Corinne Crabtree:

Hi. I’m Corinne. After a lifetime of obesity, being bullied for being the fattest kid in the class, and losing and gaining weight like it was my job, I finally got my shit together and I lost 100 pounds. Each week I’ll teach you no bullshit weight loss advice you can use to overcome your battle with weight. I keep it simple. You’ll learn how to quit eating and thinking like an asshole. You stop that and weight loss becomes easy. My goal is to help you lose weight the way you want to live your life. If you are ready to figure out weight loss, then let’s go.

Corinne Crabtree:

All right, everybody. Welcome back. We are going to have a special episode today. This is a favorite of the No BS women when the king comes into the house. So for all of our podcast listeners… I guess you’ve never been on the podcast, have you, babe?

Chris Crabtree:

I have not.

Corinne Crabtree:

He has not. But I’ve talked about him several times.

Chris Crabtree:

So I’ve heard.

Corinne Crabtree:

Yes, because he doesn’t even listen to the podcast either.

Kathy:

It might be more than several, too.

Chris Crabtree:

Oh, well I should have caught up before we did this episode. How many episodes would I have to listen to to find out?

Kathy:

About 210.

Chris Crabtree:

Okay.

Kathy:

And that’s just the ones with me.

Corinne Crabtree:

Yeah. So he is here today and what we are going to do is we’re going to talk today about a topic that I think is interesting for women, especially those of us who have husbands and partners, we’re just going to talk a little bit about me and Chris’s history together. And about my views on my body and his view on my body and kind of where all of that intersects, where it deviates, kind of give… I like the idea of giving the No BS women the idea of we all have a lot of probably pretty shitty thinking going on when it comes to our partners. Like, “They must be thinking this because I think this,” or whatever. And it’s always interesting to just hear a man’s perspective of like, “No, it’s pretty boring over here.”

Corinne Crabtree:

It’s not nearly as dramatic and creative as your brain makes it out going on. So Kathy is actually going to interview us as a couple. And that’s the topic for today. So I hope you guys enjoy hearing from me and Chris. He never likes doing these things, he always says it’s self indulgent. And when we have him do a guest appearance inside the membership, it’s one of the most wrote in appreciative things that we do because the women tend to feel like it gives them something to think about in their own relationships and it helps them change their relationships. So I hope you guys enjoy it because I don’t know if I’ll be able to drag him back ever again.

Chris Crabtree:

We’ll see how this goes. So what is the topic?

Corinne Crabtree:

We’re going to be talk about… Well, Kathy’s going to ask us questions and we’re going to talk about a little… We’ll give them some history about our relationship. But it’s a lot about my thoughts on my body and kind of what goes on in your head.

Chris Crabtree:

Got you.

Corinne Crabtree:

And it’s about the body more than anything.

Chris Crabtree:

Okay.

Corinne Crabtree:

All right, Kathy. The stage is yours.

Kathy:

The stage is [crosstalk 00:03:16] mine.

Corinne Crabtree:

You’re in charge.

Kathy:

So this is always fun for me to get to interview Corinne because she’s usually the one talking to me. But anyway, here we go, so let’s start with how you first met. Where were you, what was your first impression of each other, how did you first get together?

Corinne Crabtree:

Well, our first impression of each other was… Well, my first impression of Chris was he’s a dick. I didn’t like him at all. I thought he was a jerk. We both worked at the same company in different departments. And our departments intersected a lot and Chris would come down and basically tell us that whatever we needed from his department was not important and we just need to get over it and then he would just leave.

Chris Crabtree:

I didn’t say it was not important, it just wasn’t important enough.

Corinne Crabtree:

Yeah. What a level up, babe.

Chris Crabtree:

It wasn’t important enough to do right now.

Corinne Crabtree:

Yeah. It’s no wonder I wasn’t falling in love with him immediately. But we did work together and we didn’t like each other for a long time, probably a year or two.

