155 - Healing Seasons vs Weight Loss Seasons

[00:00:02] Ready to lose 40 plus pounds without giving up happy hours, weekend brunches, or date nights. Then it's time to uncover the hidden link between binge eating and toxic relationships. And finally break free from both. Welcome to the Hungry for Love podcast with Jillian Scott. Y' all ready? Let's go. [00:00:24] Hey. Hey. Welcome back. [00:00:26] All right, so we are talking about the difference between having years very much focused on weight loss, or it might be seasons or stages or eras, whatever you want to call it, right? It's like sometimes we're going to have seasons for weight loss, and then we're also going to have seasons of healing, seasons of personal growth. And what I found is that there's this overarching theme where sometimes we are in a season of personal growth or a season of healing, but we get frustrated with ourselves and really hard and down on ourselves because we're not losing weight. It's important that we understand what season of life we're in. You can do both at the same time, but typically we are skewing towards one over the other and not making that a problem. [00:01:08] I tried recording this earlier. My son was home sick from school today, and so I figured I could sneak away while he was watching a show. No, he always finds me and I think he hears me talking and he's like, oh, what's going on? [00:01:21] But it was really funny because I noticed it also felt very choppy. And so for most of the episodes I've done recently, most of them this year have been very much bullet points or just stream of consciousness. Like I have a topic, an idea, and in my head I'm just going through like the bullet points that I haven't actually written down. And this one I actually wrote out a little bit more of like, specific things that I wanted to say. But because of that, it felt really choppy because I was like, oh, wait, where was I? Did I already say that? And so I'm going to do a combination of both here with this episode and I'm just going to rerecord the whole thing because thing is just going to sound and flow a whole lot better. But when this episode comes out, it is my two year divorceiversary. So it marks the two year anniversary of being officially legally divorced after a little over 10 years of marriage. [00:02:14] And I will share more about different parts of my divorce story and the marriage and what led to this. Because for a long time, I would say for the first nine years, divorce was not an option. It didn't matter how bad things were or how bad Things got divorce was just not an option. And I had already been divorced before. I got married when I was in college to a guy in the army, really great guy, but just not the right fit. I was too young, had a lot of thoughts and honestly I can see some toxic traits that I had back then as well. I think there were a couple of aspects feeding into divorce is not an option. Not only was it a Christian of the church thing, but it was also like, this is my second marriage, I really want to make this work. I also had to come to terms and actually put it on the table because I realized things weren't changing and that really when we hit roughly our nine year anniversary, that really spurred a lot of personal growth. [00:03:10] And it was definitely a year of personal growth and kind of what I would consider like an awakening. [00:03:18] It wasn't really a season of healing per se, in my opinion, but it was a season of awakening. And so that was like three years ago. And then the last two years have been really personal growth focused, healing focused. And as I reflect back, I'm like, oh, there were actually some really big, really incredible internal shifts that were happening. But when I released this episode, it marks the two year anniversary of that all within a three day span. Like the divorce was final, I moved out, we sold our house out of state. I had started dating. It was a very short lived dating experience, but it was just like all of these things just culminated and happened. And it's funny, as I think back over the last two years, it feels like there were times that moved really slowly, times that felt like they just dragged on and lasted forever. And also things that kind of went by in a blink of an eye. I also feel like I am radically different than who I was two years ago and so completely different than who I was three years ago with just what I know, how I, I understand things. And really the big shift in the last, I would say within the last one year has been no longer blaming my ex and making him and his dysfunction and making him responsible for all of the dysfunction in our marriage because I contributed to it as well in my own way. I stayed in a really unhealthy marriage for nine years before seriously questioning things. [00:04:47] And so I also brought a lot to the table and there were patterns that I realized. It was like I thought that the legal divorce was going to free up so much because I think I really saw him as holding me back in some areas. I felt like in a lot of ways I had to pick my business or my marriage and so it was okay, now that I'm like lighting the marriage on fire, not because I want to per se, but because there's no other option now. I just thought that my business would just automatically take off and then it didn't. And that was so good for me to see because I still had dysfunctional patterns within myself. I still had core belief patterns and belief challenges and gaps and issues that I needed to solve, that I needed to work on. And so I can look back and see this. There was this like awakening, but also some blaming, making him more responsible for the issues. [00:05:44] Then the second year was more personal growth and starting to figure things out. And then this past year has really been a year of healing and a year of reflection and really owning the patterns within myself that I wanted to, to divorce. The belief patterns, the disbelief and the self doubt patterns that I want to divorce, right? Like no longer making it about the man and about the person that I am separating from. [00:06:13] And also noticing how, especially in the beginning, it was like his voice was still in my head for a long time. [00:06:20] And I had to finally accept that those words now were my own. He had not said them to me in two years, maybe three years. It had been a long time. And I had to start owning the fact that those were now my thoughts, my words, my voice. [00:06:35] And that's a beautiful thing because when it's mine, I have the power to