All right, welcome back, everybody.

Today, we’re going to be talking about something that has way more to do with your weight loss than the actual foods you’re eating. We are going to be talking about how the hell you talk to yourself after a fuck-up. That’s what we’re talking about today.

Most people think the problem is the overeating. They think the problem is the foods they ate, that they ate too much. It’s not that stuff. It’s what you say to yourself after these things that matters more than anything.

I am here to tell you that how you talk to yourself after messing up, after problems, after things not going the way you think they should, is everything to weight loss. Because if you talk to yourself like an asshole, you will never get to the end. You will eventually quit.

So if you’ve ever thought, “Corinne, I just always screw up. Why do I even bother? I might as well just give up. I’m so lazy. I’m so stupid. I’m so undisciplined. Great, now I’m back at square one. The second I get going good, I just mess it all up,” if you have been thinking those things after overeats, after breaking your plan, after things not going the way you think they should, then this episode is for you.

Because the voice that you have after that is the thing costing you every ounce of weight loss you dream about. It is not the mistake doing it. It is the meltdown you’re having afterward that’s causing it.

So let me just tell you, it is normal to mess up. You are supposed to mess up. Weight loss, from where you are now to where you will be at the end, is paved in golden mistakes.

There’s no one that ever loses weight who does it perfectly. I hate to break it to you. You ain’t Jesus Christ. There was one perfect human being. That one’s gone. You are not holding the mantle of being perfect in your diet.

I promise you, you are going to overeat sometimes. You are going to forget to do things. You are going to have really long days and be too tired to exercise or whatever it is you think you should be doing. You are going to get really tired. Life is going to happen. Kids are going to forget shit. Kids are going to get in trouble. Spouses are going to have bad days. Bosses are going to throw work at you.

That is called life. And y’all are making all of that a big-ass problem. And I’m like, that’s not a problem. That is called normal shit that happens to everyone. And you’ve got to learn how to be able to lose weight while normal shit is happening.

So the problem isn’t that these things actually happen to us. The real problem becomes, I talk to myself like shit inside my head when they do.

Because what most people do is we treat our mistakes like it’s some type of guilty verdict. So let’s say you eat something off plan, and immediately you’re thinking, “Well, there I go again. See? I can’t do this. I just ruin everything.” And once you only allow yourself to think that, it’s almost like your brain goes, “All right, well, if that’s just who we are, then let’s just eat like an asshole.”

If you’re talking to yourself like an asshole, you shall eat like an asshole.

Guess what we do? We take normal overeats. Say you blew past enough. Say you’re listening to my podcast and you’ve been trying to stop at enough, and you blew past it. Well, instead of being like, “Okay, that happened. I’m going to make my next best decision at the next meal. I’m going to remind myself that I’m trying to pay attention to stopping at enough,” instead of dissecting what was going on, you know what your ass does? You eat more.

It ain’t because you’re hungry. It’s because you’ve sat there and talked to yourself in such a way that you have zero incentive to learn. You have zero incentive to do better.

I have this one line that I say all the time to my clients. I always say, “Y’all, why are we fucking up the day when we can save it?” If you have an overeat, why are you deciding to just eat everything in the house simply because you made a mistake?

I know why. Because you talk to yourself like a butthole. That is why.

Because think about it. If you’re being a turd to yourself and you’re an emotional eater to begin with, well, talking to yourself like a turd doesn’t feel good. And if you’re the kind of person that every time you don’t feel good reacts with food to feel better, well, you are just turning up the not feeling good. So of course you eat more.

So we’ve got to learn how to intervene.

The other day I was coaching a client who told me something that I hear all the time. She said, “Corinne, I do good all day. But if the day has been long and hard, when I get home and I’ve got to deal with my three kids, I’m just blowing it. I can’t stick to my plan. I just give in to whatever I want to eat.”

And then she said something that literally broke my heart on the call. She said, “I’ve never been able to lose weight. When that happens, I just think I’m a loser. Every time I overeat at night, I’m just sitting there talking to myself like, you’re a loser who’s wasting money trying to lose weight, and you’re never going to be able to do it.”

Now, if you are working with some basic-bitch trainer, if you are in some basic-bitch-ass weight loss program, they’re going to focus on the food. They’re probably going to send you another meal plan. They’re going to tell you to just try harder. They’re going to tell you, like, well, don’t do that.

That’s not what I did.

I said, “I don’t think you’re a loser at all. I do think, though, that you’re tired at the end of a long day. And as of right now, we haven’t figured out how to take care of you without food yet. So of course you eat, because food has been the way that you have cared for the tired version of you.”

Think about it. You’ve been working all day. You’re worn out. You’re walking in the door, and there are these three beautiful little humans not acting beautiful. Immediately, they want your attention. One of them is jumping on the furniture. Two of them are fighting.