Chris Crabtree:

Yeah, that’s about right.

Corinne Crabtree:

Yeah. And we had a mutual friend who also worked at this company who she went to high school with him and she and I were real good friends. And I was dating someone else at the time but he was going through a breakup, she was going through a breakup and they were just hanging out like going to dinner and stuff because he really wanted to take care of her. She had moved here with her husband and I think he-

Chris Crabtree:

She didn’t know a lot of other people.

Corinne Crabtree:

Yeah. And her husband cheated on her and it was just not pretty. And Chris, the gentlemen that he always is, he wanted to help her and be her friend. And he’s always had a huge heart. So anyway, as they were doing this, she was like, “I think you and Corinne would go really well together.” Because she was hearing from each side of us and so as a big group, we started going out. And Chris and I often would end up having to sit next to each other and we had never been in social situations. And we found each other hilarious and interesting and both of us were very straightforward. Chris, your stuff is not important enough. He’s the original no BS without the cussing because he doesn’t cuss either.

Kathy:

So back in those days, Corinne, describe yourself. How much did you weigh, how did you feel about yourself? Paint us a picture of Corinne back in those days because I bet it’s a little bit different, isn’t it?

Corinne Crabtree:

Oh yeah, I was a hot mess for one. Not because of my weight. I was not the emotional queen that I am now. I was a little bit on the needy side. I had real poor self esteem, real bad body image stuff, I sought a lot of external validation from friends and from, especially, men and stuff. I think when Chris and I got together, I was about 225. I wasn’t at the height of my weight but I definitely wasn’t… It wasn’t liked I had lost a lot of weight and then Chris noticed me. One of the things that I was talking about not too long ago was I think he really noticed my mind. He was the first person that I ever was with that felt like he noticed me, like what was on the inside, he noticed how I thought and just probably how common sense I was.

Chris Crabtree:

Yeah, just-

Kathy:

Go ahead. That’s exactly what I was going to ask. What was it that attracted you to Corinne, that you noticed about her at that time?

Chris Crabtree:

Sure. Well I think it was, like she was saying, we ended up when we’d kind of go out as a group, we ended up kind of on our own having our own conversation. Which, as we found out last night, is still a thing. We had somebody come by at our favorite little restaurant up here and tell us, “I just want to tell you all, y’all have been coming here ever since we moved to this part of town-

Corinne Crabtree:

Two years we’ve been coming to this restaurant.

Chris Crabtree:

And he said, “Every time I look at y’all, y’all are in like deep conversation. And just the world is entirely between the two of you.” Just out of the blue. Just telling us that.

Corinne Crabtree:

Yeah, and the funny thing is is he said, “Y’all work together too?” Like that. And I said, “Yeah, we do.” He’s like, “You spend all this time together and y’all come out to eat and you still have something to talk about?” And he’s like, “I wish I knew how to do that. I wish I had that with my wife.” And this is not the first time that people have said, when we go to places, and we always become regulars, we’re very boring individuals. We find a restaurant and it will be the only restaurant we go to. We go to Vegas, we go to one pool, we go to one bed. We’re very routine. And people consistently come up to us and just witnessing the way that we look at each other and how we can hold conversation, they often comment, “There has to be something special going on there.”

Chris Crabtree:

In the early days, thinking back, I mean, it’s already happening. And we had basically just met and, I mean, for me, it was cool to talk to someone who was really, I think, curious about the world in a way that I could see she was working on figuring it out, how to think better about herself. And I don’t know. I mean, and we talked about a lot of random stuff too. But what really attracted me was I just saw in her someone who was interested in her own thinking. And always looking for those ideas that could propel her forward, I guess. And it wasn’t that cut and dry. It wasn’t like-

Kathy:

No, no. I think it’s really interesting that the initial connection that you all had was as much emotional as it was anything else. And I think that’s important for our girls to hear and [crosstalk 00:10:10] listeners to hear.

