Hello, everybody. Welcome back.

So recently, I was interviewed by Angie Callan on her show called No More Mondays. If you haven't ever heard of it, I suggest you check it out.

We started talking about why women talk themselves out of losing weight before they ever even get started. During the episode, I break down what happens in your head between making a plan and then actually doing it.

We talk about why so much of what you eat has nothing at all to do with hunger. And we get into why the small stuff in weight loss—all those things you say aren't good enough—are the exact things that actually work.

So I wanted to share all of this with you because I know how difficult it is to lose weight. And the things women tell me most often that are getting in their way are:

"I know I want to start, but I can't get started."

"When I do start, I never feel like it's good enough."

And honestly, "I don't understand why I know I'm not hungry, and yet here I am eating."

So sit back and enjoy. I think you'll get a lot out of this podcast.

Coming to you live from Glenwood Springs, Colorado, this is No More Mondays with your host, Angie Callen.

Today's episode: Why Knowing Better Doesn't Mean Doing Better: Self-Coaching with Corinne Crabtree.

Good Monday morning, everyone, and welcome to No More Mondays, the podcast where we believe that humans still matter, mediocrity is expensive—and I don't mean money—and ownership will change everything.

As always, I am your host, Angie Callen, and today we are talking about something that every single one of us has experienced: knowing what we want to do, maybe even knowing how to do it, and then somehow not doing it.

My guest is Corinne Crabtree, a coach, entrepreneur, and host of Losing 100 Pounds with Corinne podcast. She is best known for helping women lose weight, which might sound like an unusual topic for No More Mondays.

However, what fascinates me about her work isn't really, or just, about weight loss. It's what she's learned from helping thousands of people—and doing this for herself—to change behaviors, and specifically the way we talk to ourselves.

Because we all know how dangerous that voice can be.

Whether you're trying to overhaul your health, change your career, be a better leader, overhaul a relationship, or change a stubborn habit, there's pretty much this universal problem of knowing what we want, knowing what to do, and then having to contend with ourselves and the willpower to do it.

And so today, Corinne and I are going to start with a jumping-off point into a bigger conversation about change and self-coaching and how we can learn to notice our patterns, challenge our own thinking, hold ourselves accountable, and get better at helping ourselves get better.

Corinne, welcome to No More Mondays.

Hey, thanks for having me. I'm excited.

I know. And it's always fun. Corinne and I—this is our first conversation, which is always interesting, to be like, "Hey, wanna get to know each other and record it and have people listen in?"

But it comes through a trusted network. And just in the few minutes we were chatting behind the scenes, I think we're going to have fun and give you all some good food for thought, pun intended.

Because last week I talked with Ebony McNeil. And if you haven't listened to that episode, I encourage you to because it dovetails really well into this conversation we're going to have today.

Because he and I talked about this idea that we actually get to participate in deciding who we want to become.

And this is really that next chapter of the conversation, where Corinne and I get to talk about not just choosing, but actually putting things into action to become that person.

And, Corinne, your work really is in this area.

And so where I want to kick things off and get your kind of perspective is: Why do you think knowing better isn't enough to make us do better?

Why do we self-sabotage ourselves is probably the easier way to ask that question.

So it's a good question.

It's funny you're asking because I'm currently, as always, trying to rewrite my content to, like, my latest thinking and stuff.

And one of the things that comes up in weight loss all the time—and I've just heard so many clients say this over and over again—is, "I know what to do. I don't know why I'm not doing it."

And so I kept hearing it, and I was like, well, there's gotta be an explanation. Like, I need to go out into the world. I need to figure this out.

And there actually is an explanation.

And I think the reason why we don't end up doing things is a lot of times we don't really understand how the brain works.

Logic says, "Oh, if I got instructions, then I should just be able to do it."

But if you've ever bought anything from, like, IKEA, that immediately will tell you: just because you have an instruction manual in front of you does not mean that you absolutely can do it.

There are things that always happen between instruction and doing.

And if you don't know what those things are, then especially as women, what we tend to do is like, "Oh, I'm a screw-up. I'm a failure. There must be something wrong with me."

And our brain likes to just quickly explain away why things are happening.

It's like your person probably talked about last week. You get to choose the story you tell, but the brain wants a story, and it wants it fast.

And it's a story-making machine.

So if it thinks you should just be able to do something because, like, you watched a video, somebody told you, you made a decision, you set a goal, then it's going to come up with what it thinks is the fastest, easiest definition.

And that is always going to be, usually, through the lens of how you normally think about yourself.

