163 - The #1 Driver of Emotional Eating During the Holidays

Episode 163 September 29, 2025 01:07:39
163 - The #1 Driver of Emotional Eating During the Holidays
Hungry for Love: Lose Weight After Toxic Relationships
163 - The #1 Driver of Emotional Eating During the Holidays

Sep 29 2025 | 01:07:39

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Show Notes

The holidays don’t have to mean overeating, guilt, or waiting until January to start over. 

But you've got to address the #1 primary reason you're emotionally eating. 

Because it's not just stress, overwhelm, or trying to relax... 

It's the Fear of Missing Out. 

This fear and all the thoughts that come with it, about the scarcity of food and missing out on all the fun, will block you every year until you break the cycle.  

I'll teach you how to enjoy the season FULLY — food, fun, and connection — while still making progress toward your health and weight loss goals. 

NOW is the best time to get started. 

Schedule your free consultation at www.bodyyoucrave.com/schedule and let's make this holiday season unlike any other you've experienced before. 

Full of joy, fun, pleasure, and a deep sense of being present in all the amazing moments. 

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Episode Transcript

[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] Hello and welcome to three Myths of Holiday Weight Loss. We are going to dive into some fun stuff today. So some of this you may have heard before, some of it we likely have not talked about in the context of the holidays and what comes up. But this is such an important topic because, number one, it might be sunny and still warm where you are. If you're anything like me living in the South, I still am in this warm weather. I'm not quite ready and prepared to start thinking about the holidays sometimes. And the challenge is then that they sneak up on us, right? We don't realize that they're coming. And so then we kind of get caught by surprise. We get caught off guard. And when it comes to navigating food and drinks and emotions and people, especially difficult people, this is where we want to have time to practice. And so this is why I'm starting to talk about it now, is I want to start to plant seeds that, number one, weight loss is doable. It is so doable. And it can be easy even around the holidays, right? That you can lose weight in October and November and December. You don't have to miss out on events and parties. You don't have to miss out on foods and drinks. But we do have to stop and break this pattern of all or nothing. If I'm either all in, doing it perfectly, 100% super extreme, or I'm all out. Because what happens is often that first all out in October, maybe early November, it throws us off for the rest of the year and we throw away two, maybe three months of the year when we can be saving it. We can look at how can I still make this work? What would it look like if I wanted to lose ten pounds by the end of the year? What would be required? [00:02:03] And I've had clients in the past who have lost 10 pounds between November and December. They've lost 20 or 25 pounds from September to the end of December. We don't need a ton of time. And it they didn't have to restrict, deprive, avoid parties, avoid the fun. And this leads us into the biggest myth, and this is what I really want to encourage you and change your mind about is this myth and this belief that you're going to have to miss out. Because that's usually why we just think I can't do it. So I'm just, I'm not even going to try because I don't want to miss out on the best time of year. I don't want to miss out on the food and the fun and the parties and the events and the cookie swaps and the happy hours and maybe the company events, the other things that are going on. Right? We don't want to miss out on our traditions. And for me, the holidays, like this is my favorite time of year. I don't want to miss out on it. I want it to be so fun and enjoyable. [00:02:59] But we often think that it has to be this false dichotomy. It has to be either I'm all in doing the diet 100% perfectly and thus missing out on. I have to say no. I have to say a lot of no's, a lot of no's to the food, a lot of no's to the fun, a lot of no's to the parties. We're probably going to avoid the parties, avoid the events because we don't feel like we have enough willpower or it's going to be food is now a giant free for all and effort. Screw it, I'm just going to start over next year. [00:03:27] And we throw away months of time when really this is the best time to be retraining your brain, to be retraining how you think about food, how you relate to it. We want to change our relationship with our bodies, with the scale, with alcohol, not just with food. Right? Like we want to change our relationship with all of these different things. And this is how we start to do it, is we have to flesh out all of the thoughts, all of the emotions that hold us back. [00:03:55] And the fear of missing out is a big one. [00:03:58] And I've felt it too before. I have felt that fear of missing out. I also white knuckled and been, I would say anxious and about, oh no, I can't lose or I can't gain weight over the holidays. So then it's like this fear and anxiety would grip me. And that's not a fun way to experience the holidays either. You know, I want you to feel like you can have dessert if you want it, that you can have a drink or two. But there's a difference between I'm going to have two glasses of wine versus I start drinking and we'll see where I end up or somebody else is buying it or it's an open bar so we'll see just like leaving it open like fair game. [00:04:35] And there's a difference between I'm going to go to an event and have maybe two drinks and. And I have five events lined up. Because if I have five events now for the week, one or two drinks easily turns into ten for the week. And so it's more about being intentional and planning out and starting to experiment with why do we think, why do we make it all about the food? A lot of times holidays do involve a lot of food. It involves meals, it involves cookies and desserts, it involves drinks. Why do we really allow ourselves to focus on the food or the drinks and make that be how we have a good time versus I have a good time based off of who I'm with. [00:05:16] And this is a, this is a concept shift. This is something that is totally different. And I remember back in my binging days when I was married and my. I was very particular about where we went to eat because I was very particular about the food. I could only eat certain things and I had to have certain stuff and food was the highlight of my day. [00:05:34] And yes, sure, I wanted to spend time with him, but I really was very concerned about the food. What were we eating, where were we going, what was happening, what were my options? [00:05:43] And it was very strict in trying to stick with a low carb diet. [00:05:47] Didn't always work. A lot of times it didn't, but I would try. I had the best of intentions in the morning and now I'm at the point where I don't care where we go. I can find food anywhere. And I am more concerned about who I am spending time with. I am more concerned about my company and who I am eating with, not what I am eating. And this came out. I have a date scheduled next weekend with somebody and he asked me like, hey, what do you like to eat? What's your preferences? I also asked him that. And so we're both trying to gauge one another. And I'm like, I was like, I am, I'm happy eating wherever. Like, I am not hard to please. I'm not super picky anymore. [00:06:27] I was like, I care much more about who I am having a meal with and the connection and the conversation and building that with the person versus being concerned with the food. [00:06:39] Now why are we concerned with the food? Right? Why do we make it all about the food? Often that is a sign of diet trauma and that stems from the food noise that we often experience. [00:06:49] So I pulled up my notes from the podcast because there was a recent one a couple weeks ago. So it's episode 159 of the Hungry for Love podcast is how to decrease food noise without medication. Because there's been a lot of talk about food noise and GLP1s and taking medication, using medication to decrease the food noise. But there are ways, when we actually work on the root issue of it, we can heal our diet trauma, which is what's impacting that. So we can change this without medication. That was the whole premise of this episode. And really me explaining more about, okay, what is diet trauma? What is food noise? What's really at play here? And so the way that I define diet trauma is it's the mental and emotional baggage from trying and often failing to lose the weight or failing to keep it off, right? And so what happens is we develop