change it. I can't control what he says to me. I can't control how he says it, his tone, what he does, his emotions. Like I cannot control it. I tried for a very long time, but I can't do it. And even now I still notice myself falling back into patterns and habits, but I catch it faster. Like that default mode might come up, but I catch it faster and I shift out of it faster. And I also notice now that certain patterns, certain things, they're mine. And when it's mine, I get to fix it. I get to be the solution. And I think that's the beautiful thing is when we finally wake up and we realize, oh, I'm the pro. Like, food's not the problem, alcohol's not the problem, my ex is not the problem. I am the problem in this way. And I know that can be triggering for some people and even for myself. I would probably get defensive hearing that because my ex would say things like that a lot of, like how I was the problem, I was the issue, I needed therapy. That was constantly the challenge. And so I don't say that to beat you up or to tear you down or to make you feel bad or self conscious or to blame you in any way. I really say that from a place of there are patterns within you and typically it's things like people pleasing, perfectionism, feeling responsible for other people's emotions and their actions, this inability to sit with shame, which is just like theirs. There are patterns and dysfunctions and things within us that we learn typically as kids that are the problem, are the issue because it's why we got into these relationships and it's why we stayed so long. [00:08:12] That's what I want to help you decode, dissect, understand and really break through. [00:08:17] And that's why I think it's important that we talk about and have this conversation around the difference of a personal growth or a healing season versus a weight loss season. And sometimes we need to focus on the personal growth and, or the healing parts and sides of things in order to make the weight loss so much easier and smoother. [00:08:38] One of the key things that I remember and that I took away from one of my coaches I've worked with in the past is she would often say that so often we overestimate what we can accomplish or change within a six month period, but we vastly underestimate what we can do in two years. And I'm starting to see what she's saying. I think number one, you can accomplish a lot in six months. I remember creating my first one year future vision in March of 2023 and bringing nearly all of that to life by September of that year. So within six months I took a one year vision and I condensed it down to six months. [00:09:14] Now there were a couple of things that she was saying that I had achieved and I did create that I didn't fully believe. Like I was not there. My brain was not on board. I was still like, yeah, no, that is just not possible. This is all there for us to learn from. But one of the things that happens when we look at what we can do within six months, a lot of times we don't anticipate the time, effort, energy it takes to do the personal growth, to do the healing, to get and like really get into the deeper beliefs, the things that we've held onto since childhood. And we overestimate what can be done in six months because we don't often account for how much time we actually need for the healing work. And yet we underestimate then what we can do in two years and what all we can accomplish. And when I look back on this time, I'm now I'm like, oh, I get it. And I also see why some of these hard times and these challenges came up because there were lessons that I had to learn, there were things that were still holding on where it's like I can't get to the next level, I can't do more, make more, be more. I can't be the person that I want to be ultimately when I'm still holding on to these thoughts and certain things. [00:10:26] So it was real. While it can be painful, it was also really good for me to go through and to see and to recognize. [00:10:33] And not only does this help me on my journey, but the beautiful part of all of this is I find so much meaning in my pain, in my challenges, in my suffering even, because I know that I'm going to have a client or I'm going to have multiple clients that are going to need to hear, that are going to need to hear how I navigated it, that are going to need to hear that there are options, that there is peace and freedom and so much on the other side. [00:10:59] Sometimes though, we can get a little caught up and even in the coaching industry, right, we play into this instant gratification. I want change and I want it now. And you can create big amazing things within a six month time period. [00:11:13] And sometimes we have to account for different levels and just journeys that we're on with our healing and our growth as well. And I know some people that when they were divorced, they had already been separated for several years, they'd already done so much healing, they had already done a significant part of the work to where they were ready to start dating, they were ready to be in a healthy relationship. And I thought I was when I got divorced and I was not, very much not. And I didn't see that. And it took about a little over a full year for me to actually recognize. Oh shit, I don't have a flaming clue how to date, how to find a healthy guy, how to attract a healthy guy, how to not say yes and follow after all the red flags, how to some of these things we just have to go through, right? And my journey was mine, it was mine to experience. And so while I can look back and think, oh, I wish I would have learned this sooner, I wish I wouldn't have wasted so much time on this one guy. I needed to go through that. That's exactly what needed to happen. And I think about my marriage that way too. Like I needed to marry him and I needed to go through this and I needed to get to the point where I was like, I have exhausted all other options. This is not working, and I don't want this for my life. [00:12:26] Getting to a point where it's like letting that be a complete sentence, a justifiable reason for divorce, which in the church is typically not allowed. This is not what I want for my life. [00:12:37] That is not acceptable. I remember moving to Alabama and the pastor here didn't know me, didn't know my ex, didn't know our situation at all. But he made a comment saying, there are no irreconcilable differences between Christians. [00:12:51] Blanket, judgy, manipulative statements. At that point, I was no longer looking for permission. I had already decided and it was a