160 She Thought She Was an Emotional Eater…Until She Learned This and Released 30 lbs - Tammy’s Story

You likely get that you’re not the only one who’s dealing with food noise and not feeling great in your body, but it sure feels like it sometimes. It can help to hear another person’s story. 

Today you’ll hear from my client Tammy who started working with me following a painful breakup. Even with decades of nutrition and fitness knowledge, she wasn’t making progress with her weight.  

Hear how she released 30lbs by transcending emotional eating and how food no longer has power over her: no more snack bags on trips, pantry raids, emergency snacks, or overeating spirals.

In this episode you’ll learn:

• How she not just understanding the skills of weight loss conceptually, but embodies them
• How journaling can become a breakthrough tool
• How she’s transforming perfectionism and all or nothing thinking 

Watch Build Momentum Video Series 

• Instagram: @mindful_shape
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• Interested in getting coached by me? Go to my website mindfulshape.com

Transcript

This transcript was auto-generated, please forgive any weirdness.

Speaker: [00:00:00] Welcome to the podcast, and thank you so much for doing this today. My first question is always, yeah. What made you reach out and tell me, paint the picture a little bit before we started working together. What was it like 

Speaker 2: for you? I don't believe in coincidence. I call those God incidents, and when I started out with this podcast, I happen to be going through a bad breakup with a long-term relationship and.

Speaker 2: I was going for walks in the morning, and I just thought, I want to be more useful with my walks, and I had never listened to a podcast, and so all of a sudden I just listened. Picked your podcast. I have, and like I said, gods like, I have no idea why. I had never listened to a podcast before. I just went and I was looking for something.

Speaker 2: Uplifting and maybe some information or whatever was addicted. I mean, I listened to that podcast the day, that day, and I couldn't believe how much I related to everything that you [00:01:00] were talking about, just how you put things in words. You just made it understandable and it was. Something that I didn't even know I needed at the time.

Speaker 2: So then I started listening to your podcast and then as, I mean, this is almost four years now, I think three and a half, four years, and I think three and a half. But I am not certain how exactly I got into the coaching, if I'm being honest. I mean, I, I must have heard it at the end of a podcast or reached out on your website or whatever.

Speaker 2: But when I did, I just wanted to dig deeper and. I just felt like I wanted some direction. I wanted somebody to sort out my thoughts. I had a lot of things going through my mind at the time. I was definitely up a considerable amount of weight from when I started my relationship with my boyfriend, like 11 years earlier, and I just wanted to feel better.

Speaker: Mm-hmm. And then what were you hoping to achieve in terms of like your relationship with food or your body? 

Speaker 2: When I started, [00:02:00] I mean, my goal was to lose weight basically. Like that was the long and the short of it. I wanted to lose weight. I had no idea what I was in for. I think that's probably why my whole journey has been so up and down because I really, even though I had a lot of knowledge, I have a lot of knowledge about nutrition.

Speaker 2: I have a lot of knowledge about macros, and I have knowledge about. Health. I mean, I lift, I play pickleball. I, I've worked out for, I don't know, 30 years, but I didn't have any knowledge about my mind, and I didn't even realize that that was what was impacting my up at and down journey. I went in with the thought, I wanna lose weight, but then it just was so much more than that.

Speaker: Yeah. What, when you say it was so much more than that, what are some of the things, or like the way that you've come to understand yourself differently than looking maybe like four years ago? 

Speaker 2: So I always related to myself, um, and I told you this the other day, I related to myself as a [00:03:00] emotional eat.

Speaker 2: That's just who I was. I was an emotional eater. I ate whenever I was stressed out. Worse, I felt the more I ate, I mean, I could be so full. I was literally to the point I felt like I was gonna burst. And the only thing I could think to do at that point was eat more. But I didn't even realize what an emotional eater was.

Speaker 2: So what I learned is that I was not emotionally eating, I was numbing my feelings, and it was extremely hard. To learn to feel my feelings. It was hard to even understand what my feelings were. Like I didn't even know. You dig so much stuff out, we figure it out on our own, but you just are so persuasive in how it comes out and you just make it so much easier to find it.

Speaker 2: And I just don't think, I didn't, first of all, I don't think I knew I needed to find it. And second of all. I just don't think I knew how to find it. I think that is one of the biggest things [00:04:00] and how it has actually impacted so many other areas in my life. This is no longer just about food. I mean, it was all intertwined.

Speaker: Now that you understand that this is more of a, I was numbing my feelings before. 

Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. 

Speaker: Mm-hmm. What are some of those feelings that you notice in terms of patterns that come up for you a lot that you can now identify? 

