[00:00:02] Speaker A: 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.
[00:00:18] Speaker B: Y' all ready?
[00:00:19] Speaker A: Let's go.
[00:00:24] Speaker B: Hey. Hey. Welcome back.
All right, so I just got done recording a podcast around the real reasons why diets and relationships feel so hard. And this podcast right now, as it stands, is about an hour long. So I'm gonna do some editing, probably some cutting. We'll see what I can get it down to. A part of me, it's like I look up and I'm like, what did I just say? For the last hour, I had an outline. I followed my flow. I don't know what's going on, but I think it's like we can really struggle with this concept around things feeling hard, and yet we also struggle with when things feel really easy. And so I've done a lot of podcasts on similar topics. How to make saying no feel easy was episode number 28. Episode 60 is three keys to make weight loss easy. Episode 104 is doing the opposite for simple weight loss. And just that process of we can make weight loss simpler by thinking about what's the opposite of everything that I've been doing.
123 is letting simple action be good enough. That's in the same vein. And then more recently this year, episode 150 is vacation weight loss made easy. So there are a fair amount of podcasts around how to make it feel easy, how to make it easier.
Now there's also aspects around it being hard. So episode 13 is three reasons weight loss feels hard. Episode 59 is why two bites behind feels hard.
Episode 113 is why food feels hard during the holidays. So this is from November of 2024. So last year, and then a bonus episode from this year was after episode 145. July 15th is letting life and weight loss be hard. And I know I've referenced this last one here somewhat recently around leaning in and recognizing the hard parts and choosing the hard that we are going for. What is the hard that is getting you to the next level, the next version of yourself versus the hard that most of us experienced in relationships and marriage. And with weight loss, which was doing the same thing over and over again, hoping for different results, expecting wanting, trying for different results, and yet continuing to create the same negative effects time after time. This latest episode that I just recorded will likely be out Next after this one.
But this has been on my mind for the last several weeks. And it's why we struggle to let things feel easy or to let things be easy, like, why we struggle when things feel easy, when they feel too good to be true. And this comes up with a lot of clients, and I've even experienced this recently as it relates to dating and finding a healthy, emotionally stable, emotionally mature and available man.
And I know there are a lot of clients who have felt the same way, especially around food and weight loss. And I know I have felt this way in the past. And it's. I've been able to maintain my weight loss for several years now. I lost the baby weight over four years ago, and so I've been able to keep it off very easily over this time. And my goal has always been to make weight loss easy and to make weight maintenance easy and to make it something that I could actually stick with very effortlessly without constantly thinking and obsessing about food. And so I've had clients who have lost anywhere from two to five pounds in a week. And it was almost like they weren't expecting it. For some, they may have been getting over a cold or an illness. For some, it was getting back from travel. For some, it was knowing and recognizing that the scale had been stable for the last two to three weeks.
And then all of a sudden it dropped. And it almost felt unexpected, and it was confusing at times. And what I know to be true as well is that when we can let go of the focus of this scale and needing the scale to change, it's actually when it changes. And it can feel really counterintuitive and really hard to reconcile this. Like, I'm committed to a goal, but also detached from it. So I'm committed to weight loss. I'm committed to ending my emotional eating. But I'm also detached from needing that to feel good about myself is really how I think of it. And this is really important because this is also what I noticed is that when I focused on a life that I loved, on a life that felt fun and enjoyable and lit me up, I did not need food for fun. I did not need food for pleasure and for joy. I didn't need it to be that primary source. I also learned how to stop escaping my life and how to stop escaping negative emotions with food and alcohol. And so these all play together.
