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] Hey. Hey. Welcome back.
[00:00:25] Sorry I missed a week with the podcast, you know, best of intentions, but I was speaking up at a conference in New York and I had a really great experience and getting to go and speak for a company called Tops, taking off pounds sensibly. And they have an annual retreat, or really they do it every two years, but it was called Health on the Horizon. And so they had a variety of different speakers and they're talking about a range of topics. And so of course, I got to talk about GLP1's emotional and mental health and how that impacts our physical health and our physiology as well as relationships, and how relationship trauma impacts our relationship with food and our bodies and the way that we see ourselves at our core. It was a really great experience. I had a very busy schedule, good travel, but also some delayed flights, canceled flights, things that got a little turned around. But overall, everything went really well. I even got to bring Vash up with me, and he came and was my assistant and helper and was so helpful in like, troubleshooting, and I needed to get things reprinted. And so just having somebody there who is so, like, truly supportive, not just with words, but with actions, I think that to me just re emphasizes what I'm creating with this relationship and what he and I now are co creating together and our ability to support one another in different ways at different times and what that looks like. And so, yeah, that was just such. Such a great experience and a good time for us together as a couple. And then a lot of fun for me to really be in my own zone of genius teaching and coaching and hearing more feedback and what's resonating with people and where they're getting stuck and really how to help them see what's underneath the surface. Because a lot of it is, okay, I know what to do, but I'm just not doing it. Or I think I know what to do, but I'm not totally sure, or I'm not creating the results that I want, or I keep trying to stay with it. And so at what point do I pivot? At what point do I try something new? It's that. That concept of do I persevere or do I pivot? And there's a lot of nuance to it. And so this is not a one size fits all. It's not a Just do these three things, and then you'll create this result. There's a lot that we need to explore and we need to look at and unpack.
[00:02:44] I got to do three workshops. Those were planned, and then I actually threw in a bonus workshop where I got to be on the main stage talking about GLP1s. Because the original conversation around GLP1s, I had designed it to be in conjunction with talking about food, noise, and diet trauma. And I found that we just didn't have enough time to really go in depth with these two concepts that are very big and meaty on their own. And so I went to the organizer and I was like, hey, I know your schedule is packed. I know there may not be room for this. Happy to do this afterwards as, like, a webinar. But if you can make space, I'd be happy to put together an additional workshop specifically around GLP1s, what they do in the body beyond weight loss, beyond just body recomposition. And not to say that's not still a great benefit, but we want to look at it from the lens of autoimmune conditions, inflammation, anxiety, depression, looking at how it impacts mental health, looking at how it impacts things like addiction, our cognitive performance, and our ability to focus and think clearly. So there's this wide range and this big impact. And yet, so often I hear the same fear, the same worry of, but isn't that cheating? Am I taking the easy way out? Does this mean that I'm lazy?
[00:04:06] Or really, the deeper fear, the deeper question is more around shame and is something wrong with me that diet and exercise alone isn't doing it?
[00:04:16] And I think this is where we have to take the shame off of it and recognize that some people can change their bodies, their composition, their health. They can decrease certain symptoms, and they can do that maybe with food or exercise or supplements. But some people's bodies need a little bit more intervention, right? I need glasses in order to see far away.
[00:04:38] Taking a supplement to try and improve my eye health, while maybe could help a little bit. I still need glasses. I still need glasses to be able to see. And so this is something where it's like, people don't shame me because I need glasses because that's what my body needs. They also don't tell me, jillian, you should just eat more carrots and then you'll see better. Jillian, you should just take this supplement and then you'll see better.
[00:05:02] No, that's a Bunch of bullshit. And we know it. And yet we, when it comes to our weight and our body, our size, our shape and food and, and GLPs, now we feel like we need to be justified or we need to prove that we need it or we need it for these certain reasons or even this thought of people don't actually need the peptide. The peptide isn't actually what's working or doing it justice. It's that your habits are getting better and therefore your health is improving because the habits are getting better. It really has nothing to do with the peptide. And that's a bunch of bullshit too. So don't believe that the peptide is actually working to heal and regenerate your body. It's helping to regulate, it's helping to decrease inflammation, it's helping to regulate blood sugar and glucose levels, and it's helping with cortisol dysregulation at the core. I believe that is one of the key functions that it's doing because it has all of these downstream effects as well.