Speaker 2: So overwhelm is a huge one. So when I have too much to do and I don't know where to begin, there's overwhelm.

Speaker 2: For a long time. It was boredom and loneliness. I was, I mean, I was living in my house by myself. I mean, I was having a pity party a lot of the times. I mean, I just basically was, woe is me. I'm here alone. And where so many people were saying to me, oh my gosh, you're so lucky. Like, I just thought this was just the worst thing ever, which was also another thing that I learned is how you look at.

Speaker 2: Situations and how they impact your life, how that's such a big deal. Paula, we probably don't have enough time. I mean, there's just so much. There's so much I have learned and so much that has [00:05:00] changed anyway, so yes, so, overwhelm. Overwhelm, boredom, loneliness, anxiety. I mean, anxiety was a big one. And then, I'm not really sure how to even describe this one, but I feel like I was always trying.

Speaker 2: To hurry up for everything I did. And I guess that would be in an anxiety category, just always feeling like I wasn't going to get stuff done or I had to do this. Or rushing here, rushing there. So 

Speaker: what has changed in terms of your anxiety or that rushing nature? What has changed there for you? I've had to learn 

Speaker 2: to just kind of sit back and realize that first of all, you're gonna get there.

Speaker 2: And I'm not even talking about just your weight. You're going to get there when you get there. And. Nothing is so pressing that it has to be done this second, and it's not worth the emotional impact it has on you or the stress you're putting on your body or what you're doing to yourself because you're feeling that way.

Speaker 2: So I just have had, I've had to be able to just put some stuff aside a little [00:06:00] bit more than I ever was. Even though we're not supposed to categorize ourself. I mean, I am a perfectionist. I like everything in place. I just like everything in order and. I have had to come to terms with that, even though it's okay to want those things.

Speaker 2: It wasn't healthy for me like it was, it wasn't doing anything. Good for me, it was making me more stressed out than it was giving me what I felt I needed to have everything in order. 

Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. So it sounds like you changed part of how you were thinking about it to be to change 100% expectations. Yeah. To change your expectations.

Speaker: And then what's the other piece of that? Because you said there's a lot of. Working with your emotions, how do you now work as we are human? And those emotions come up where like you're anxious or you are overwhelmed or anything like that. How, what have you learned in terms of processing emotion now that maybe you didn't know before when you were numbing?

Speaker 2: So we haven't even touched on [00:07:00] journaling, but journaling is something I wanted to do for my entire life and I have, if anybody could see my room, I have. Probably 60 notebooks. I love to buy notebooks and I love to start a journal, but that's it. One page, two page, three page. That's it. I mean, I've seen, I've picked up so many notebooks that have been, had a couple of pages full, but then as we started this, we started doing mindful 15, and then we were doing reflection.

Speaker 2: And I mean, we've just done so many things and. Even though sometimes I have to push myself to do it, once I start writing, so many things come out. Sometimes sad comes out, but very little anymore. It used to be I'd write and it, I would actually get very sad and now when I write it actually is. Exciting for me.

Speaker 2: Like I, I'm like, oh my gosh. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That right? Absolutely. That's why that happened. Or, or, great, now you know this and you can use this moving forward. So I do [00:08:00] that a lot. I use my writing to process that and sometimes not fast enough. I mean, sometimes I don't step away from a situation fast enough and write, but I do write after it a lot more than I do out during.

Speaker 2: But the other thing is we've learned a lot of. Techniques, I mean, to catch, hold and release or to redirect my, what I'm doing. Um, and funny thing today before the podcast, I was gonna take a shower. Well, I did take a shower. Honestly, like today's not the best day I've had. I mean, so this is a great day for this because it just really brings a lot of things to light.

Speaker 2: I got outta that shower and I felt so empowered and so invigorated and I'm like, yeah, this is, this is just another tool. Like this is another way to just get up, go do something and get away from what you're feeling. And it does not take long. An emotion lasts like 45 seconds, have a 

Speaker: thought, and then it creates a hormonal response in the brain and tells the body what to do, and then we feel that.

Speaker: [00:09:00] And that the whole, I can't remember exactly, but I, it's super short. And then we have another thought oftentimes about what we are feeling. That 

Speaker 2: perpetuates the emotion. Until I felt what that felt like, I did not understand that. Like there's a lot of things that we've gone through that until I physically felt it, I didn't understand it.

Speaker 2: So it took a, it took a lot to like really get the physical understanding of some of the things we were working on. Because, I mean, they weren't hard, but yet they were hard. I really don't wanna use that word, but. But they were, they were hard. It was hard for me to figure some of those things out and understand how to, what it meant to, to feel that and let it go.