Chris Crabtree:

Y’all might not know this about Corinne, but she’s also really good at giving advice. And she was giving me some advice on different things and I gave her advice on things. And it was productive.

Corinne Crabtree:

Yeah. And one thing that’s probably super consistent with me is I’ve always felt like I had a voice. I’ve always felt like I could say things to people and I just never held back. If I had an opinion, I was just like, “Let me tell you my opinion.” I just always figured what the worst that’s going to happen? They just don’t take my advice? But I’m going to give it. And with Chris, he was, when we first started talking, he was dating this chick who was just not nice to him. And I remember that night and the guy that I was dating was actually there and I remember looking at him and just saying, “That is some bullshit. You should just break up with her. If she’s going to act that way, you don’t need that in your life.”

Corinne Crabtree:

And I was like questioning him like, “Why would you keep somebody like this around?” And it was coming out. I don’t think that it was he was afraid he would never meet someone. But he was kind of just hanging onto it because I don’t think he really knew how to let it go. I think he really liked her. And I just remember that conversation and what’s so funny is the guy I was dating pulled him aside later and apologized for me and my opinion. And Chris said, “Don’t apologize. I think I needed to hear it.”

Chris Crabtree:

And that also happened a few times. We would be conversing and then after the fact, somehow that was embarrassing for him.

Corinne Crabtree:

Needless to say, that guy didn’t work out. And the funny part about that story is… So Chris and I, it was getting really clear that we liked each other, like liked each other. And getting emails from Chris each day with his little random jokes and just whatever was the highlight of my day. And he broke up with his person. And then he had decided that… This meant a lot to me but this one week he had decided he just wasn’t going to be able to hang out with me anymore because he didn’t want to be that asshole that took someone’s woman.

Corinne Crabtree:

And a week later, he’s texting my best friend saying, “I really need to have dinner with you and Corinne. I need to talk to her.” And on that date, he just said, “I will never be the other guy, but if you ever break up with him, I want to go out with you. And I just want you to know that.” And three days later… Chris, first of all, what was the name of the book. I was going out of town on Monday, I was flying out to… I think I was going to Massachusetts or something. And he brought me a gift.

Chris Crabtree:

How To Dump A Guy.

Kathy:

Very subtle.

Chris Crabtree:

Sort of the no BS handbook on how to do it. You don’t leave doubt, you don’t think you still have a shot. You just-

Corinne Crabtree:

It’s clear.

Chris Crabtree:

It’s a clean kill.

Corinne Crabtree:

Yeah. Basically.

Kathy:

A clean kill. Wow.

Corinne Crabtree:

Yeah. And I read it on the plane and on Tuesday I called that guy and I made it super clear that we were done. And then he and I went out on Friday. And I knew that that was it. He’s the one. I could just tell.

Kathy:

So back to the theme of Chris has loved me at every size. You weighed 225. You were a little bit of a hot mess, you were sort of opinionated. But Chris knew you were the one. It took you a minute but you figured it out too.

Chris Crabtree:

Yes. That’s true.

Corinne Crabtree:

It took him six weeks. It took me one date. Six weeks later, Chris was like, “I’m all in.”

Chris Crabtree:

I’m more analytical. I like to collect more data before I go ahead.

Corinne Crabtree:

Yeah, I’m just reactionary. I’m like, “Let’s go.”

Kathy:

Okay. All right. So then your relationship begins to develop. And it seems like you told me once upon a time he would send you flowers, you’d get little things, what was it? Every day he would send something.

Corinne Crabtree:

Every week he sent me flowers for like six months, the first six months of our relationship.

Chris Crabtree:

And never again.

