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 Weightloss 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’re ready to figure out weight loss, then let’s go.

Corinne Crabtree:

Hello everyone, I have a very special podcast today. I am going to be sharing with you a recent guest appearance I made on the Not Your Average Runner podcast, with my friend and fellow Master Coach, Jill Angie. Jill, we’ve just been friends for a long time, and we had such a great conversation around a topic that both of us think is important for women who are looking to exercise and add movement into their life and possibly for the very first time. If you don’t know my history, I did not grow up working out, I was the girl that rode the bench in elementary school. When we would have PE, teachers would sit me out because basically the kids did not want to play with me, and the kids did not want me on their teams because I was too overweight.

Corinne Crabtree:

Well, when I started losing weight, one of the things I really wanted to do was become an adult athlete. Now that’s a big, big deal for someone who never played sports. But I was very determined. And over the years, I learned so much about learning how to eat for my athletics, learning how to eat for exercise, and not just eat for emotion. So Jill asked me to be on her podcast because she’s got a great program for women of all sizes and all shapes who want to learn how to become a runner.

Corinne Crabtree:

And inside my own membership, we are having our third Don’t Stop Believing race, where we call it My Race, My Pace, where my members have the opportunity to sign up, to come to Nashville or do it virtually, where they will learn how to run, or walk, or a combination of both, for one hour, two hours or three hours. I didn’t want to do the traditional half marathons and 10Ks and things like that anymore, I really wanted to help my women just learn how to move their body for longer periods of time, so that they could challenge themselves on everything that they believe that they are, and everything that they believe that they aren’t.

Corinne Crabtree:

So Jill and I had this powerful conversation about the four basics of exercise fueling. We talked a lot about how you take the No BS basics of weight loss, and how does that apply to someone who’s going to be moving their body more, moving it more frequently, and moving it in ways that they may have never dreamed possible. So I really hope you enjoy today’s episode, and if you are a No BS woman, make sure you check out our Don’t Stop Believing race. It’s inside the nobswomen.com membership site, you can go to the events tab, you can find out all the information about participating with us virtually or participating with us in person. We have a 12-week training program, we’re doing it as a group. We have mindset coaching, we have nutrition coaching, we have all kinds of things happening for you. So don’t forget to check that out. For the rest of you, please enjoy me and Jill, as we talk about the four basics of exercise fueling.

Jill Angie:

Hey Rebels. Well, as you heard in the intro, I am here with the one and only Corinne Crabtree, and we are here today to talk about the four basics of exercise fueling, and I promise this one is going to rock your world. So Corinne, thank you for joining me today.

Corinne Crabtree:

Well, thank you for having me. And can I just say that this was not completely my idea, this was your brilliance. I never had a four basics of exercise fueling until you’re like, “You got those four basics, do you have anything for exercise?” I was like, “Genius, Jill Angie, let me write something.”

Jill Angie:

Great minds. Great minds. So before we dive into that, I’d love to have you maybe tell folks a little bit about yourself, maybe people who aren’t familiar with you. What’s your backstory?

Corinne Crabtree:

Well, I lost a 100 pounds, after years and years and years of… At the age of nine, I had started putting on weight. I had a single mom who… She didn’t have a lot of money. She’s trying to raise two kids, my mother was 17 when she had me and the ripe old age of 19 by the time my brother came along. She had a high school education. And so we didn’t have a lot of food around. So when I grew up, it was always McDonald’s, Burger King, or KFC on steady repeat. And every now and then, the treat of Hardee’s. Then we moved up to where we could go to buffets. And so we were taught that… I just never ate anything other than fast food. And then I spent my entire growing up eating at buffets, being told, “Eat all you can, because we don’t know where the next meal’s going to come from.”

Corinne Crabtree:

So, by the time I’d gotten into my twenties and thirties, I didn’t like a lot of things other than burgers and French fries and buffets, and I didn’t have a stop button on my eating. And I also was bullied so bad because of my weight all my life, that I had a lot of emotional weight that I carried around. So, I spent twenties and thirties eating to feel better. Eating to fit in, eating because it was free, eating because I didn’t want to waste it. So I did a lot of eating that didn’t have anything to do with why I was actually hungry and what my body needed or wanted.

Corinne Crabtree:

So, when I had a little kid, he was about a year old, and he wanted to play with me one day. And I was laying on my couch at 10:00 AM, and I was so exhausted and so depressed. And I just looked at him and said, “I’m too tired to play.” And it was in that moment that I realized I had to do something different in my life, that I was sitting around eating, and that was the only thing… It wasn’t even making me happy anymore. It was the only thing that kept me from crying all day. It was like the only lifeline I really had. And I just, I cried all day. And by the time my husband came home that night, I just looked at him and said, “I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I’m going to have to figure this out. I can’t keep going like I’m going.”

Corinne Crabtree:

And what was interesting is I knew I wanted to lose weight. I had literally been wanting to lose weight since I was nine-years-old. I remember my first diary entry said, “This is how much I weigh. The boys don’t like me. Everyone thinks I’m fat. I wish I could just lose weight.” That was basically the entry of almost every diary that I had throughout my childhood. But I knew that I didn’t want to lose weight the way I’d always it, which was just like a asshole. I’d always started something so gung-ho, and I would start things from hatred of myself. I would torture myself. I would deprive myself. I would cut out everything I love to eat. And I was not going to do that to myself ever again. And so I just asked a simple question each day, like, “All right, what are you ready to do today? What is something a little bit better that you can do today than you did yesterday?”