Speaker 2: When you do it, it's like, wow. Like wow. You know, it really, it's very eye-opening. So that's just a, I mean, a couple of those things just to change, redirect, 

Speaker: would an example be like, conceptually you understand this idea of allowing. An urge to [00:10:00] overeat or allowing an urge to eat. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. But then what you're talking about is to really learn it.

Speaker: You can't just understand it conceptually as like trivia, right. It needs to be embodied. You need to practice it and have that visceral experience, and that's how you come to really know it. What you're talking about. Yeah, 

Speaker 2: yeah. Well, like for instance, you used to, you don't, you didn't use to, you still do say like you can't white knuckle your way through something.

Speaker 2: And I didn't understand like, how do you not white knuckle your way through? I mean, you try to figure out what your emotion is and then you deal with that and I mean, that was. That took me a long time. I mean, this is a step process. You know, you start and it, it, it is. It just really builds up and it builds and builds and builds and it just gets getting better and better and better.

Speaker 2: And you just grow and grow and grow. 

Speaker: Yeah. 

Speaker 2: Within it. I mean, it's amazing. 

Speaker: Yeah. How has that translated into your body? Like how has that translated into weight loss for you? 

Speaker 2: When it [00:11:00] first started, it was just literally going through the motions, but then all of a sudden, when I first started with you and we went through our first, what I think we did, I don't know if we did a year the first time or six months, I can't remember, but whatever it was all of a sudden.

Speaker 2: My weight just started coming off. I wasn't thinking about it anymore. It was just so natural and it was such an amazing feeling. I'm going to relate this to pickleball, Paula, because I can't help but do it. But every time that you drill in pickleball and you drill a certain shot or you drill. Something you're doing, then you go play in a game.

Speaker 2: It's messy. Like you don't play well because you're trying something new, but then you keep drilling and drilling and drilling, and then you go in the game and you don't think about it anymore. It just comes naturally and it's exactly the way this works. I mean, you just go through these steps and through these steps and practice, practice, practice, and all of a sudden it's just happens and it doesn't just feel good because I feel better [00:12:00] physically in my body.

Speaker 2: It feels better. Anxiety wise, I, I am a lot more calm. I handle a lot of things in my life a lot differently than I did before. I mean, I was basically irritable and I'm a really, I mean, not to toot my own horn, but I'm pretty nice. But I was irritable, I was snappy. I was unhappy for a lot of reasons, probably because I wasn't dealing with anything.

Speaker 2: I mean, I was just. Pushing everything under the rug and now I've dug into some things and I've learned some things and it's given me peace and understanding and just a lot more calm. 

Speaker: Going back to what you said about the journaling, because you said when I first started doing it, there's a lot of sadness and I just wonder, I can't help but wonder if that is a lot of unprocessed emotion.

Speaker: That you needed then to process. And now when you do your journaling, I mean, you're still human, you get the whole range of emotions, but that's, it's a different experience for you now, whereas your thoughts are more in alignment with [00:13:00] how you want to be thinking. And so that's generally more positive experience for you.

Speaker: You're more future focused, more present focused. 

Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. 

Speaker: And it's so different than before. 

Speaker 2: I was looking back at my journals. I mean, I think I have, I think from you, I probably have five, five subject notebooks easily, and it's bad. I mean, it's great, but it's bad. I was looking back at some of them from a long time ago and I just couldn't believe how differently I spoke.

Speaker 2: Just how, how much kinder, even the things that I say, even when I'm having a rough day. The things I write down are not anywhere near as harsh as they were, you know, two years ago. 

Speaker: Yeah. What is it like for you to look at that now and 

Speaker 2: see that growth? We've done some calls where we've had multiple people on the calls.

Speaker 2: I've listened to some people say some things that I think, oh my gosh, they're hurting. And I think I was hurting like that, and I was saying those things about myself, [00:14:00] and I was feeling that way about myself, but I was thinking that's exactly where I was. And this is exactly what they need. They're in the perfect place at the perfect time to help them.

Speaker 2: And so I'm, it just makes me feel grateful, like I am grateful. I am grateful every single day. I, Paula, I'm grateful for you. Uh, like people, anybody in my life knows how grateful I am for this program, what it's done for me, all of it. I'm just grateful. 

Speaker: Aw. Thank you for saying that. And also I hope grateful to yourself, right?

Speaker: Who was willing to show up and who was willing to fill out five journals of thoughts. Yeah. And learnings and all of that, right? Like you are the one that has been doing all of this work. I love that you brought that up about, you can see where other people maybe are on their journey and they are in pain.

