I Was 70lbs Overweight And The Data Made Me Feel Relief — Here's Why

Most people never look at the data. Not because it isn't available — because looking means the story might not survive.

In this episode Greg Fearon breaks down the verdict loop: how a story about genetics, hormones, or biology closes the investigation before it starts, why the wellness industry profits every time that loop completes, and what actually shifts when a pattern gets named precisely enough that it can't be unseen. 

If you've done everything you were told to do and things still aren't falling into place  this episode is worth your time.

Transcript

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The moment you decide that it's your hormones, it's your genetics, the way you're built, that you haven't got time, then you've already created your biggest problem. Because when you create that, you create what we call a verdict, okay? And then there's no actual conversation to look at what's happening. And verdicts are comfortable because if the problem is structural, like I said, it's genetics, hormones, the way you're built, then there's nothing required of you. There's nothing, there's no reason to change. The case is already closed before it opens. And today I want to talk about what happens when you actually look and why most people can't look past the verdict. So earlier in my career, I had been a personal trainer, nutrition coach, health coach, leader, manager, all of the things. Um, there was a point where I gained a good 70 to 80 pounds, right? And I was carrying around all of this weight, and I was I had the knowledge, I knew exactly what to do. I'd just done a degree in in sports science, right? But I had a story that explained it all. I had already created a verdict. My mum, my sisters, they all have struggled with their weight. So my story was high body fat runs in my family. It's just the way that we're built, it's just the genetics. Um, and I believed it completely. But I want to be honest about that because the belief that I had wasn't the cause. It wasn't causal, it wasn't the magic. It was low-bearing. That verdict was doing something for me because it meant that if it was my genetics, it wasn't my issue to solve. Because, hey, I can't rewire my genetics, can I, right? So I decided to do something. I decided to do something that many of the women I've worked with in the past have been unwilling to look at, we shall say. I decided to track everything I ate. I weighed it, I loved it. No matter how busy at work I got, no matter how stressed I was, I decided to say, right, I'm gonna do two weeks of cat of capturing the data. And when I looked at the data and what it showed me, I felt something that I wasn't really expecting to feel. Made people feel shame, disappointment, etc. For me, it was just nothing like that. There was no shame, there was no demotivation, there was nothing. It was relief. Actual pure relief that the data was showing one thing and one thing very clearly. I was overeating my calorie needs. That was it. The entire explanation, it wasn't the verdicts that I'd already put on myself. It wasn't all, it wasn't um my hormones, it wasn't you know testosterone, etc. It wasn't the genetics, it wasn't metabolic dysfunction, there wasn't a genetic curse. Just I was putting in more food in my body than it needed to function. I blame the one kilogram bars of dairy milk that I would not show and talk to everyone about because I would say, and amongst my friends, right, I'm eating really healthy, but I would never tell them about the chocolate bars I I would eat or the sweets I would eat, etc. The big bag of sweets that I'd get on a Friday, Saturday night to soothe me because the week had been hard. But that's for another podcast. So it was a relief because what it meant was that actually there was nothing wrong with me. I wasn't broken, I wasn't lazy, I wasn't doomed, I was just the person who hadn't been willing to look at what was really going on. And that one thing that change that seeing that one thing meant that I had complete control uh over the outcome. Complete control. And that's a very different position to it's my hormones, it's my time, anything. It meant I was in complete control of the destiny and what was gonna happen next. But I wanna be very precise here because I think this is where the health and fitness industry really gets it wrong. Um you see the story genetics, hormones, age, a boy just doesn't respond, isn't a weakness, it's not even a denial in the word in the way the word usually gets used. It's a story that does a job. It does the job really well as well. Okay, so I talk to my clients about stories and facts. Because if the problem is fixed and biological, there's nothing to investigate. Like that's it, no data to face, no behavior to look at honestly, no private moment to examine, to get underneath to really dissect and be and understand. And it then the verdict that we created just really goes backwards and it absorbs everything. It says you weren't overeating, your metabolism was just was uh dregulated, um you weren't negotiating it on your sleep, you know, you weren't saying your nervous system was safe, you weren't avoiding the whole thing, your body was protecting itself. All of those things are important, and the behavior is now correct. Okay, so what it means is it it's able to justify what we're really doing, which isn't serving you, and that's what I find with clients. We're able to justify the results we've got with the story of something that we can't control, so therefore, there's no way of changing it. What that means is that any suggestion that something needs to now change is an attack on a person who has already been told that they were never the problem, and that's the problem. I call this the verdict before the investigation, and the whole of the wellness industry, and I say this as someone who's worked inside it for 20 years, worked in the national health care in the UK, in Gyne and endocrinology and many other specialties, it profits every time over this loop because what happens is there's a new diagnosis. So, you