Corinne Crabtree:

And so, as I was thinking about getting started, I started with walking. I was the kid that got benched in PE. I remember clearly when I was in the sixth grade, going to PE and the PE teacher to telling me that I was too slow, and too big, and none of the kids wanted to have me on their team, so I had to sit out while they all took PE. And so, I’d never played sports. I had no background in any of that stuff, but for some reason, on that day, I was like, “The one thing I know I could do and I could do it consistently.” And it really wasn’t exciting, but it seemed very doable, was, I thought, a human could walk 15 minutes a day. That doesn’t seem extreme, that doesn’t seem like, for me, it didn’t seem like some kind of ridiculous expectation. I really felt like, even on my worst day, I could convince myself to walk around my house for 15 minutes if I had to.

Corinne Crabtree:

And so I just told my husband, “Tomorrow, I’m going to start walking.” I’m going to go to the gym, because we didn’t live in an area where going out for a walk at night was going to be a good idea. My son, who was one, who wanted to play did not like a stroller. I was going to have to carry him, and I wasn’t in shape to carry him for 15 minutes straight. And so I joined the Y, and I rolled up in there and I walked for 15 minutes, and it killed me. I was so winded by the end, it was really hard. But I walked out really proud that I had basically taken a step in the right direction.

Corinne Crabtree:

And so each night when my husband would come home from work, I would drive to the gym and I would walk for 15 minutes. And then those 15 minutes turned into 20, and I just tinkered with it. But I just kept consistent with a habit. And walking for me was that first habit. Exercise was the foundation for me. I tell people all the time, I don’t teach people to lose weight with exercise, I teach people we’re going to have to drop our emotional eating and stuff and figure that out, and that’s a process and that takes time.

Corinne Crabtree:

But if you ever use exercise as a tool for weight loss, it has nothing to do with burning calories. And that’s been the biggest lie the diet industry has put out. It has everything to do with learning how to make a plan, get excited about it, commit to it, show up when you don’t want to. It’s about challenging the beliefs you have about yourself, doing things that you never thought you could do, like lifting weights to get stronger because you always felt kind of weak in life.

Corinne Crabtree:

I remember when I started lifting weights, and this was a long time after my walks, I felt like I was never a strong person, that I always felt like I let people run over me, I listened to other people’s opinions before my own. And when I started lifting weights, it made sense to me that I was becoming a stronger person, not even just with weights, but even for myself.

Corinne Crabtree:

And so, that’s kind of my story and how exercise was such a key player in my weight loss journey, just in the mental transformation that it played for me.

Jill Angie:

Yeah. Oh, I love that so much, because it really is about respecting your abilities and taking a step, right? Instead of taking all the steps, all at once. Right? It’s like, what is that one thing that I can do that I can count on myself to do? And I love that it was exercise, right? Because…

Corinne Crabtree:

Yeah. Oh, go ahead.

Jill Angie:

Well, I just think exercise is so beneficial to our minds that it helps create the mindset to make additional changes.

Corinne Crabtree:

Yes. And for me it was also a little bit of therapy for me to… I had a really hard time when my son was young. He has autism. He was a high needs child from the get-go. Sweetest boy you’ll ever meet, he’s the kindest soul ever. But God, those first few years. He needed to be carried everywhere, he was very active, he didn’t speak for a long time, so there was a lot of trying to guess what his needs were. It was mentally exhausting for me all day long. And for me, going and being able to take a break calmed my nervous system down all day. Because if you can imagine, when you have a high needs kid, a lot of us, what we do is we… Or at least for me, I started thinking that there was something wrong with me as a mother, and that everybody else seems to be enjoying their kid, and I’m just sitting here miserable all day.

Corinne Crabtree:

And so there was shame happening all day, and stress happening all day, and all these things. And then when my husband would come home, I would go and I would be able to deal with what was going on in my head. I would be able to feel like I was accomplishing a little something, having a little bit of that me time, and calming myself down some.

Corinne Crabtree:

And that was, I think, the turning point in my weight loss, was not that I was exercising, but that I was doing something for myself that I didn’t need to eat. Because up until that point, when my husband would get home, it was time to get down on ice cream, and it was time to get down on all the foods because I needed to calm down. And I finally had a break where I could just eat all I wanted. During the day I would eat, but I would eat when he would get home, because I didn’t have any other way to cope. I didn’t know how to cope. And that’s where exercise became a really… It really wasn’t as much like I was killing it in the gym, it was just like, “I’m going to go here, and this is for me. And this is all about me figuring out my shit.” And that was what was giving me so much peace.

Jill Angie:

Yeah. And once you have that peace, then you can start making decisions about other things without the drama.

Corinne Crabtree:

Oh, gosh, yes. Yes.

Jill Angie:

Right? Without all the drama.

Corinne Crabtree:

I remember the first time that we went to IHOP, we went out to eat, and I’d been walking for a while. And up until this point, when we went out to eat, I ate like I did when I was a kid. Like, “Eat all you can. Don’t waste anything. Find the biggest, cheapest thing on the menu.” I had so much messaging.

