Corinne Crabtre…: This week we’re going to talk about what to do when old shitty is loud and proud. As you go through the No BS Weight Loss course, one of the things that you will find is that in module two, I teach you about the Think Feel Do Cycle. The Think Feel Do Cycle is simply this. There are things that happen in the world, and those are facts. Wallpaper is a fact. “I’m moving,” is a fact. What you weigh on the scale is a fact. The image you see in the mirror is a fact.
Then you have thoughts about all of it. Even an over-eat is a fact. Being on plan is a fact. Those things are just facts. Nothing feels terrible or good until your brain decides to have an opinion about it. Your brain has an opinion about everything, and it’s supposed to. The way that our brains are hardwired to work is simply this. “I’m going to scan my environment, and I’m going to make up a story about it.” I’m probably going to make up a story that skewed negatively.
The reason why your brain does that is because, one, it can just be social conditioning. Maybe this is what you’ve learned about these things. The reason why so much social conditioning, so much of what we have adopted as our own perceptions and thoughts and stories about facts, is because of the second reason. Our brains were originally designed with a huge fear central place. A huge fear, I almost used cortex. I don’t think cortex is the right word, but it’s the only one that’s coming to mind, and I don’t want to get stuck on it.
Our brains came out of the box from primitive design, with a huge fear central. If you looked at your brain, and we just drew a graph, let me show you real quick. I’ve got to grab my slip chart, hang on. Y’all can see just how naked this back is. I’m just going to tell y’all, if you ever want to get fake boobs, you need to be prepared that you are going to have shiny nipples 24/7. Nobody told me before I got my fake books 15 years ago. But literally, your nipples are on high beam 24/7.
I have two nipple pads on. This morning I put on the one, they’re called dimmers. There was no dimming. It was just making that silicone look like it had, it looked like I put a bandaid on, not no silicone. I put two on today, so that I do not poke anybody’s eyes out if they are watching the video. So if anybody’s wondering, “Why is Corinne’s nipples always out?”, at least you know now. I let go of it a long time ago, but every now and then, when I wear a sweater that I can not wear a thick bra with, I always feel the need to explain why my shit’s out.
This was from the other day. We’ll just use this. Let’s imagine this is your brain. Here lies the positive. This is your brains. They come out of the box. This is about how much of your brain is supposed to be looking for the positive. The pleasure, and things like this. This is the negative. So if you are listening in the private member podcast on a replay, 90% of your brain’s dedicated resources are to scan the world and say, “Something’s wrong with this. Let me tell you why this is wrong. This is why this is dangerous. This is why you shouldn’t do it, blah blah blah.”
It does that for a good reason. It does this because it would rather you look for the negative, and be safe, than to just be like, “Everything’s great. It’s so positive,” and you go running out your cave, a puma comes charging at you from the bush. You were hungry for the berries, and you got ate, because you were like, “I’m sure the wild animals just want me to pet them,” instead of, “I will bet you if I leave this cave, something’s going to eat me.”
It would be great if our brain, over the thousands and thousands of thousands of years evolved. But it hasn’t. Seriously, this is how slow evolution is, so don’t think that your brain should be caught up to things. You know, one day we won’t have a pinky? Do you know why your pinky toe, and this pinky is getting smaller? We don’t need it. We don’t climb trees anymore. We don’t do hard labor with our hands. It’s probably going to take another million years, and then you ain’t going to have a pinky.
So don’t be upset that your brain goes negative. That’s one old, shitty thought that we have all the time about our brain. Like, “Oh my god, my brain’s so negative. It must be broken. Something’s wrong with me.” Nothing’s fucking wrong with you. Welcome to the human race. You just got your human card. Your brain, just like the rest of us, talks like an asshole first.
Now, what has happened over the years, through evolution, is we have discovered that we are humans. We’ve gotten pretty smart. Science has said, did you know that at any time you want to turn on the part of your brain that thinks about things in a positive way, or in a new way, you can? That is why we are not dogs, cats, and birds. We have the part of the brain that can reason. So that means that if you want to lose weight, if you want to change your thinking, you have to be very willing to use your reasoning part of the brain, instead of sitting there, acting like an entitled ass, that you should just be thinking better.
Like, “I just shouldn’t be having these thoughts. These thoughts should go away. Did you know that I have already listened to 45 minutes of Corinne’s No BS course, and I’m still thinking like shit? I have been here a year. I have listened to all the words drip out her mouth, and I am still thinking like shit.” Well what the fuck do you expect? That is why. It’s not a problem that you still think like shit. That’s just how your brain works.