hard decision to make. And so, anyways, I think this episode, though, is really great. Coming on the heels, though, and just like, right in line and in sync with this anniversary. [00:13:12] So let's get on with it here, because I have several pages of notes and we are still on page one. [00:13:19] As I think about and reflect on my journey as well as that of my clients, a couple things come to mind. Number one, we grossly underestimate how much mental and emotional work is required to change a core belief, to change one of these core deeply ingrained beliefs, patterns, habits. Not just the pattern of overeating or emotionally eating, but belief patterns around things like I'm not good enough, I'm not smart enough, I'm not thin enough, I'm not pretty enough. Or food rules like, I can't lose weight and eat carbs, or food makes me feel better. Or things like perfectionism and people pleasing and feeling responsible for somebody else's emotions, feeling like you have made them angry, you have made them upset, and now it's your job to fix it. These things, they've grown and lived inside of us for not just years, but decades. Like truly multiple decades. [00:14:12] And now we are trying to rewire that. And it takes time, it takes emotional energy and bandwidth and even the mindset work. And so I think this is why sometimes it can feel so frustrating when it feels like we're doing a lot, we're working hard, we're working on changing these beliefs and these patterns, but then we're not seeing the results, maybe on the scale. And sometimes you will, sometimes you're going to do both at the same time. [00:14:37] But sometimes it's like we. We have to do this internal work in order to make the weight loss easier. And so as we're doing that internal work, it's like we're climbing Mount Everest. And I want you to Truly think about it that way because it may not require a lot of physical energy to change beliefs and patterns and certain habits, but it really, like when we really look at it holistically, it does take that amount of energy and bandwidth to do that. [00:15:06] So this is a really important piece to note and to give yourself credit for the work that you are doing, even though you can't necessarily see it in real time. And I know when I think on the last year, it's gone by so fast. There have been days or I feel like when it was the depression era, it was like those two and a half months of being depressed that felt really slow, really heavy, really painful. But outside of that, things just feel like they've gone by so fast. [00:15:34] When I stop and think about it, I can reflect and see how much I've grown, how much I've changed, what has changed, different habits and patterns and things like that. So much growth. And yet it's not like I just wake up and all of a sudden I feel different. It is truly this 1% level up that happens day by day where it's like you don't always see it. It's like you can't necessarily see it yourself. But when you can look back over this larger period of time, it's not like it all happened within a day or a week. It's like it really took this compounding effort. [00:16:07] I say all of this to encourage you to give yourself a lot of grace, a lot of compassion as you are looking at this and recognizing if you are in a season of healing or a season of personal growth, really understanding how much is truly involved there. This internal work is quite large. [00:16:26] It's very large. It's very intense. [00:16:29] You can still learn how to lose weight and love your life and heal at the same time. You can learn how to heal and lose weight at the same time. And it's also okay if one is happening more so than the other, because it's not just about losing weight, right? Anybody can lose weight once. And in fact, most people who come to me and work with me and who listen to this podcast, they have lost weight once before. [00:16:52] But it's not just about doing it once. It's about being able to keep it off. It's about being able to maintain those results. [00:16:59] And that means you have to change who you are. You have to change who you are being. How you show up in the world. And this is why it hasn't worked in the past, typically is because you did it fast. You did it in a way that was not sustainable. And so you're like, let's hurry up and get this over with as fast as humanly possible. Dear Lord, please make this stop. Let's just get this over with. [00:17:20] Rather than figuring out how to make weight loss fit within your lifestyle and learning to enjoy the ride, enjoy the process, enjoy your life, it's like, no, I need to buckle down, get this done fast. But then we're not the person who can maintain it. Most people don't know how to moderate. And we're not set up after all of these diet rules to be able to moderate in a healthy way. [00:17:40] And so often it's like, you can't just bring back all of the old foods in all of the same way that we did previously. And it's really this. We are breaking all the diet rules. We are really looking at the diet trauma and the relationship trauma, how they coincide, how we can really see that they are. These are two sides of the same coin and what that means for us and how to truly overcome it. How do we work through it in a way that moves you forward, not so that we can just play a victim and woe is me and just kind of keep playing the same card over and over again, but just so that we understand there is some work involved here. Now, I want to be clear here that the work is not about I have to restrict a lot of food or I can't eat certain food. The work is often going to be not beating yourself up or shaming yourself when you make a mistake or fall back into an old pattern. That takes hard work. The hard and the work looks like the willingness to look at not meeting your own expectations and being willing to evaluate and truly learn from them that can feel hard. Saying no to food from a place of self, love instead of punishment, and like shit talking that can feel hard. It's learning to meet your own emotional needs, which means you have to identify what emotions food is typically meeting for you, right? That can feel hard to slow down and actually break that down and to figure that out. And then figuring out and learning how to meet those needs for yourself instead of turning to food or alcohol or a dating app or another person, trusting yourself can feel hard. Trusting your body to eat certain foods, learning to moderate, learning to eat a little bit and be satisfied instead of thinking that food is bad or off limits or certain