But the emphasis is often creating a life that's bigger, a life that's better, really focusing on that aspect, not just on. I need the scale to go down And I was talking to a client recently about this because we were talking about another goal. But I brought up the same concept of sometimes when we need it to happen, we try to force and pressure ourselves to create a certain result. We actually get further away from it, not because of anything to do with the goal, but because of the pressure, because of an almost then obsession with a goal, with a particular outcome. And the more we focus on it, the more we need it and the more anxiety we can create around it, the less fun we're having, the more likely we're emotionally eating. It's like it has this kind of weird spiral domino effect. And when we can really embrace letting things be easy, it's like that's what we want. Yet it's also going to feel very uncomfortable. So it's just like finding a healthy relationship. So the next episode we'll dive into a little bit more of like why dieting has felt hard, why relationships have been hard, this connection between the two, really bridging together these two aspects and these two pieces. But letting it be easy can also feel really uncomfortable. And this is the core, is that anything that is new won't feel familiar. So it's now unfamiliar, it's new. And there's a level of this isn't safe even when it's something we really want. And this is why we can fall back into the same coping mechanisms and survival patterns when what we're choosing is the familiar. Even though the familiar is bringing about the pain, the heartache, the struggle, even when the pain is keeping us stuck in toxic relationships, when the pain is keeping us in these toxic dynamics with food and dieting, it's the same thing. And so this really came up for me because as I started dating in August, I was very open. I feel like I've had very realistic expectations, especially to be online dating, as well as hoping to meet somebody in person. But I also recognize that online gave me the ability to meet and talk with more people that I wouldn't meet and interact with in my everyday life.
I also have noticed that men don't talk to me. I don't get hit on. I don't get hit on, typically at the gym or at the grocery store or at church. I've been asked out in person twice in the last six months. It's very rare. It does not happen often.
What I've noticed is that men will look at me, they'll notice me. But not many men are comfortable or confident enough to come start a conversation to risk being rejected in person.
And I think sometimes when it's at the gym or at church, they might see me as busy. They don't want to interrupt my day, they don't want to interrupt my workout. I think it actually has more to do with rejection though. And with online dating there is less for formal rejection than going up and asking a girl and finding out either A, she's not interested in you or B, she's taken and you didn't know. But it's that willingness to put yourself out there. And I think because of the online space there are less men who are willing to risk that in person rejection. That's just my take. I've also been told that I look intimidating. Maybe I have resting face. I don't know. A lot of times I am probably pretty serious. I am thinking things in my head all the time and sometimes I do just genuinely forget to smile at people. But I. But I noticed the online platforms I think just give me more opportunities to meet and start a conversation and to see where things go. So anyways, I started dating Bea and we met the end of October. We had our first date November 1st.
And we just hit it off. Like from our first text communication into the couple first dates, things just felt so good, so easy, so natural.
And because of the trauma, because of past abuse cycles, there is a little part of me that doesn't trust it. It's like I don't trust when things are easy. And we often have these thoughts of it's too good to be true.
And we have this fear of when is the other shoe going to drop.
Because in the past things could have been good for a short period of time, but they never stayed good. Something bad always happened. Something negative was always the consequence. And we can see this cycle in behavior from people. We see it even in our own eating and drinking patterns, right? It's like I can be good with a diet for a couple of days, maybe even a couple of weeks, but then I'm off the rails. It's never easy enough to where I can stick with the diet the whole term and lose all my weight. I'm bound to it up somewhere.
And so we don't trust it. We don't trust ourselves is really, I think at the core of this. We don't trust ourselves around food. We don't trust ourselves around dating and the opposite sex. It's like really this erosion of our self trust which is at the core of the abuse that we faced and the trauma. We've been told flat out that we can't trust ourselves. But we also have built up evidence in our head as to how we can't trust ourselves either. And so when things are going and they're going good, we have so much past evidence that it doesn't last, and we need to protect ourselves from it. And that's what our habit brain is there to do. It's there to protect us, to keep us safe, to keep us alive. And so our brain wants to prevent us from being caught off guard when a negative thing happens, because in its mind, something that always happens, the other shoe always drops. We can't trust this good part right here. And so it always wants to jump to the negative. It doesn't feel safe and secure with letting something feel easy, with letting something feel natural. And when you're used to love being transactional, when love is conditional, being loved for who you are is what we want. And it will feel so foreign, it will feel so uncomfortable, and it doesn't make any sense, right? Because on one hand, it's like, that's what we want. We want to be loved unconditionally, but it's not something we learned. We learned how to earn love, how to be, how to work for approval, how to work for love, but we never learned how to be loved unconditionally.