The problem is, you’re so busy arguing with how your brain works, that you aren’t just telling yourself what you want to think. You aren’t just interrupting those thoughts. You’re not just being like, “Okay, my brain’s hijacked. It’s running wild like a freight train.” I know some of you, you’re neuro-divergent. You’re adult ADHD, or you’ve got past trauma. Your brain runs wild. When it hits, it hits like a freight train for you.
Okay. In that moment, you’re probably not going to be able to change your thoughts. But one of the things that you can do is, you can make a decision, when you know your brain is going haywire, to calm your nervous system down first. That’s when you put in the practice of, “Now it’s time to protect my nervous system. Now it’s time to remind myself that I’m safe. My brain is just running away from me right now, but I’m physically okay.”
This is important, because in the Think Feel Do Cycle that I teach you in module two, it’s all about, we are going to figure out, the way the world works is facts. Facts happen all the time. Then I have a thought about it. However I decide, or my brain automatically offers up in the moment, that’s what I am going to feel. Whatever I feel dictates what I will do or not do in that situation. So it’s not the facts ever making me do anything.
If someone brings free doughnuts in, that doesn’t make you eat. If your partner is not supporting you, that doesn’t make your weight loss harder. Your thought is, “My partner doesn’t support me. So I feel hopeless, unsupported, unloved. When I’m feeling unloved, I don’t support me. I eat. I do these other things, and then I blame it on them.”
Instead of, when your partner’s not supporting you, take a wild guess what you could think. “This is the opportunity I have, to finally learn how to support myself. This is my chance. As much as I would like for them to support me, at the end of the day, if I don’t support me, none of this matters anyway.” There’s always options for how we think, feel, and do.
I wanted to give you that explanation, because what we do inside of module two is, we explain how the brain works. We give you the Think Feel Do Cycle. It’s like, “This is the way the world works. Facts happen. You’re going to create a story,” just like if somebody rang my doorbell right now. I use this in the modules. I say, “Huh, he’s interrupting my call. I wonder if that’s that package that I ordered the other day. I bet that’s that damn Chris Crabtree, ordering the 500th thing of the day.” Or my thought might be, “I’ll bet that’s FedEx.”
Notice how I don’t even see what’s going on, but my brain automatically wants to create a story. That’s how fast it happens. Most thoughts do not deserve your attention. Some you just want to swat away. Some it doesn’t matter. But what I teach you in module two, is to pay attention to them. Module one is all about paying attention and raising your awareness around what you’re eating, in terms of how often, how much, and the quality. When we write our 24 hour plan, we’re becoming aware of what our likes and desires are. What we want to be able to lose weight eating.
When you assess your plan, you’re becoming aware of, do you follow it or not? Was that plan good for you or not, for the day? You learned from it. When we do hunger and enough, that’s you learning how to pay attention to your body. That’s raising the awareness of your body, raising the awareness of your cues. Raising awareness of what works for you, and what is going to be something you’ve got to work on in No BS. That’s why you’re here. You’re here to work on the problems that other diets couldn’t solve. You’re not here to lose weight.
All of you, I want you to hear this. You are not here to lose weight. You’re here to solve the problems that you’ve never had solved in other weight loss programs, so you can lose weight, and keep it off. That’s very different. If you’re just here to lose weight, you’re going to be looking for a quick fix. You’re going to be like, “Where’s my meal plan? Why ain’t I got a recipe page on the website?” You’re going to be looking for regular old ass diet tactics.
I don’t give you those things for a reason. You don’t need them. You shouldn’t pay $59 a month to get recipes from us. You shouldn’t pay $59 to get a meal plan from us. You know what you should pay $59 for? Figuring out how to solve all the things that you can go. If you want recipes, and you want meal plans, go to Pinterest. Fucking free. But while you’re here, figure out how you’re going to make sure you follow it. How are you going to remove all the obstacles in your brain? How are you going to think different? You don’t need that shit from us.
Then we give you the four N’s, because you’re going to find a lot of old shitties. That’s what module two is all about. When you raise all the awareness of what’s working and what’s not, how you’re eating, how you’re following your plan, if you’re following your plan, how often you stop at enough, how often you do doable hunger. All the things. Guess what? Your brain is like, “Girl, I’ve got a story for you. You know the day that you didn’t follow the plan? Let me tell you, it means you can’t lose weight.”