foods you just can't eat and lose weight. There are aspects that are going to feel hard. And typically it's the mindset aspects, it's the beliefs that's what's actually hard. [00:19:36] That's why this process can feel challenging. [00:19:40] And so I don't say this to scare you off. I don't say this because it's going to take forever or like your entire lifetime to figure out, but just so that we recognize. Like, when I talk about aspects of weight loss being hard, it is not about how many miles you're going to run or burpees that you can do or weight you're going to lift or how much food you can restrict or how strict or extreme food rules you can follow. [00:20:05] That is not the hard everything that I just covered. That's the hard part. That's the hard of becoming someone new. That's the hard of becoming a normal eater. I don't even want to say healthy eater. I don't know how else to describe it. Somebody who's not obsessed with food, who's not obsessed with what they can and can't eat, who's not looking for food to be their primary source of joy and pleasure and happiness. [00:20:32] There are going to be some growing pains. There is going to be some discomfort. I don't say this to scare you away. I say it to normalize it. And let's lean in. There was a podcast I did recently about leaning into the hard. Let it be hard. Not hard in terms of we have to restrict and can't eat certain things, but hard as in recognizing the beliefs and the patterns and these behaviors, these things that we want to change. It was a bonus episode from CH July 15, actually letting life and weight loss be hard. Lean into it. Challenge yourself. Challenge yourself through the discomfort of when you would typically beat yourself up and talk and throw yourself under the bus. And instead of doing that, you're now going to evaluate. You're now going to have some love and compassion for yourself and truly learn. You're going to get curious and it's going to feel really uncomfortable. [00:21:24] That is going to feel hard. [00:21:27] But that's the hard we need to be focused on. And I think that's the important piece is so often we're not focused on the productive hard that's going to get us where we want to go and help us become the person we need to become. Because that's what this is all about. You've got to become the type of person who can say, no, I can have more tomorrow. I don't need a second dessert. No, I don't need to drink just because everybody else is. [00:21:49] No, I don't need to keep eating just because the food tastes so Good. That is a different type of being. When you can go on vacation, you can go into the holidays, you can travel, you take all of your healthy habits with you in a very easy way. [00:22:03] And there might be some little tweaks and shifts, there's some flexibility there, but everything goes with you. I teach you how to lose weight and end emotional eating in your real life because it's that life you take with you everywhere you go. You have to. [00:22:17] That's how we make it simple. That's how we make it sustainable. [00:22:21] That's how we stop all of the screw it eating. When you're. When typically in the past, we're like, yeah, screw it, I'm on vacation, whatever. And everything goes off the rails, out the window. And then we're constantly on this, on and off, start and stop, cycle of doom. [00:22:35] We want to break that pattern. Because really what we're doing here is every time we've gone left, we're now trying to tell our brains to go right. [00:22:43] And it takes some time, it takes some practice. You're gonna know to go right, but you're gonna keep going left. And it's how you handle those situations when you keep turning left and really want to go right. [00:22:54] That is what dictates how fast you move ultimately. [00:22:59] But oftentimes there's a lot of work on the front end to prepare you to lose weight. [00:23:04] So, like, for example, if you are an emotional eater or a binge eater, like I was focusing on that and working to heal your relationship with food, healing these habits, healing and understanding and decoding the binging and the emotional eating that is going to help make the weight loss so much easier. If you can focus on that pattern, you can solve and heal that aspect. It's a thousand times easier than to lose weight. It was way easier for me to lose weight and maintain it when I wasn't binging every night. [00:23:34] That's my whole story. [00:23:35] It becomes so much easier. You can actually eat some carbs, you can eat some fat, you can eat some foods that you thought were off limits. You can actually have a balanced diet. You can go out to eat, you can travel, you can enjoy your life because it's never about those things. It's often that we are over consuming and we are over consuming because we are under feeling and we keep trying to solve the wrong problem. [00:24:00] More on that here in just a sec. I was up really early this morning and I decided to go for a walk and I came up with a really great analogy. Super simple, but it's really Great. [00:24:09] Okay, so imagine you're going to cook pasta. What do you do typically? Most people, I think, would all agree you heat up the water. You get the water to boil first, and then you add the pasta in it. [00:24:25] And why do you do that? [00:24:28] It's because when the water is already hot, when the water's already boiling, it's going to cook the pasta noodles more efficiently. It's going to be faster. [00:24:36] So often we are upset with ourselves because we are trying to boil the water ahead of time, but we haven't added the pasta. So the pasta is not actually cooking. We are in the stage of boiling the water. That's it. [00:24:51] But we're also looking at the pasta. Like, why aren't you cooking? Damn it. That's what it's like when you are in a healing phase, a healing season or a personal growth season, thinking that you should be losing weight or you should be in a weight loss season. [00:25:06] And I think there are times when we do get to decide and we can be intentional with what season we're in. And I also think that sometimes there are some aspects that are maybe somewhat out of our control. [00:25:18] And I don't like suggesting that things are out of our control. I think we want to look at where we do have control and ownership. That way we are not a helpless victim and like a victim of our circumstances. [00:25:28] I think sometimes this feeling of powerlessness and helplessness as one of the narcissistic abuse wounds, like that is definitely a challenge, and this is definitely a