So if you are somebody who has, let's say, mediocre self-esteem—I'm not even talking about people who live in the gutter.

I'm just talking about somebody who's just like, "You know, well, life's good. I guess I got lucky."

Like, you're just that kind of person.

Then your brain's going to explain the reason why you're not doing it through that lens.

But that's not what's really happening.

So I'm always big on when a woman knows what actually has to happen in order for the doing to happen, number one, we feel so much relief because it's like, "Oh. I didn't realize all these things needed to happen."

"Now that I know these things, I have something I can actually go work on."

And then you just get relief from thinking you're not broken.

I mean, it's pretty crappy to go through life always feeling like you're broken in some way.

And so I think it's just really important that when it comes to that topic, you gotta understand there's not, like—

Everybody always thinks, "If I know, I should be able to do."

Well, the knowing is what's called the planner part of your brain.

The planner is like, "Okay, I'm going to go listen to a video, and I'm going to think about this, and we'll set a goal."

And it's like it's off to the races.

The doer is over here.

It's like, "Okay, planner, you told me all the things," except it didn't go through the other two people who make the decision.

And that is our habit brain.

The person who's like, "Now look, planner, I know you want to change everything we've been doing, but I call crap. I've been doing this for 50 years, and I'm just not going to get on board for any willy-nilly reason."

And then you have your reward brain, who, like, in weight loss, she's having a damn good time.

She's like, "What do you mean we're not going to eat Oreos anymore? What do you mean we're not going to drown our sorrows in ice cream?"

She's like, "I've been having a party."

So, like, these two people very often that live in your brain, the planner has to learn how to talk to them before they can ever hand anything off to the doer.

Because they're all part of the party, and they better be getting along or you're not going to get anything done.

And so, like, when you start realizing that stuff, it's a lot easier to be like, "Oh, okay. There's more to this than just learning and doing."

There's all these other little things that have to happen.

Well, and there are a couple of things that, first of all, Corinne just gave you all a different version of what I mean when I say mediocrity is expensive.

Right?

"I'm just going to do the thing. I'm going to stay the same. I'm not going to reach my potential. I'll just eat the Oreos," whatever your kind of version of that is.

I love this idea of thinking about the pass-through between plan and do.

And we tend to simplify it as those are the only two components that are part of the conversation, when really there's these two little competing angels on our shoulders in between that can really make that wiring hard.

Especially because, as you said, we like stories, and we like those stories to come fast.

Unfortunately, when you're trying to change the story, things don't happen as quickly as that whole communication channel wants it to.

And that's where we get resistance and give up.

Yes.

And it's tough for people because I just—you know, speaking just in weight loss, that's why I always think weight loss is such a wonderful vehicle to really change the relationship you have with yourself.

Because when you're trying to lose weight, the way I teach it at least, is we tackle emotional eating.

I firmly believe if you are a woman who has a weight issue, 70% of what you need to lose is emotional weight.

It is the emotional eating that you're doing.

And most women don't even realize what emotional eating is.

They just think it's binging or something along those lines.

I'm like, no.

Emotional eating is like, "Oh my God, this is a rough day. Hey, Linda, do you want to go out for lunch?"

That's emotional eating.

You know, it's not always, "I come home and eat in a dark closet all by myself."

Yeah, or throw away the empty package so no one knows you ate the entire bag of products.

A lot of emotional eating happens right in front of everybody.

Let's say I go on a weekend dinner with my friends and I don't want to feel left out because everybody else is ordering margaritas, chips, and salsa flowing out their booties.

Well, if I don't want to feel left out, I'm now emotionally eating.

I'm eating because if I don't, then I'm going to feel weird.

I'm going to feel odd or whatever.

"No, I'm just eating to go with the flow."

So I always like to tell women, when you realize that so much of it's emotional, we want to be working on what goes on there.

And that's not something that just changes overnight.

That is coping mechanisms.

So, like, when you're losing weight, that's why I always tell people it's the best way to develop a good relationship with yourself because so much of your eating is tied up in not feeling good enough, worrying what other people think, people-pleasing yourself to burnout.

We fix those things in No BS.

You fix the stuff that right now you eat over, you don't have a reason to keep eating like you do now.

You can eat in a healthier way.

You can eat in a more common-sense way.

You can actually include foods you love.

I tell women all the time, cake is not your issue.

Cake is not an addiction.

Cake is none of those things.

If you didn't eat cake every time you were mad at your boss, every time you were worried about your kids, every time you had two weeks where you worked too much and didn't take care of yourself—

If you only ate cake when you truly were going to enjoy it and it had nothing to do with that crap, you would not be having a cake problem at all.