Speaker: What, for you, what was 

Speaker 2: challenging about this process? I'm very hard on myself. So, um, I did a lot of all or nothing thinking for a long time. So every single time I would [00:15:00] make a mistake or what I thought was a mistake, which there just isn't a mistake that I think that's another thing. There just isn't a mistake.

Speaker 2: Just like everything, I just always think I have to do everything perfectly. And so I was beating myself up if I wasn't where I wanted to be at a certain time or I, I went off protocol or I wasn't following something a hundred percent. I've just started to give myself a lot more grace because, you know, I was thinking this morning, you know, somebody's hurting or having a hard time, you don't go beat 'em up and beat them down.

Speaker 2: And tell 'em, oh, you're terrible. And like, why are you doing that and shit? Or get off the pot or just anything. Like, you just don't do that. And, but we do that to ourselves. Why do you say there's no such thing as mistakes? Because this is a journey, like you're growing, so your learnings, you can make a misstep, but I feel like that's different than a mistake.

Speaker 2: Like I think a misstep is you're just a little off track. It doesn't mean it's wrong, you're just off track. I always [00:16:00] looked at it like it was wrong. Oh my gosh. Now I've ruined everything. And I might as well start over. You're just. Why can't you do this? You have so much knowledge. You have everything right in front of you.

Speaker 2: I treated it like work instead of like something I take joy in. That was a big change. 

Speaker: What I'm hearing too is you treated it like work in, in terms of it was something I had to do, right? You had to do it versus something that could be a joyful process, which is something I get to do and I know we've talked about that recently, which is there's parts of it.

Speaker: That you really enjoy doing and you get to just enjoy it. It doesn't have to be heavy or something you have to do. You get to give yourself permission to enjoy parts of it. 

Speaker 2: What I really, really love about it, it is really uplifting to be able to look at your journey like that because, you know, we forget where we, where we came from or unless we can see it.

Speaker 2: I mean, this is another example. Like I went to Europe probably. [00:17:00] Seven or eight years ago, and I brought my daughter home a sweater, and we were in a place that was all you could get was samples. So all samples are extra small and small. Well, I never wore a small, my whole life, like I just never remember wearing a small, I always bought everything too big for me because I was always hiding my body and I always felt like if stuff was loose, I, you know, looked thinner.

Speaker 2: So when we were. In Europe and I, and I saw this sweater and I mean, I loved it so much for myself, but it just, I mean there was, it did not fit like it was like I was wearing large, extra large at that time and I went to my daughter's house the other day and we were cleaning closets out. And that sweater was there and she said, you know, mom, I know you gave me this from in Europe and whatever.

Speaker 2: And she said, but I just don't wear it very much, but I hold onto it all the time because I know where it came from. She goes, why don't you try it? I go, honey, I'm not gonna fit in that because that's where my brain sometimes still is. So this is where you like really get wake up calls that you still have work to do.

Speaker 2: And I'm like, I'm not gonna fit in that. And I put it on and it was [00:18:00] big. I was like, oh my gosh, we don't recognize things because, you know, you grow into where you are. It's not like you go from 30 pounds to 30 pounds down in a week and notice that huge change. You just, it's gradual. Just like you gain weight, you gain weight gradually.

Speaker 2: You don't notice it sneaking up until all of a sudden, you know, you're 20 pounds down the road. So I think that that's the same with this journey. If you don't have anything to look back on or anything to kind of gauge where you were. Or give yourself a pat on your back a little bit to say, Hey, look at what you have done.

Speaker 2: Look at what you have done. Tell me a little bit about how your relationship with food has changed. Food doesn't have so much of a demand for me. It pretty much consumed my life thinking about it because I was either worried about it, when was I gonna have it, when was I gonna stop eating it? I shouldn't eat this, I shouldn't eat that.

Speaker 2: Different approach that I had never, ever [00:19:00] heard of, ever. Which makes so much sense. I mean, why give your body more than it wants? So instead of you controlling what you put in your body, your body's controlling what you put in your body, which makes so much more sense. So it takes away a lot of food chatter, and you're just not always thinking about it.

Speaker 2: Like I used to come in my house and go right to my cupboard. I don't do that anymore. When I used to fly somewhere or travel, I always had to pack a bag with snacks in it. I don't do that anymore. Our fun driving travel was stopping at gas stations, getting bags of garbage and you know, eating it in the car.

Speaker 2: I don't do that anymore. I mean, there's so many things that I used to do that were just. Did not serve me and I don't do them anymore. Those are all big deals. There are definitely some things that I still, I mean, I, I still have work to do. I'm still struggling a little bit with stopping it enough just because I don't eat very that often.