fine line. [00:25:40] But there are going to be times when, like, if I look back over the last two years, these were personal growth and healing years. [00:25:46] I didn't necessarily want them to be personal growth and healing. If I'm being totally honest, like I was hoping, I. I don't know if I thought I had already done it. I think that's probably where I was. I probably thought I already had done this. It was like the awareness of the problem. Awareness of these factors doesn't mean anything. I remember recognizing that I was anxiously attached and sometimes both anxious and avoidant with the same person. [00:26:09] And it would be like, okay, I don't want to date you, but I don't want you to date anybody else. And I still want to kind of act like we're dating, but we're not dating. Like, it would be really confusing things. [00:26:22] And so I can see it's okay. Just the awareness, though, of that doesn't make it go away. Like, just the awareness of abandonment wounds, just the awareness of my anxious attachment does not change anything until I actively work on that. And there are some things. My full belief is that there is a base level of healing. There's a foundational level of healing that you do on your own, and there is then healing that we do in conjunction with other people. There's healing that is done as we are dating, as we are getting to know somebody, as we are in a relationship with somebody, as we are going through and navigating, potentially a breakup. [00:27:01] And if you go back to last week's episode, when I talked about when your abandonment wound gets triggered, that was so key, it was so instrumental. I could not have learned that on my own, not dating. [00:27:14] But I did also need a foundational level of healing and learning to meet my own emotional needs and not relying on a man to do that for me. I did need to go through this man detox for a little while. [00:27:26] And now I'm sure I'm still going to have some lessons to learn. I'm sure that I'm still going to have some healing and some growth work. [00:27:33] But I am set up for way more success and way more understanding and true growth, real healing. So anyways, if we go back to this pasta analogy, it's really spot on. We heat up the water, and sometimes I'll even use water that's already hot to even speed up the boiling. But we don't make it a problem that we're boiling the water ahead of time so that we can cook the pasta. This is part of the process. And when we think about it as, oh, what if heating up the water was really healing your relationship with food, working on your food rules, creating a better relationship or dynamic with alcohol, healing your emotional eating, getting to a place where you're not emotionally eating or binge eating every day. Maybe it's happening once or twice a month, but it's not every day like it used to be. Weight loss. Then when you go to add in the components of weight loss, it happens so much faster because the water's already hot. You have primed the water to properly cook the pasta. You're also not pouring pasta into cold water onto the stovetop and looking at it like, why aren't you cooking? It's about managing our expectations. [00:28:42] This is probably the core premise of this whole podcast episode today, and my rambling here is managing your expectations and not being so hard on yourself and not having unrealistic goals or desires for the stage that you're in. [00:28:57] I've gotten better at managing expectations in life, but I still have probably some unrealistic ones. And I think it's holding space for like realistic expectations and also being open to quantum leaping, these big leaps, these big jumps that we can have. Sometimes the quantum leaps are not that you lose £20 in a month. It's the internal work that we are quantum leaping. And I promise when you are doing that, when you quantum leap internally, it will manifest externally in your career, in your parenting, with dating or finding a spouse with a business. Like it will come out in other areas 100% and with weight loss, absolutely. But I have also been really mindful and aware as I talk to different clients about helping them to set realistic expectations. [00:29:44] If somebody comes to me and they have 4,40 pounds to lose, it might be a slightly different process than somebody who has 20 pounds to lose. But they are super anxious and terrified around food and very restrictive versus somebody who has maybe a hundred pounds to lose is emotionally eating or binge eating. [00:30:02] I found that the clients who do the best, who have the most success, they know that and they recognize when they are in a personal growth or a healing phase versus a weight loss phase and not making the personal growth and the healing a problem, you can do both together. I have some clients who are doing both together. I have some clients who will start with me and it will take them a couple weeks to start losing weight for some, it will take a couple months to start losing weight for some. They come in and they are doing some healing work and weight loss at the same time and they start losing weight immediately. I had one client who started with me in July and in the last two weeks we've been tracking her weight more consistently and she's lost ten pounds. She's crushing it. She's creating really great results. [00:30:44] And part of this is also in the work that we're doing together. It's healing her relationship with food, creating the long term lifestyle. It's navigating stress. It's healing from toxic relationships and dysfunctional patterns in herself. So it's not just about the weight. It's also navigating these other aspects of life. And then when she wants to stress eat or emotionally eat, she now has other tools and other ways of navigating that. [00:31:09] And there might be some weeks where the weight loss isn't going to be as significant. Maybe it'll be five pounds, maybe it'll be two pounds. But she's going to be learning and navigating different things. [00:31:20] Even with our weight loss journeys as a whole. If you think about over six months or maybe a year thinking about it, from that lens of not making certain weeks wrong or bad because you're learning different aspects or you're learning to implement different pieces. [00:31:35] This is an important concept and something to think about, not just with weight loss, but in dating and romantic relationships. I took off nearly all of last year from dating and it was really this slowing down that's going to help me to speed up. I did my man detox and there were a