Kathy:

So I want to know what you were thinking about all of that? Were you thinking, “Of course he’s sending me flowers. Of course I’m this great person”? Or were you thinking, “I’m not sure this is real”? Tell me-

Corinne Crabtree:

It was a lot of disbelief. When I finally told my mother that I was actually dating Chris because they worked in the same department and my mother hated him. She just spit his… She was like… what is it? The Italian moms that will spit the name if you mention it or something, that was like what Mamie was doing. So after we dated under the sly for three months, I finally came clean with my mom who I was dating. And she was just like, “Oh god. Everyone’s going to make fun of me.” She was just like, “This is it.”

Corinne Crabtree:

But she was curious. She was like, “What do you even see in him?” Because Chris had a… What I know is that when Chris is in work mode, he’s very serious. He’s always been very driven and he’s very-

Chris Crabtree:

I had a mission.

Corinne Crabtree:

Yes. Back in the day especially. His heart is a little softer in his older age.

Chris Crabtree:

For sure, yeah.

Corinne Crabtree:

But I always got to the see the other side of Chris that no one was seeing. And it was so special to me but I told her, I said, “Momma, every date he’s paid.” To me, I was just shocked. I always dated guys that treated me like crap, expected me to pay. And I would gladly pay to just keep them around and stuff. And he was just treating me so well. And it was culture shock for me. I’d never been with anyone who treated me like Chris did. And so I don’t think it was like hard but I look back on our relationship and we’ve never been ones to fight. I mean, I can count on one hand how many real arguments we’ve had, or maybe two hands. I think we might have had 10. But over the course of the years where we’ve yelled at each other or really gotten pissed.

Corinne Crabtree:

And I think in the first few months, there was a couple times where I was really testing his love to make sure it was real. Overreacting to things and when I look back on it, I can see it was me like making sure this is real for fear that I would get hurt. Like, “If it’s going to blow up, let me blow it up first so I don’t hurt as bad.” And he hung in there like a champ. He was not going to run away [crosstalk 00:17:19]-

Kathy:

Were you testing it because you didn’t know if the connection was real or were you testing it because you didn’t know if it was something that you deserved or did you-

Corinne Crabtree:

No. I knew the connection was real. But I didn’t believe that big girls could be happy in love. I just didn’t think that being overweight, that… I don’t know if it’s that I didn’t deserve love because of my weight. I literally had the thinking that those kinds of relationships don’t happen for us. I mean, I operated under that. I remember in elementary school like writing in my little diary that I just hoped that one day that somebody would love me. But I didn’t think that would ever happen. In my 20s I had decided I would never get married because I was fat. Nobody would ever love me. And I will say this about my 20-something year old, I had decided I’d never marry because I was never going to marry a bad person.

Corinne Crabtree:

I wasn’t going to settle. And I just figured that I was probably never going to get married because good guys didn’t like us. And so I know that it was hard for me in the beginning. I was overcoming that and my body shame. I remember when we were having sex, I practically needed a Xanax the first time we ever had sex because I was so worried he would see my naked as if he couldn’t see that I was overweight but that once I took my clothes off, it’s like, “Now you’re going to really see that I’m not worth it.”

Chris Crabtree:

A lot of the early behavior too is, because you had that belief, it’s almost like you’re looking for evidence that this can’t work. And so things got magnified out of proportion, any little thing. I mean, not anymore, but your go to emotion is usually anger.

Corinne Crabtree:

Yeah, that’s always mine.

Chris Crabtree:

And I think that just was part of that. You were not 100% convinced, at some level.

Corinne Crabtree:

Well and I think one of the things that helped, and I don’t know if you knew this or what but Chris made it like just fucking obvious that he cared about me. Like when he was sending the flowers and doing the things, it’s probably the only reason why we made it. And it’s because he wasn’t going to let me let my disbelief win in this relationship.