And so I asked her something important in this moment. I said, “If you didn’t eat, and your kids are being demanding, and you are exhausted from the day, what would you be thinking in that moment if you weren’t going to be able to eat?”

So she sat there and she thought about it, and she said, “Well, to be honest, I would be sitting there thinking about how un-fucking-fair my life is. I’d be thinking, I just wish I could be left alone.”

And then she said, “And then I would just feel guilty because my kids, they’re away from me all day. I love them. I promise I love my kids, and I should be more grateful.”

And I was like, “Oh, hell no. That’s our problem. It’s not the food. It’s not that you’re somehow lazy. It’s not that you’re undisciplined. It’s not that you’re a big-ass loser.”

I told her, I said, “The problem is you’re tired. And the problem is you don’t know how to let yourself be tired and annoyed without turning it into being a bad mother. You’re not allowing yourself to have hard times. You’re not allowing yourself to sit there and say, this is the hard part. I don’t want to be around my kids right now. I mean, I’m going to have to, but I don’t want to.”

There’s no compassion for herself. She just thinks that when she’s having normal human reactions, either she’s got to somehow quit her job, give up the kids so she can lose weight, or somehow she’s got to figure out how to keep going the way she’s going, not eat, and not even feel bad that sometimes she wants to tell her kids to shut the fuck up.

So guess what? Food becomes her escape.

Because if she eats, she doesn’t have to sit around feeling like life’s unfair, I don’t want all this, and I am a bad mother because I don’t want my kids every single night. It is no wonder she eats.

If not eating means that you have to keep sitting around taking care of kids while also feeling bad for not being overjoyed and grateful that you’re going to take care of three kids after a long day, then yeah, food is going to be the easiest relief that you have.

So this is a hill that I swear to God I’m going to die on. They’re going to put it on the tombstone right next to, “She put Weight Watchers in the dirt.”

Women need way more help figuring out why they eat than they realize. There are so many little things happening inside your precious head that drive the overeating. And until we fix what’s going on between your ears, it is really hard to fix what’s going in your mouth.

Because when you are tired, something important happens. The part of your brain that does all the logical thinking, the part that says, “Okay, what’s on our plan? What makes sense here? How does this work with you losing weight?”—the part of your brain where all your dreams and your goals live and reside—well, when we’re exhausted, when we’ve had stressful days, long days, we’re not getting enough sleep, we don’t have enough help and stuff, that part of our brain literally goes offline.

You are not lazy. You are not broken. You are not undisciplined. You have a tired brain, and it’s going to rely on its old patterns to get you through these moments.

And when you’re building new habits, the logical brain has to do a lot of work. It is trying to interrupt all those old patterns that are going to be coming up for you. That part of your brain is having to make conscious decisions to do things differently than you have been doing for a long time.

Even if the things you’ve been doing, you can logically see, aren’t good for you, in the moment your brain thinks that’s the best answer. And your logical brain is trying to always remind you of what you want. But when you’re tired and you’re exhausted and you’re stressed or overwhelmed, the old habit brain, the one where your patterns reside, quickly takes over.

And guess what that habit brain is not doing? It’s not pushing pause and saying, “Now, Corinne, let’s just have a calm conversation. What was your why again? And what is it that you want for your dreams and goals when it comes to your weight loss?”

Your brain just says, “No, we don’t need to worry about that. What we need to do is get through this moment. And in this moment, if we eat, we won’t have to feel guilty. We won’t have to feel like a bad mother. We’ll get maybe a burst of energy because we’ve always tied eating to a burst of energy. We will be able to take the edge off so we’re not yelling at our kids.”

Your brain has just connected food to solving some of your problems. And what you’ve always done when you’re tired and overwhelmed is eat. And that is why you’re doing it.

And we have to figure out, how do we solve for this? That’s how you’re going to lose weight.

So you’ve got to be able to talk better to yourself after you make food mistakes, if you overeat and stuff. Because if you keep saying that you’re lazy, then the solution has to be for you to try harder.

Well, the problem is, you don’t have that at night. That part of your brain is shutting down. So we can’t try harder.

If the problem is you’re actually tired and you have no compassion for yourself, then the answer is, I need to start looking for ways that either I can get more rest, I can get more help. If I don’t have compassion, guess what? The answer is, I’ve got to learn how to be understanding of myself. And I have to learn how to break down these patterns in a way where I can learn what my truest needs are.

For my client, one of the things that she had to learn was that she’s not a bad mother because she doesn’t love every tooth, fart, yell, scream, and holler that her kids do.

So I want to tell all of you: you are not lazy. You are not undisciplined. If you relate to my woman, it means you just haven’t had enough time yet to rewire your pattern.