couple random dates. Like there were some things like coffee chats, where in my mind I'm like, oh, it's not a date, but it's two single people getting together. It's a date. [00:32:00] Or it's, oh, I'm just catching up with an old boyfriend, yeah, no, we're going to dinner. There were times when I wanted to justify or rationalize, no, this isn't a date. [00:32:09] So there were some one off things. But through that, by saying yes and then by saying no to those, it was helping me to learn and it was helping me to better understand what it is that I was seeking in those events from those people. [00:32:24] And I was intentionally trying to put my brain into a deprivation mode. [00:32:30] I wanted to intentionally strategically deprive it of love and attention from men on purpose because my brain was so hyper focused on that to the point that I would overlook red flags, that I would not walk away. I wouldn't walk away fast enough. [00:32:47] I believe that even though it might feel like it slowed me down by not dating actually helped me as I was in the healing process. And I think that's the other thing too. It's not just about not dating and doing something else. It's the actual healing. Right? Just like you can take food out of the house, but it doesn't mean that you have a healthy relationship with it when you bring it back in. There's some mindset and emotional work that has to be done around what's going on. I was doing that as I was also abstaining from dating. And then in February, couple dates. And then I was like, nope, pulled back and started to step my toes back into it this summer. But it was really necessary. [00:33:23] I needed to learn what were the emotions that men were meeting for me. And I needed to learn how do I create those in myself? How do I meet them for myself? [00:33:32] Because this will ultimately help me to meet my future man faster and it's going to help me to walk away from guys with red flags faster. It'll help me to walk away from people who just aren't the right fit. And I can see where old Patterns of, like, scarcity comes up, scarcity in the dating world. [00:33:49] And really being mindful of, who am I listening to here? Who's in my ears, who's in my feed? Is it a bunch of people and posts and things about how terrible the dating scene is? I look at men's profiles online and a lot of them talk about how shitty this dating scene is, and I'm like, no, that's not the experience I want to have. And so I very consciously, very intentionally decided I want my dating experience to be fun and enjoyable. [00:34:14] And yes, there might be some heartache. And yeah, I'm sure there's gonna be times when it's not always gonna be high vibe and super amazing. [00:34:22] But overall, my experience is going to be vastly different from most of these other people because of how I'm thinking about it, because of how I'm emotionally regulating myself ahead of time and the work that I'm doing on the healing side, right? So if I look at it as like a healing season versus dating season or a partnership season, it's trusting that I'm going to find my future man at the right time and he's going to be ready and I'm going to be ready. Like, we will both now be on the same wavelength. I think about it from this lens of we both likely have to do and have had to do some growth and personal development work to get to a point where we could both be on the same level, being equally yoked, not just in terms of what we believe spiritually, but how we do life, our core values, and being able to recognize our own trauma and trauma responses and the awareness that we have of trying to prevent it from coming into future relationships, and also the willingness to own it if it does. [00:35:22] I also see this with my business, right? When I think about business growth versus personal growth. My business has grown the last couple of years, but these were very heavy personal growth years, very heavy healing years. [00:35:34] And it's been really fun to see how my business is growing faster now and more so than I could have ever expected. And through the end of the year, this is super fun and exciting, but I had to go through these seasons prior to get to this point. At the end of the day, when it's five, 10 years down the road, you're not binging, you're not emotionally eating, you've been living in the body you love, you have a partner you love, you have an amazing relationship, you feel really fulfilled, you're in an amazing career, you're doing what you love, raising awesome kids. When you have the life that you truly crave, it's not gonna matter how long it took. It's not gonna matter if it took an extra couple of years. Who cares when I now have all of the future decades to enjoy this? [00:36:14] Lord willing, of course. Right? Like, we could go at any time. Sure. But hopefully I have another 50 years. [00:36:21] And if that's the case, what's an extra couple to help me create what it is that I truly want out of life? [00:36:27] Part of this for me has been, like, the willingness to go slow, the willingness to be patient. And what does patience look like? And, like, active patience. I really believe it all goes back to, you're committed to a goal, but you're enjoying the journey. You're enjoying the ride as you get there. And when you can do that, no matter what you're doing, just like with dating, if I can do that, if I can love my life now while I'm dating and finding my right person, it's gonna be fun and enjoyable. It's gonna be awesome. [00:36:55] If I can learn to love and enjoy my business and where it's at right now and my life with my business right now and this phase that I'm in, it's going to be awesome. I can allow it to take some time. [00:37:05] I don't have to be in such a hurry to get there. That's been one of the biggest shifts since being divorced, too, is really recognizing how in the past I was so focused on finding a man because it was like, oh, he's going to complete me or he's going to fix me. Something about it where it was like, this person or just being married is like kind of this epitome, end all, be all. And now I see it as, yes, I do want to be married again one day. [00:37:29] Marriage is also hard. Like, relationships are hard, and it's a hard worth doing with the right person, but they take some work. The fairy tale glasses have been lifted, and I think that's often what happens with people when they. It's like by the time they come to me, like, the weight loss, fairy tale glasses have been lifted, and they're like, all right, let's do this sustainably. Let's do this in