Metaphor City.

Because this is really where the conversation is much bigger than just weight.

However, it is such a great example because especially women, we identify directly with it.

But I would say even the men out there, there are a ton of correlations behind this idea that it's not about the cake.

That is an amazing book title, by the way.

So anyone out there knows and looks for it when Corinne writes it.

But we do it with eating, we do it with exercise, but we also do it with money.

We do it with our careers.

We know we need to have this conversation with ourselves, to set boundaries.

We know we need to level up, change jobs because something's making us miserable, ask for help, or otherwise stop doing the thing that is essentially eating cake anytime we're miserable, whether it's cake or not.

But we don't actually just—we don't actually do it.

Which is where we come to something I'm really interested in.

I love talking about the brain, by the way.

Whatever mechanism gets us into talking about neuroscience, I enjoy.

And I want to talk about this specifically with you because clearly we're coaches.

Clearly, we believe in having another human who can help us through some of that, you know, stuff we can't see when we're lost in the middle of our own life.

But also, you can't have a coach around forever or all the time.

And so at some point, how can we begin recognizing our own patterns, catching ourselves in the bullshit, and kind of helping ourselves become accountable?

So I think in your world, it would be: You get somebody through that emotional heavy lifting.

They see that it's not about the cake.

But how do they actually begin to believe that, own that, and act like that every day, whether you're around or not?

So I think that's really important whenever you are working on things.

The first thing I will just say to all of your people is, one of the things I instruct people when they first are wanting to lift weights is to always say, "You should hire a trainer at first."

So a trainer can—and you need to be really clear with them.

"I'm going to be working out at home. I'm going to be using dumbbells. I'm by myself. I just want to be able to get up and down off the floor so I can play with my grandkids. And I need one routine that I can do over and over again and never worry I'm going to get hurt."

So you go into a trainer and you tell them that, then they're going to teach you the one routine.

And eventually, you're going to be able to, like, wean yourself off of them.

It is the same thing with working with a coach.

You know, some of us—myself—I don't know when I'll never not have a coach.

I just find it so valuable.

I know I can coach myself, but it's so much faster when somebody else does it for me, and it's so much easier, and I learn a lot when I'm getting coached myself.

So I have hired a coach, and literally the relationship is, "I'll let you know when I'm done, but until that point, like, you're in charge of my brain."

You know?

"Don't spend time teaching me how to do it. Spend time unraveling me because I'm willing to stay here."

But the vast majority of people are not going to be in that boat.

And so when you work with a coach, I think it's really important for you to tell them:

"I don't want you to just coach me. I want you to make sure I know how to coach myself so that by the time I do leave you, I know how to do this too."

So I think that's always step one, is you almost—

If you want to be able to be the person who can help themselves with their own thinking and get better clarity about their life and, like, feel their feelings and stuff, working with a professional first is always helpful.

But I think the second thing—and this is what I do with my clients—I teach them all about repetition.

Everybody wants—I don't know what it is in the coaching world—but I think the second you learn that your thinking is as powerful as it is, it's like when that clicks, it's like, "Oh shit. Now this explains everything."

That light bulb goes on.

There's a secondary switch that gets flipped that's not true, which is almost like what we were talking about in the beginning.

"Once I know that, well, then why would I ever think crappy thoughts ever again?"

"Why do these thoughts keep coming back?"

Like, we think something must be wrong because, you know, we have an aha.

And then from that moment on, our brain doesn't be like, "I only think the aha now. Just immediately release the rest."

That is not how your brain works.

And so the—I don't think it's a sad truth to me, but for a lot of people it feels sad at first—is you're going to think like you do right now, no matter how many ahas you get, for a while.

You do not need your old thinking to go away to be able to do great things.

You've got to get so good at practicing the new stuff.

You gotta get so good at catching old thoughts and pivoting them to where you want to go over and over again, to where eventually, when your brain is ready to let it go, it will just let it go.

I always tell my people, I'm like, what if the habit is every time you have a crappy thought, your brain now forms a habit to say, like, "I should just come in with this one."

Like, if you got there, your life 100% improves.

You're not bothered about thinking anymore.

That one tiny thing that you actually have complete control and ownership of.

It's like the one thing we do have complete control and ownership of is the voice in our heads and how we talk to ourselves, which goes back to that kind of earlier point when we kicked this off.

But yeah.

Like, imagine that if all you just did was say, "Sorry, scarcity. Here comes abundance."