specific fears and anxieties around food and around eating because of past diets that we've been on and that we've tried. And I would say just about every Western diet will has the opportunity to trigger this. [00:07:50] Not everybody suffers from diet trauma. Like, not, I can't say that everybody in the world has this, but there are a lot of Americans and especially if you maybe can resonate with being considered a chronic dieter, I was very much a chronic dieter. I was almost always on a diet to lose weight. And then there was so much fear and anxiety around, like, got to stick to this diet now in order to keep the weight off. [00:08:14] And so there was just this constant obsession with food because it was often being taken away. [00:08:19] And so this is where we want to look at it from this lens of often, right? Not only is it the fear of missing out on the good times, the fear of missing out on the fun and how like how everybody else is experiencing an event, a party, but so often it's, we're now going to miss out on these limited time only deals where I'm going to miss out on the pumpkin spice everything, right? And it gets us back into this. I've got to get it while the getting's good. I've got to get it while I can get my fill now. So that way I can. I'm good. I like am satisfied with this until next year. [00:08:56] And so food noise, though, I just want to take a moment to talk about this for just a sec because food noise is really common and one of the ways that I describe it is it's this constant obsession and like a preoccupation with food. [00:09:08] You often have increased cravings, increased food urges, difficulty listening for hunger, or feeling satisfied like really tuning into your body and letting your body distinguish that. And so because of that, often there's a lot of overeating, and there can often be a lot of emotional eating. You may also resonate with feeling out of control around food or feeling like you can't control yourself. You feel out of control around food. [00:09:35] Sometimes I think people might describe it as food calls their name, right? It's like you might have some cookies in the pantry, and it's Sarah. [00:09:43] It's like you. You hear. It's like this draw, this obsession. [00:09:46] And what I think is interesting is to look at what food calls your name, right? Does grilled chicken breast call your name? [00:09:53] Does broccoli call your name? [00:09:56] Do these other foods call your name? Does ketchup call your name? [00:10:01] Or is it often, like the quote, bad off limits foods that we have decided are not okay. They're either too high in calories, too high in fat, too high in carbs, too high in sugar, right? We have decided and labeled as being bad. [00:10:16] And so now, because it's bad, it's supposed to be off limits. We're not supposed to eat it. We moralize food and then we moralize ourselves based on what we're eating, right? And so now I'm bad if I'm eating the bad food, which is what has us often going into, screw it. I'll start over tomorrow. I'll start over next month. I'll start over in the new year. And we don't have to. We don't have to throw away the month or the year in order to enjoy life, in order to enjoy things. But the crux of this is not making food or alcohol the primary source of your joy. [00:10:52] So when I went on a date last night, I'm sorry, I'm dating. So I'm going to use a lot of these analogies because I think it's helpful when we hear it in other contexts and in other ways, and we also see it in real life. Okay? So when I went on a date last night and I had a cocktail, I was like, oh, this is pretty good. It's fun to try. [00:11:10] But I was more concerned about who I was talking to and having a conversation and seeing do we connect and can we laugh and have fun? And he's telling me about his day, and I'm telling him about my work and what I do and all of these things. I'm actually telling him about diet, trauma, like some of the things I'm teaching today. [00:11:27] And so it's. It is one of those things where like, my preoccupation was not on the food, it was not on the alcohol. Like, I could have had a great time without ordering a drink too, right? My mind was so much with, wait, where am I? And am I enjoying my life? Am I enjoying this life that I am now intentionally creating? And it's really hard to enjoy life or to find ways to enjoy it. If we feel like life happens to us and we don't have control and we feel helpless, and this is where we've got to bring it back. This can be a really big, important piece for us, especially if you have navigated any type of relationship transition. If you're going through a breakup or divorce, maybe you're post divorce now, maybe you're married to a new spouse or somebody who's actually really healthy and really great for you. There are still these transitions, though, and it's really being intentional and mindful of. I can create a life on purpose, a life by design. And when I am focused on creating a life full of joy and pleasure and relaxation and adventure and fun and the things that I want, that I crave, when I am intentionally creating that, I don't need food to do that for me. [00:12:40] So I can stop turning to food as the escape, as the emotional escape of negative emotions, like any type of pain. [00:12:47] I can also stop using food to try to create that sense of relief, to try to create joy and pleasure and fun. I don't need. I can enjoy my food, but I can spend way more time enjoying the people and the company and what I do for a living. I can spend way more time enjoying my son and my dogs and this season of fall that we're in, right? I want you to be able to enjoy the holidays, which means we have to take our eyes off of the food to some extent. We don't want to make food the primary source of our joy, of our happiness, and of a party, of an event. [00:13:24] What would it look like if you went to a cookie swap in December and you were able to eat a couple cookies, maybe you had two or three and you felt satisfied, you felt good, you ate what you liked, it tasted good. The things that you tried that you didn't like, you felt comfortable throwing them away, you didn't like them, you didn't have to eat them, you could just toss them, right? How would that feel? [00:13:45] Imagine taking home a dozen cookies and now those last you two weeks. [00:13:52] Not because you're white knuckling, not because you need willpower, not because you can't, not because you're giving them away. Not because you're hiding them from yourself, not because you are putting them in a block of ice and you are freezing it so that you would have to melt it and it would take forever to get them out. [00:14:07] Just, they're just sitting in the pantry. [00:14:10] They're just in the refrigerator, but you don't need them. [00:14:15] You can decide when you want one. But there's ease and freedom and this flow around food, if we want that and if we want that around the holidays in particular, we've got to work on our relationship with food as a whole. We have to heal our diet trauma. We have to heal the food noise. We have to change how we think about weight loss and what's required. [00:14:39] Because so often the diet trauma, it stems from like, these really ridiculous and often outdated diet rules about what we can and can't eat, what we should or shouldn't be doing, how we are, should be exercising. [00:14:53] And really, we've got to create a plan that fits our lifestyle. [00:14:58] We don't try to make our diet the lifestyle that never works. We have to find the eating plan that fits into our lifestyle now where we can keep making small level ups, small progressions. We don't have to be perfect. Which means if it's a travel day and you normally do chick fil a on travel day, it's like I do. You decide. Do I want to do fries and maybe a salad with grilled chicken or do I want to do a grilled chicken sandwich and maybe a side of a fruit cup? We're making intentional decisions. [00:15:29] I can do both. I can do both the sandwich and the fries if I really want to. But I also know I feel better in my body if I add in more greens, if I add in more fruit, and instead of doing the large fry that, you know, financially maybe makes a lot of sense, I'm going to order the small fry, even though it might be cheaper to get more. [00:15:50] Or sometimes what I'll do is I'll get fries and I'll let my son eat most of them. And I just have a couple, right? But it's because I don't. The food is not bad. It's not off limits, and I'm not bad for eating it. But there can be this ease around it. [00:16:06] And I can still eat French fries. And you can too. You can eat French fries and still lose weight. [00:16:12] Hamburgers or pizza or pasta, like, you can eat the, quote, bad food and still lose weight. I promise. Because that is not the real issue. The real issue is