Speaker 2: And when I'm eating, I'm kind of excited to eat. And [00:20:00] so, um. I'm still working on that. I mean, I'm still working on that so much better. I mean, I just had a hiccup the other day, but my hiccups are so much smaller. So when I hiccup or eat something that I wasn't planning on eating, I don't go, oh my gosh, I ate that.

Speaker 2: So now I'm gonna eat everything I can possibly find. I just don't, I just don't do that. I stop much faster and I recover much faster. So all those things, I just don't think food has the same hold on me that it had. Yeah, which is what I was hoping for. My long-term goal is that even more than my weight, because I just feel like that will naturally come exactly where I wanna be or exactly where I'm supposed to be.

Speaker 2: If I'm letting my body tell me what it needs. 

Speaker: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, a, a big thing that I've noticed in working with you too is the e emphasis originally I think was more on like the scale and following protocol, and now it's transformed into more [00:21:00] of. Learning about yourself, the relationship that you have with yourself and how you wanna treat yourself, your relationship with food and how you want that to feel.

Speaker: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And I mean, you've also had a lot of weight loss success as well along the way, so we don't wanna discredit that. Like there has been measurable results that you've been cr that you've created. 

Speaker 2: Yeah, a considerable amount. But I, as we talked about, so I thought that once I got to that weight, that was just going to be the perfect place and the perfect everything.

Speaker 2: And I got there and I mean, not that I, my body feels, I feel great, but there was still so much work to do and there was so many other things I discovered on the way that I wanted to work on. So, and it's still again. In order to have this be a lifelong thing, it is a lifelong journey. I wrote down the other day that every plateau is learning and then every move forward is growing.

Speaker 2: Then you know, you learn and then you grow. You learn, and you grow. So instead of a plateau being [00:22:00] a negative thing, it's just a place to. To figure something out, you know, and move on to the next, because we're always growing. I mean, we have to grow into our bodies and our age. Things are different as we age.

Speaker 2: I'm 60 years old, so things aren't the same as when I was 30, and we just have to morph into our life, and I think that that was another thing, like living in the past and where I thought I should be. I think I'm just learning where my body wants to be and what's comfortable for my body. Now, 

Speaker: why do you think you were successful in this program or are successful in this program?

Speaker 2: You? No, I, 

Speaker: I'll take all the credit. 

Speaker 2: Honestly, I think because I just kept going. It was hard for, it was hard for me to keep, in my opinion, asking you for help. I think that when, when you struggle with your weight, you always want somebody to tell you what to do. So that's why people do all these plans. Oh, this person says, well, if you can follow this for six weeks and you eat exactly this way, then you're gonna get this.

Speaker 2: Or if you take all this out of your thing or [00:23:00] whatever, you're gonna get here. So I think everybody's always looking for somebody to give them the fix. And I think I wanted that because I felt like. I knew so much and I, I just wanted to lose. I wanted to lose the weight. But now I think it's more like, if you really think about it, it's just like everything in life, what you want, you have to work for.

Speaker 2: It's not easy. But it's rewarding and it's kind of exciting. Like in the beginning I was uber excited and then I would be not as excited, and then I was very excited again. But I think coming back to you and allowing that to be okay. Letting you help me to move through my journey has been huge. Your podcasts are huge.

Speaker 2: Your podcasts are just like journaling. For me. It is so funny. Again, another sence. How many times I'll be in a rough patch and then all of a sudden I'll get a popup that says, new Mindful Shape podcast. I'm like, heck yeah. And right away like I'm on that [00:24:00] podcast, you know? So you have, so. Many great tools, so many tools, so many things to look back on.

Speaker 2: I love, I love the programs that we've done in between. I just think all of it just keeps you mindful and if I would've just stopped doing any of this stuff when I got to where I thought I wanted to be, I don't think I would still be here. And I don't even necessarily just mean coaching, but I just think in general, I think all of it.

Speaker 2: I think all of it is just gonna be a part of my life because it's just new practices and new habit. I maybe could have been somewhere sooner, but I don't know if that would've been good for me either because I wouldn't have learned some of the things I've learned had I gotten there sooner. I mean, I really had to push and work.

Speaker 2: Work and dig and come out of holes and go over hills and I mean, I had to do, I was up and down. I mean, in a good way though. Like not a, not a bad way, like not like I used to be. So, in a good way. Yeah. Why do you say in a good 

Speaker: [00:25:00] way, what does that mean? 

Speaker 2: It wasn't like I was sabotaging or doing something to be hurtful to myself or just going hog wild the other direction, like your weight loss is never steady.