Or, "Sorry, negativity. Here comes your positive antidote."

Yeah.

And it's—I like my—like, my clients are not coaches.

And so they're like, "Oh, it's so hard. I just get so wore out doing that."

And I'm like, "Bitch, you're wore out every night going to bed thinking like you are now."

If we're going to go to bed, let's go to bed tired because we're working so hard to be happy.

Right now you're going to bed tired because you ain't working at being happy.

You're working at being miserable.

Isn't it amazing what people will think?

Sorry, everyone, we're going to shame you for five seconds, but that's kind of the point because we want to help you get out of the comfort zone, and we know growth doesn't happen in it.

It is so amazing to me what people will label hard.

And ultimately you choose your hard.

I was a CrossFitter for a while.

There was a CrossFit campaign where it was, "Easy choices, hard life. Hard choices, easy life."

And in a way, it tells you because, you know, it's not about the cake.

So if you do that hard now, how incrementally better, exponentially better even, does everything come behind it?

But it just takes that ownership in a moment so that you make the choice to not be mediocre.

How's that for tying this back into the theme of the show?

But yes.

Right.

And then also, if you even think about it, it's like, "I'm working hard at something that's going to really grow my life."

You know?

That's not a weird thing.

That's not an odd thing.

And that's not your thorny cross to bear.

I mean, that is just, like, it's a good choice.

And it's only hard because it's different.

I think—I feel like it is only—it's just not the thing that most people do, so it gets the label of, "This is hard."

No.

It's different.

I love that.

Yeah.

I tell my people all the time that whenever they're gonna—I don't care if they're just getting used to eating a little differently or whatever it is—it's really only hard because you're just not used to it.

And when you're not used to doing something or when it's different, your brain's job is to put up a fight.

It knows when you're trying to change what it's worked so hard to make a routine.

And it's like, "Don't destroy my hard work."

But your brain can change.

So I always just remind them, like:

"Keep reminding yourself, this is different. I will get used to this."

Because at some point, like, one of the things that we teach is before you put anything in your mouth, you just ask:

"Am I hungry?"

Like, the most bare-basic question of all time.

And you would not believe how many women in their 50s and 60s told me, "I've never thought to ask, 'Am I hungry?'"

I've always ate, like—because they've dieted so much in their life.

They have always ate, number one, on what the diet told them.

It didn't matter if they were hungry.

You followed the plan.

You go back to childhood.

It didn't matter if you were hungry at dinner.

You were just supposed to eat.

It didn't matter if you were hungry at school lunch.

This is when we eat.

Like, we learn from an early age to stop using our body as a gauge.

We start using everything outside of us.

So it's like, no wonder that people are, you know, just like, "What?"

But then when you start doing it, it feels weird.

Like, my women will be like, "But what if I'm not and I still want it?"

I was like, "Well, isn't that good to know?"

Because if you're not actually hungry and you want to eat, there's probably a really good reason happening there that needs to get fixed in your life.

Like, if I'm hungry after my husband and I have words over the dishwasher—or, like, I want to eat and I ask, "Am I hungry?"

And I'm like, "No, but if I don't eat a Ding Dong right now, I'm going to yell at him. And the next thing you know, our whole night is going to be ruined."

I would want to know that the only way that I know how to have a disagreement is to have a, you know, World War III.

Maybe I could work on that.

Maybe there's something easier.

Maybe.

Awareness is a powerful thing.

However, you can't unknow it, which I think is a lot of what your work is, right?

It's like bringing to light these things.

We could have an entire episode about the harm the diet culture of the '80s and '90s has done on the female side and healthy eating.

However, in order to avoid that rabbit hole, I will say, in a lot of ways, that's very similar to just any belief system that we carry with us because it has been instilled in you somewhere.

Whether it's, "Lunch, and you eat," or whether it's, "I have to do this job that I went to college for for the rest of my life," or, "I have to be a micromanagerial leader because that's all that was modeled for me in my entire career."

Those are all the same as the, "I'm eating because it's time to eat," versus, "Am I hungry?"

Right?

And I love to look at the food thing.

It becomes such a simplistic way to look at parallels in it.

And you brought up something that I want to ask because I'm curious how we challenge ourselves without being asses to ourselves.

Because there's also an interesting tension here because, in a way, we've created two extremes:

"Push harder. No excuses. Have discipline. Do hard things."

But then on the flip side:

"Give ourselves grace. Self-compassion. Don't be so hard on ourselves."

How do we reconcile that?

So I think there's—gosh, I could talk all day on this.