when we Binge and we overeat. The real issue is when we aren't stopping at satisfied because it tastes so good, because we don't want to miss out because it's free, because someone else is paying for it. Because we don't want to miss out on the season because we're saying screw it. Who cares? Why bother? It's not going to work. Never can I ever. [00:16:41] I'll start over. January. [00:16:44] This is how we make weight loss hard. [00:16:47] Weight loss is not difficult, it's simple. [00:16:51] But because of our diet trauma, it's not always going to feel easy. [00:16:55] Because I'm going to teach you how to trust your body, how to listen to your body. And you've been told for a long time that's not okay. You shouldn't don't trust your body. You can't trust your body. You can't trust your hunger and your satiety that will steer you wrong. So you can't do that. You've also likely been told you can't trust your intuition, you can't trust your judgment, you can't make good decisions. Right? Your self trust is likely like through the floor like it is in the basement. It is very low. [00:17:25] And we need to raise that level of self trust so that you can believe in yourself. [00:17:30] Part of it's around food, part of it's gonna be around people or making decisions or decide, even just deciding. This is the route I'm gonna take to get to this family event. [00:17:42] Here's the dress I'm going to wear. [00:17:44] We are really good decision makers, but chances are that has been eroded. Your self trust, your self belief, your self confidence has been eroded over the years. [00:17:55] May have even started as a kid. [00:17:57] And there's been this slow erosion, which is why we keep trying to prove and earn and justify ourselves. [00:18:04] This goes a lot deeper than just the food. [00:18:07] But when we can understand that, when we can understand the diet trauma, when we can understand the food rules and the all or nothing habits that we get into, when we can understand that perfectionism, because that is really what's at play, is like understanding this perfectionist habit. That's why we want to start tomorrow, right? If I'm not perfect today, screw it, I can't achieve my goal. I've already ruined the day. I'll start over tomorrow. Because our thinking is tomorrow I can be perfect. And if I can be perfect, then I will lose weight. [00:18:38] So one of the biggest things that I like to remind clients is you don't have to be perfect losing weight. [00:18:44] I was never Perfect. Losing weight perfect in terms of following certain rules. [00:18:48] And I. None of my clients have been perfect either. [00:18:52] And that's a great thing because it's not required. It's not mandated. Perfection not required here. [00:18:59] This is a change in our thinking. It's a change in how we are doing life, how we're doing food, how we're doing weight loss. [00:19:08] And this is an important piece because we have to flush this out. We have to work through it if this is really what we want. The lifestyle where it doesn't matter what time of year it is, where it can be spring break or summer vacation at the beach, or it could be the holidays and you can maintain your weight with ease. That's huge. [00:19:27] But the first step is we've got to end the war with food. We've got to really heal the diet trauma. [00:19:34] This is how we change it, not just for the holidays, but for the entire year. [00:19:40] Because how you lose weight in February and March and April is going to be the exact same way. You will lose weight in October and November and December. It is not more difficult. [00:19:51] We might have more parties, more events, more things going on. [00:19:55] And that's okay. It doesn't make it harder. You can still listen to your hunger and satiety. Even at a party, you can still decide, I'm only gonna have two drinks at this event tonight. [00:20:06] You can still decide. I can try up to three cookies and then I'm taking no more than a dozen home. [00:20:11] You get to decide. [00:20:13] But there's going to be so much more mind drama. If cookies are bad or off limits, if messed up, if you screwed up, if you let one overeat turn into a binge or turn into off plan overeating for the rest of the week. [00:20:28] This is where we have to catch ourselves. [00:20:31] This is how we stop obsessing and constantly worrying and thinking about food. This is how we can forget about food in the pantry. We forget about food in the fridge in a good way, because we aren't constantly thinking and obsessing about it. [00:20:45] This is when I can put cookies up in the pantry and I forget about them for literal months because I've healed my diet trauma. [00:20:53] I've decreased that food noise. [00:20:57] This is what it's all about. [00:20:59] All right, my throat is getting a little scratchy. Grab some water. [00:21:07] But this becomes the foundation is changing how we think about food and weight loss, dieting your body, and I'm going to help you to love your body now. And all the way down the scale, it's going to feel a Little odd, feel counterintuitive because we're so used to dieting and we're trying to lose weight from a place of I'm not enough right now, just as I am. [00:21:29] We're trying to lose weight from a place of punishment. [00:21:32] And I want to flip that. [00:21:34] I want you to love yourself and love yourself so much, you're willing to do the work, the internal, mental, emotional work that is the real work. [00:21:44] All right, so myth number one was this fear of missing out. It's if I. It's going to require me. Weight loss will require me to miss out on the best time of year. I'm going have to miss out on the food and the fun and the parties and the drinks, right? So it's. That is the myth. [00:22:01] The reality is that we make it harder on ourselves because of our unhealed diet trauma. [00:22:09] We make it difficult, we make it harder. We tell ourselves, screw it, why bother? I'll start over in January. [00:22:16] Which is myth number two, the screw it, I've flown it. I can't be perfect. I'll start over later. [00:22:23] And that later could be next month. Often, once we get close enough to the end of the year, we might have two months left, but we still have just decided, why bother? It's not going to work. It's not going to happen. I know I can't be perfect. [00:22:36] I'll start over in January, when really you could go into January £10 down instead of being five or ten pounds up. And it's not just about the scale either. It's how you feel in your clothes, it's how you feel in your body. It's if you feel energized, if you're sleeping well, if you feel really bloated like it. There's so much more than just what the scale is saying, and I want you to also step into this belief that you can enjoy this season without a lot of stress, without a lot of heartache, without a lot of frantic energy. [00:23:14] No matter what it looks like for you, even if this year looks a little different than past years, this is what it's all about. But we have to wrestle and reconcile this aspect of perfection. [00:23:25] And perfectionism has served us. It has. It was a survival tool, a survival coping mechanism we learned often as a kid. And it served us well. It helped us to meet our needs. It helped us to meet other people's needs. We learned how to survive using if I can be perfect, I can manage their emotions, I can manage my emotions, I can get what I want. And that's usually the theory, right? If I can be perfect, I get the A, I get what I want, right? It's like how we were trained in school. [00:23:53] But that's not real life school for most people. [00:23:58] Most public, even private schools don't mirror actual real life. [00:24:04] Which is hard, right? Because then you turn into like for myself was great at getting straight A's and then what the hell, where's my job? [00:24:13] Economy crashes in 2008, 2009, and now I'm like, what? What the heck? I did what I was supposed to do. I did all the right things. [00:24:21] And now I have no job, but I have student loans, right? There's all this drama coming up because life doesn't work like that. [00:24:30] And neither does weight loss. Weight loss is not just a follow these rules and you'll lose weight because eventually can't follow the rules. You can keep trying to follow the rules, but you can't stick with them. Or you keep. You do actually follow the rules, but you still gain weight anyways, right? We fall into these weird kind of spaces where it's I A, you could be doing the right quote right things and it's still not working. And then it feels really frustrating. And then what happens there is you often internalize that rather than it being this diet doesn't work for me or this diet isn't working for my body does not need this. I need something different. And trying to and like deciding, here's what I'm going to