Chris Crabtree:

Yeah. Well I don’t know if it was totally conscious but I knew that I had to make sure that if I wanted this to work, that that’s something that I had to work toward. I wanted it to work so I’m going to do what I can do because if you have that belief, it takes consistency to change it. And I have to offer that evidence consistently for you to ever change it. And some of that has not ever changed. I’ve always said… When I say it now, marriage, but marriage is not something you have, it’s something you do. It doesn’t just exist because you bought it. It’s in the garage, I’ll go check on it once in a while. It’s something that you do together. And even then, I mean, I was very tuned into that. So I’m glad it worked.

Corinne Crabtree:

Yeah, me too.

Kathy:

So many things I want to ask now. Go back to you being worried, Corinne being worried about taking her clothes off, right? And she’s, all in her head, “He’s going to see me.” Probably turned the lights off, that’s what I did. All the lights were always off.

Corinne Crabtree:

Oh he lit candles. I was like, “Fuck.”

Kathy:

What was Chris thinking? I mean, seriously, what was going on in your mind? Were you worried about her weight? Were you like, “Oh man, 225”? What were you thinking?

Chris Crabtree:

Oh yeah, well so I had candles in the bedroom. And I also had… just picture before a boxing match, there’s a scale. I’ve got the tape out, I’m measuring for her reach because we’re about to battle. And no, I mean, I knew what she looked like. We’d been hanging out for, at this point…

Corinne Crabtree:

A few months now.

Chris Crabtree:

Yeah. Over the course of a few months. I knew what she looked like. It was not going to be a surprise. And it also was not something… I mean, it didn’t bother me. It never was going to bother me because it doesn’t matter. I mean, we talked about finding reasons why this couldn’t work. As I’m finding reasons to make it work and ways to make it work more, one of the things that I pride myself on, especially in those early days, was I just want you to feel totally comfortable with me. So I have these rules about how do you do that with someone? How do you make it where you always feel safe? And that includes the little things and the big things.

Chris Crabtree:

The little things are like I will… Like you’ve never heard me make a sly comment about anything physical. I’ve never done it. And now you’ve taken things I’ve said as if that was the case. But I’ve never done it. And so I’ve always tried to be conscious of the fact that here’s someone I really care about. She’s probably a little sensitive about her weight. So I’m going to make sure that she feels comfortable with it and safe with me. I’m not going to be the one that’s critical especially if it’s something I know that you’re sensitive about, I’m not going to be critical about it. And if it was a deal breaker, we wouldn’t have gone out in the first place. I wouldn’t have given you the book.

Kathy:

I asked you a question one time about Corinne’s scars on her legs because we had this Q&A going on at camp and some of the members wanted to know, “Well, Chris, what do you think about those scars?” Do you remember what you said?

Chris Crabtree:

I don’t.

Kathy:

You were like, “I don’t think anything about them. It’s just part of her. I love the whole person.” And that’s what I get out of all of this is Corinne is the one with all the body drama, Chris didn’t have any of the body drama.

Chris Crabtree:

Right.

Kathy:

Right?

Chris Crabtree:

Right.

Corinne Crabtree:

Yeah, no.

Chris Crabtree:

That’s for sure true. And I think also it’s… and it doesn’t take this sort of perfect storm of circumstance for this to all come together. I think anyone can kind of get there but you have to do it for yourself with just how you talk to yourself and everything. Which is why I was able to do it, I’ve worked on and have good self talk. And so that gave me, I think, sort of a mental runway to offer that kind of safe place in our relationship.

Corinne Crabtree:

Yeah. I mean, in all the areas of our relationship, one of the things I’ve commented on several times is… And my mom would be the first to agree that her self talk is pretty pfff. And it comes out loud a lot. So I’ve never been modeled belief and, “Yeah, that’s possible.” I’ve just never seen that until I met Chris and he’s a really good example of someone who doesn’t tell you you should do these things or even if it’s from the positive. He has always just been someone who sits back and talks about potential and talks about… Like the way he approaches problems and stuff, he’s always just like, “Yeah, I bet we can do that.”