Corinne Crabtree:

I remember we went to IHOP once, and because I’d been consistent with my exercise and all this stuff, I wasn’t going in there stressed. I thought, “I think I could just eat these pancakes without some butter.” That was like my level up. I walked out of there thinking that somebody should put a gold medal from the Olympics around my neck, because I had never walked into a restaurant and made a level up from believing I could, I always went to a restaurant and ordered like, “Yeah, I’ll take the salad, keep the chicken, give me fat-free Italian dressing” and then leave angry and feeling punished, but thinking I had to eat that way in order to lose weight.

Corinne Crabtree:

I don’t know, for me, exercise just really helped me believe in myself, and settle down, and think about possibility. And it was like, “How could I challenge myself a little bit today?” It was really a big change, a big, key change for me.

Jill Angie:

Yeah. Yeah. I can agree with that a hundred percent, because I think for me, that’s always what exercise has been for me in my life. It’s a way to say like, “Oh look, look, you did that, you did that amazing thing.” And then I can see possibility for myself elsewhere in my life, and it just sort of snowballs from there. Especially if you’re somebody who grew up thinking you’re not an athletic person, right? For you to reclaim that belief and turn it around to, “Yeah, actually I am somebody who moves my body every day. And oh, wow, actually I can do some really cool stuff.” It’s really life changing. So…

Corinne Crabtree:

Well, I want to say this, this is one of the things I love about you, is that I think we need more people like you out there who are… For years, I wouldn’t exercise because of my size, and my shape, and the other 4,000 do-do thoughts I had about myself. And I think that we need more people out there showing that everybody deserves to be able to exercise and everybody can exercise in some way. I even have clients in my membership who… I have a significant population of women who are 60-plus, and they got busted knees, and arthritis, and some are in wheelchairs, and all kinds of stuff. And we work really hard on showing them the possibility of moving your body no matter how old you are, no matter what size you are, no matter what you’ve been told, your background, even the access you have to things. Just go to YouTube, find a yoga video in your chair.

Corinne Crabtree:

I remember my mother who… She’s always been significantly overweight all her life. And she has… Oh, my poor mother. She’s had a complete shoulder replacement, two brand new knees, one shoulder, the other shoulder needs to be replaced. She has feet that were, when she was born, they were deformed. And so she’s never had arches and she had to have a heel formed for her. She just, from the head down, aches and pain almost every day. And carrying around weight for her was excruciating, and very hard for her to move. And I remember the first time that I showed her how to just do some chair yoga, I was like, “Mama? I know you think you can’t do anything, but I think you can do this, and I would love for you to try it so you can feel better.”

Corinne Crabtree:

And over the years, the last two years, she’s lost about a 100 pounds, and she lost it because she was on every med, she was like, “I can’t afford to be on the meds. And I can’t afford to be in this much pain every day anymore.” And so, she just started changing. Only thing she think she did was, she said, “I just stopped eating before I was full. I hadn’t changed a damn thing.” She hasn’t, she’s fried chicken three days a week, at least. My mother is hilarious about her fried chicken. She’s a Southern lady who will never give that up. But she even figured out. “I need to move so I can feel better.” And she had a really good motivation behind it.

Jill Angie:

Oh, I love that. And really, I know for myself, if I go a couple days without exercising, I feel it in my body pretty quickly, right? I’m like, suddenly I start to feel achy. And in the past I think I would’ve called those aches and pains like, “Oh, it sucks getting older.” I’m like, “Oh, no, actually it just sucks when you stop moving.”

Corinne Crabtree:

Yes.

Jill Angie:

And that’s where that comes from. But something specific I want to ask you, because this is something I was originally, when we started talking about doing this podcast, I thought, “Oh, let’s do an episode about how everybody gains weight when they start to train for long distances.” Right? It’s really common that people think, “Oh, I’m going to train for a half marathon, I’m going to burn all these calories”, right? It’s definitely a thought error. I’m going to burn all these calories, I’m going to lose all this weight, and then very often the opposite happens.

Jill Angie:

And that sort of morphed into like, “Well actually, what are some guidelines to eat when you’re training for a half marathon?” But then, just in general. And so then you came up with the four basics of exercise fueling that I think… They’re super simple, just the way you said like, “Okay, when I first started losing weight, I’m just going to walk for 15 minutes a day.” And it’s sort of your brain was like, “Okay, that’s a thing I could do.” There’s no drama in the brain. And so, these four basics that you’ve come up with are so beautifully simple, that I feel like pretty much anybody should be able to do them.

Corinne Crabtree:

Yeah. So, everything I do, I don’t care what it is, from parenting, to how people are going to lose weight, to just how you go about your day, how I plan my day, everything has always got to be simple. I am not a complicated person. I tell people all the time, if it’s hard, I know me. I’m likely to not do it. People always look at me and be like, “You do so many hard things.” I’m like, “I may do things that look hard on the outside, but my process is so simple, that’s why I can do them.”

Jill Angie:

Yeah.

Corinne Crabtree:

Most people can do hard things. It’s just your process is so complicated, and so full of shit in your head about it, that you make it a hard process to get there. So I’m all about the simple, all about it.

Jill Angie:

Yeah. I absolutely love that. It’s like, you don’t need to count all your macros and with all these other things, these basics… Well, why don’t want you go ahead and explain what are the four basics of exercise fueling? Just kind of like, “What is the purpose of this?” And then we’ll talk about them individually.