[00:05:55] But we need the right dose. We can't use this as a monotherapy and we need the right dose for the right person, which means that it needs to be very individualized, not a one size fits all.
[00:06:06] So that became its own workshop because I'm very passionate about it and I There is nothing wrong if your body needs support in that way. Nothing I was doing was going to regrow my eyebrows. I have not binged since 2019.
[00:06:21] My emotional eating is way, way down. I eat really healthy. I exercise basically every day. I am by all accounts a very healthy person. And yet I lost all my arm hair and my leg hair and my eyebrows and just trying to eat better was not going to fix that. There was some sort of dysfunction in the body that I needed to correct and GLPs are helping me to do that. So it may not be the solution for you, it's not gonna be the solution for everyone. And that's okay. But let's not shame people who want to use this and want to explore this as an option. And if it is something that you want to explore, give yourself permission to do that without shame, without feeling like you have to prove or earn it. But just recognize that sometimes our bodies need a little extra support. We need a little extra intervention. Give that to yourself. One of the things I've been talking about a lot recently on social media and in email has been this idea around permission and permission to give yourself what it is that you really want. Permission to acknowledge and recognize what it is that you want permission to make decisions for yourself instead of outsourcing your authority and outsourcing your decision making to other people.
[00:07:35] You get to decide this and anybody else. No one doctor is going to know best for you.
[00:07:43] This is where I really believe any type of health, whether it's physical, mental, emotional, needs to be a co creation. So when somebody comes to me and they're asking about nervous system regulation, for example, I give them a variety of tools and I tell them, here are 12, pick 1 to 2 and start with those and see what works, see what you like, see what you want to maybe tweak or change and make your own. This is where it's not just a this works for me, so now this should work for you. It really has to be a let's explore and figure out what does actually work for you because that will always look a little different.
[00:08:21] And so what came up very frequently throughout these two days and these four sessions that I was teaching and coaching was really this concept around the blind spot and how so often we are so close to a problem, we're so close to a goal, we're so close to a situation that we can't see clearly, right? And so often it's not that we need more information.
[00:08:43] Sometimes that's a piece. Yes, sometimes we want to have more information or different information, but a lot of times it's more about clarity or certainty. And that's where we get stuck, that's where we get hung up on. And when it comes to some of these bigger concepts of like why can't I stay consistent? Why do I seem to still be sabotaging myself?
[00:09:02] What should I change careers? Should I leave this relationship?
[00:09:06] Should I stay?
[00:09:08] And really knowing that it's not about these external things, it's what's underneath it.
[00:09:14] And so I have coached dozens and dozens of people over the years and I've noticed that very few people come to me because they don't know enough.
[00:09:24] They come to me because they can't see themselves clearly anymore. They either don't know what it is that they want, or they don't know how to create what they want effectively.
[00:09:33] We are really good at consuming as Americans, as Westerners, right now, we are really great at consuming podcasts, books, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube. And sometimes we think we just need one more piece of information, just one more thing, or if we can find the right thing, it's going to unlock everything else.
[00:09:53] And maybe at times it does, but usually it doesn't. And I think this is really Fascinating. As I was writing this and thinking about, where has this shown up in my own life? Because I remember reading, or actually I was listening to a book and it was called the COVID Passive Aggressive Narcissist. And as I was listening to it, as I was walking, it was like, everything just started making sense. And I was like, oh, my gosh. And at the end of the book, the author talks about it as abuse. This is emotional and verbal abuse. And I was like, ugh, abuse. I don't know about that. Is this bad? Yes. Is it something that I want to mitigate and avoid? Yes. But abuse, ugh, I don't know about that. And I went on to listen to another dozen books. There were another six to 10 other books about relationships and emotional or verbal abuse or dynamics or narcissism or, like, how do I understand what is actually happening? Because at the end of the day, there was this question of, can he change?
[00:10:53] And also, do I stay? Because a lot of those. Those two pieces were riding on each other. It was like, if he can't change, do I want to stay? And then if he can change, then maybe I'm more willing to stay to try to figure it out and work on the marriage and work on the relationship. And so I kept looking for therapists or counselors or the pastor or these books, or it was like some piece of information for it to sink in. And there were a couple of pieces that really sunk in. I remember there were a couple pieces that just stopped me in my tracks. I think that's happened twice now. One time I was listening to a book by Lundy Bancroft called why Does he do that?