Corinne Crabtree:

And any time I’ve ever come to him and said, “What do you think? Do you think I could do this?” He’s like, “Of course I think you could. Do you?” He’s always been in that space. And so I think that’s one of the things that’s been nice about our relationship is that he’s always giving me the runway to kind of figure myself out without getting in the way. And I really wanted to mention this because I honestly… like my self talk and stuff is not better because of the things Chris has said or not said. It’s because I have sat and changed it myself.

Corinne Crabtree:

And I don’t want someone who’s listening to this podcast be like, “Well, that’s great. You have a Chris Crabtree and I don’t. My partner doesn’t send me flower. And my partner doesn’t do these things.” For a long time in our relationship, it didn’t matter what he was doing. On my inside, I was not believing it. I was still tearing myself apart, still thinking he must not like my body and stuff. This is the epitome of someone who is telling you and showing you in every single way, “It’s okay, this is amazing, I love you.” And all these things. So I don’t want anybody to sit there and think they need to change their partner or their partner needs to be better for them to be able to be better for themselves. At the end of the day, I did all the work on myself.

Chris Crabtree:

And that’s the way [crosstalk 00:28:01] it has to go.

Kathy:

He couldn’t have done that… Right.

Chris Crabtree:

You can’t change somebody else’s self talk. That’s why it’s self talk. They have to do it.

Corinne Crabtree:

But one of the reasons I do love him is because he is such a genuine man. He’s just a great person all around.

Kathy:

I think the beautiful thing about your relationship is the connection emotionally because that’s really the basis of any relationship. That’s what we teach in No BS is that your relationships are based on what you think about the other person. And it doesn’t matter if they’re tall, short, fat, thin, brown, black, white, whatever. It doesn’t matter. It’s all in what you think about that person. So that’s the connection that the two of you have where what’s beautiful is that Chris was able to model… he was able to love you enough for both of you in the beginning. And then you were able to come along for the ride and work on your own self talk and your own self love. It didn’t happen just because you lost weight. And he didn’t love you just because you lost weight. That was just a change in the way of the world at that time. And I think that’s what’s so important for the listeners to hear.

Chris Crabtree:

Yeah, no, that’s definitely true. The ability to dial in the weight that you want, I always say, that is a pleasant silent side effect of having a good relationship with yourself.

Kathy:

Yes.

Chris Crabtree:

But that’s not really the goal. And I didn’t love her more when that happened. But yeah.

Corinne Crabtree:

Yeah, I don’t know if… I was just sitting there thinking like of all the years we’ve been together, it’ll be 20 years married this November. But I don’t know if I love you more now. I always wonder about that question. I think I love you the same. I think I love you differently. But I love you as much now as I ever did.

Chris Crabtree:

Right. Yeah, I don’t know how to really quantify that either.

Corinne Crabtree:

I do feel more connected to Chris. The older we get-

Chris Crabtree:

We’ve had more shared experiences.

Corinne Crabtree:

Yeah. I do feel way more connected. I feel sometimes we’re starting to become one person, when you can finish each other’s sentences and… Or I know a lot of times what he’s fixing to say.

Chris Crabtree:

That’s true, that’s true. But you still laugh at the jokes so that’s good.

Corinne Crabtree:

Yes.

Chris Crabtree:

That’s very polite of you. The other thing that I think happens is we both have our own interests. We’ve worked together but her self development is very different than mine. Her actual work in the business is very different than mine. And so we get to have these separate experiences that we can then reconnect over and that’s usually what we’re talking about when we go to restaurants is like the stuff that she’s been working on this week that’s interesting to me and vice versa. And I think that’s an element of a healthy relationship too. Like when you were asking about the degree of love, is it more or less or the same? I think it’s the same too but I also think it’s important for a relationship that both people are interested in keeping it interesting.

Corinne Crabtree:

Yeah, for sure.

Kathy:

So interesting. That’s cool. One more question. As you lost weight this last time, Corinne, what was your mindset about your body changing? And then Chris, I want you to tell me what your mindset was about her body changing. Let’s see how different these are.