So even though it's what we want, it will also feel very foreign. And because it's foreign and it's unknown, it will feel a little scary in our brain. And anything that's scary will be seen as unsafe, and therefore I might die. That is our brain's line of thinking.
And that's okay. We just want to recognize when it doesn't feel safe to let it be easy. And so I saw this with dating in particular, but I can also see it with weight loss, right? Because it's maybe you lose five pounds in a month, ten pounds in a month, and you're like, wow, that was pretty good. But you have this expectation that's what it should look like all the time. And if it does, it's like, but I can't trust myself, and I can't trust that I'm going to keep losing weight in the same way. And so we're like, it can't always be this good, can't always be this easy. And we build up all this evidence as to how we can't trust ourselves. We can't trust our bodies. We don't trust ourselves around food or around the holidays. And we end up creating more evidence because of the stories that we're telling ourselves. But it's more evidence as to how we need to be afraid, how we can't trust. And that is ultimately the problem with weight loss. One of the things is that our bodies are going to lose weight at different intervals all the time. And I have some clients where they will lose it might be like £10 one month, £5 the next month, £10 one month, £5 THE NEXT MONTH. It alternates like that.
I have some clients where they tend to lose more like one pound pretty consistently every week. I have other clients where they might lose five or six pounds one week, and then the next three weeks they maintain, and then they lose five pounds and then they maintain for three weeks. And that is how their body is creating level of safety to keep losing weight. So everybody is going to be a little bit different. And the key here is to better understand your body's natural rhythm for losing weight. And we really need several months of data to be able to see that. The more that we do the mental, emotional work behind the scenes, the more the scale is actually going to go down. Because the habits are always going to be preceded by how you're thinking and feeling. And so how much we're eating, what we're eating, when we're eating. All of those aspects are impacted by our ability to regulate our emotions, to process, to feel, by our ability to catch negative thought patterns, excuses and justifications, to eat, especially when we're not hungry, and to be able to rewrite old stories that are really painful and create more of a negative experience that we often want to eat over in order to escape.
So this becomes more of the process. It's not just on the food and the habits, it's really on the aspects that come before that. It's the emotional awareness, the emotional capacity, our ability to better understand the default thoughts that are just flying under the radar. So often with weight loss in particular, we have to recognize that it's going to take a couple months to find our rhythm and to figure out what is our body's natural rhythm for losing weight. And then as the scale comes down, as you have less weight to lose, it's less percentage of your body that you are losing, and that's coming off. And so often you will lose less. It'll be proportionally the same, but it'll be less in terms of the number.
So it's the same percentage, but it's less because you're losing weight. So the scale is going down. That's a great thing. But instead of losing ten pounds, it goes down to eight. And instead of eight pounds, it goes down to five instead of five pounds. There'll come a point where maybe it goes down to two.
And we can't make that a problem.
This is about the lifestyle. This is about creating the healthy relationship with food and exercise and alcohol and habits and water and really building in the lifestyle that we want by letting the best version of yourself come out and shine through. Really stepping into you, really. Not only have we shoved down emotions, but we often shove down our personality and our authenticity and who we really are. We put ourselves in a box and we play small so that other people can feel big. In particular the toxic people who were in our lives. And we learned this from a survival standpoint. It was how we stayed safe. And now that's how your brain wants to keep you safe currently.
And so that's why it's going to be skeptical and hesitant about anything that feels too easy. That's why maybe whenever I talk about certain aspects being easy, you might already be skeptical. Even if you don't have evidence or if you don't feel it, you're like, eh, nope, no, no, no. Weight loss is supposed to be restrictive, it's supposed to be hard. Restriction is how we lose the weight. So if I'm not restricting and I'm not suffering, if I'm not being punished in some way with fear food, I'm not going to lose weight.
And really what I see is it goes back to this thought error is how I would think about it is that suffering equals weight loss.
And it doesn't. Suffering does not equal weight loss. Just like suffering does not equal a godly marriage. Because many of us suffered in marriage and we did not have a godly marriage. But that's often what we're told. That's what we're told to do. That's how we're told that it's supposed to work. We are told like marriage is going to be hard and you just gotta suck it up and get through it.