So there's several pieces to it.

One is just realizing that so many of us never really figure out that life is not so black and white.

It's not discipline or free-for-all.

Like, there's a middle ground.

And a lot of times, like, we don't even try to think, like:

"Well, if I wasn't going to be so disciplined that I'm miserable, but I also wasn't going to be so much freedom that I'm actually careless now, what would it look like to be in the middle?"

It may be something like, for me, discipline is more about certain guardrails I put around myself in certain areas.

And in these areas, I feel like I own.

So I'm going to be like an owner there.

Like, I'm going to start looking for what areas of my life need guardrails.

So, like, for a lot of my clients, ordering Uber Eats—they need guardrails.

My people tend to be big-time emotional eaters.

And if they have, like—they're usually women who have a lot of responsibility.

So they've got kids, and they've got families, and they usually have a demanding job.

Like, they're nurses, they're teachers.

They've got people pulling at them.

They also tend to be caregivers for everyone in their life, whether the person asks or not.

They're just honor-bound to do it.

So when six o'clock hits, the last thing they want to do is cook.

They're done.

They have made every decision for everybody all day long.

They don't even want to decide their own food.

So I always tell them, look, we're going to make a plan in the morning of what we're going to eat for the day.

Just for today.

We don't worry about the rest of the week.

We only worry about today.

And we're going to look at today and we're going to decide what kind of day this is going to be.

And if it's going to be a really hard day, the last thing I do is expect the tired-ass bitch to come home and be a Martha Stewart.

She needs to go to Uber Eats.

But what she can't do is sit down with an app and scroll through 40 restaurants because that will even be overwhelming, and she will always go to what feels good.

So she needs, like, three or four places that she knows what she's going to get at every one of them locked in her Notes app.

And then she can tell her family, "Pick between these four. Let me know."

And then if somebody else has ordered, screenshot what to order me.

She needs no decisions—as few as she can have—but we make the decisions ahead of time that help us.

So many women just think, like, it's either, "I eat like a perfect nun every single night," or, "I eat my ass off."

And it's like, no.

We have to really think about, like, if we are going to become someone who is not living in the extremes, we just have to think about:

"What are all the support systems I need?"

And we find support systems by first finding out:

"Where are all the places that right now is kind of a shit show of my life?"

Like, if I'm in weight loss, where are all the places that it breaks, and what kinds of supports do I need?

And almost always, this is why working with coaches who kind of know more about this side of weight loss, and not just having a boring-ass plan of chicken and broccoli all the time, can help you.

Because you're like, I'm so glad you're doing that podcast next week because so much of what you think you should do is based in a lot of horse crap you've learned through years that when we all look back on them, we're now saying, "Whoa. That was bad."

Like, we should have never been learning that.

That is, like, asinine.

Like, this is—science now says—

Just like our whole low-fat craze.

That's exactly what I was thinking.

I was literally sitting here thinking it's basically like how we were taught in the—what was that, the early '90s?—that low fat is the way of the future.

That, to me, was the exact example.

Yes.

And then you have, like, the low-carb phase.

Like, nowadays they're telling—for women, like, especially if you're in the menopause years.

Like, I'm menopausal.

Like, that is one of the worst things you can be doing.

It just is going to, like, jack the—like, it's going to make your—if your hormones are jacked, they're going to be jackier now.

It's real.

And so, like, just sometimes you just need—I think that there is a beautiful blend between we do have to understand the power of our thinking, but there's also skill gaps that are just missing sometimes.

There's knowledge gaps.

And no amount of positive thinking can overcome if you just don't know how to do something or you don't understand missing pieces of components.

I teach, like, in weight loss, most diets focus—well, almost all of them do—they focus on either exercise and/or food.

Like:

"Here's a strict set of food."

"Here's your macros."

"Here's your calories."

"Here's whatever."

It's like you got a 10-piece puzzle set, and somebody said, "I'll give you all the weight loss in the world if you can put it together."

And you're like, "Hot damn. I can do this. Ten pieces."

But if they withhold one piece, it doesn't matter how hard you try.

It doesn't matter how bad you want it.

It doesn't matter how much help you get.

If that piece is missing, you can't do it.

And that's, to me, like what diets have been.

And then when you blend coaching and emotional eating and all the things, it's like now you have the 10-piece puzzle and you're like, "Oh. This all makes more sense now. I actually can do this now."

And a lot of times I think that missing piece is more about the mindset and the ability to create lasting change than it is, like you said, any individual thing.

Right?