Corinne Crabtree:

Well, for me, and I’m still on the pursuit, I’ve always wanted to love my body. Like I really want to be proud of it and stuff. And you would think that after you lose all your weight that you just automatically would, it’s always been the one thing that I work on the most to really talk nice to it, to think about it in lush ways and stuff. And I will tell you a huge motivator for me was when I was losing weight was I wanted to be a sexy wife for him. It was just all the things. I know Chris’s tastes and stuff and I’ve always been… I’ve read the five love languages and all that kind of stuff. I’ve always felt like dressing certain ways and stuff, like I do it for myself but I always do it as also a gift to him because he has always loved my body at every size.

Corinne Crabtree:

And the more that I take care of it and the more that I celebrate it and stuff. I always think it just adds to his love tank because the last thing I’ve ever wanted to do is make my emotional health is responsibility. That’s a heavy load for somebody to have to carry. I mean, it’s heavy enough for yourself to carry it but when you ask someone else to be responsible for it, take care of it, to nurture it, to be there on its bad days, it’s hard on a relationship. And I think that sometimes that might be why our relationship is so strong is neither one of us is expecting the other person to make us happy, do things in order for us to feel loved. But I think because we don’t expect it, we gladly do that for the other person.

Corinne Crabtree:

So I think, for me, I mean, I still work on my body image. But there’s days when I can’t get there looking at myself mentally with love, I sometimes think, “Well, what would Chris be thinking right now? He’d be thinking yum, yum, let’s get some.” And that’s easy for me to be like, “Okay.” It’s a good day if your husband is still enamored as fuck with you. So what about you? Did you just like-

Chris Crabtree:

I was just thinking about what you were wearing yesterday.

Corinne Crabtree:

I was dressed pretty cute yesterday with my leather pants.

Chris Crabtree:

That’s right. What was the question?

Kathy:

As Corinne’s body was changing, did you have any thoughts about her body that were changing as well?

Chris Crabtree:

My thoughts about her body were I think I was mostly proud. And it’s not because of the result. I was proud of her for doing that work on herself. And getting her mind right so that she could do that. And it is, like I say, you can self talk right and you can start to make things easier. That’s what I was proud of. I mean, I enjoy reviewing the evidence of that work, sometimes a very close inspection. But my thought wasn’t always enjoying watching her become a more confident, happy person. In the process of all this, she’s gained control over her temper which was legendary there for a while.

Corinne Crabtree:

Legendary.

Chris Crabtree:

But that’s…

Kathy:

Go ahead.

Chris Crabtree:

No, and that’s a big deal. Some people never really examine any of that. And even if they did and they might want to change parts of it, they’re not willing to put forth the work and the self examination it takes to actually change it.

Kathy:

So if Corinne were still 225 and she had done all this work, this self examination and had taken care of that legendary anger and created all of this self confidence-

Corinne Crabtree:

Y’all make me sound like Johnny Cash or something.

Kathy:

She would be just as beautiful and attractive and connected to you as she is today? Is that what I’m hearing you say?

Chris Crabtree:

Oh yeah, for sure, because that’s the magic that we have, isn’t it? And if it wasn’t going to be with her weight, it was going to something else. But becoming that person who can be happy and that you can enjoy your life with, the scale is a convenient measurement but I don’t know how much it really matters, to me. My mindset is, I mean, I enjoy the way she looks now for sure, don’t get me wrong. But I think more importantly, I enjoy just being with her because of the person she’s become and the weight is secondary to that, for sure.

Kathy:

I don’t know about you, Corinne, but I’m a little teary eyed over here. [crosstalk 00:37:42]-

Chris Crabtree:

Oh we can’t end until that happens.