Corinne Crabtree:

Yeah. So the purpose is to just give you a basic framework that is like, “All right, common sense tells me these are things that I should probably do.” They just make sense, they’re not overly complicated, but most of us need some kind of rules. I tell people all the time, there’s a difference between rules set in shame, and anger, and disappointment, and all this other stuff. And so we tend to complicate things. These are just basic guidelines, basic rules, just to let you know, all right, when I do these things, it’s going to be simpler for me to get it done, and if I start getting off-track, when you have some simple rules, it’s real easy to know when to rein yourself back in.

Corinne Crabtree:

So, I always equate all of my basics, all the different variations of basics that I have, as like, when we are kids, we go to the bowling alley and they put the bumpers down. And when we first start throwing the ball down, it zigzags its way all the way there, and sometimes we even get a strike. We can fuck it up and still get one. And then the older we get and the better we get, eventually we’re throwing the ball down pretty good. And we rarely hit our bumpers. So to me, having some guides is like having those bumpers, and when you first start, you’re banging into them all the time, but they’re there to let you know, you’re about to go in the gutter, get back on track, get back on track. And then eventually, you get to where you just can throw your own ball down the lane pretty good, and you don’t need your bumpers that often, they’re just now happening in the background. But every now and then, when shit hits the fan in life, you’ll hit it, but you’ll be able to guide yourself back. So the first…

Jill Angie:

Fucking love this.

Corinne Crabtree:

I came up with this kid’s bumper thing the other day, I was like, “Why have I never used this analogy?” Everybody has pretty much seen a little kid haul a ball down and watched that… There’s nothing more gratifying to see a six pound ball roll slowly, zigzag pattern, down a bowling lane, and it get a strike. Just goes to show you, you can fuck it up all the way there, and still nail your goal.

Jill Angie:

I know. I feel like this is a life lesson that we should all be tattooing on our forearms. So anyway, all right. Well, let’s talk about the first basic.

Corinne Crabtree:

Yes.

Jill Angie:

I love the first, I love them all, but I especially love the first one. So, tell us all the things.

Corinne Crabtree:

Drink your water. This is the unsung, I think water’s the unsung hero. It’s something that everybody, I think, in health and fitness and all the things, we always talk about water, but we never talk about why it’s really important and what it can do for us. And I think that that’s the important thing, I watch too many people pooh-pooh water all the time. And like, “Oh, drinking water’s not going to be enough.” And “Oh, I don’t even like the taste of it.”

Corinne Crabtree:

And we focus on that part, but when you are exercising especially, you owe it to yourself to get the first nutrient in, and that is always going to be the water, because you’re going to lose a lot of water, and the more water that you lose? Number one, you increase a lot of your cravings to eat because your body, you have to think about it, water is a required nutrient. You can go three days without water and die. You can go 30 days without food before you die. And some people can go even longer than that. That is how Mother Nature, she is like, “If there is one important thing you need, it’s got to be the water.”

Corinne Crabtree:

So when we exercise, we’re losing it. And your body, when it starts not getting enough, it goes into alarm mode. It doesn’t just turn up the volume of like, “Oh, I think you’re wilting, flower.” It’s like, “No! Go find food! Ransack everything! Whatever you do, get something in you, because you’re losing your water.” And so, if you really want to be able to stabilize your hunger cues, and you want to be able to help your body along with understanding what’s going to be required fueling, necessary fueling for your sport? Stay hydrated.

Corinne Crabtree:

The other thing is it also gives you the energy in your workouts. So if you’re working out and you notice that, let’s say you’re starting to train and you’re going to do a 5K. And you notice about two weeks in, you were like, “I started off gung-ho, but now the runs seem to actually be getting a lot harder. I seem to be running out of steam.” It may be that build-up of being chronically dehydrated, and most people just are.

Corinne Crabtree:

And I think the last thing that I think about water when it comes to an athlete is, and can I just say this? I always use the word athlete. A lot of times, beginner exercisers, it’s really hard for them to call themselves an athlete. I know it took me a long time to consider myself an athlete. If you start moving, you need to adopt an athlete mindset. Because you have to start thinking like an athlete in order to power through workouts, to get to your finish lines and stuff. You can’t think like the person who never exercised. You have to think like the athlete, you have to think like the person who takes care of themselves. Athletes don’t sit around and think water’s not important. They’re always trying to get it in.

Corinne Crabtree:

So anyway, when you’re working out, you’re always tearing your muscles down, you’re tearing them down and you’re building them back up. You’re tearing your body down and you’re building it back up. And that’s how we get better, more efficient, do the things. Water is the required nutrient to do that. It is more important than anything else. So, just make sure that you’re doing it, it will keep you from getting injured. Not a hundred percent, but a lot of injuries come when people are not drinking their water and trying to exercise on dry bones, dry muscles, dry joints. It’s just terrible.

Jill Angie:

And really, the time to start drinking your water is not during your workout. We’re not talking about hydrating when you’re working out, because for sure you should be doing that. We’re talking all the time, right? Before you work out, all day long. You’re just going to feel so much better on your workout if you keep yourself in a hydrated state.

Corinne Crabtree:

Yes.

Jill Angie:

The other thing that I wanted to add, because this is, from the perspective of my clients, it’s winter now when we’re recording this, and a lot of folks are like, “Oh, well, it’s cold outside and I’m not sweating very much, so I probably don’t need to replace as much water.” And it’s like, just because you can’t feel the moisture on your skin, right, doesn’t mean it’s not leaving your body, it’s just evaporating into the super dry air. So I think it’s just as important, maybe even more so, to pay attention to your hydration and your rehydration when it’s cold outside, because you can kind of trick yourself into thinking, well, because I don’t feel too sweaty, I probably didn’t lose a lot of liquid.