No, not when you are with the right person. You will still have challenges, but marriage should not feel constantly hard. And I think this is the biggest thing is we fought so hard for somebody who did not have the capacity or the ability to be able to truly love us in a healthy way. Because they can't truly love themselves because they are dealing with their own trauma that they refuse to acknowledge or process.
So we need to let them do them. And now we let ourselves stay focused on the things that matter and to focus also on recognizing what's hard.
Because when we are Focused on restricting and depriving and I'm not allowed to eat this. I can only eat 800 calories. When we have these really extreme dieting rules that we think we need to follow, this is when weight loss feels really hard versus the productive hard that gets you closer to your goals. So it's like the hard of I'm going to love myself after an overeat. I'm going to evaluate why I overate last night and really understand the emotional drivers as to what was really happening. The hard of I'm gonna go talk to my coach about this or I'm gonna go show up to this group coaching call and be vulnerable and expose this underbelly. When I feel really self conscious and a lot of shame and a lot of regret because I know that this is what's gonna help me figure this out in the long run.
That is the hard. That is the hard that we want to take on.
The heart of the discomfort of letting it be easy. The heart of the discomfort of saying no and choosing not to eat because we know we're not hungry or we've already had one dessert or we're about to go to bed and we don't need food right before we go to sleep.
Those are the aspects where we're breaking habits, we're breaking cycles. But really, truly, I think so much of weight loss and our journey is supposed to be easier. It's easier than we make it out to be. But it doesn't feel safe when it's easy because easy doesn't feel familiar when it comes to weight loss. Easy definitely doesn't feel familiar when it comes to relationships and marriage and especially romantic relationships.
This is so important for us to recognize and acknowledge because we can make it harder on ourselves than it needs to be. And this is where the self sabotage comes up is like we let things be easy. It doesn't feel safe when it's easy. And so then we make it hard by this self protective mechanism which we often call self sabotage. And this is the epitome of what we would call self sabotage. Because self sabotage is not sabotage. It is not conscious. It is your nervous system trying to protect you by choosing what's familiar. That is what ends up happening. Because to your brain, familiar means safe. Familiar means I'm not going to die even when familiar is actually hurt hurting you even when familiar. And what's familiar is actually the problem.
These are the things that we have to unwind. These are the patterns that we get to decode. We get to better understand and we get to lean into when things feel easy and letting them be easy. And I found this with dating and letting myself be loved unconditionally by somebody else easily without having to prove or earn or achieve.
There's a little discomfort there. Even though that is 100% what I want, I can recognize, especially in the beginning, that felt very uncomfortable because I'm used to having to work for it, to prove, to earn, to justify.
But we have created such a great dynamic and such open communication that we can talk through it, too, and we can share these things. And we were actually talking about it today. He asked how I was feeling about things and about the relationship. He's overseas and traveling right now.
And I told him, I am so happy. I love where we're at and this continued growth and evolution of our relationship. And there's also still a little bit of fear. There is some fear that he's gonna decide I'm not the right fit, I'm not the right one, I'm not good enough, and he's gonna walk away. And there's a little bit of fear in that. Just because that's happened in the past where I thought things were okay and not bad. And out of the blue, all of a sudden, someone decided to leave.
And what I do know to be true is that if that happened now, I could handle it, and I would be just fine. I would feel all the emotions. I would feel the heartache and the loss and the grief. But ultimately, I would also know that I would be okay.
And I hope that doesn't happen. But there's this sense of comfort and safety, of being on my own, too. Not that I need it, but just knowing I can handle it. And I also know that every relationship is getting me closer to my future person.
So if B is not my future person, if he's not my future husband, that's okay. I know this relationship is getting me closer and closer to the man I'm going to be with. So even if he decides, like, nope, she's not for me, I'm done.
I know that the right person is out there for me. And it takes a really strong, healthy man, a really strong, masculine, to be able to love and withstand the challenge that comes with a vibrant, strong, fierce feminine like me.