Because this isn't just about stitching together a bunch of individual decisions.

Because, by the way, by the time you doom-scrolled Uber Eats for 40 minutes, you could have just cooked a healthy dinner, basically.

Also, hack: live in a place where there's no Uber Eats.

That's us.

But, like, you get to this point where you're not just trying to do something differently.

You're trying to operate differently.

And that's fundamentally where that last piece comes in to kind of bring everything together.

And that's a really hard thing to do yourself, at least to start.

Just like you said, you're going to start a new gym routine, you're likely going to go see a trainer and get the skills first.

Because positive thinking about the skills, like you said, doesn't do anything.

But skills without the mindset also—you've probably got two pieces.

Right?

And so I love this.

There's some very practical things you've already said, but I would love to give everybody some advice about what it means to make lasting change, what you've learned about that, and what you would tell somebody out there who this is really resonating with and they're like:

"Yeah. I'm ready to really make change, whether it's weight loss or otherwise."

What are some practical steps they can take really to look at that missing piece?

Well, I mean, like, when I started, you know, I didn't have a me.

So there was no No BS Weight Loss out there.

I just really had Corinne.

And so when people ask me this, and I'm like, if I had to go back and strip it all the way down to:

"You're going to be doing this all by yourself. No one's going to support you but you. Like, you gotta figure this out."

Because that's kind of where I was.

My husband was great.

He wasn't somebody who was just, like, you know, actively sabotaging or standing in my way.

But he didn't know crap about what I was going through.

So he always was like, "You can do whatever you want."

And that was about the level of support that I got.

But him and my son were going to keep eating the same.

They weren't going to change their eating for me.

And I remember when I was first losing weight thinking, for the first time:

"I really don't want them to change how they eat. This is my thing to fix. This is not theirs."

Like, my husband and son, they don't have a McDonald's problem.

I have a McDonald's problem.

They only want McDonald's when it's fun.

I want it every day because I don't like my life and I don't like my ass.

Like, there's a big difference.

So I always tell people, like, the first thing to do is you really have to listen to what you think about all day long.

And it will be disarming at first.

Most people do not listen to how they think.

They hear their thoughts, and they just think that they're just the truth being spoken.

But if you really were to listen to how often you, like, sit in a meeting and read between the lines—

You know, like, I remember being in meetings and sitting there thinking, like, if my boss was to say to me, "Next time, I need you to do it this way," I heard it as, "You didn't do a good job, and I'm going to need you to change it or I'm going to fire you."

That's how it—like, that would be what I would hear in my mind.

And so I had to, like, spend a lot of time in the very beginning identifying what I called Old Corinne thinking.

I started going on the hunt for anything that I could label.

Be like, "You know what? Old Corinne thinks that way."

"And when she thinks that way, she quits. She gives up. She feels terrible."

That was, like, the big three for me in weight loss.

If it was going to make me feel bad, I knew I would eat.

If it was, like, fatalistic or, like, a huge catastrophe, I was going to quit.

I'm really good at that one.

Yes.

And then if it was too big of a leap to do in the beginning, I knew I would give up on it.

I didn't have, at the time—I knew one of my fatal flaws was I did not have a way to talk to myself when shit went wrong.

Well, I did have a way.

It was terrible.

I mean, it was just, like, a beatdown for days.

And so when I first started, I was like:

"Everything you do has to be almost foolproof."

"You cannot do things that are going to be too hard for you."

So I went on a mission of just, like, listening to how I talked, identifying Old Corinne stuff.

And anything that I thought, like, "Old Corinne would think this way, and these things would happen," we're like:

"All right. What does New Corinne need to do?"

"And what does New Corinne have to think in order to be able to do that?"

And I lost so much weight just doing that without—

When people ask me, "What did you do to lose weight?"

It's like, I changed literally how I was thinking about myself.

Because that led me to make smaller changes.

And I got really good at my small changes.

And then I started building some momentum.

And then once I saw myself being able to do some things right and consistently, suddenly I was willing to try harder things.

Because, like, well, now my brain had to think, like, "Well, if you can do that, maybe you can do this."

So I just set myself up for a lot of easy wins.

So I just tell people, listen to how you're thinking.

If you can identify it as, like, "Ooh. That's probably not a great way to think about this," come up with another way to think about it.

And then just when you're trying to change anything, unless you're really good at making 180s, most people aren't.

Most brains are not designed to change on a dime.

They like—you can sneak up on change.

And before your brain knows it, it's like, "Oh my God. We're like somebody else. What happened?"

That's kind of how you want it to go.