Speaker 2: It's always up and down. And so I learned to be, and I'm gonna say, to have to be okay with it because I mean, there is part of me that feels like you have to be okay that your weight's going to go up and down. But that's what I think, I mean, I mean, I. I had to struggle with some of the ups and downs, but I never envisioned going back to how I was being before.

Speaker 2: In my mind, I knew when I started doing this, I knew as soon as I. Started talking to you. There was no going back. I was never going to be that person again. I was at the beginning and oh my gosh, that's gonna make me cry. That's an amazing feeling. Like, that sounds like a sad thing to say, like, I'm not gonna be that person anymore.

Speaker 2: But it's an amazing feeling. It is. It's just, it's really cool. 

Speaker: Yeah. That's why I do this. Right? 'cause it's so [00:26:00] about transformation and change. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And we just get to use this one thing that we care about, which is our weight. Mm-hmm. And our relationship with food to transform ourselves. And I think that like you're such a good example of that in that.

Speaker: Process you came for weight loss. And in that process, really it was more about the growth and the transformation. And so when you're speaking, I was thinking that's the part that can never, you can never go back to that old part because you will all, you can't not see once you understand, oh, it's not, mistakes might be a misstep, but I'm still moving myself forward.

Speaker 2: You can't 

Speaker: unknow that. It's this continual self evolution or self discovery. 

Speaker 2: I also think I've had the feels. Now I think that sometimes when you're thinking about your future self or what you wanna be, it's hard to imagine something you haven't felt or or know what it's going to be like to feel like that it doesn't feel real.

Speaker 2: So when you. Experienced it or felt something that you were working towards, [00:27:00] you can't unfeel that. And then you always know that feeling, the feeling that you wanna feel and how you wanna feel for the majority of the time. 

Speaker: I almost think like when you feel like you're in alignment. Whenever you're out of alignment.

Speaker: Mm-hmm. You just, you know, it, you so you, you're so aware of it. 

Speaker 2: When I was diagnosed with Lyme, I didn't even realize how much it was gonna impact my life. Four years after I was diagnosed. I mean, I was just living my life like normal, and all of a sudden just everything went to pot. It was terrible. I had so many things happen.

Speaker 2: I mean, I couldn't hardly stay awake, feet hurt, my joints hurt. I was losing my words. I was. Um, having nerve problems, just all kinds of stuff. I went to a specialty doctor because I didn't, I didn't realize that that was what it was, that it had to do with my lys. And he told me when we went there, he said, saw so many people in there that were impacted by it, and he said, people don't realize how bad they feel until they feel good, because our bodies are such an amazing.

Speaker 2: Machine that they [00:28:00] will adapt to anything you're doing to them, but only for so long and all of a sudden it's gonna catch up. That's an impactful statement because we don't know what it feels like to be feel good. So once you feel good, you don't wanna feel bad anymore. You just don't. 

Speaker: I felt that my experience with yoga was like that because I got into a routine where I was doing yoga very regularly when I worked at a studio, and then when I would go on holiday or I stopped doing, I just felt, oh, is this how I always used to feel?

Speaker: Mm-hmm. Like this stiff and this. Lack of mobility and lack of energy and like, almost like, um, like a tightness versus an openness. 

Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. 

Speaker: And I thought, oh, I've been living like this my whole life. 'cause I started yoga in my mid twenties. So I'm like, I've been, and I've been active my whole life. But it was something to do with that kind of movement that I had, that exact epiphany, which was, oh, you could just feel like this all of the time.

Speaker: How was I 

Speaker 2: living before? You can't tell anybody that either, like, and I've shared this with people, but [00:29:00] you cannot push anybody into this. People have to want it. They have to want it for themselves. I have just decided that it's important to lead by example. There's a lot of ways in your life that you need to lead by example.

Speaker 2: So a really cool thing this is gonna make me also sad is my brother is now doing some of these things that I have tried and tried and tried to get him to do, but I just kept doing what I was doing and he started asking questions and it just, and he's learning now. 

Speaker: Oh, that's amazing. Right, because it's a great thing.

Speaker: It took you to let go of trying to change him and instead embody this healthy living that you are doing. In this, I always think of it as like aware cognitive awareness and embodiment awareness, like knowing what's going on in your body and knowing what's going on in your mind and directing your thoughts, and then.

Speaker: It was to the extent where it was showing up in your life to where he noticed it and said, I want some of that. 

Speaker 2: Yeah, it's great. I love it and I love sharing with him. I love sharing, like I have too much [00:30:00] information sometimes I, I love to share. 

Speaker: Speaking of which, what do you wish other women knew when it comes to releasing weight?

