks of elimination, I actually added dairy back in to see, like, oh, is this really affecting me? Because my stomach hurt so bad. And I'm like, I didn't realize that this is what dairy was doing to me. And it made it so I didn't want to eat dairy, and it got a little bit easier after that. Anyways, after Claire and after I've, you know, worked on regulating my hormones, got my food sensitivities under control, I lost 80 pounds in like seven and a half months. So I hit my 100-pound weight loss goal um a little bit before Claire turned two. And it was actually, I hit my goal about five days after I found out I was pregnant with my fourth baby. So again, getting pregnant, but this time was so different because I actually worked on changing my habits so much that I felt like I didn't even try to lose the weight. It was just like taking care of my food sensitivities, new habits, together equals weight loss. Like it didn't feel like it was hard. And in fact, so many women in the Body Confidence Academy tell me that. They're like, I never thought losing weight could be easy. When you approach weight loss differently, it doesn't have to be a struggle. You don't have to deprive yourself. You don't have to live in a state of restriction forever. And I got pregnant with Alan, my healthiest pregnancy to date. I felt so good. I walked three miles every single day. I ate healthy. I still gained, I think I gained like 50 pounds still. Again, is what my body does. But after I had Alan, within that year, I didn't diet one single day. I didn't, I just maintained my habits. I maintained these habits throughout pregnancy and postpartum. And with that year postpartum with Alan, I got within 10 pounds of my pre-pregnancy weight. I ended up getting a tummy tuck and a breast reduction. And I have not struggled with my weight since. And again, that's why I say I don't struggle with my weight anymore. I feel like I just live a certain way. I still have ice cream, I still eat cookie dough. Like those are my things that I love and I still have them. But I have worked so hard on my thoughts and my mindset and my relationship with food where I'm not in this constant state of all or nothing. It's no longer I'm either on a diet or I'm binge eating. It's, oh, I can have a salad and I can have a slice of pizza. It doesn't have to be either or. It can be both, and really learning how to have a life of balance where I feel good. I don't feel deprived. I feel healthy. And I've realized like this is the example I want to set for my kids. I want to show them what balance looks like. I want to teach them that we nourish our bodies first and we take care of our biological needs before we give in to our wants of a cookie. It's, you know, and I have these conversations with my kids and I'm learning and navigating all of it as I go. It's my first time being a mom, you know? It's my first time teaching kids how to do this. And I've I've read a lot of books about it. And my philosophy now is I never want to dictate how much my kids eat, but it is my job as their mother to offer them food and make sure that they have healthier choices. And when they ask me for treats or sweets, because yes, my kids have those things. Um, our conversation is more so like it's not no, you can't have it. It's well, have you taken care of your body today? Have you had water? Have you had vegetables? Have you had protein? And yes, these conversations are different with my 11-year-old than they are with my five-year-old. It's very different. But I really want to teach that way of thinking to my kids more so than I want to dictate what is going in their body, of making sure that they know the importance of health and the importance of movement and the importance of managing your stress. I mean, that is also part of it. I will tell you, I've lost so much weight. If I am stressed out, it does not matter what I eat or how much exercise I do, I will not lose weight. I won't. I will not. And I have I learned all of this through tracking, you know. I started writing everything down that I was doing, trying to find correlations and patterns in how am I losing weight? What is actually working for me? Because we are all so different. And that's what I help my students do, is I help them find what works for them, what works for their lifestyle, because your life is gonna look so much different than mine. And my goal is to empower you to figure this out on your own. Because if you are relying on someone to help you lose weight forever, like you're never gonna maintain it. You have to take accountability, you have to take ownership that this is your life. And if you want that type of result, you need to learn how to make a change. And it's hard in the beginning. Like it's I I like I always tell people it's exponential. The beginning is going to be the hardest. But just like anything new that you learn, I mean, I talk to my kids about this all the time. They get really frustrated if they try something new and they're not good at it right away. And it takes time. And learning how to do something is the hardest phase. Once you have like a basic understanding or a basic skill set, it gets easier and easier and easier. And if you take the time to do that with weight loss, that's what's going to happen. All right, that is my whole weight loss story. I do wanna actually, I know I mentioned I was gonna give you my thoughts on GLP ones. I haven't said that yet, but I will do that now. I'm curious if this is gonna surprise anyone. Um, because I know they're like super popular right now. Um before you go in, can you mention that you know what's actually really funny is when I was losing a hundred pounds with Claire, um, when I was losing a hundred pounds, people thought this is so funny. People would message me and be like, Oh, you're just taking Ozempic. I didn't even know what Ozempic was. I had to look it up. I was like, wait, what's Ozempic? Like, why are people saying that I'm doing this? I had no idea what it was. Like, I lost a hundred pounds naturally. And then the whole surgery thing, people think that, oh, you cheated. No, like I really did this, and I want it to be proof that you can do it too. But here's my thought with GLP ones. And it might be different than what you assume. I think that it is a tool to help you lose weight. And I think that it's not so much the GLP1, but how are you utilizing it? Because if you are treating it like a cure, like I'm just gonna take this and I'm not gonna change anything and I'm gonna lose the weight, you're not gonna have lasting success and you will likely have to be on it forever. You know, but if you are using it like a tool to help you, I mean, my opinion then is either you're taking a GLP one that's gonna help you, but you're also committed to changing your habits and eating healthy and exercising and making sure you are getting enough protein. Because if you, I mean, you can go out there and read all the information of what is happening to people who are using a, I would say even overusing it, abusing it, but also people that use it who do follow a certain protocol who do get very different results. You know, I think it's how you approach it because it might not be the best thing. And I know people have opinions and it can cause side effects and all this stuff. But do you want to know what else can? Being obese, being morbidly obese is also not good for your health. And so for me, it's like, which