[00:11:32] And in it, he quotes a statistic where it's four out of five kids who grow up in abusive homes either become abusers or they marry abusers.
[00:11:42] And that stopped me right there. I full on dead stopped of, holy shit. This is not just a decision about me and a marriage. It's really looking at what are the downstream effects of how this impacts other people.
[00:11:57] Really thinking about it through the lens of how do I try to make the best decision for my son, not just for me, but also for him.
[00:12:05] It took almost a whole year after that of watching and listening and talking and exploring and waiting and watching to see, who is this person?
[00:12:18] How does my ex show up? Is this what I want more of?
[00:12:22] And it was so interesting because I stopped pleasing and giving in, and I started having more of an opinion. I started being more of who he probably didn't want me to be.
[00:12:32] So I don't know, is it that I was changing, so then he was changing in response to that, and I noticed things happening more, or is it I finally was waking up to all of the little moments that I used to sweep under the rug, I used to just brush off, and now I see them differently.
[00:12:49] But this is not about him, right? And I think that's where with relationships and that dynamic, we can get so caught up in him and what's he doing and diagnoses and labels and is there enough criteria to justify leaving? I think is ultimately what it comes down to is it's like, am I justified in making this decision? Am I justified in saying, I don't want to be a part of this relationship anymore? It's this. This level of looking for permission.
[00:13:13] And I really believe that it's not about other people. It's about you. Your habits, your traits, your characteristics, what you're allowing, your boundaries, your lack of enforcing them. You are letting other people walk all over them. It's so much more about your life, who you are. And we have to take the emphasis off of them and put it back onto you, us. What do I want?
[00:13:39] What's the type of partnership? What's the type of marriage and the dynamic that I want with a spouse, that I want with a partner? And when we do that, that's when we find that empowered state because we're no longer trying to change or control somebody else. Because that's what I kept doing through people pleasing. It was really ironic that my ex accused me of trying to control him. And it was funny because in some ways, yeah, I was trying to control him because I was trying to keep him from exploding or yelling at me or cussing at me or doing something negative. I was trying to tiptoe and walk on eggshells and say the right thing and not wake the beast. Don't poke the bear. Right. There was this tiptoeing and he felt the same exact way around me.
[00:14:21] And I always just felt, like, what? And I remember he told me one time that, and this was several years prior, but he had said he has to walk on eggshells around me because I asked him to choose his words mindfully. I ask him to be mindful of what he says instead of just spewing out whatever he feels like in the moment. And that, to him, was walking on eggshells. So I don't have to argue about what walking on eggshells means or who is entitled or who is allowed or who's doing it more, what I get to decide is this is what it looks like and feels like for me, and this is what I want or what I don't want, and let him be him.
[00:15:00] And now when he is fully him, is that the person I want to be with? Is that the dynamic that I want to maintain and continue?
[00:15:08] That gets to be the question, that gets to be our work.
[00:15:11] But those are also often the blind spots, because those are the questions underneath the questions. Those get into the beliefs and the patterns and what those patterns are protecting you from. That we get layers deep, and that's where we have to go if we really want to understand some of these dynamics.
[00:15:30] This is how we change. But this is also why we need other people. We need coaches, counselors, therapists, people on the outside who can see things that we can't because we are just too close to our own situation.
[00:15:43] This is why it's so much easier for me to see things in other people than it is for them to see it in themselves. It's why I still have a coach that I work with every week, because I know that there are patterns and habits and things that I. I cannot see clearly.
[00:15:57] I'm going to do a new series on TikTok called Confessions of Dating a Sociopath. I will share some of that here on the podcast as well, but you're welcome to follow me over there. But got divorced, still dating toxic men, still dated a sociopath for nearly nine months. I was so close to the situation, and I could even see the red flags. I could see things that didn't make sense, but I brushed them aside. I minimized, I excused, I justified.
[00:16:24] Because I was hanging on so tightly to this concept that this guy really actually loved me, and I didn't want to let that go. There were emotional needs in me that he was meeting, and I didn't want to let that go. The thought of losing that was like tearing off my arm. Like, it felt just as painful. And so what we need is often not just more information.