So when you raise the awareness around how you show up, now next stage is, you raise the awareness around how you think about all of it. How you think will dictate how you start showing up for yourself.
So then in module two, we teach you, how do you watch your thoughts? How do you raise the awareness of, how do you speak to yourself? What stories do you create around all of it? Because whatever the story is, the story, the thought, will cause feelings that drive what you do or do not do. So if we want to show up better, if you want to show up differently, you have to change how you think.
Too many of you have spent your entire diet life trying to change your facts. You’re real busy switching diets. You’re real busy looking for that final answer. I’m telling all of you, there is no diet that you’re ever going to try, that will fix your brain. The only way your brain will get fixed is when you’re willing to work on it. That’s why we have module two.
As you raise that awareness of your thoughts, here’s what happens. It sounds great. You’re like, “Yeah, that’s a shitty thought. Oh my god, here they all are.” Now I teach you to stay out of judgment. I teach you, there’s only one Judge Judy in the world. She gets paid a lot of money to be her. Nobody’s paying you to be Judge Judy of your brain. So if nobody’s going to pay you to be a Judge Judy, don’t do it. Waste of time.
So when we start all this thought work, the very first thing we have to do is, do not sabotage yourself by hearing all the negative Nancy crap that’s going to go on in your brain, and then tell yourself shit like, “I shouldn’t think this. This is bad thoughts. Never going to be able to lose weight doing this.” Do not do that.
So let’s just pretend that you don’t do that. You come up with, use the four N’s. You’re like, “Corinne, changing my life. I’m doing the four N’s. I finally understand why I think the way I do. This is amazing. I have got the world’s best next thought. I went to ask coaches. I went to the Facebook group. Everybody gave me things. I feel great. This is going to work. It’s clicking.” Then two days later, old shitty is back. He’s like, “Hey, you know all those thoughts you found? I’m back. I didn’t go nowhere. You half-ass wiped your ass. Here I am, stinking up the joint one more time.” You’re like, “Fuck me. I had enlightenment. I listened to videos. I did the things. Why is he back? He shouldn’t be here, oh my god.”
Let me just tell you, I watch, for my elders … My new people, y’all are like, “Okay. I could see that after a couple weeks, my 42 years of negative thinking probably isn’t going to change about my body. It seems reasonable that I’d still have these shitty-ass thoughts.” You’re willing to work on it. My elders, y’all decide there’s this certain amount of time that you’re going to be in the No BS. Then, “I now have what’s called the entitlement card. I am in the entitlement class of, my thoughts should be more pure. My thoughts shouldn’t be like this by now.”
Y’all ain’t entitled to jack shit. That would be like your kids telling you, “I’m entitled to not do my homework, because I’m a junior now, and I’ve been showing up every day since kindergarten. I did my coloring and my ABCs. I memorized my state capitals, times tables. Here I am, a junior in high school. I am entitled to take a break from the homework.” No you ain’t. Nobody’s entitled to anything.
You know what we are? We’re either willing to keep working on it, or we’re going to frustrate ourselves thinking, “It should be different.” I’m a big believer in, nothing should fucking be different. The best thing I ever told myself is, whatever’s happened, don’t shit on yourself. If something’s happened, it’s a fac. Sitting around thinking something that’s already happened, a fact in the world, should be different, pisses me off. It makes me feel gross. So nothing should be different. It’s always, “This is what’s happened. Now what? This is what’s happened. What’re we going to do about it? This is what’s happened. We don’t argue with reality.” These are the things I tell myself.
So if your brain is sitting around, still telling you horseshit, all that means is, do you want to pivot and think new shit? Or do you want to sit around, and whip out your entitlement card, that you should be thinking better? Just think about it. Whenever somebody’s like, “I should be thinking better by now,” you feel like a wilted fucking flower. It’s awful. Ask yourselves this. Why would I choose to be doing this? What payoff am I getting, by sitting around thinking, “My thoughts should be different”? Because everything you think is trying to send you a message.
I want you to stop thinking that your thoughts should be different. Old shitty is going to come back, and he’s going to come back a lot. Trust me, as someone who’s getting coached every week for the last four years, all the time, every week I go into my coaching session, I have all kinds of shit that I get coached on.