one are you gonna choose? And I think if you are approaching it with the mindset of this is a tool that I want to use to help me get to a specific result, but I also am committed to changing my life because I don't want to be on this forever, then I why not? Okay, so full disclosure here, we are getting into our very last segment to close the show. And as I started the beginning of this show, we are figuring this out as we go. So I literally just paused, you were you didn't hear it, for several minutes, trying to figure out a name to close the show with because I wanted to leave you with a little bit of motivation today. And it's kind of funny. I don't feel like I am a very motivating person, but what I have learned over the years that your lived experience is what inspires other people. And that's what I want to share with you. So I'm gonna close the show today. F how I wanted to end this, because I can't waste any more time thinking about a name. So here's our messy action, unnamed segment of motivation. Maybe I want to answer the question if I could start my weight loss journey over again, what would I do differently? Life, if I could start start my weight loss journey over again in my adult life, the very first thing that I would do, and this was the hardest part, and this is actually the very first thing we do in the Body Confidence Academy, which if you want to join, I will drop a link for that below. Totally optional. But the first thing that we do is we drop the diet mentality. Because if you want to lose the weight and keep it off for good, you cannot. Do you want to be on a diet for the rest of your life? Probably not. I mean for me, I hate dieting. I hate it so much. Like just hearing the word diet makes me cringe, like, oh, run away. Like, I don't want to do it. I spent so much of my life on a diet that I hate it and I don't want to do it. And honestly, dieting is what led me to yo-yoing so hard. I would lose a lot of weight on a diet, it would be so restrictive. I couldn't sustain that. I would end up overeating because I was so hungry that I would gain even more weight back than I lost in the first place. And I would just yo-yo. Sometimes it was 10 pounds, sometimes it was 50 pounds. I mean, it didn't provide a long-term solution. So the very first thing we do in the Body Confidence Academy is you make the decision to stop dieting because it truly is that. It is a decision. Decide that you are not going to diet again, ever. And that, yes, you can lose the weight by changing your habits. That is another way that you can lose weight. If you really change your lifestyle, your weight is going to catch up with the actions that you are doing every single day. It just will. So you need to decide I'm gonna stop with this diet mentality. I'm going to start building trust with myself that my body knows what it needs. Our bodies are so smart. Our bodies know when they're hungry, they know when they're full. And if you really start to pay attention to that, you're gonna realize like, when do I need to eat? When do I stop eating instead of how many calories should I have? You can literally pay attention to your body's hunger cues, and I teach you how to do that in the Body Confidence Academy, to pay attention to your body's hunger cues to know how much you should be eating. And if you're eating, you know, my rule of thumb is eat real whole foods as close to their natural state as you can as often as possible. If you are doing that and you are paying attention to your hunger levels, you know, you are probably going to lose weight. But then, you know, you gotta layer on top all of the drama, the emotional eating, the schedules, like all of this other stuff. Because yeah, I mean, I can pay attention to my hunger and eat healthy food, but let's be real. That is not what our lives look like. We have so many other things on top of that that we are dealing with. But number one, you have to give up dieting. You just have to decide that you are no longer going to subscribe to that. I mean, really think about the diet industry. If they were solving your real true problems of why you're overeating and why you're gaining so much weight in the first place, they would not exist. They want you to keep coming back and spending more money. I mean, it is my goal that my students sign up and they never spend any more money on diet things ever again in their life. Like, I don't want that for you. No one wants that. I mean, I don't want you to feel stuck in this cycle and frustrated. So you have to give up dieting. The second thing I would say is take the time limit off. And this is kind of hard because, like, I don't think that there's anything wrong with setting a goal with a time frame, but don't tie all of your success to that. You cannot because our weight is affected by so many things. So if you're like, I want to lose 20 pounds in the next two months. Are you gonna be upset if you lose 18 pounds? Because you shouldn't. You should not be upset about that. In fact, there is a book called The Gain in the Gap. I don't know who's it by. Can you look that up real quick? Um, there's this book where it talks about, I mean, that's the whole point. The whole process, you are gaining so much. It's not just the end result, but so often we put so much weight and emphasis on whether or not we hit a goal. And if you fall short, even just by one inch, you feel like a failure. You need to change that. You are not a failure. But I would say, okay, the book is called The Gap and the Gain by Dan Sullivan. Check that book out. It is a good book. But I think a time limit is fine as long as you are not putting all of your success on that. And it has to be a realistic meaning, your expectations need to be aligned with the work that you are putting in. Because if you are at a place right now where you're like, you know what, all I can handle is this one thing. I'm just gonna focus on drinking water. Don't expect to have rapid weight loss. Like, it's not gonna happen. But it's also essential that you take that time in the beginning to really establish healthy habits. Like, really think about you are laying the foundation. This is the foundation. And I talk about that in BCA, the Body Confidence Academy. The whole like first part of the program is creating a solid foundation so that as you start to lose weight, it's permanent. So don't set a crazy time limit goal because, in all reality, if you want to lose the weight and keep it off forever, the timeline is your the rest of your life because you can't just stop once you hit your weight loss goal. You have to keep going. So, really, there is no time limit on it. And both of those things, like I said, getting rid of the diet mentality and then also taking that pressure off of yourself. Notice I didn't tell you what to eat or what exercises to do. It is all your mindset. You have to really change your thoughts, change the way that you are approaching weight loss. And when you can do that, I promise you will get a different result. That's it for our show today. Thank you for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed, and I will see you on the next one. You made it to the end, which means you're officially one of the real ones. Don't forget to follow, leave a five star review, and text this episode to your bestie. And if you want the unfiltered behind the scenes, make sure to get on the email list. The link is in the show notes.