try next. It's, something's wrong with me. I must not be able to lose weight. I'm the issue, I'm the problem. [00:25:17] That's what we've got to break. [00:25:19] And not only do we have perfectionism showing up in dieting and with weight loss, which often leads to the screw it, why bother when we can't be perfect? [00:25:29] But we'll have perfectionism showing up in relationships, right? And if I can be perfect, if I can make, I can do all the right things, I can make them think these things, I can make them feel a certain way. I can manage their emotions and thus their actions. And if I can do that, then maybe they will love me back. [00:25:47] That's really what it comes down to. If I can be perfect and manage their emotions, maybe they can manage mine. [00:25:54] Maybe then they will be able to manage and meet my emotional needs. [00:26:01] That we're doing. [00:26:02] And that is the crux of emotional eating. That is the crux of dealing with emotional abuse and healing from toxic relationships. It is recognizing where we have let food or alcohol or maybe a person or multiple people, manage our emotions, meet our emotional needs. And the first step that we have to do is understand what those needs are. [00:26:26] We have to understand what is that doing for us. [00:26:31] And this goes. Whether it is a person or it is a substance, what is it doing for you? [00:26:38] And when you can get clear on that, now, you know, this is what I get to meet for myself. [00:26:45] So with men, for me growing up, it was often, I feel special, I feel chosen, I feel wanted. [00:26:52] And so anytime I felt special, like that was an attachment. I remember talking to a guy, this was a couple years ago after the divorce, and he was like, wow, your life is just so cool. [00:27:02] I felt real special, right? There was like this increase in attachment there. I didn't even know why. [00:27:10] We were like very opposite, not probably not the right fit really. But I was. I started to become very attached to him because I felt special when he would say things like that. [00:27:23] Now I think we only had two dates. It was. Didn't really. Didn't go anywhere. [00:27:27] But that is an important thing to recognize because I will overlook and I will be like, oh, you believe this or you think this or you're that or, oh, don't worry about that. That's okay. [00:27:39] I'll compromise on my values. [00:27:42] I won't look at those red flags because you are meeting my emotional needs. [00:27:47] And my job is to make myself feel special. [00:27:51] My job is to make myself feel wanted, to feel desired, to feel good enough. [00:27:57] That becomes my role. Chosen. Chosen was another one. I felt really special and chosen. [00:28:04] If somebody. If it was like somebody chose me and it plays on that special. Because I'm chosen, I'm special. [00:28:11] And because I'm special, I'm now chosen. So now I have to stay special. [00:28:18] That can be a little bit more difficult, a little bit trickier. Trickier than I was expecting than I thought. [00:28:24] I think with the right person, it's not going to be hard. [00:28:28] See, give me a couple of years, I'll let you know that both. [00:28:34] But this is. That becomes my job, right? I get to find that that way. I'm not seeking that from men. I don't need their attention. [00:28:42] I don't need their eyes. I don't need them to take me out. I don't need things from them. It's like he can show up as a whole person and I can show up as a whole person, and we can create this healthy dynamic. [00:28:53] And it's very much how we need to shift our thinking when it comes to food. So I need to understand okay, am I turning to food for joy, for pleasure, for relaxation, for comfort? What are those emotions that food is meeting for me, that it's creating for me? And now my job is to create that for myself, is to create a life full of joy to look at. How do I comfort and self soothe myself without turning to food, without turning to wine, without turning to something else? [00:29:24] Because it's the intention. It's what's underneath it. It's not just the action. It's not just the habit. It's why am I doing that? [00:29:31] Am I looking for a hit of dopamine? [00:29:34] Am I thinking, wow, my life sucks right now? This is stupid. But a cookie will make it better. [00:29:39] Some ice cream will fix this, right? And again, there's nothing wrong with enjoying our food, but we don't want it to be the primary source. We don't want it to be that default. This is what I go to to fix my needs. [00:29:52] This is what I go to to escape any physical, mental, emotional pain of the holidays. [00:29:58] All right, grab some water, y'. All. [00:30:05] So to bring it back to the screw it and to wind these two together, what happens often is we're letting food meet our emotional needs, right? And so because of that, we're now not following the diet. We're often off plan. We might be overeating. We're not eating the quote right foods, we're not eating them properly. We're not following the rules of the diet, rules that we were given. [00:30:26] So that can turn into a screw it. And often the emotional eating or the overeating is screw it. Why bother? Already blown it today, but maybe I'll start over tomorrow. [00:30:37] But if it's Thursday, Friday, or heck, even when it was Wednesday, I would say I've already blown it this week. I'll start over on Monday. [00:30:46] Without truly learning from it, without really understanding what was going on, what was I trying so hard to escape? What was I trying so hard to feel? [00:30:57] And I think for me, back in my heavier binging periods, I was probably wanting to feel connected. [00:31:02] I wanted to feel loved, I wanted to feel connected. I wanted to feel valued. But I think really, it was like I wanted to escape shame, and I wanted to feel good enough. [00:31:12] I think I had a lot of shame around what life was supposed to look like, what I should be doing, how I should be feeling. [00:31:19] And because shame is a narcissist's favorite tool and weapon to use against you that can get poked by any number of people that we are surrounded by at any given time. [00:31:33] And so when that shame is poked and we want to get out of it food. We've just learned that food creates that rapid, reliable, effective sense of relief. [00:31:43] And these patterns still play out over the holidays. [00:31:46] And now there's often even more opportunities. There's more parties, there's more events, there's more socializing. [00:31:52] And we want to let it be fun. [00:31:54] We want to let it be something that we truly enjoy because we like what we're doing, we like who we're with, and we take the emphasis off of the food. We take our eye off the ball. Take your eyes off of the food and put it now on. How do I want to feel throughout this season? [00:32:13] And sometimes that means we have to start planning and thinking about it ahead of time, which is a little hard. Like, it's hard. I'm probably gonna go to the pool this afternoon. Like. Like it is a warm, sunny day today. I'm not thinking about the holidays per se, but I am starting to plan ahead for things. I'm starting to look at tickets for Christmas in California. I'm starting to plan out my son's birthday party at the end of October. I've ordered invitations. I've started to plan out the food. Here's what the kind of cake he wants, which is so funny. Rather than doing, like, a cake, he wants cupcakes, but he really just wants this setup of cupcakes because it had this giant dinosaur toy with it. That's why he wanted the cupcakes that he picked out. It was like this picture. I want this. But really he wants the toy. [00:32:54] And that's good to know. Right? I get that. [00:32:57] Like, I know what to do. I, like, understand what his motives were there. Right. And if I can decode this, I know what's underneath. [00:33:05] Same thing happens when it comes to emotional eating and overeating, especially around the holidays. We want to decode it, what was really going on. [00:33:13] And if you didn't have to miss out, if you never felt that feeling of unwanted or missing out or feeling not good enough, how might you experience the holidays this year? [00:33:27] Because it's not so much just about what we don't want to feel. It's what we do want to feel and intentionally creating that on purpose. [00:33:35] And I can change how I'm feeling and how the emotions that I'm having with how I'm thinking about different parts of my life and change that. I can manage my emotions and my nervous system that way, but I can also change some of the circumstances. I can start planning earlier. I can start Thinking about things earlier, not from an obsessive standpoint, but from a place of, I want to give myself this luxurious amount of time to do something, to accomplish something, because I know it's