Corinne Crabtree:

That is so funny you said that, because my husband is… If you came to our house, you would think something’s wrong with these people. We have humidifiers all over the house. They’re the cold air versions?

Jill Angie:

Yeah.

Corinne Crabtree:

And I mean, they’re everywhere. My husband’s real funny about, he does not like dry air. And so for a couple of days he wasn’t feeling good, he wasn’t refilling them. And I was telling him, this was just one night this week, I said, “I don’t know what’s going on.” I was like, “But I have been so thirsty today, and I’m barely peeing, and I can’t even get my Oura Ring off.” And he was like, “Oh yeah, I didn’t run the humidifiers for a couple of days.” And I was like, what the fuck does that have to do with anything? I was just like, what? And he said, “Well, you’re losing like, a hundred ounces of water a day.” He said, “If you didn’t drink extra and stuff, of course you’re like, blah, blah.” And I said, “Damn, Spoony, you know way more about this than even I do.” That was new news to me that when the air was dry, that I was…

Corinne Crabtree:

And I know this sounds crazy, but I live in the South. I always equate everything to humid-ass conditions, you know? We sweat in the summer. And so I was just sitting there thinking, “Oh, okay, well…” And I literally could not get my Ring off. And I kept drinking and drinking, and I kept thinking, “I can’t believe I don’t have to pee today. I just haven’t hardly gone to the bathroom.” But it was because I had not been upping, and then I got behind. We do lose a lot more, we lose, I think he said a hundred ounces a day through evaporation of our skin? And we lose it in ways that we’re not consciously aware of.

Jill Angie:

Yes, exactly. Exactly. So it’s not just like, “Oh, I’m super sweaty after that workout.” It’s like, that’s just a proverbial drop in the bucket to what you lose during the day. And I think it’s so funny, so I’m in my office right now and our Peloton is in this room. And it’s a pretty small room, and if you’re in here riding the Peloton with the door shut and somebody comes in, they walk in, they’re like, “Who turned on the humidity?” And it’s just because so much of the water that’s in your body has left your body and is now hanging out in the air, and it’s really noticeable.

Jill Angie:

So yeah. So those are things that I think we kind of forget sometimes with water. But water’s my favorite. And what are some ways… Like, for example, I don’t drink caffeinated coffee, I only drink decaf because caffeine, once I hit menopause, that was it for me and caffeine. We do not work well together. But I love coffee, so I drink decaf coffee, and I count that as water, because I’m like, “Well, it’s just basically like hot bean water at that point.” But what do you count as…

Corinne Crabtree:

Hot bean water. That sounds delicious, Jill.

Jill Angie:

It’s delightful. What do you count as water when you’re thinking about hydration? Especially for the people that are like, “Oh, water sucks. I hate the taste.” What are some options?

Corinne Crabtree:

I am just not going to be a big prude about… I mean, look, if you do not like artificial sweeteners and stuff, then I applaud you. Don’t put that shit in your water, and be on it. But for me? I’ve always flavored my water. I just do. I like it. I’ve been drinking flavored water for 15 years now and I’m not stopping. So I just tell people all the time, whatever you got to do to get it down, get it down. If you want to use just fruit to naturally do it, you can go to Pinterest, you can find a bajillion different versions of flavored spa-like waters and stuff. There’s so much you can do to water naturally to make it taste better.

Corinne Crabtree:

I personally, I like to use an electrolyte blend. I drink Xtend all day. I take, well, you can’t see us, podcast listeners, but Jill can see me because we’re looking at each other. I take a bottle of water, the big old liter version, and I put a half of a serving of Xtend in that and shake it up, and I drink three of those a day. It’s X-T-E-N-D. I’m not endorsing them, but I have been drinking, and I drink grape, because that will be the next question everybody will be writing in to Jill about, like, “What flavor does she drink?” It’s grape. I drink grape. But there’s a lot of other flavors that taste good. I just happen to drink that one because I started drinking it a long time ago and enjoy it. If you want to flavor it, that’s fine with me. I agree with you on… I drink coffee in the morning. I always drink two cups of coffee every single morning. In fact, you’re breaking my heart, I’m about perimenopause now, I’m like, “If I’m going to have to give up my coffee, Jill, we’re going to have problems.”

Jill Angie:

You’ll be okay. I haven’t heard of too many people that this happened to. I found that the caffeine triggered hot flashes. And I was like, “I’m not down with the hot flashes.” I should give it a try because I don’t get hot flashes anymore, so I could probably… It’s been a few years, so I could probably start drinking it. But the reason I say decaf is just because caffeine’s a diuretic, and so that causes you to flush out water.

Corinne Crabtree:

Yes.

Jill Angie:

So 10 cups of coffee is probably not…

Corinne Crabtree:

It’s a no. Yeah, no. I always tell my people, if they want to count one caffeinated beverage a day? That’s fine. I’m like, just go ahead and go with that. But after that, you cannot count those. Because of its diuretic effect, I wouldn’t count them.

Jill Angie:

Yeah.