This last week, we’re coaching on my body. Y’all all think, “Woo, losing 100 pounds, and having a weight loss empire. Corinne must have a get out of jail free card of loving her body.” No she doesn’t. I just have a whole other crop of body problem thoughts. I’m just really willing to be honest about them, and open up to them. I cry about them. I talk about them. I wonder why they’re here. I wonder what they could be telling me, about the next version of me. I do all of that stuff. But I don’t sit around and think, “I shouldn’t …”
Just think about this. For all of you who think you shouldn’t talk negatively yourself, you shouldn’t think negatively about your body, why wouldn’t you, in this world? I always give myself some grace. We live in a world that is so body focused. Short of putting your head in the sand, and never reading a magazine, never going on social media, never watching television, never going to the grocery store, you’re going to be bombarded with societal imagery and messaging about what a woman’s body should be.
So I just always keep that in mind. When I keep that in mind, I don’t have to get mad at the system. I just get really aware that the system is at play, and that my brain might be latching onto it. It would make sense that I would think these things. It would also, it’s probably my brain not saying I should look like that. It’s my brain saying, “Have you taken time to figure out how you want to look? Are you scared to put your stake in the ground on, this is the body you love? Why do you want to hang all this up?” Those are the questions I ask myself all the time.
So let’s talk about old shitty. He’s going to come in, and old shitty, I just want y’all to think about him. He’s like your default way that you are going to interpret those facts in the world. Three of the things that I hear y’all say the most is, “I’m never going to quit thinking this. I’m never going to get this. This won’t work for me. I can’t have what I want.” Y’all have a lot of automatic thoughts that will be coming up, that all of you can probably relate to. “I can’t lose weight, because I never have. Dinner’s going to be really hard for me. It’s going to be hard to stop at enough.”
We just have lots and lots and lots of thoughts that come up. But what I want to do is, I want all of you to do this. I want you to think about, what is your go to, “I can’t. It’s hard for me. This should be different”? What is your flavor of an old shitty, that just keeps coming back, over and over again? For some of you, it may even be things like this. “This won’t hurt. We’ll start tomorrow. A little bit more will be okay. You’ve been so good today.”
Some old shitties are very sexy. Some old shitties just feel good when you hear them. They offer a little relief. Some old shitties are straight up a slap in the face. “I’m not good enough,” says Andra. “Just one more bite. I can’t lose weight, doing the four basics.” That’s a common one. A lot of us think, “I can’t lose weight doing the four basics.” We sit around not doing them, and then we wonder why we’re not losing weight. We’re like, “Oh, it must be because the four basics aren’t good enough.” “I suck. I’m so tired of this. I can start over tomorrow.” These are really good. All right. “I’m too old. Another thing you’re going to fail at.” So tons.
Oh, here’s another good one. “I can’t lose weight enjoying food I like.” A lot of us are going to have recurring thoughts, and let me just tell you, they’re going to feel awful true. I always say that just because something feels true, doesn’t make it true. I want to repeat that. Just because these thoughts feel true, does not make it true. It makes it one interpretation that you are having in this moment.
Now, one of the things that I would do is, I would take whatever your more prevalent version of old shitty is. Put it through the four N’s. You’ve already got the hard part done, which is notice. For most people, noticing the recurrent thought can be the hardest thing to do. Because we get so used to not listening to ourselves.
Then I want you to normalize it. Normalizing is the part where we release the Judge Judy. Normalizing is where you ask yourself, “There has to be a good reason why my brain thinks this. I wonder what it is.” Sometimes it’s because somebody told us this. “It makes sense that my brain would say I’m not good enough, because I remember as a child, often bringing home good grades, and not getting kudos.”
For example, this is not the reason why I think I have a not good enough story. I think mine has more to do with my father. But speaking of grades, when I was little, I did make good grades, effortlessly. My brother, not so much. My brother really struggled in school. It was really hard for him. Probably had ADHD undiagnosed, but just really struggled in school. My mom literally, it was like he got all the attention for it. I would bring home good grades, you’d hear nothing about being on the honor roll.
It was almost like, for my mother, I am sure when I look back on it, it was, “Oh thank god, at least one kid has got their shit together.” Because she was so worried my brother was always going to flunk. My brother was always C’s and D’s, and barely passing and stuff. So I am sure now as an adult, now that I’ve thought about, “Why do I have this desire to be seen? Why do I want people to love me and stuff so bad?” I’ve got 1000 reasons that I’ve gone through, but this is one where it makes sense. This might be one reason why I never thought that what I did was good enough. That I always had to do something extraordinary to get the least little bit of attention.