like, it's going to take some time, and there's going to be these little pieces that have to come together. [00:34:11] And the same thing is true around weight loss. When it comes to the holidays, sometimes we just. We think it's going to be harder. We think it's going to be worse. We don't want to have to count calories and macros. We don't want somebody following us around, smacking cookies out of our hand, making us feel like crap. [00:34:26] I don't want to do that either. [00:34:28] I don't want to do that to you. [00:34:31] But we have to understand, like, what's at play underneath. We have to understand some of these deeper habits and this kind of apathetic. Why bother? It's super hard. I don't have enough willpower. [00:34:43] It's another one in there. Like, I don't have enough willpower to say no. [00:34:47] So now I just have to try to avoid. [00:34:50] We. It's like these are all links. They're all intertwined. [00:34:54] This is why we need to shift. We need to change our concept of weight loss and how it fits in with the holidays, what it looks like, because there can be so much more freedom and ease and peace. But we've got to make sure we're addressing the right things, we're addressing the right problems. [00:35:10] So if you spend some time healing your diet trauma now, it becomes so much easier to navigate the food, to navigate the alcohol, to navigate the special events and occasions. [00:35:22] And this is a skill now that you have for life. [00:35:27] So that was myth number two. Right? And often we again, once again, we just tend to make things harder on ourselves because of the way that we have been trained with the diet industry. [00:35:38] And then falling in line with that, myth number three is, it's not the right time. I don't have enough time. Life is already so hectic. I don't have time to meal prep or get groceries or I don't have time to exercise. I just. It's like, there's the physical sense of time, but there's also, like, the mental emotional capacity. And we often feel like we just don't have the bandwidth for it. Right. I don't want to do that. That would take so much energy, so much willpower, so much thinking, so much bandwidth that I don't have right now. I don't want to bother with It. [00:36:09] Life's already busy and chaotic. Holidays are already busy and sometimes hectic. [00:36:15] I don't want to. [00:36:17] Right? And we just let ourselves slide, and we keep looking for a better time. Because if there's a better time when I can be perfect now, I can hit the goal that I want. Right? We just think that perfection equals hitting our goal. If I can be perfect, then I get the goal that I. That I'm looking for. [00:36:32] And we gotta break all of that. These all tie together. These are like three things that are braided in. [00:36:39] All right? I don't want to miss out. [00:36:42] But if I go, I still have to be perfect, and I still have to stick with these extreme rules. [00:36:48] Instead of, here's how I create more fun and ease and joy. Here's how I. Here's what. Where I put my focus. Rather than on the food, I put it on the people and who is there and the gathering. Even when I don't know a lot of people, I will still do this. I still think about, okay, who do I know? What's one person that I can start talking to? Oh, how. Maybe I just go up to somebody else, and I'm like, hey, I'm Jillian. How do you know the host? [00:37:13] Oh, I know her through this way. How do you know her? Something like that. Right. It's like sometimes there are bigger parties, bigger functions where you may not know a lot of people. Maybe it's a work event where you do know them. [00:37:24] Maybe there are things that you feel obligated to go to that you really don't want to go to. [00:37:29] And what if you just allowed yourself to say no rather than forcing yourself to go? That's the other side. And I hadn't really actually considered that until just in this moment now, but. Right. It's like letting your yes be a yes and your no be a no, and listening to, what is it that you want? What is that desire? I had a client actually asked me a question yesterday on Boxer, and I responded to her, and I said, the first step is to decide, what do you want? [00:37:56] And now your job is to go out and ask for it. And based on the response and what the answer is, then you'll have. You'll know, do I go left or do I go right? [00:38:05] How do I navigate this? But the first thing is to decide what do I want? [00:38:11] Not what do other people want from me, not what's expected of me, but what do I want? [00:38:18] And it's okay to not want to go to an event. It's okay to decide I'm going to go for 30 minutes and then I'm going to go home. [00:38:27] I was. This is almost two years ago. I was going through a breakup after. [00:38:32] It was like in December, after the divorce is the first guy I had dated. There was a lot of love bombing, a lot of intense feelings and deep gut feeling. We weren't. Like, we weren't right for each other. But just wanting to make it work. Old habits coming back and a huge fear of abandonment. Huge abandonment wounds that were triggered, especially because he seemed to. It was like. It wasn't even an argument. It was like one conversation that didn't go maybe perfectly. So, like, he gets triggered. [00:38:59] And instead of coming back and talking through it, it was like we came back to talk and he was like, and I'm out. [00:39:05] This is a conversation to tell you that I'm done. [00:39:08] And really blessing in disguise really was. [00:39:13] But there was a party two weeks later, and I am still completely heartbroken, crying like, every day. [00:39:19] And I decided, I'm gonna go this party. I only have to go for 30 minutes. [00:39:24] I already volunteer. I already said I was bringing this food. I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go make an appearance, but it's okay if I just want to stay for 30 minutes and then I want to leave. [00:39:31] There was that permission there, and I ended up having the best time. I'm so glad I went. I'm so glad I didn't skip it, because there was a part of me that did. I totally just wanted to skip it. To lay on the couch and cry and watch sad, sappy movies and that wouldn't have done anything for me. I actually needed to get out and be around people. [00:39:52] And it was. It, like, it fed my soul. Like, it was so good to be around people and to smile and to laugh and to have a good time. [00:40:01] It was so essential. [00:40:04] And we don't always know. [00:40:06] And I think this is where sometimes we do have to have that. We do say, hey, I'm gonna go, and it's gonna be for this amount of time. Or maybe there's a longer trip and maybe you're going across states or you're flying across the country. Maybe there's a longer trip where normally maybe you would do five days or seven days. And you're like, you know what? I'm just going to go and I'm going to be there for three days, and I'm going to make that work. I'm make it good enough. [00:40:29] Maybe you want to be there for one or two days, right? Maybe you're like, all right, let me go. Gonna make an appearance, go do a family thing, and then leaving early or at least giving yourself the option, I think that is. That's key. And that's how I think about food a lot of times, too, is I give myself options. [00:40:49] Especially if I know if I'm going out to a restaurant and I can look at the menu ahead of time, I'll often look at it and say, oh, I'm either going to do this or I'm going to do that. [00:40:58] Last night, I had a couple options picked out. I was like, oh, I'm going to do this or I'm going to do that. And then there was a special for the night that I didn't know about, but I was like, oh, you know what? Has protein, has some carbs, has some veggies. This actually meets all of the needs, all the requirements that I'm looking for. I'm going to do that instead. And allowing yourself to be flexible, not being so right. Like, I didn't feel bad that, oh, I had decided I was going to eat this on the menu, and then I decided to do something different. [00:41:22] Who cares? This is life. This is how you make your lifestyle is. It has to be flexible. It has to work with you. [00:41:31] And you can't feel bad. Don't feel bad. Don't feel guilty. We love it, we enjoy it, we embrace it. [00:41:37] We allow it. We give ourselves permission to change our mind. [00:41:41] We give ourselves permission to do things shorter. I will do this at the gym sometimes. Like, sometimes there are classes, or there are times, like, I love my yoga class, but there are times when I don't want to go. I'm tired, I'm exhausted, I'm worn out. And I know, though, that I feel so much better after I've gone. And so I will tell myself I only have to stay for half. Just stay through the warmup. That's it. Just go get in there. Get a little