Corinne Crabtree:

I also tell people I really wouldn’t count diet sodas as much. I think that they also don’t hydrate you as well. But there are really good carbonated fizzy waters. My best friend in the entire world, she happens to be an elite Ironman athlete. She’s impressive, just, that’s the best word I can come up with, is impressive. And every quarter we have a girl’s trip. We always have to go someplace to make sure that she gets her fizzy Deer Parks, because she loves them. She can’t function without them. We either get those or those little Bublys, she loves those too. And you’ll see her, because she is an athlete, a really good one, you’ll never see her not… I always love it when she’s like, “I think I’m dehydrated” and she’s on her 400th bottle of water for the day. And I’m like, “Oh my God, are you serious, Jane?” And she’s like, “Oh yeah, I can just… I can taste it.”

Jill Angie:

That’s so funny. I love that. And just, last question about this. How much water do you think is the right amount? Because I know people are going to say, “Well, how much should I be drinking?”

Corinne Crabtree:

Well…

Jill Angie:

So do you have a starting point for people?

Corinne Crabtree:

Yeah, there’s always the basic 64 ounces. At least get there. As you exercise, you do need to add in more. The rule that I always give people that tends to be the simplest, and this is just me, because I always… The way I teach weight loss, the way I teach exercise, the way I teach everything is get in tune with what your body’s signals are. I always feel like our body is always going to guide us in the right direction. What society says, and Google says, and our best friend says, and social media says? Not always the best indicator of where we should go in life.

Corinne Crabtree:

But your body? It is designed to be your best friend. The good Lord didn’t give you a body to be like, “Worst enemy, coming in.” I always say there’s one thing in the world that unconditionally loves you. And that is your body. And if you look at your body, let’s say you want to sit in a chair for the rest of your life and do jack shit nothing? Your body will love you so much, it will deform its spine to accommodate anything you want to do. It’s just like, “I will sacrifice myself to fit whatever lifestyle you want to live.”

Corinne Crabtree:

So with water, if you’ll watch your urine, as long as it’s a pale yellow, you’re doing great. So I always, like right now, I’m training for a half marathon. I haven’t done a half marathon in a few years. I did a 10 miler last year. And this year I wanted to do a half here in Nashville, I’ve done this race seven or eight times now and I just, I don’t know. There’s just something special about it. And as I’m working out more, to accommodate training, I’m watching my urine to see if the color is staying pale yellow. If it starts to darken, I know I need to up my water intake. To me, the best measure will always be what your body’s trying to tell you.

Jill Angie:

Yeah. Perfect. I love that. All right. What’s number two?

Corinne Crabtree:

Sleep!

Jill Angie:

Basic number two. Sleep.

Corinne Crabtree:

Sleep. But to me, it’s my favorite. I can get behind getting some sleep.

Jill Angie:

I fucking love sleep.

Corinne Crabtree:

Oh, me too, man. It’s a love affair. We were in bed last night, I was asleep at 7:45. I woke up at nine to go to the bathroom, thought I’d slept all night. And my husband was still awake, and I was like, “What time is it?” He said, “Nine.” I was like, “Nine? We’ve just gotten started!” That’s kind of good news.

Corinne Crabtree:

So sleep is very similar to water. They share a lot of characteristics. Your body needs sleep, it does not like being sleep deprived. When it’s deprived of that nutrient, it will ask for it in other ways. So, I know for me when I’m tired, I want to eat more. When I actually need to listen to what’s going on. I need to be sleeping. But my body will say like, “All right, bitch, if you’re not going to give me what I need, I’m going to circumvent the system to try to figure out a way, because you’re going to work today, you want to be up, and you want to spend time with your kid, and all this other stuff. So I’m going to have to figure out a way to give you energy. So I’ll ask for food, when what I really need is more sleep.”

Corinne Crabtree:

So seven to nine hours a night. I know for me, personally, that when I start training, seven hours when I’m just doing 30, 45 minute workouts a day… My average workout, especially in the summer, is a walk. I love walking. I like to listen to podcasts and stuff. And I like to be able to spend time with myself. So I do a lot of walking, more in the summer. This time of the year, if I have a race or something, I’m doing more running, and I would call it weights and higher intensity workouts. I need more about nine. And I start noticing, because I’m either waking up refreshed or I’m waking up tired. So, that’s how I judge it.

Corinne Crabtree:

I also wear the Oura Ring, O-U-R-A. Again, I don’t get anything from these people, I just tell y’all the bullshit of what I like. But I have an Oura Ring and it will tell me, based on my sleep patterns and stuff, it starts telling me how much activity I can do that day, that it recommends. It will tell me all kinds of really good biometrics. And I listen to it. The other day I had a run planned, and I could tell when I woke up, I was tired. I woke up and I thought, “Oh my God, I am so tired this morning.” And I had done my first long run on Saturday, and this was Monday morning. I woke up and I was supposed to run, and I checked my Oura Ring stats, and it was really low. And it said, “Today is a good day to take a mindful break.” And I shit-canned the run. And I rearranged my entire schedule because I was like, “I really want to listen to what my body’s telling me.”

Corinne Crabtree:

So when you start upping intensity, you also are going to probably need to prioritize getting a little bit more rest. It helps you repair your muscles, again, you’re working out, you’re breaking things down, you’re tearing things up. The magic happens when you sleep, in your muscles and in your joints. That is when your body works really hard to make sure that it can keep you going when you get up.

Corinne Crabtree:

The other thing that it does is it is where gains are made. So if you are trying to… Maybe you want to get a little faster, or you want to be able to take your intervals from 30 seconds of running and one minute of walking, maybe you want to get to where you’re 45 seconds of running and one minute of walking. Being able to get good rest and recovery is where you can make those types of gains. So you just have to think about sleep that way.