a way where I can keep it off. Let's do this in a way where I never have to learn and figure out how to lose this £40 ever again. Because it's off and you've kept it off and you know how. And it was really important. I see. Especially with the business, too, with it was important that these happened when they did. It was important that they happened after the divorce because it helped me to see my beliefs, my thoughts, the things that I had to let go of that were my own dysfunctional patterns. [00:38:18] And even when it's painful, it's like these are the lessons that we have to learn. I will not stop saying that sometimes God takes us where we don't want to go to create new what couldn't have been done any other way. I firmly believe that. I really wish that was a verse in the Bible. It's not, but it should be because that's exactly how God works. He will take us sometimes where we don't want to go because that is the only way that we are going to get on the path that we need to be on. [00:38:46] And it's not punishment, it's not spite or vindictiveness. [00:38:50] It's simply God trying to move us along, get us on the right path, because God loves us. And I can have a lot of love and compassion for myself in these different phases and seasons of life. I don't have to walk around with a bunch of shame and self doubt and discouragement when we can really, truly let that go. [00:39:07] Watch out. [00:39:09] And I know it can be frustrating when you realize that you've been making it harder on yourself, like unnecessarily harder. [00:39:16] I get that. And I've had a lot of clients who have brought that up almost it can't be easy because if it really was this easy, then it means I've been making it harder on myself. And I can't bear the thought of that. So it's almost like I'm going to keep making it hard because I can't stand the thought of it being easy. And now I've wasted all this time making it be hard. I was a binge eater for 14 years, okay, a decade and a half that I spent overeating, emotionally eating, binging. Not necessarily every day of those 14 years, but a lot of that time was spent obsessing about food. [00:39:46] I made it so much harder on myself and I wish that I hadn't, I really do. [00:39:52] But that was my journey. That's what I had to go through. [00:39:55] There's some pain in that, there's some frustration in that. [00:40:00] Now I hope that you also have the hope and excitement and encouragement when you realize that you now have the power to, you can control and you can do things differently, you can make things better, you can actually achieve your goals and you could do it better, faster, stronger than ever. Before easier, way more fun, way more ease. And we have to let go of a sunk cost fallacy of like, we've sunk all of this time into making it hard. And it's like, we don't want to give that up. We don't want that to be all for naught. So we're like, we're just going to keep making it hard rather than letting it be easy. [00:40:35] And this is the type of work that I do with clients of really understanding the mindset and the emotional things that come up that we might label as self sabotage. But really, there is a reason why it's coming up. Typically it is to protect you in some way. Even when it doesn't logically make sense, it is there to protect you. And this is the value of working with a coach, someone who can help you navigate these different seasons, personal growth seasons, healing seasons, work, weight loss seasons. A coach that is going to help you identify the right problem so that you can properly apply the right solution. Because not only will you have an outside perspective, but you're going to have a trained professional perspective, someone who's walked the walk and also knows what it's like to navigate the challenges you're facing. You can't see or catch what you don't know is a problem. And it's very hard to change such deeply ingrained patterns like we have when it comes to weight loss and emotional eating, trauma responses, things with relationships and abusive relationships and dynamics. [00:41:35] So often we don't know how because we grew up with it. These are default patterns. If we knew how to change them, it wouldn't be our default. We would have changed it. But we need that outside influence to really help us. [00:41:51] Yesterday I had an experience with my son that really highlights this exact view and stance. [00:41:57] Caleb was wheezing and he had this really barky cough that developed on Saturday night. So he was wheezing on Saturday, didn't go play soccer. So I'm thinking, okay, I have exhausted all of the things that I know how to do. Like, I've given him different medications. I have done a breathing treatment at home that didn't seem to help at all. So we go to urgent care Sunday morning. So Saturday night, I'm making the appointment for Sunday. All right, we're going to get in early. I figured we'd be there maybe an hour and then we'd be back home. And at least then we would have some ideas of, okay, what's going on, how do we make this better, all of that. But I got to a point Where I was like, okay, I have exhausted all of my options, all the things that I know how to do. I need to go get some outside help. So we go to urgent care, and then the nurse there, she now has exhausted all of her tools, all of her resources, all of the things that she can do. We did two breathing treatments and a dose of steroids, and his wheezing wasn't getting any better. She looked at me, and she was like, I'm sorry, you guys got to go to the er. And I was like, really? Are you sure? Do we really have to? [00:42:55] And not only that, but we had to get transported by ambulance. And I was like, what? I can't just take him myself. What's happening in the ambulance? They were able to give him a treatment, and they were very kind and let me sit in the back. Originally, I was told that I would have to either sit up front or I would have to follow. And my little guy, he's still so young. He's four. So I'm really glad they let me sit in the back. They were very kind. And he was just scared. He just needed Mom. And, of course, I'm also frazzled. Neither one of us are sleeping. I'm ready to burst into tears just because it's a lot. And I think it activates some of that fear, just like that natural fear response. [00:43:30] Anyways, they do a different breathing treatment. We get to the hospital, and the doctor walks in. He meets us almost immediately. Like, they wheel him into the room. The paramedics haven't even left the room yet. And the doctor's walking