What you don't want is to change everything so drastically on one day that for months, you're like:

"Oh my God. What are we doing? This is too much for me."

And you're just every single day forcing yourself.

We just—most people don't have the resiliency for that anymore.

It's not like it was 200 years ago where we were pioneers and really resilient.

Nowadays, if my phone takes more than two seconds to load a video, I'm like, "I'm outta here. What kind of crap website?"

Yeah.

Yes.

So if you don't have that capacity anymore, and we're kind of trained that way, smaller changes than you think are going to be good enough.

Do those first.

Earn your way into the big ones.

Don't try to start with the big ones.

But, I mean, literally, I just tell people that's probably the secret to everybody's success, pretty much any arena.

Yeah.

It's just kind of boring, but I don't think people like boring.

And I'm like, I don't know.

I have changed my entire life on a lot of, like, boring little things.

So I would say kind of the same.

Although maybe some people wouldn't think they're boring.

But it's so weird that, like, small, boring things actually make a big change, but at the same time we think change needs to be exciting.

And so we just set ourselves up to kind of fail from the start.

And if you're on the 180 train, you're not even going to make it months.

You're not going to fight through that for months.

You're going to fight through it for maybe days at the most before you give up.

There is a reason we use the analogy most people don't quit smoking cold turkey because it's just hard if you don't incrementally get your nervous system to adjust to it.

And I love what you talk about with the, you do some small things and you realize you can do the next level of hard and the next level of hard things.

Because those of you that have read—here's shameless plug—read my book, Scary Good: Discovering Life Beyond the Sunday Scaries.

I talk about the exact same concept using type-two fun as the mechanism.

Right?

So learn how to ski at 42, learn how to mountain bike at almost 44.

And it started helping me build confidence to go take that other places in my life because I was able to change how I thought about myself, change how I talked about myself, and start making kind of small changes that led otherwise.

Which is exactly what you've talked about with these, like, let's say boring things, that eventually add up.

Yes.

I think that one thing that my people do a lot when it comes to the boring things is they don't realize it's a boring thing until they hear these awful words:

"That's not good enough."

It's like the four words that just will kill it.

And I always tell them, I got so mad on a coaching call with my whole group.

They're used to me just losing my shit.

I had, like, four different people come on, and every one of them was like:

"Yeah, but my brain thinks that's not good enough."

And I was like, "All right. Everybody listen to me."

"For the next 30 days, we're having the Not Good Enough Challenge."

I dared anyone to—I don't remember what I was going to do.

I was either going to give them one-on-one coaching with me or, like, a thousand dollars or something along those lines.

I was like, "If you take me up on the challenge and for 30 days, you swear on a stack of Bibles that you did every single thing your brain said is not good enough and you don't lose weight this month, like, basically I'll kiss your ass and give you 20 minutes to draw a crowd."

Every person that took me up on it lost weight.

They're like, "I can't believe it."

And I'm like, "I believe it because you spent 30 days doing things instead of 30 days talking yourself out of doing anything."

It's like, you just did things.

That's it.

So I always tell people, if it's not good enough, number one, that's your green light.

You should just do it anyway.

But number two, you have to earn the right to know if it's not good enough.

Give that thing 30 days.

And if after 30 days it's not working, it wasn't that it wasn't good enough.

It was the wrong thing.

So go try something else.

But earn the right to your stupid beliefs.

And stop shoulding all over yourselves because that's a woman thing big time.

But you should all over yourself because:

"I should do the thing. I'm not doing the thing."

"Oh, I should do it better than I'm doing the thing."

Allow yourself to go through the steps.

Because whether it's changing your eating, changing how you lead, Corinne said it really well:

Nobody's going to do it for you.

However, trying to change it all in one fell swoop isn't going to be sustainable.

Growth is a really tricky thing.

We know it doesn't happen in the comfort zone, like we said earlier.

However, that's exactly where you're going to stay if you don't get intentional about who you want to become and how you talk to yourself as you undergo the much less glamorous process of becoming that person.

And I love this conversation that had this undercurrent of weight loss.

But I hope those of you out there, whether you've struggled with the weight loss journey or not, know that this isn't really about weight loss.

It's about really tuning into our inner voice and thoughts to learn more about ourselves than we maybe ever imagined.

And that's a pretty good place to start if you want to close the gap between knowing what you want and actually getting the help.

This has been super, super fun.

So as we kind of wind down, I want to know how people find you.

Because, you know, Corinne and I—shameless plug—are here.

If you feel like you need the intervention to get started, we can help get the perspective.