And not all men can handle that. Men say they want an independent woman. They say they want a strong, independent woman, but most of the time they don't. And that's okay. I'm gonna find the man who does want that, who can handle that, that wants to be challenged by me in a good, healthy way. Not that I need always be arguing or challenging him, but that I help him to rise. And that's how I think about partnership and marriage is I want a teammate and I want a partner where when he wins, I win. And when I win, he wins. We can both be successful and together as a team. We are going to rise together, same boat, same rising. Whether he's the one with the success or I am. Because there are going to be times where we're both succeeding together. There are going to be times when it's more so one versus the other.
And it's also okay that right now still feels a little uncomfortable, that there's still a little fear of him leaving, just like there's still a little discomfort and almost disbelief in his ability to love and value me without me having to work for it, without me having to earn or prove or achieve. This is a new level, like I'm in a new place. Never have I ever dated from a place of actually being a whole healthy person myself.
And that's part of what I love about this, is this is probably the healthiest relationship I've ever had. And we are just getting started. I think that's the beautiful part too is like we are just getting started. But this is the best I've ever had in large part because this is the best I've ever been.
This is the best, most hundred percent, fullest, healthiest version of myself I've ever been able to create and be able to show up in a dating environment with.
I don't take that for granted. And I recognize that past wounds, past trauma is still going to come up. But I'm learning how to let it be easy. I'm learning how to receive love, not just to give it. And I'm learning how to give myself more love. And part of this too is he will compliment me or he'll. He'll say something like, oh, you look beautiful today. And he can compliment me and he can compliment my hair and how beautiful I look. And I believe he genuinely means it. It is not from a love bomby st. And I can also receive that.
And the other cool thing is it is more like the sprinkles on top of the icing on top of the cake because I have already done the work of telling myself I am beautiful, of telling myself that I am vibrant and amazing and captivating. I don't need him to tell me that, yes, it feels great, but it's not a need. It's now Something that's just this added bonus and never has it ever been something like that before in the past, especially with men. Truly, it would feed my soul. It would just light me up. And now I've done that harder work of lighting myself up, of being my own dream girl and going first and trusting that the right man is going to fall in love with that. The right man is going to recognize that I am his dream girl. Because I'm focused not on being his, but but on being my own. I can let this be easy. I can let this relationship be easy. I can let love be easy. I can let loving him be easy. Just like receiving love can be easy. Just like we learn how to let dating and the process of dating feel easy, we can let weight loss and ending emotional eating feel easy. Because there are aspects where it is.
It won't always feel easy. Just like with any relationship, it won't always feel that way. And that's okay. Just like with weight loss and emotional eating, it's simple. It won't always feel easy. There will be levels of discomfort, often because our past trauma has been triggered. That's why it's gonna feel hard, because it's gonna feel a little uncomfortable, because it's a little foreign. That's the only difference.
But the more that we can lean into trusting ourselves, building back that self trust that is so key and so pivotal to allowing it to be easy. I think that's one of the biggest roadblocks in how we make things hard on ourselves is we continue to tear down and erode our own self trust. Not only do other people do it around us, not only did your ex do it, but now you're doing it. We've got to course correct. We've got to re steer this ship.
You are the one in control. You are the one in the driver's seat. You get to decide. This is now your own voice and it's time to stop advocating for all your inadequacies and how you can't and start arguing for how you can, how this is possible and how no matter what, you've got your own back. You are not going to abandon yourself. No matter what happens with anyone else, no matter what happens with the scale or your weight or the size of your pants, you will have your own back. You will love yourself to the bitter end and you will not make that love conditional on if you're married or single or divorced, on who you're with or not with, on what the scale says or how much you ate the day before. You will make that self love unconditional. And the more that you love yourself that way, the more you can receive it from others.
This is how we combat and heal from toxic relationships. It's how we heal that wound and that part of us that wants to keep striving and seeking and pleasing and being the dream girl for somebody else in the hopes that they won't leave thinking, who do you need me to be? I'll be her because I did that for a very long time.
This is just your reminder of it's okay if it feels uncomfortable. And this is the nuance. This is the nuance of weight loss and of dating, especially after toxic relationships. And it's why having a coach, having a community is so incredibly important.