in, asking me a couple questions, pats him on the back, but he's so cool, calm, collected. [00:43:48] He asked Caleb to cough a couple times, and he's, oh, yeah, this is totally solvable. He's got croup. Here's what we're gonna do. He, like, lays out two or three steps, and, you know, the problem, this simple solution. And then he's like, all right, yep, it's gonna be maybe about an hour. You guys will be going home shortly. It was just so easy. But I didn't have the resources. I didn't have the tools at home to be able to do that. I needed a professional. I needed a trained professional. And even the nurse at the urgent care clinic, somebody who I would think would know what this was. I think she's also maybe not supposed to diagnose certain things. There's certain things within her capacity that she's allowed to do and not do stuff like that, but she Also knew when it was time where it's like, okay, I have exhausted certain things. Now I've got to send you up the chain. And now we keep going. And there were four, five kids total. I think that this was happening to. There's just something going around. [00:44:38] Then when we finally got to the ER and talked with the doctor, it was such an easy, breezy, simple, shut case. We, no big deal. And so it was like, oh, okay. When it just felt okay. All this hullabaloo with this ambulance seems very unnecessary. But whatever. It was so good to know that you're in good hands. To know that when you are at a point where it's like, okay, I don't really know how else to fix this, this is not getting better. In fact, now I'm noticing this is getting worse. I've got to step in and do something. And so I'm really glad that I stepped in and intervened because I was kind of debating. I kind of wonder sometimes, okay, what could they do? And I don't know, because I'm not a doctor. And I have also gotten to the point where I'm not going to sit around in pain and misery. I am going to get help pretty quickly. I'm either going to go to the doctor or a chiropractor, a physical therapist. Like, I'm going to start to seek treatment for something. [00:45:28] Because there have been times when I have just tried to stay off it, take it easy, lay low, and I'm just in pain for the week, and I go and see a specialist, and within two days I'm feeling better. I've just learned that other people know more about some things than I know, and I can trust them. This is why I pay them. This is why, though you hire a coach, it's to help you navigate these different seasons of life, to help you navigate things like emotional eating and binge eating. If you are struggling with your weight, if you are struggling with your emotions and regulating and processing emotions, if you're struggling with emotional eating or emotional drinking and just the buffering effect, if you are struggling to navigate life after divorce, this is what I do. This has become my zone of genius. In part because it's what I've walked, it's what I know, it's what I've been through. And in part because it's what I've been trained in. It's what I have the skills and the resources and assets for. It's this kind of melding of, like, my own natural skill and ability, my training, and then my own life experience and it comes together to create this amazing trifecta for you. [00:46:35] But you have to be willing to get help. We have to let down the ego, let go of our pride and just say, I need some help with this area. [00:46:44] This is not where I want to be and I can help you. The next best step is to schedule a free consultation so you can visit bodyucrave.com forward/schedule. I'll drop a link in the description, find a time on my calendar and let's talk. And if you have not downloaded the feelings wheel yet, that will also be in the description. But make sure that you download that because that is going to be your first starting point to decoding your emotional eating pattern and that habit. There is so much peace and ease and freedom on the other side, but we literally have to rewire so much of your brain. When it comes to people and relationships and dynamics, when it comes to food and weight loss and food rules and exercise, there's so much reprogramming we have to do. It is like cult deprogramming. Truly. We have to de brainwash your brain. And it's possible sometimes we have to do some of that initial brainwashing first in more of a healing phase or a growth phase versus a weight loss phase. But when you can recognize what phase you're in right now and maybe you're on the cusp of a shift, maybe you've been in a healing phase and you're ready to go into a weight loss phase, or maybe you've been in a healing phase and you're like, all right, maybe I need to also stay here. Maybe the healing I need is actually healing. When it comes to an autoimmune disease or diabetes or a pre diabetic diagnosis or something like that, maybe there are other aspects that need to come first before the weight loss can come. And, and this is where it comes down to body image, how you see yourself, how you talk to yourself, what you think about yourself. Because so much of it is our worth gets so caught up and wrapped up in how we look. [00:48:25] We put so much emphasis and so much value on that. And sometimes that's how we were raised. It's what we learned growing up. It's what was emphasized in a marriage or in a dysfunctional relationship. Typically there's a reason for it. But we have to recognize that all of those mean judgy thoughts, all of the fear of judgment from other people, those thoughts are really your own, which means you get to control them. And so if you want some help controlling those thoughts, managing those thoughts, navigating and managing your emotions through this next phase of life, through the rest of this year and into next year. Let's chat. [00:48:58] All right y', all, sorry this went a little bit longer than expected, but I guess that's what you get for having four pages of notes. So have a great week. Here's to creating the life and body you crave. [00:49:13] If this episode resonated with you, it's time to break free from destructive cycles around food, alcohol and toxic relationships. Your next step Book your free Break the Cycle call where you'll finally see why your binge eating and relationship patterns are so deeply connected and how to break free from from both for good. [00:49:34] You'll walk away with fierce clarity and a game plan to step into a life full of fun, adventure and self love. Grab your spot now at www.bodyyoucrave.com VTC. [00:49:48] It's time to break the cycle. I'll show you how.