So look back, and figure out, why might it be normal that as an adult, you still think this? A lot of times in the normalizing, you’re going to be looking at your childhood. Sometimes for a lot of you who think, let’s take, “The four basics aren’t good enough. The four basics are not going to, that’s not going to be enough for me to lose weight.” It’s probably because you’re very conditioned, that every time you’ve ever lost weight, you had to do something incredibly hard. You had to do something very restrictive, very depriving. All the willpower, rules galore, and it almost required being perfect all the time.
So that taught you that that’s one way to lose weight, and so your brain is a lazy fucker. It’s sitting there thinking, “But we already know how to lose weight. All these things you’ve done in the past. It’s got to be like that. Because if it feels easy, if it feels too good to be true, it can’t be that.” So what we do is, when we have that thought, it would be very normal to try to imagine that this won’t work for you, if all you’ve ever done is punishment.
It would be very normal to think that, because you keep telling yourself the story, “Those diets worked,” when in reality they never worked. The only diet that really works is the one that will keep your weight off. Otherwise, you didn’t lose weight. Your scale number changed up and down. I don’t think any of you are here because you’re like, “You know what I want? The roller coaster ride of my life on my weight loss.” Go to Disneyland. Don’t come here.
So we want to be working on these root causal issues. That’s normalizing. Normalizing is essentially just trying to explain, “Why do I think the way I do?” Because I promise every one of you, it’s not because you’re broken. It’s not because something’s wrong with you. Your brain always has a really good reason as to why it offers up certain things. Sometimes it’s just because the brain skews negative, and that’s enough. Some of you are like, “I think it’s just because the brain skews negative, and that right there gives me relief from this thought.”
For some of you, you’ll trace back, and you’ll find, “Oh, no wonder I think this way.” So sometimes you don’t even have to go that deep with it. If at any time you are confused on trying to figure out why this thought might be normal, take it to Ask Coaches. Go to Ask Coaches with, “I notice I’m thinking these things. I’m trying to figure out why I might think it. Here’s my best guess.” If your best guess is simply because you’re broken, then just say, “I keep telling myself I’m broken. Something wrong with me.”
They can give you questions that will take things deeper for you, where you can really move past that default shitty thought. They can give you differently worded questions to be like, “Huh, okay. I never thought of it this way. I never asked myself this question.” Then you’re going to go to neutralizing. This is just where we go back to what I was talking about at the beginning. You’ve just got to get it factual.
Let’s take, “The four basics won’t work for me.” The only fact is, “I’m in No BS. I’ve learned the four basics.” That’s it. “I’ve listened to the lessons. I see them. This is where I am.” All of this, “It won’t work for me. They’re too hard. They’re confusing. I’m no good at them,” all of that stuff, that’s more and more thoughts that you might want to work at some point.
So we go back to just remembering, and taking a deep breath. This is all that’s happening. I want to give you some power thoughts for the next best thought. Because one of the things that I’ve noticed that y’all do is, when you first hear all of this information, and you go to the next best thought, your next best thought is, “The four basics are totally going to work for me,” or, “The four basics are the best way to lose weight.” You tell yourself something that does not ring an ounce of truth to it.
I want to tell you, when you go to the next best thought, I want you to be thinking about, “It’s got to be something that a small part of me says, ‘Yeah, I can get behind that.’” It doesn’t have to totally solve the original thought. It doesn’t need to do anything. What we’re really looking for is the ability for you to shift out of 100% belief in whatever story you’re telling us, to about 95% belief in that one.
When you crack the door open to something else being equally as true, here’s what happens. Your brain starts realizing, not everything you think is the god’s gospel. It starts thinking, “Okay, if it’s not 100% true, other things can be.” The moment you land on any thoughts that feel a little better, your brain is very attracted to want to go to those thoughts in the future.
Now here’s the problem. You still have a lot of neurons in your brain, neurological paths well grooved for your old automatic thinking. Because you have told yourself it, “Imagine,” thousands or millions of times. If your thought is, “I’m not good enough,” that is probably a thought that got practiced millions of times, over and over again, loudly and subtly. If it’s, “The four basics won’t work for me,” it’s probably, every single time you’ve tried to do a part of the four basics, your brain has thrown it up first, thrown it up first. Then once it throws that thought up, it’s like, “Okay, I need to pay real close attention to how the four basics aren’t working.”