Let me say that again. If you are still making mistakes in weight loss, if you’re still blowing past enough, if you’re not waiting for hunger, if you’re not doing a lot of things I teach you, it just means you haven’t had enough time yet to uncover what’s going on inside you, to rewire the way you speak to yourself. You haven’t rewired your automatic habits of how you take care of yourself, how you respond to a bad day, how you respond to your kids being hellions at eight o’clock at night.

All you’re doing is reacting the way that the brain is designed to react, the way you did last time.

And instead of seeing that and saying, “Okay, this is just a pattern I need to work on,” you’re saying, “I suck.”

And that’s the biggest mistake women are making in weight loss. It’s not the overeating. It’s attacking yourself.

Because here’s what happens. You overeat because you’re tired. Then you call yourself lazy. Then you feel ashamed for not doing it. And then you think, “Well, why do I even bother?” And then that shame is so much heavier than that meal ever was.

And shame is going to make you want some relief in the moment. And the relief for most of us is going to be to go back and eat more food.

So now the problem isn’t the first mistake. Now we have a response problem. It’s like, not only do I need to unwind this mistake, but now I’ve compounded this mistake into more food. And I also have to work on that pattern because you cannot fuck-it eat over mistakes and expect to lose weight. We have to break the habit of fuck-it eating too.

So what if instead of saying, “I always screw up,” you said, “I’m just tired. That’s what this is about. And I just don’t know how to handle being tired without food yet”?

And then what if instead of saying, “I’m just so undisciplined,” you said, “I just haven’t learned how to take care of myself in these types of situations yet”?

And then if you’re saying, “I’m just back at square one,” okay, in order to get to the next square ahead of me, I’ve got to learn from this one.

Because the mistake does not determine how much weight you are going to lose. Your response to the mistake is where all of your power lies.

I’m going to say it again. The mistake does not determine how much weight you lose. How you respond is where every ounce of your power lies.

If every mistake turns into a character assassination, I promise you, you’re going to quit. But if every mistake turns into information, I promise you, you’re going to keep going.

And I want you to notice something else. When my client said she wished she could be left alone and felt guilty for even thinking that, the real issue wasn’t the food. It was that she just didn’t believe she was allowed to be tired and annoyed and still be a good mother.

So of course she ate because eating was now having to numb that guilt.

So the work wasn’t for her to not eat. What we had to do was talk about how she was going to have to remind herself: it is normal to be tired at night. I can love my kids, and I can want alone time too. I am allowed to want and feel both.

And once she was able to do that, guess what? Eating was not the necessary step. Eating became one of those things where she could see she was reaching for it, and she would have enough wherewithal to say, “Hey, how I’m feeling is okay. I don’t need to feel bad about how I’m feeling. And eating is probably not going to help this situation.”

This is why I tell y’all all the time, you’re not broken. You’re just reacting to things inside your head that you haven’t learned to handle differently yet.

So here’s something I want you to walk away with in this podcast. How you talk to yourself after you mess up determines how much weight you’re going to lose. The mistake never will be the thing that determines it, but how much you learn from it will be everything when it comes to losing your weight.

Because you are going to mess up. We’re supposed to. Every mess-up is informing us of all these things that diets never taught us.

You’re going to be tired some days and overwhelmed, and sometimes you’re going to overeat, and there are going to be a lot of reasons for all of this.

So stop trying to figure out, how do I avoid making mistakes, and start saying, how am I going to respond in a new way that keeps me going when these things happen?

So the next time you mess up, I dare you to do something different. I dare you to not call yourself names. I dare you to not declare the day or the week ruined. I dare you to not quit.

I dare you to pause and ask yourself, what was really going on for me when that happened? Was I tired? Was I lonely? Was I overwhelmed? Was I feeling guilty? Was I bored? Was this just a new habit and I forgot? Was it something innocent and I just need to give myself more space and time to get good at it?

And then we solve for all of that instead of punishing ourselves.

Because I promise, when you solve the real problems, eating becomes a lot easier. And if you don’t start solving the real problems, you’re going to keep fighting the same battles over and over again.

You will keep telling yourself that it’s just because you’re lazy. It’s because you’re stupid. It’s because you’re undisciplined. It’s because you can’t lose weight. It’s because you always fail.

No. The truth is, you’re a woman with a lot of food patterns. And all patterns can change, but not if every mistake turns into proof that something’s wrong with you.

So this week, when you mess up, and you will, please don’t make it a verdict against yourself. Make it a lesson and keep going.

This is the stuff I help women with all the time inside my program. This is the stuff we don’t talk about in the diet industry, and it is neglectful, and it is a disservice, and it is doing harm.

Women deserve better than to just be made a smaller version of themselves that feels mom guilt and bullshit that we don’t need to.

And that is why I work so hard in this podcast and in my program, because I think women deserve so much better. You deserve better.

I’ll see you next week.