Jill Angie:

Yeah. Well, and I think it’s especially important too if you are doing a lot of strength training, because that can seem like… A run takes a long time, if you’re training for half marathon, you’ve got these long runs or whatever. And for sure, sleep is going to help you recover from that. But I think sometimes we forget that something like strength training, where you’re lifting heavy things and you’re like, “Why am I not getting any stronger?” You can look at your sleep and say like, “Oh, well, I’m not sleeping very well, so my muscles aren’t having time to repair.”

Corinne Crabtree:

Exactly.

Jill Angie:

So I just read this book… Oh, and the author’s name is totally going to escape me, but it’s called… Is it Why We Sleep or How We Sleep? I think it’s Why We Sleep. And it’s a whole book about all the details of what sleep does for us. It’s absolutely fascinating. And he talks in that book about how important sleep is for making new memories, and just taking whatever your body went through, and your mind went through in the day and processing that.

Jill Angie:

And so I think with exercise and with weight loss and so forth, yes, it’s what we’re doing to our body, we definitely need to repair that through sleep. But also being able to process what we learned about our body, and deal with the thinking that’s been coming up throughout the day. I think sleep is super important for the mental aspect of it too, so that you can come back refreshed and maybe drama-free the next day. If you had a hard run, and maybe it sucked, and you’ve got a lot of thoughts about it, getting that good night’s sleep can help you reframe that as well.

Corinne Crabtree:

One thing I actually… I don’t know the podcast, I just listened to this. Literally, I listen to so many podcasts every single day, but it was either in the last day or two. It was talking about when you sleep, that your mind, it’s almost like it tidies up your brain. It says like, “All right, these are the beliefs we want, these…” It’s just kind of going through there and cataloging everything that it absorbed all day long. And when you wake up first thing in the morning, that first hour, your conscious brain is on the highest alert that it will be all day long. That first hour is when it is going to be its best at creativity, its best at problem solving, its best at all those things. And unfortunately, what most of us do is we get up, and we check email, check social, check the news.

Corinne Crabtree:

And what we do is we put in the most anxiety-driven type things into our conscious mind first. So, just like for all of you, I have had to practice for a long time the way that I structure my mornings is, I always wake up, first of all, it’s that coffee, Jill, just got to say, my hot bean water has to go down first. But I always journal and plan my day first. And when I journal, I’m not journaling the shitshow of my life, I’m always like, “This is how I want to think today, this is what I want to accomplish today, here’s what I’m looking forward to today, here’s what I’m grateful for today.” I do a lot of that.

Corinne Crabtree:

And then I exercise. Because that is the opportunity of the day when, I’ve just noticed that when I… And not everybody can do this. So I spent years having to exercise in the evenings. My son woke up at like, 5:00 AM for most of his life, and he would not go to a childcare. So I get all the mamas out there that are like, “I don’t have that. I can’t do that.” But in the mornings, if you think about it, you’re more primed with your brain after sleep to be able to utilize the conscious brain that can override the desire to shit out on a rep or a set, to cut a run short for 10 minutes, to do those things. It’s your brain’s highest opportunity of time to challenge you, to teach you that you can do things when you don’t want to. So it’s just something…

Jill Angie:

Well, that’s the time of day that it’s going to be the tidiest and the cleanest.

Corinne Crabtree:

Yes.

Jill Angie:

It’s like walking into that perfectly clean kitchen, and you know that the rest of the day, it’s not going to look like that, but that first moment when you’re making your coffee and everything’s put away…

Corinne Crabtree:

It’s like, this is the gold…

Jill Angie:

… you’re like, this is amazing.

Corinne Crabtree:

This is the golden hour, right here.

Jill Angie:

Right, exactly. Exactly. Oh, I love that. Yeah. So sleep, it’s not just… It’s just… I’m losing the words to describe it, but I feel like, for me, sleep impacts every single aspect of my life. Physical, mental, if I’m not getting enough sleep, everything goes to shit real fast.

Corinne Crabtree:

Exactly. Well, [crosstalk 00:46:00].

Jill Angie:

Especially postmenopause, oh my goodness. It’s crazy.

Corinne Crabtree:

Well, it’s a mood regulator. For everybody that has… I’ve been around the rodeo with the depression. I attempted to take my life at 17. The first time I was diagnosed with depression, clinically was… I think I was 14? I got a long story about that, we won’t get into it today. But I know for me, I can’t emotionally afford to not give myself sleep. It’s tough. That was one of the reasons why the other biggest bout of depression that I had was that first year of my child’s life. He didn’t even sleep through the night until he was 18-months-old. Up until 18-months-old, we were up five times a night with him. It was really rough, and emotionally hard, and I was hanging on by a thread.

Corinne Crabtree:

And I learned through that, that I would never be the kind of person that acted like sleep wasn’t important. Even building a business and doing the things that I’ve done, I have always said there has to be a cut-off, you have to get sleep. Even as much as I like to train and stuff, I’ve had periods where I did all kinds of, like, Tough Mudders, and four-day Ultra events. I have done all the things. And even during those times, I would make sure that I got sleep before I got in the workout. Because I knew that I could not burn the candle on both ends and it not be detrimental to my mental health.

Corinne Crabtree:

So I think it’s really important for all of us that have struggled with depression and different things to… We have to take care of ourselves. We just have to figure out, somewhere deep down, we are very responsible for taking care of ourselves, and we almost have to be unapologetic about it to the rest of the world. Because if we are not, ain’t nobody else going to prioritize us.