So every over-eat, you think, “Oh, see. The four basics are not working. They’re not helping me lose weight.” Instead of every over-eat being like, “Corinne told me I would over-eat, because I’m raising my awareness. I’m bringing up more discomfort, which means sometimes I’m going to over-eat. That’s another version of eating I’m going to need to solve, on my way to losing my weight.”
So here’s what I want you to think about with the next best thought. Old shitty is going to keep coming back, whatever it is. “I’m not good enough. Four basics won’t work. I’m too old.” Whatever your thought is, I think your next best thought needs to be, “I knew I’d think this.” That thinking no longer makes my decisions for me. “I always do this, and that’s okay, because I knew what else to think.”
What I want you to do is give yourself some peace. In the moment, when your old shitties come back, that you really believe that are our trues, and you have the recurrent thoughts, I don’t want you going off to la la land, trying to feel better immediately. I want you to be like, “I knew I’d think that.” So tonight when you’re at home, and in the morning, your brain is in love with you. It’s like, “Oh my god, I’m dialed in with my future self. Girl, I’ve got your back. This is what we’re going to be eating. This is plenty of food. I put stuff on there you love.”
Then, Jekyll and Hyde. It’s 5:00, you’ve had a long day. It’s Groundhog Day. Dishes are staring at you. You’ve got to make some dinner, and you’re like, “Fuck me and that plan. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking. Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m just going to order pizza. We’re just going to do something easy. Mama needs a break, I can start over tomorrow. I promise I’ll be good tomorrow. Tomorrow I’ll work out more. Tomorrow I’m going to cut back. Tomorrow is such a better today. Today was some bull fucking shit.”
This is the moment, because you’re going to feel all that. Your brain is offering a lot of reasons to feel good, and we’re like, “Yes, I should do that. I have had a long day. Oh my god, I do deserve a reward. This bitch-ass world, they never acknowledge me. If my partner was only supporting me, this would all be so much easier.” Whatever your flavor is, your job is to sit there and be like, “I knew I’d think this. I know me. I’m not surprised. This is exactly what I think, every single night.”
That right there shifts your energy from just believing your horseshit, to being like, “Oh yeah, I anticipated horseshit.” I want you to think about the difference. If we do our Think Feel Do Cycle. If you’re thinking, “I knew I’d …” Let’s say, “I can start tomorrow.” What does that feel like? It feels giddy, exciting, complacent. There’s feelings that come along for the ride.
Here’s the difference. “I’ll start tomorrow. I knew I would think that.” That feels insightful, focused. In that moment, when you’re feeling focused, you have opened the door to more options. If all you think is, “I can start tomorrow,” and you just leave it at that, or you go to, “I’ll start tomorrow,” and be like, “I shouldn’t be thinking that way.” Like, “I wish this thought would go away.” Now you’re feeling not only wanting the relief, but now you’re feeling entitled, whiny, like it’s harder. You’re layering shit on your shit sandwich.
It’s like, “On that shit sandwich, can I get extra cheese?” We don’t want to do that to ourselves. When we do that, our do line, and the Think Feel Do Cycle, becomes eat. Eat, and usually that eat snowballs into eating more. Fuck it eating, eating up because we’re telling ourselves we’ll start tomorrow, so we paint this imaginary picture that we’re going to restrict tomorrow. It’s like, “Bitch, you ain’t ever done that. Why do you think you’re going to start tomorrow?”
So if we switch to, “I knew I would think that. I’ve been writing about that in my journal.” This does not guarantee that you will make the best choice. But in version one, you have no choice. You’ve given yourself literally no options, but to screw yourself over. To not do what you say you will do. You have set yourself up to go on one path.
I want you to get used to this. This is what’s powerful. When you go with, “I knew I would think that,” anything in that realm … Oops, left out some words. “I knew I would think that.” Now you’ve got two paths. Big sexy is going to be over here, with eating, kicking the can down the road, and tomorrow. It’s 50% now sitting there. But you now have the 50% of, “Can I just, those things that we talked about? Can I just eat what’s on my plan? Can I just order Uber Eats, but get a salad instead of a pizza?” It opens the door to making a better decision than if you go all in on the shitty one.
It you say, “I knew I would think that,” for some of you to just stay on plan. You’re not caught off guard, and you’re not whining. You have the emotional bandwidth to do what you say you would do.