sweaty. If you want to leave after 20 minutes, Jillian, you can. I'll tell myself I will remind myself I don't have to stay the whole class, But I also remind myself I always feel so much better afterwards. I'm always so glad that I went. [00:42:16] Always. Every time. [00:42:18] Never have I ever regretted going to one of her yoga classes, right? And sometimes we have to do that with ourselves, too. [00:42:26] And most of the time, I stay. [00:42:28] Now, there was one time when I wasn't feeling good and I told myself I could leave after. I think it was a body pump class. And I was like, I can just do half. And if I'm really done, if I'm tired and tapped out after that, after half, I can leave. And I did. [00:42:41] I really, I listened to my body and I made that decision intentionally. Rather than trying to force and push something, I let it be fluid. [00:42:49] And this is what it all comes back to, is trusting yourself, trusting your judgment. Because I also didn't have any fear that, oh, no, I left this early and now I'm afraid I'm going to leave future things early. We get so worried about, oh, if I do it once, what if it becomes a habit? What if it becomes a thing and I never go back to doing a full class again? [00:43:07] Okay, you can just. We don't have to get that worked up about it. We don't have to let it be a thing. It only becomes a thing because you let it. Because you keep giving yourself excuses and justifications to not go to leave early to eat off plan, to keep overeating. You just have new thoughts in your brain justifying it. [00:43:24] And the more that we can make the subconscious conscious, the more you can direct your own life. You can be in charge of it. You are no longer at the mercy of someone or something else. It does not matter what is on the menu tonight at the restaurant. It does not menu. What is playing, you know, what's on tap at the bar next weekend. I could not drink, I could not eat. There are those options. I'm going to listen to my body, but like, I get to let it be easy. I get to do this. [00:43:53] And the pre work, like the work that often comes before the weight loss is changing and decoding all of the diet programming and deciding what are the new rules that I want to have, what actually works for me, what works for my body, for my lifestyle, for what I want. There's no one size fits all for anything. [00:44:12] There's a million different ways you could do. You could accomplish almost any goal. [00:44:16] There might only be like a couple. Maybe there's five ways to file your taxes, right? [00:44:21] But even then you got five different ways, right? Like you always have options. There's never a one size fits all and even we won't go down that road. But like actually in terms of different deductions and things, you could get really in the weeds there. [00:44:36] All right, grab some water. [00:44:39] I need to stop talking. [00:44:43] But this is what it's all about, right? It's creating intentionally on purpose the type of season that you want. [00:44:50] And then it's identifying and noticing, okay? This is what's really Stopping me. [00:44:56] I keep waiting for a perfect time, keep thinking I have to be perfect. [00:45:00] I have a really hard time not throwing away the day or the week after I make a mistake. [00:45:06] And part of this is creating a. Like a weight loss plan, creating an eating plan, for example, that you don't. That you feel like you can actually stick with that you like the food, you enjoy it, and you believe that you can truly stick with it. [00:45:20] And it's okay if you don't. We want to get just a little bit better, but we have to be realistically planning, not diet planning. We have to learn how to let go of a lot of this diet brainwashing, because that's really what it is. It is like a cult that we have been in around diets and food and weight loss. [00:45:38] And it's going to feel awkward walking away from Will. [00:45:44] That's okay. [00:45:46] It's part of why I'm here is to help you with things like this, with the diet trauma, with the food noise. [00:45:53] And we're going to also bring in the relationship trauma because often it's how we have done food and we've developed this dysfunctional and often toxic relationship with food. [00:46:03] We also have dysfunctional and toxic relationships with other people. [00:46:07] And we want to look at what can I own? I don't have to own the whole thing. I want to look at what's my part to own. [00:46:14] So when I'm a pleaser, when I'm a fixer, when I am a perfectionist, when I'm jumping in to try to placate and make things okay, to try to soothe somebody else's nervous system, to try to make them happy so that they can make me happy. [00:46:29] That's what I get to look at. [00:46:31] I don't have to focus on what they are doing or saying. [00:46:34] I just focus on myself. [00:46:39] And I think the holidays can be harder too, because so often we have spent so much of the year avoiding our emotions, we don't have a large capacity to feel. [00:46:52] And that really becomes part of it. It's like learning how to regulate our emotions, regulate our nervous system, understanding what emotions feel like in our body. [00:47:00] And when we can expand our capacity to feel, even like we can feel negative emotions, we can also expand our capacity to feel positive emotions. [00:47:10] And a lot of times we need both. [00:47:13] With the emotional eating, I'd say that the starting point, the trigger point, is often avoiding something negative. [00:47:20] So this is where we want to notice. What does this actually feel like in my body? [00:47:26] What would it be like if I sat here for the next two minutes and just allowed myself to breathe, just breathe and feel it and notice what's happening in your chest, in your throat, maybe in your stomach, in your head, when we can really just calmly sit with it and notice, oh, this is just a vibration. [00:47:52] Like, the emotion that I'm feeling is just a vibration in my body. [00:47:56] It's not going to hurt me, it's not going to kill me, it's not going to do anything to me. [00:48:00] I'm just very resistant to feeling it. [00:48:03] And so often we're resistant because it can feel very intense, can feel really big. [00:48:09] There was another recent episode on the podcast around, like, when your abandonment wound gets triggered. [00:48:14] Abandonment felt very intense, very big. It was like anxiety on steroids. [00:48:21] And it started to all make sense. Then I was like, I wasn't even dating this guy for two months. It wasn't even that long of a relationship. [00:48:29] But him leaving triggered that. And then it was like, oh, this is why I have avoided this. This is why it took me a while. This is why I didn't leave. This is why I let things go on longer than they needed to. This is why I felt like I felt this in the past, right? And it felt so bad. This is why it was so hard to leave my marriage. This is why it's so hard to leave different people. [00:48:50] Because it. It creates these sensations in our body and we. It's a lot of discomfort. [00:48:57] But when you allow it, when you allow yourself to feel it and you can move through it, it decreases. Like, the intensity decreases. Even that same day, the intensity decreases. You don't feel it as long you don't feel it as consistently, like grief. [00:49:15] And so we don't need to shut down our negative emotions. We don't need to say, I'm not allowed to. I can't be angry, I can't be grieving. I can't. I shouldn't. Right? We want to be on the lookout for any of those, but really start to notice, what am I feeling? And what if I just allowed it rather than fighting or resisting? What would that look like? [00:49:36] And so our first step is to expand our capacity to feel. [00:49:40] I think sometimes the holidays can trigger more emotions, and maybe that's why it feels harder, because we already aren't good at feeling and allowing emotions, and now we're getting more waves, so there's more resistance, there's more fighting, and there's more of a need to escape. [00:49:58] And nobody wants to give up their primary coping mechanism. [00:50:02] Nobody wants to give up the food when food is the only thing that makes me feel better makes a lot of sense. But this isn't just about the holidays. This is about your whole entire life. [00:50:13] And it's not just what you do, it's what you are teaching others. It's how you're teaching others to treat you, to interact with you, to engage with you. It's what you might be teaching your kids or your nieces or your nephews. [00:50:25] It's other people are learning and they're picking up on this. [00:50:29] And that was a huge reason as to why I knew, like I needed to work on my relationship with food was because I did not want to be a negative impact on my nieces, on my nephew. I knew that eventually I was