We can set you up to start thinking on your own.

But I'd love to hear a little bit more about where people find you and what you've got coming up that is new and exciting.

So they can find me at No BS Weight Loss.

That's probably the best way because if you go there, you can get—I've got, like, a three-little-video series where you can, especially if you're into weight loss, learn, like, the three things that I did.

Which I'll just tell all of you, one of them is the mindset piece.

Like, you will get introduced to some of the mindset work that I did because I just don't think it's fair to women to snow them that they're going to lose weight by just doing certain things.

It's like, if you don't work on what goes on—

I always say the six inches between your ears controls what goes in thy mouth.

So you gotta work on that.

You want that change to last versus yo-yoing 20 pounds.

Exactly.

And then once you get that free course, then I'll invite you to listen to my podcast.

Like, I send two to three emails every single week that are just all about all things weight loss and your mindset.

It's very mindset-focused.

So if that's the kind of thing you're into, you'll love it.

And, like, my podcast is Losing 100 Pounds with Corinne.

But I always tell people, get on my mailing list because there's a lot of stuff that I email people every week that helps a lot of people lose weight, whether they work with me or not.

I get at least three to four messages a week of somebody's like, "I'm down 65 pounds. I'm down 100 pounds."

Like, you know, all I did—

I met a lady in the airport yesterday.

I was just standing in line at Southwest trying to come home from Vegas, and some woman walks up and goes like, "Are you Corinne? I listen to your podcast."

It's like, "Yes, I am, ma'am."

So a lot of people never work with me, but they get plenty of help anyway.

She's airport famous, y'all.

And you can find all of those links that she just mentioned.

We'll put them at nomoremonday.info.

So you can grab all the show notes and tune into some of what I am guessing is a lot of good weight-loss advice, but a lot of good life advice if you're trying to change the six inches between the ears.

This has been amazing.

And I have one last little challenge question for you before we say goodbye to everybody.

All right.

I'm curious, as you've gone through this journey, what is something that you know about yourself that you feel like you still have to keep relearning even after all these years of doing the things and coaching other people in the things?

Oh gosh.

Probably that I am stronger than I give myself credit for.

Like, I'm a pretty tough person.

But it's amazing to me how often I can talk myself out of doing things because I think I can't do it.

And it's like dumb crap.

Like, I can just be at the gym and not get the next set of dumbbells because I'm sitting there like, "I don't know. You know, are we sure?"

There's just something in me that still always doubts my capabilities.

Even though, like—I mean, if you know any of my history, I have overcome so much crap.

And, like, I didn't go to college, and I have three businesses that I run, very successful ones.

And I attempted suicide at 17.

I have dealt with depression my entire life, and I'm a master-level coach.

And, like, just some of this—and lost 100 pounds and kept it off after being overweight my, like, entire life.

There's just so many things I've done.

And yet whenever I want to go for the next thing, I am just like everybody else.

I think I can't do it.

I think I can't do it.

It is not automatic for me to think of capabilities and my past and stuff like that.

So I have to really work on it.

I would love for there to be one day where I just naturally felt capable and, like, it's a no-brainer.

"This is just going to happen."

I have friends who are like that.

I am not one.

And I would love to be in that crowd one day.

We'll get there one day.

But until then, you have your own advice to take, which is: thought comes, you prove it wrong because you have the evidence to do so.

That's a pesky little imposter that tells us we can't do the thing and we're not capable of the thing.

However, the only way to get that little guy off the shoulder is to just keep proving it.

Keep plugging.

This has been so awesome.

Corinne, thank you so much for joining me.

Well, thank you.

This is an excellent conversation to kick off an amazing new season as we think about how to level ourselves up, whether there is somebody helping us or not.

Because I want to remind you all that humans still matter.

And that starts with you.

You still matter.

Mediocrity is expensive, and you don't have to take it.

Ownership will change that.

And so I challenge you.

Maybe I even challenge you to do the 30-day thing Corinne mentioned.

But at the very least, take stock and think about:

"What thoughts can you take ownership over this week?"

Because change isn't just about knowing the answer.

It's learning how to work with yourself to actually make it happen.

And Corinne is a great example of how to do that and what happens when you've achieved it.

So thank you so much for joining us and giving your wisdom and inspiration to everybody out there, Corinne.

Well, I appreciate you having me.

Thank you.

And to all of you out there, thank you for tuning in.

I hope this gave you some—again, pun intended—food for thought.

And until next time, here's to fewer Sunday scaries and no more Mondays.

I'll see you next week.