If you do, “I knew I would think that,” you might compromise. Lessening fuck it eats. Staying more engaged while you eat. Whatever it is. So I want y’all to think about, when we decide, “All right, old shitty is just going to keep coming back over and over and over again,” that is okay. That is no longer a problem. He’s not supposed to go away for a long time.
When I use things like, “I knew that would happen. I knew I would think this,” that’s okay. I think this very often. I can still make a better decision. This is not a game ender. None of the things that I tell myself. Then guess what? You’ve now opened yourself up to new options. This is how we lose weight. Not from being perfect, but at least giving yourself a 50/50 chance of going in the right direction. The more you do this, the more this 50% starts getting better and better and better. Louder and louder and louder.
The reason why is because every time you follow through on this, your job is not to say, “Well I half-assed it.” Your job is to say, “I am making improvements every day. I am getting better at this. I bet the four basics will work. I’m figuring out, one step at a time, how to make them work.” The more you do that, the more you start changing.
Then guess what? The more this starts happening, and your mind starts watching you, and being like, “Well she doesn’t go to the shitter every night anymore. She only tells herself this stuff, stays on plan, feels proud. The next day she’s doing her assessment. She’s so excited that she was able to break her cycle. That she was able to do a little bit better,” guess what your brain wants to do? It starts wanting to think in a way that takes you down a path that feels good. That’s what we ultimately want.
The main thing for all of you is, I just want you to stop feeling like something’s going wrong, simply because old shitty is not going away. Some go away pretty quick. Ones that we don’t hold close, or ones where we start doing other things, and we fall in love. For a long time, I didn’t think of myself as an exerciser. I just didn’t. I didn’t think that I could, because I never played sports. All of the things. I didn’t fit in, because I was the big girl. All kinds of stuff.
When I started going to the gym everyday, and started telling myself, “I am an exerciser. I’m going to the gym. I’m going to walk for 15 minutes,” this is something that any human can do. Not any human, but any human in my shape and my age can walk 15 minutes a day. I knew we have people that, like my mom, she can’t walk 15 minutes a day. She has got bum-ass feet, that just gets really, my mom, she does her pool exercises. But when I started identifying as someone who was going to exercise, it didn’t take long to where I was so proud of myself for showing up everyday, I started thinking, I didn’t ever think anymore, “I’m not an exerciser.”
I had other old shitties come in, like, “You’re a cardio person, but you’re not a weightlifter. Only the thin girls go in there.” I just had new old shitties come up. New flavor of the day, of an insecurity. Then I worked on that one, until I’m now, I will tell you, there is not an ounce of me that doesn’t think that I am a lifelong exerciser. There’s not an ounce of me that doesn’t think that … Most of the time, when I walk into the weight room, I think, “The men should pay attention to me.” I lift heavier than a lot of them, and I always have tight form.
I watch guys all the time lift weights, and I’m like, “How the hell do you not need to go to the chiropractor after this? I’ll never know. You already look like you injured yourself.” There’s this one dude that goes to my gym. If you’re a weightlifter, you will know what I mean. He grabs a 100 pound dumbbell to do dumbbell rows. Now I row 35s and 40s most of the time, to do a single arm row, supported. I’m tight with my form. Here’s him, with his 100 pounds. He looks like he’s … Well, you can imagine what he looks like he’s doing. But he’s literally doing it so fast, and with about an inch of motion. I’m like, “Bro, come on. What are we doing? No one’s impressed.”
So, tangent. But every ounce of me, because I’ve told myself for so long that I’m an exerciser, from day one. I used to believe that I was someone, I was so ashamed to walk into the gym. I remember the first few weeks that I went to the gym. It was cold when I started my weight loss journey. If y’all know me, I barely like mother nature. I like indoor anything. But I would go, and it took every ounce of my willpower, to override all of the shame around my body, the embarrassment that I had for myself. Lord y’all, my thoughts were in the fucking dooder. Dooder about it. I went anyway, and I learned in those early days, that even if I’m ashamed and embarrassed, I can still do stuff.
I was very willing to bring all of it along for the ride, because I was more interested in becoming who I wanted to be, than staying in that. Because one of the things I realized is, not going to the gym was not solving my shame and embarrassment problem. The only thing that was ever going to solve my shame and embarrassment problem was, go to the gym, and tell yourself you can do it. Tell yourself whatever you need to tell yourself, until one day, you’re telling yourself other shit about you that’s not shameful, and it’s not embarrassing. That’s when everything changed.