going to have kids and I wanted to make sure that whether I had a girl or a boy, that I was able to help them create a really healthy, positive self esteem and body confidence. [00:50:51] And I want to teach them how to have a healthy relationship with food. [00:50:56] And it's tricky with a four year old. [00:50:59] He doesn't get it, but he's starting to and he's learning. [00:51:03] And as I am talking through things out loud with him, we are like, I am helping him to learn, I'm helping him to listen to his body. [00:51:12] But this is what it comes down to, is expanding our ability to feel. [00:51:17] And the flip side of that now is also allowing ourselves to feel good. Because in the past feeling good never lasted in those dysfunctional and toxic relationships was good for a little bit of time, but then the other shoe would drop, something else would happen, something bad would happen. You didn't stay there forever. [00:51:36] And so we get stuck in this loop. That trauma bonds us to them because sometimes it's good, not all bad. [00:51:42] And so this is where we have to really also allow ourselves to feel good, to feel positive, to think better things, to actually believe this can last. I can keep this up. It can be this simple, it can maybe even be this easy. [00:52:01] This is our work, this is the underlying work that we get to do now. [00:52:06] It's how you heal your relationship with food and body and exercise and the scale, how you heal your relationship with yourself. But it all comes down to, and we do it step by step, piece by piece. [00:52:21] And we learn from mistakes. We learn from the overeats, we learn from the emotional eating, we learn from the interactions with people where we're like a couple hours later, we're like, I don't really, this just rubbed me the wrong way. It's like when we're evaluating and we're like, it's after the fact. And we're like, oh, yeah, I don't like this. I don't like how this happened or this went down. [00:52:40] But when you can let go of the shame and the judgment and beating yourself up and you can just stand and allow and notice, oh, here's what I did, or here's what I didn't do. Here's what I'd like to do differently next time. [00:52:54] Great example today, actually, that came up, was so perfectly timed. There was another. There was an assistant coach that I was playing against for my son's soccer team. He's on a U6 team. They're young kids. A couple of the kids on each team usually get it. A lot of kids are still trying to figure out the game and, like, going for the ball, not just watching it, things like that. They're starting to pick it up, right? They're starting to learn. [00:53:15] But because of this age, there's some really flexible rules. [00:53:19] And I think from what I've noticed, there are, like, different coaches play by slightly different rules. And that's okay. I think the key is under. Is, like, coaches coming together and playing by the same rules in the game. And so if. [00:53:33] If there's like, a kick in, which is not really part of the rules, the overarching rules, but this particular team is doing a kick in, they expect the other opposite team to be behind a certain line. Now, this is all made up. This is all their own rules. They have decided this is how we play the game, but they haven't told me. They haven't told my players. So there's this assistant coach on the opposite team that's, like, now starting to yell at one of my boys, right? Because I was like, hey, do. I was like, back up, blue team, right? I'm telling blue team, back up. But I'm also calling out one boy who is a little bit ahead. So now this other guy, who I don't know if he knows the kid, the student, but he starts yelling his name back up. [00:54:14] And that kind of rubbed me the wrong way. I just got a weird vibe from this guy, total. Like, he's just. He's one of those that you're just like, oh, gosh. Like, I don't know what's happening here, but there is some kind of vibe juju. Like, I need to. We need to lay hands. I don't know, something needs to happen. [00:54:29] But I just did not. I did not like the way that went down. And I realized afterwards because I was very quickly. It was like, I was in the game in the moment and then I was going to teach body pump. And then it was like when I got home and I started thinking about, I was like, why did that bother me so much? I was like, oh, he is playing by his own set of rules that my kids don't know that I don't even know. And he is now yelling at one of my players that is not his place. And so he's trying to make the best decision that he can to try to get the needs met on the field that he sees best. And I'm like, oh, my thought is, my initial instinct is like still that pleaser of, yep, he needs to move back. Yep, we need to get him back. [00:55:10] But I, I can now start to see after the fact and this is the first time this has happened. This my second season coaching. Right. I don't know that it's necessarily going to happen again, but now I'm more prepared, number one, next season if I play him again. I know. Going in. Hey, we need to have a conversation. I also know, oh, I need to get to the field ahead of time. I need to have more time to talk with the coach beforehand. I need more time to park and then walk the complete. It's like a half a mile to get to the right field. Oh, there are certain things that I just need to set up and do differently moving forward and in the future I can also have a conversation and I can say, hey, coach, you have a problem with one of my players, I need you to come talk to me, let me move my team. But you need to talk to me. I can have that, I can say that. But it didn't. It's like there was so much going on I didn't even realize and have time to process it until after. [00:56:01] So that's okay, right? I'm not gonna beat myself up. I'm not gonna get all frustrated or angry. Like, I think the boy and his parents were totally fine. I don't think there was anything bigger but for me it just, there was something about the energy and he just seemed so negative and frustrated and I'm like, this is rec soccer for 5 year olds. Come on, dude. And again, my approach is very different than other super competitive people. I, I think I'm, I think it's just a lot of narcy vibes. I think that's why I don't like this guy. Right? This, like it just. All signs are pointing but I know how I want to handle things in the future moving forward. And it's okay that I didn't handle them exactly like I wish I would have. [00:56:39] I'm learning, and I'm going to be in different positions and different opportunities to get to learn this. I'm going to be able to use this with future coaches if it ever comes up. I know how to preemptively address things. Right. I know what I want to do to prevent something from, like, that from happening. And I also know that I'm going to step in and say something if there's something else is going on, because I've not gotten that kind of vibe from any other coach. [00:57:05] So, again, it's like, I'm going to learn from it. I'm going to decide how I want to handle it, how I want to do things differently. And at this point, there's really nothing to do today, right? That's okay. [00:57:15] But the more I can evaluate, the more I know, the more I can see it, the better, the faster, the sooner I'm going to catch it, and then I can do something about it. And that's how it works with emotional eating and with overeating is we catch the habit sooner. You might catch it the next day, and then it turns. Maybe it's like the next afternoon. Then you'll start to catch it the next morning. Then you're going to catch it like an hour after the overeat or emotional eating. Then you're going to catch it at the tail end. Then you're going to catch it at the middle, right? It's like you're going to get closer and closer to catching it until you catch it beforehand. But it is normal that you're not going to always catch it in the beginning because this is a totally new way of thinking and doing and talking to yourself. We are slowing down what your brain has automated and systematized as a way to make you feel better. [00:58:03] We're slowing that down and truly evaluating. And this is what no other diet program is going to help you do. They're not gonna help you manage emotions or your nervous system. They're not going to help you decode it and understand what is at the root of this. [00:58:16] They're also not going to teach you how to evaluate. They're going to teach you to have more willpower, just try harder, be more of a perfectionist. Try again tomorrow. It's okay. You blown it now, but that's okay. Try again next Monday. [00:58:29] But I want to teach you how to evaluate, how to learn. And the holidays is going to give us a lot of opportunities to learn this is the best time to learn how to love and enjoy your