Because this is the work. Instead of hustling and striving and trying to earn and prove with new habits and new sizes and new weight, we want to rebuild the woman behind them. This is why what I do is not just a weight loss program. This is a self worth, body and identity reinvention. Because you're not becoming a better you per se. You are becoming more of you. You're not just becoming better, you are becoming more of yourself and letting yourself shine through. We are going to activate the woman that is already inside of you. The dreams, the desires, the goals, the vision, the that already lives inside of you. You are already her. You've just stuffed her down, shut her up, dimmed her light and now we want to let that light shine. We want her to stand up, we want to activate her. That authentic, true, best version of yourself.
And I want to help you to do this. To reclaim your body, your emotions, your voice, your identity and your future.
That's what this is all about.
If you would like some help, if this message resonates with you, your next best step is to come work with me. Work with me in one on one coaching or in a small group and come work with me. Give me six to 12 months and I guarantee your life will never be the same. We're going to radically transform from the inside out on so many different levels. With healing trauma, with healing from emotional eating and binge eating habits, healing your relationship with food, from diet trauma, healing from that toxic relationship, from your childhood trauma, from the people who have hurt you. And now we're also going to heal those inner wounds, those inner parts of us that keep hurting ourselves. We are going to change that nar voice that lives inside of you right now. It is your own voice. It's not your ex, it's not your mom. It's not what your siblings said three years ago that now is your voice. And it's time to heal. It's time to shift. It's not about being somebody else's dream girl. It's not about trying to live up to somebody else's expectations anymore. And it's no longer feeling the need to perform for love. You are going to break this habit and you're going to reclaim the life that is going to set you on fire. I'm going to help you to see the pattern, break the cycle and reclaim your life. To schedule a consultation, find a day and time on my
[email protected] schedule link is always in the description, but get on my calendar and let's talk more about what you want to create in this next year. Because I guarantee there are going to be challenges and obstacles. I guarantee there are going to be times when you get in your own way. There's going to be self sabotage and protection and your trauma brain and your survival mechanisms are going to want to come out. And that's why we're having a coach. Having a community is so powerful, to keep you aligned, to keep you focused on the vision. And in those moments when you feel down and you feel frustrated, you borrow my belief and you get reinvigorated and reinspired and you keep those goals and that dream and that focus front and center to where by March, by June, they have not fallen by the wayside. You stay focused and committed to the woman you are becoming.
She's already there. She's already in you. It's now time to let the patterns break, let the cycles break, so that she can fully rise up.
We are a group of phoenixes. That's how I think about this. The women that I am calling into this, they are like phoenixes. We are rising together from the ashes. That is what we are doing. And this is where it happens, where we don't just focus on the body, we don't just focus on the scale. We don't just try to enforce new diets and have more willpower. We focus on a life that lights you up. A life that you don't need an escape from. A life that brings you so much joy and pleasure, you don't need to seek it in food. That's how you create it. It's not about more diet rules, a new diet fad, more protocols, shots, pills, potions. We let all of that go and we now focus on what's truly underneath the surface. Our thoughts and emotions that are driving our habits. This is what I'm going to help you do. And because of the trauma that we've all experienced, we with relationships, with dating, with marriage and divorce, with diets and weight loss and weight regain, because of all of these aspects, we have a little bit to unwind. We have some patterns. We have decades worth of patterns to unwind. Which is why I encourage you to give me a year.
Come work with me for a full year and I promise you will never be the same. This will be such a pivotal domino in your life where you'll be able to look back and note that time you came and worked with Jillian and she forever changed how you saw yourself.
Life will never look the same, I promise.
We're going to start the bonus work now in December, but the real work begins in January. And we are going to give ourselves a luxurious amount of time to be there, to work through all of the patterns, all of the cycles, all of the blocks. I'm going to teach you how to interrupt the old patterns, to let go of the emotional conditioning, to recognize the survival strategies that we used with food and relationships, and to reclaim a new identity for yourself.
This is where it begins.
Forever starts today.
So if this message speaks to you, come schedule a call. Alright, that's it for today.
Have a fabulous rest of your week.
Here's to creating the life and body you crave.
[00:33:02] Speaker A: If this episode resonated with you, it's time to break free from destructive cycles around food, alcohol and toxic relationships.
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[00:33:39] Speaker B: I'll show you how.