Kathy:

Oh my goodness. You guys, you just really are an amazing example, I’ve told you this I don’t know how many times, of a beautiful relationship and how you care about each other and listen to each other and compliment one another. Good grief, if you were both like Corinne, you’d kill each other. If you were both like Chris, you’d work all the time [crosstalk 00:38:02]. Right. But you have this beautiful way of complimenting one another and I’m sure over 20 years that has only grown and developed and become more of a compliment over time because you’ve invested that into your relationship and Corinne’s weight didn’t have a thing to do with it.

Chris Crabtree:

Right.

Corinne Crabtree:

Yeah. I just enjoy spending time with him. There’s no other human on the earth that I would want to spend more time with. I mean, every minute that I… I’m never bored with Chris. I’m never wishing I was somewhere else. And what’s funny in our relationship is… Now I know Chris wishes he was somewhere else sometimes with me. I could just be curled up in a ball in his lap all day long and be like, “What are we going to talk about next? What are we going to talk about next?”

Corinne Crabtree:

But I think that that’s important. We do enjoy spending a lot of time together. And he is the person I want to be with. But I also separate myself from him a lot because what I know in this relationship he needs most is Chris time, alone time. He likes to have long stretches of uninterrupted time. And part of, I think, what I have appreciated about him is he’s helped me become more resilient with myself where I can be alone, I can genuinely enjoy being with me and not having to be with him. And I think that’s what also is really awesome about our relationship. It’s so funny, it’s like the moment when you don’t have to be with someone is the moment that it’s almost like you end up spending more time together because it’s not a forced thing.

Chris Crabtree:

Right, right, exactly.

Kathy:

That’s all I have. What else? What else do you want to say about your amazing relationship?

Corinne Crabtree:

I don’t know. I think for the listeners, when you’re thinking about your partners the way that I think about Chris is what strengthened me in our relationship is he’s the first person, in a relationship, that I have tried to figure out what can I do for them versus thinking about what they’re not doing for me and I know that that’s not always been true in our relationship but I think that’s where I think I’ve grown the most is not making him so responsible for me. And it’s hard on a relationship when that happens so for any of our listeners, I think that might be something that, when you’ve got a lot of weight to lose, sometimes you don’t even know when you’re doing it. And so for all of our women who want to improve their relationships, start with improving your own relationship with you first because when you do that, you free that person to just love you so much more, so much harder, and without strings. And that’s just beneficial for both people.

Chris Crabtree:

Mm-hmm (affirmative), yeah, I think so too. And when you’re doing something for someone else, it’s a benefit. Paradoxically, you get more of a happiness bump from that than they do. So it’s a good reason to do it because it helps the relationship and you help yourself. And I think with regard to your self relationship, that also applies. Do something good for yourself, have some self compassion and get the benefits from that.

Corinne Crabtree:

And that’s it. So everybody, I hope you enjoyed Mr. Crabtree. The king, as all the No BS women call him, the king to the queen.

Chris Crabtree:

How did that even start?

Corinne Crabtree:

It started with Lori. Lori [Cleary 00:41:59], she’s probably going to listen to this. But for everybody who would like to know how I became the… Sometimes people will write in thinking I’m just so self indulgent and stuff. It’s like, “I didn’t even come up with that fucking nickname.” But my friend, Lori, back in the day, she was one of the original No BS women, she was like one of the first seven. And I don’t remember what was happening but this was like after a year, we’d all been together and she was just like, “You’re just like the queen of weight loss. I’m going to start calling you queenie.” And then for that moment on, everyone has called me queen or queenie. And that’s how it all started. So once that got legendary, and the membership, they started called him the king because what else would you call him? But yeah, that’s how that started. But y’all have a good week. Kathy and I will see you next week.

Corinne Crabtree:

Thank you so much for listening today. Make sure you head on over to nobsfreecourse.com and sign up for my free weight loss training on what you need to know to start losing your weight right now. You’ll also find lots of notes and resources from our past podcasts to help you lose your weight without all the bullshit dieting. I’ll see you next week.