life. [00:58:42] Without making food the primary emphasis. [00:58:46] Without making food the like. Food's job, its primary responsibility is to make you happy. We want to flip that. [00:58:56] And what better time to get started than now? [00:59:00] This is the best time to do it. This is the best time to get started because not only are you going to navigate the holidays so much better and easier, with more peace and more ease and more love and joy, but you are now going to run straight into the new year. You're already going to have a jumpstart on any goals and anything that you want to achieve next year. [00:59:22] Yeah. And now it's like, we're just. It's like, why throw away the last quarter of the year? Why throw away three months of the year when you can do something pretty freaking awesome with it? [00:59:32] The year is not over. [00:59:36] As I'm recording this, the 27th of September, and I have to go in and remind myself the month is not over yet, right? Because my brain still wants to write off the month. And I'm like, no, we're not done yet. [00:59:49] Not from a frantic, urgent sense, but more of, I am going to run through the finish line. That is one of the things that has stuck with me from track and cross country all of these years, especially with track and running, like, shorter distances or running any type of relays or things like that, right? It's you run through the finish. You don't slow down before the finish line. And you certainly, if you are in a mile race, you do not give up on lap three and decide, I'm already behind, there's no chance now. [01:00:19] There are so many amazing comeback stories when it comes to track and field and people who have passed others, people who have been second, third, fourth place. At the beginning of lap four, right, it's four of four. They're starting lap four. There's one lap to go, they are in fourth place, and they go on to win the race that is possible for you. Not because you have to prove something, not because it's going to make you worthy or good enough or better than who you are right now, but because you can. [01:00:48] And this is where we want to do weight loss from a place of empowerment and conviction and commitment. [01:00:55] And we learn how to detach from needing that to mean anything about us. I can love myself this month whether I lose five pounds or I lose zero, whether I lose ten pounds or I lose or I gain two pounds, right? It's like I can love myself no matter what. [01:01:11] And I can still be in pursuit of a goal. [01:01:14] And that feels very contradictory, very counterintuitive than how we have done it in the past. [01:01:23] This is why weight loss can feel hard in the holidays because it brings up extra emotions, it brings up all of our diet rules because we have these thoughts about what we should and shouldn't be doing, what's expected. [01:01:34] And this is my zone of genius in a large part because this is what I went through. It's not just how I've been trained, it's this was my lived experience. So much diet trauma, so much relationship trauma. [01:01:47] And while I will likely be on a healing journey for a long time, for many years still to come, I'm getting better and better and I'm finding it in more areas and more ways. I'm fine tuning, I'm getting to the deeper layers of things. [01:02:00] I'm still having epiphanies and awareness and that's amazing, but it's not this frantic, urgent. I have to hurry up and create this goal because really it's like what we're looking for is to create an experience. We want to feel a certain way. That's usually why we want a goal is I just want to feel a certain way. [01:02:18] And we don't just want to be thinking about how do I want to feel when it's over, when it's done, how do I want to feel as I'm in pursuit of this goal? [01:02:26] That is the question to ask yourself, how do I want to feel on this journey? [01:02:32] And I'm going to help you do it with way more fun and ease and joy. [01:02:39] If you want it right, like it's open if you want it, but you have to want it. [01:02:45] I can't want it more for you than you want it for you. [01:02:49] That's the tricky part here. [01:02:51] But I believe in you and I know that you can do this. [01:02:55] You get to now believe in yourself and that might feel like a step out of your comfort zone, but this is where we start, this is where we practice. Because you have to rebuild that muscle, period. You have to, you've got to rebuild your self trust and your self belief that that becomes the foundation of so much and I can help you do it. [01:03:18] So if you would like to learn more about working with me, the next best step is a free consultation. [01:03:24] You can go to body you crave.com forward/schedule. Find a day and time on my calendar and let's talk. We'll talk about what you've been through, where you want to go, how you want to finish out this year as well as what do you want next year to look like? And I want you to start to play with. Wouldn't it be fun? We don't always have to know the how, but we can play with. Wouldn't it be fun to accomplish these things? [01:03:46] We're just going to suspend disbelief, suspend the how and trying to figure out the how and what makes sense and actually start to play into what do you actually want? [01:03:56] What do you want with this big, beautiful, one precious life that you have been given? [01:04:03] How do you want to use it? Because you are here for a reason. You are on this earth and you are breathing for a reason. [01:04:09] God is not done with you yet. [01:04:13] So what do you want to do with it? [01:04:16] And if you'd like to lose weight and end emotional eating and heal your relationship with food and body, I would love to be a part of that journey with you. [01:04:25] All right. I will make sure that on the replay page that you can find that the button below it will take you straight to book a call. And there will always be links in the emails and everything that I send out. But this is your reminder that the year is not over. You still have plenty of time to lose weight and end emotional eating and feel amazing in your body. And at the very least, just get started, right? Like, just get started and let's make January mind blowing, right? Let give yourself the Runway. [01:04:59] Let yourself start practicing now. And I guarantee if you start now and you start doing this work now, this first holiday season is going to be better than the last. [01:05:09] And next holiday season is going to be even better than this one. [01:05:13] But we've got to stop kicking the can down the road. We've got to stop thinking that there's a better time. We've got to stop waiting until we think we can be perfect. [01:05:21] You get to decide to be ready now and it's probably going to be a mixed bag. You're going to feel some excitement and you're going to be a little terrified at the same time, right? It's mildly terrifying and also very thrilling, very exciting. And yet there's also this part of you that's don't get your hopes up. We don't want to feel disappointed, right? There's so much that goes on behind the scenes and under the surface and that's okay. [01:05:45] This, even this believing in yourself and starting to say yes to yourself and your desires and what you want, even that alone is starting to heal your trauma. [01:05:55] Don't let it hold you back. [01:05:57] You can choose to make the next 20, 30, 40 years so extremely different. [01:06:03] But we got to start doing things different. We got to try things we haven't done before. [01:06:08] All right, that's it for me for now. I think I'm going to do another one of these workshops in November. One of the things that often comes up around, not just around the holidays, but it can just come up with different clients and different people I talk with is like really creating a healthy relationship with alcohol. And I know with more parties and events and things, there's often more opportunities to drink. There are more special occasions. There are more reasons and ways we can justify and excuse drinking more during the season. And often we want to feel better, right? We don't want to. We don't want to miss out. We don't want to feel like we can't. [01:06:41] Well, we want, we still want to create that healthy relationship with it. So that will likely be coming in November, so keep your eyes out for that. But until then, here's to creating the life and body you crave. [01:06:58] If this episode resonated with you, it's time to break free from destructive cycles around food, alcohol and toxic relationships. You're not 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 both for good. [01:07:18] 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. [01:07:31] the Crave TC it's time to break the cycle. I'll show you how.

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