[00:16:48] We need a conversation, a reframe.
[00:16:51] Sometimes it's as simple as just a new question, a new perspective that is often enough to completely change somebody's direction. And so there were a variety of things that came up last week, and I'm going to expound on those in future episodes as well. But sometimes it's that you think you need more discipline.
[00:17:10] Actually, what you need is more calm, more white space, more time to actually relax and not be so busy.
[00:17:19] You might think that you need to lose weight, but actually you need to stop trying to Earn love and prove to yourself and to other people that you are lovable based on your size, shape or weight.
[00:17:32] You might think you need motivation, but you actually just need permission.
[00:17:37] Permission to identify and give yourself what it is that you actually want and permission to say no to the things that you don't want want. And so we want to look at a couple of things, and I'm very big on helping people assess and evaluate what is actually happening. Whether it's relationships or it's food or it's weight loss. We need to look at what is actually happening before the pattern, before the behavior.
[00:18:01] And then we need to get a little bit deeper. And this was a new thing that I brought into this workshop last week, which was what's the belief under the pattern?
[00:18:11] And then what is the pattern protecting?
[00:18:14] Because often what's underneath some of these different layers is a fear, an identity, an old survival mechanism, a way that you learn to stay safe, to stay enough to stay worthy, to stay wanted, to stay a part of your family or community or the ecosystem that you'd created.
[00:18:35] Often that question of, like, how do I stop snacking at night? Is nothing about the food. It's not about tips and tricks and how do we change the habit? We have to get deeper.
[00:18:47] This idea of how do I stop dating unhealthy men can't be about dating apps and tactics and tips. It has to be getting deeper as to what are the emotional needs. You think men are meeting for you or that in this moment, they're meeting for you?
[00:19:00] Why is it that I can stick with my eating plan during the day, but then the rails fall off once I get home at the end of the night?
[00:19:08] These are the things that we have to explore and we want to start looking at this with curiosity and compassion.
[00:19:15] That's how we've got to evaluate.
[00:19:18] And this is exactly why I have opened up a new free 30 minute coaching call called Find the Blind Spot. And So I'm offering 10 free blind spot calls this month. And for 30 minutes, we're going to dissect one problem, one pattern or one decision that you're currently struggling with. And I'm gonna help you to uncover what's actually keeping you stuck. Because a lot of times it is simpler than we realize, but it may also be deeper than we realize. And so if you come with one thing that you want clarity on, we'll start there. And I promise, you will leave with a revelation, you will leave with an epiphany, you will leave with so much more clarity and understanding for yourself and not just the habits.
[00:20:03] But remember, a habit is something that you learned, which means it's something you can unlearn. And so there's the aspect of like, how do I do something different? But in order to do that we need to understand why we're doing it to begin with. There is a lot of nuance, there are a lot of layers and there is not a one size fits all. But make sure you come back and listen to the next episode where we are going to dive into more of these topics, more of these conversations.
[00:20:29] And next week specifically is about why can't I control myself around food at 8pm at night?
[00:20:37] Right? And we think it's maybe a food problem or a willpower problem or a self control or self discipline. And none of those are the real problem.
[00:20:46] So join me for the next episode where we're going to dive into this and really explore what is often happening underneath it.
[00:20:54] But I want to invite you to the Blind Spot call so that you can figure out and decode what is actually going on for you.
[00:21:02] I will put that link in the description if you'd like to schedule a call. These are free 30 minute coaching calls. We'll find a day and time and we'll look at what's been going on, what's happening and what do you wish was different? Those are the two key things we're going to look at. That's where we're going to start and I'll listen, I'll ask you some follow up questions and I'm going to help you start uncovering what's underneath the problem.
[00:21:24] All right y' all have a fabulous rest of the week and I will catch you in the next episode. Here's to creating the life and body you crave.
[00:21:37] If this episode resonated with you, it's time to break free from destructive cycles around food, alcohol and toxic relationships. Your next step Book your free Break the Cycle call where you'll finally see why your binge eating and relationship patterns are so deeply connected and how to break free from both for good.
[00:21:57] 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 BTC.
[00:22:12] It's time to break the cycle. I'll show you how.