know, in the last three to four years, maybe insulin resistance, although very real, is now being a new diagnosis or cortisol or something like that. So there's a new diagnosis, let's say insulin resistance. There's a new protocol, a new program designed specifically around that particular verdict that was given before. So you get the insulin resistance, and now you have the insulin resistance plan or protocol. It works really well temporarily, okay, two, three weeks, four weeks. And then at some point, the behavior that was always actually the real issue comes back. It slowly but surely slides back into view. The loop returns, the industry collects again because then we need to sell you another problem. Well, it wasn't your internet resistance, it was actually your cortisol, and you need the cortisol program now to fix that. So it just moves the goalposts every time. And what needs to break the loop is not a better protocol, it's the ability to look at the data before the story gets to organize it. Okay, it's not what what does this result mean about me, it's just what specific inputs are producing this particular output? What what am I doing that's producing this result? And this is you know, disclaimer to say that we don't need not need uh medical interventions, but there will be a set of behaviors that aren't supporting what you're trying to do. And here's the truth the women I work with are not confused about what to do, they never are. Um, I often have clients produce their yearly health um audits, and you can see exactly what needs to be done. And they know, they come to me and they tell me exactly what they know needs to be done, and it hasn't actually changed in 10 years. They're not lacking information, they've seen a nutritionist, they've done the programs, they've dressed the hormones, they've got they've had the HRT conversation, they've got the optimal supplements, etc. Things still aren't falling into place. And what I find is a without exception, is a version of the same thing I found in myself: a story that's doing the job. Noise genetics, sometimes it's hormones, and I want to be careful here because again, hormonal change is real, perimenopause is real, menopause is real, PCOS is real, all of these things are real. The body does change, and I'm not dismissing any of that. However, the woman I work with already had those things addressed. The HRT is in place, the supplements are there, ready to rock, they've had the doctor visits, etc. But things still aren't in the same place in the right place because the hormones are in the right place now. They're they're pretty much sorted, right? They're gonna be as good as we can get. But underneath that, there's a story almost every time, and it's simpler, there's specific inputs producing specific output, and there's a private negotiation consistently happening to explain the result. A standard that you hold in public for your public-facing life that quietly goes away and drops in private. When that issue becomes visible, like really clear, visible to you, not as a verdict about your character, but as a this precise description of the pattern, things change, something shifts. And this is the same feeling that I had when I looked at my own data, it was relief. Because a pattern is not a life sentence, a pattern is a specific thing happening in a specific context for specific reasons. Once you name it precisely, it doesn't have that hold, it loses the grip on you. So, for example, if you always say I'm not disciplined, well, that's gonna hold on very, very tightly. And this is the thing that actually is the work. Okay, it's not a better plan, it's not more accountability, it never is accountability, not another protocol layered on top of the ones that didn't already hold you before. The work is looking at what's actually there before you can make the story that closes the case. And here's what I've watched happen when that pattern gets removed. And I want to be clear by what I mean is not means removed, not managed, not contained, removed. And it doesn't stay in the health domain. This is this is the beautiful thing about the work I do with my clients. Because the same negotiation pattern that runs in private around food, around exercise, around boundaries, is happening in other parts of your life. It's happening around what you charge for your work, it's happening about what you tolerate in your career, it's happening around the boundaries you hold with family every time. Health, your weight, how your body's performing is just where the data is easy to see. Because the body doesn't perform, it doesn't manage impressions, it doesn't have a public version, the private one, the body just reflects exactly what's going on. The body will always tell you what's going on. Fix the pattern there, and then it moves. Okay, so it moves from your body to being other areas of their life, or we see it replicated, we just don't know or realize it's there. And I've watched clients get promotions, start new businesses, start new relationships, leave situations that were costing them for years. Not because we worked on those things directly, although when we work together, we're gonna have to talk about some of those things, but because we removed the pattern underneath that was running across all of these areas of their life, their relationships, their work, friendships, health standards, everything. And it's the removal of that verdict, it's investigating what's actually really going on and being able to talk about it. And that's what produces those results that I see with my clients. So if you've been sitting with a story about why the protocols haven't worked, why the diets haven't worked, and part of you suspects that the story might not be the whole picture, there's something worth paying attention to. Not to feel bad, but to look at it as data. And the investigation starts with being honest to look at what's actually there. And if you want to have this conversation, the link below is to book a call. Let's talk about what that might be looking like for you and see how we can help. I'll see you in the next episode.