Speaker 2: That no matter what you are telling yourself, you can absolutely 100% do it. You will do it. It's not, you can do it, you will do it. You will do it. I mean, you will do it. Just all you have to do is just put in the work, show up it, just show up and it, and it might take you six months or it might take you two years or who knows.

Speaker 2: I mean it, you just don't know, but you will do it. 

Speaker: I love that because it's, one of the things you said is when I asked you how have you been successful, you said, I didn't quit. So we worked together for a little time and then we went on pause and then you came back to the coaching. And that's is just like part of the resilience of not giving up.

Speaker: And I always tell people, so long as you don't give up, you're for sure gonna get. It's, we give up too early. Okay. Is there anything else that you would like to share? 

Speaker 2: I just want people to know that you're [00:31:00] important. We don't believe that we are important. We don't take the time for ourselves. I can see things shift in my life when I don't take the time to do this, or I don't make it important, and it doesn't mean we're selfish, but if we aren't full and we aren't happy, we aren't going to be good for anybody else.

Speaker 2: So this needs to be important. We just don't put ourselves first. It's not being selfish. It's being good to ourselves and it's really good for others because we are gonna be better to others if we're good for ourselves. So just take the time and do it for yourself and make it important and it'll change your life.

Speaker 2: I mean, it changes your life. And I, and I don't even mean that your pants are gonna fit better, it's life changing if you dig in. 

Speaker: So yeah, and you start to prioritize yourself. Mm. 

Speaker 2: Yeah, 

Speaker: so that, and prioritizing yourself, I think can really mean journaling movement, drinking more water, making sure you have that food that you need in the house.

Speaker: Like it doesn't have to be a spa day, right? It can really be what are those small [00:32:00] things that you can do for yourself that maybe are lacking right now, because. In the bigger picture, you are spending so much time caring for others around you that you come last. Whereas if you could prioritize yourself, and I love that you said it's not selfish.

Speaker: 'cause I know I've coached so many women that immediately they say, well that's selfish. Right? Versus being like, it is selfless to prioritize yourself so that you can be there for the people that you love most. 

Speaker 2: The other thing is, and this is just not just to push for your coaching, but had I not reached out for you, I mean your podcasts are very impactful, but the work we have done together, not only have I built a relationship with you that I really cherish, but you make me figure out me.

Speaker 2: You don't give me the answers. You just give me a direction. You sort my thoughts out. You make things seem simpler. You make things seem okay, you just feel more like it's okay to be human. [00:33:00] And I just really think that you don't get that everywhere in your life. So, um, I just think that that was a really important part of my journey is being able to talk to you and have you sort a lot of things out for me or help me to sort them out for myself.

Speaker: Yeah. I'm so glad you said that 'cause it's like that sounds like that made a really big impact in terms of your transformation. Is embracing your humanity and learning about yourself, and that's, thank you so much. I really take that to heart because I think of myself as almost like a conduit for that, or like a guide versus, as you said, telling you what to do.

Speaker: It's more like, let's just look at this together. Here's another perspective. Here's, let's explore how you're thinking about that. Let's explore the impact it's having, and then you from there, feel empowered to make the change if you wanna make a change. 

Speaker 2: Because I've even tried to tell you to tell me and you won't tell me.

Speaker 2: So you don't basically you won't tell me. 

Speaker: Yeah. It's very temp. Think it's great. [00:34:00] It's very tempting, right? Because I, it's like, but then always remind myself. Yeah. But then I always remember myself like, I don't know what you should do. Like, right. I know, right? It's like, I wanna help you figure out what you should do.

Speaker: Or at least try, not even should do, but at least something that makes sense to try. This 

Speaker 2: is different for everybody. What ev what? Every single person is going to take something out of this differently. They're gonna respond to it different. They're going to get different results in a different order, in a different amount of time.

Speaker 2: They're gonna learn things in a different way. 'cause none of us are alike, but we all know what each other feels like. We've all been there, which is another huge thing. Like you always feel like you're alone and, and we're not alone. This is just, we're not alone. 

Speaker: Oh, I love that. That's, that's a great thing to wrap up.

Speaker: So what's next for you now because you, you're at your desired wave. I'm close. 

Speaker 2: I mean, I fluctuated, but I still, I basically put when I'm more, I mean, I still want more, I still have work I'm [00:35:00] working on. I just would like some of the stuff to be a little bit more, still a little bit more natural, but I just wanna keep growing, learn more, grow more, and just.

Speaker 2: Continue to get stronger and more solid on my ground. I just want a solid foundation. The more solid my foundation, the less I'm gonna waver. Okay. Amazing. That's great. Well, thank 

Speaker: you again. Thanks so much for doing this. 

Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks. If I'm looking back on how I used to view food, I mean, I was always counting calories, always counting macros.

Speaker 2: I don't do any of that anymore. I literally don't do that. I only think about eating foods that serve me stopping at enough. I eat in a window because I intermittent fast. So that is. Also a huge thing for me, but it falls into everything that you teach, that you can befriend hunger. It's also very interesting to me how when you think you're hungry, if you drink a glass of water, you're really not hungry and how much hunger is based off of other things you have going [00:36:00] on in your life.

Speaker 2: There's none of that. Like there's none of that. So like the things that I would spend so much time on, like, I mean, you can track your food and you can do all that stuff, but you don't have to do any of that, which is, I think. Huge. Where do we see that in our world, in nutrition, we just don't. We just, nobody listens to their body and we just have to listen to our body.

Speaker 2: We don't take care of our bodies. We don't listen to them. When I started treating my body, like it wasn't part of me, I started to treat my body like it was outside of me and taking care of it like it was. Literally outside of me, it was such a big deal because it wasn't like I was taking care of myself, even though that's fantastic.

Speaker 2: I was taking care of my body and doing what was good for my body, and it just felt extremely motivating and thinking that. Whatever you put in your body, and I ask a lot of my body, I mean, there are days I will play pickleball for four hours. I like, I lift in the [00:37:00] morning, I drill and I play pickleball some days, plus I have four grandkids.

Speaker 2: I ask a lot of my body, I have got to give to my body too. That was huge for me. That was huge. 

Speaker: A, a client sent me this clip that I thought was really interesting, which was imagine that you were born and we get given a human, and then our job is to take care of that human. Have you heard this? No, but that's exactly what I'm talking about.

Speaker: Yeah, that's, well, that's what it's making me think of, right? Is we're, our job is we're given this human and our job is to take care of the human. Yeah. And so what we couldn't do is, if we think about that, is our job is to. Love the human. And so what does that look like? Well, when you love this human, you're gonna treat it really well.

Speaker: You're gonna give it nutritious food, you're gonna move it in a way that feels good. You're gonna make sure it's hydrated. You're gonna make sure it gets enough sleep. Mm-hmm. And then if we can have that mentality, 'cause what I'm hearing is you said it's so motivating. I think it's so motivating because.[00:38:00] 

Speaker: When you first love that human, you're taking such good care of that human, you start to like that human too because that human starts to perform. That human is like showing up that human does it when they don't feel like doing it. That human is like rising to the occasion. It's nice to people, it's kind.

Speaker: It has extra bandwidth. It doesn't snap at the grandkids or the kids or whatever. And then you start to like that human, and that's how we like ourselves. We first have to care for ourselves and then we will grow to like ourselves. So if you're thinking like, oh, I don't like myself, it's probably 'cause you're not loving yourself enough.

Speaker: Right? And is that self care first? Then you will start liking yourself for showing up. 

Speaker 2: It literally means taking care of yourself and making time for yourself to be good to your body. Yeah, like. With the food or water or foods that serve you, or if you need time to journal or if you just, anything a checkout for 10 minutes.

Speaker 2: We need that stuff for ourselves. People only think about losing weight in a [00:39:00] calorie, in calorie out way, and I just think this is a completely different way and that's why it can be so simple. You know? Like, is it, it's hard to. Navigate it at first, but once you think about it, it's, it's much simpler than anything else that we've done to lose weight.

Speaker: Yeah. Why do you say it's hard to navigate at first? 

Speaker 2: Um, because it's hard to believe it. It's something completely different than we've ever been taught. I mean, we've been taught so many things and you know, we have, I mean, there's just so much stuff out there. Low fat, high fat, low carbs, um, uh, no carbs, keto, paleo, whole 30, everything.

Speaker 2: It just, there's so many things that it, it's confusing. It's confusing. So when you can just boil that down to three things. It's huge. I mean, it's just huge, but it just takes you a while to wrap your head around it to believe it. [00:40:00] It's just you don't believe it at first. I don't believe that this is gonna, yeah, I don't believe this can work.

Speaker: When you say, I don't believe it can work, meaning I don't believe I can lose weight and maintain it by eating only when I'm hungry, stopping at enough and choosing foods that serve me, 

Speaker 2: that you can lose weight at all without thinking about calories in, calories out, macros, all that kind of stuff. I mean, it's hard to think that you don't have to think about that.

Speaker 2: Yeah. It's such a paradigm shift. Yeah. Which another one of the things in my book Paradigm Shift, I have that right in front of me. We did that.