Jill Angie:

Exactly.

Corinne Crabtree:

We got to do it, you know?

Jill Angie:

And I love that you said that, because I know for myself, taking care of myself sleep-wise means I go to bed a lot earlier than most people. And they’re all like, “Oh, party pooper” or whatever. And I’m like, “Hey, this is how I’m going to take care of myself.” It’s so much more important for me to get a good night’s sleep than it is to stay up late and watch another episode of whatever fucking show I’m watching on Netflix, right? That’s the beauty of Netflix, it’s always going to be there. So for me, sleep is 100% that first priority. And yeah, people sometimes get awkward about it, and I’m like, “Oh well.” I’m the one living in my body, so.

Corinne Crabtree:

Yeah. I’m very proud to be a grandma at 47.

Jill Angie:

Exactly.

Corinne Crabtree:

My grandmas, they always come to me and they’re like, “You’re just like one of us.” My 60 and 70-year-olds are like, “We just love you. You go to bed at 7:30.” And it’s just like, “I’m telling you, I’m ready. I’m ready for this lifestyle.”

Jill Angie:

Yeah. So awesome, I love that. Okay, well let’s talk about number three, because this is where I think a lot of folks struggle, right?

Corinne Crabtree:

Yeah.

Jill Angie:

I don’t think we’re going to have anybody going, “No, water’s not important.” Or, “No, sleep’s not important.” Everybody’s going to agree with that. But number three, I think, will be where people are like, “Oh, okay. But how do I do that?”

Corinne Crabtree:

Yeah. So in Weightloss, I teach it as doable hunger, and I really do think it applies here too. One of the things that I learned through exercise was I had to get really good at listening to what my body needed, and to fuel it for that. Which sometimes meant that when I wanted to emotionally eat, I had to decide what was more important, my emotional whim right now, or making sure that I was getting the right nutrients so that I could feel good when I go to the gym or whatever. So, the basic of it is you’re just going to eat when you’re hungry, so you’re going to wait for your body to say, “I’m hungry.”

Corinne Crabtree:

Now. People who have had diet trauma, let me just give you my spiel on this. You have been poorly messaged your entire life about what hunger is. A lot of us have done traumatizing diets where it’s like, here’s a pill, and here’s your 500 calories a day, and this is what you get, and can you just do this for six months? And all your ails will be cured. We have had experiences where we think when somebody says, “wait until you’re hungry”, our brain automatically gets triggered to think we’re now going to be deprived. And now we’re going to be like starving and stuff. I am not talking about you needing to eat your arm off before you’re allowed to eat. It’s more about for athletes, understanding how to wait until their body starts whispering hunger.

Corinne Crabtree:

So I want you to think about, there’s a difference between your body screaming, begging, crying, and demanding like a tantrum, like a child having a tantrum to eat. And then there’s your body saying like, “Hey, I think it’s time. It seems like we just need something.” So the more that you exercise and stuff, you may notice the whispers coming more frequently and stuff. The goal isn’t to delay hunger all the time and to over question it. I just always tell people, if you think you’re hungry, like if anything, even if it’s just a thought that enters your brain, just ask yourself, “What in my body is telling me that I am?”

Corinne Crabtree:

So that’s the first line of defense, to kind of get to know your own body. The second part of it is you stop when you’ve had enough, we’re not eating until we’re full. And I think for athletes and exercisers, this is important. There’s nothing worse than trying to train when you’re bloated and stuffed, it’s terrible. You will be sluggish. So I always have been able to perform a lot better when I am eating right below full, which means it’s very safe. It means I’m going to get plenty of food that’s going to sustain me for a few hours. It’s enough to power me through workouts. It may not be as much as I would love to eat because I’ve had a shitty day, but it’s definitely enough for my body to feel like this is a great amount for us to eat, and to get quality sleep so you can wake up in the morning and do that run you said you would do. That’s where we want to really start turning on athlete’s mindset when it comes to hunger, and how much you eat.

Corinne Crabtree:

And when you’re working out, the demands are going to change. But what doesn’t change is your body signaling you. It wants to talk to you, but when you are training, it talks to you in new ways. So if you’re not training and you’re just like… Most of my clients, they’re in the “I’m trying to lose my weight”, that kind of thing. I would just say, it’s almost more clear, you don’t have these extra demands asking for more food. When you start training, there are some nuances that start to happen. There’s increased energy demand, which means you probably need to put more food in. I know at least I do. I think everybody needs to, but you have to listen for it and you have to separate out as, “Do I actually need more fuel because my body’s telling me? Or am I wanting more fuel, because I feel like I deserve it? I worked hard. I did so many miles, this’ll be fun.”

Corinne Crabtree:

So there’s the emotional wanting, and then there’s the physical wanting. So, the most important thing is just to think about what is my body telling me before the workout, during the workout, after the workout. Hours after the workout. Later in the day. And it can change. So you and I were talking before, my body is different than Jill’s body. So I’ll let Jill talk to her experiences on wanting to eat, her body gets over-hungry. My body always gets under-hungry the first day. If I do a hard workout, it suppresses my appetite. I’m almost nauseous. The last time I did a really long run, for like, six hours, I was a little nauseous all day, I couldn’t even think about putting food in. I ate dinner. The next day, my cat walked by, and I wanted to snack on his ass. All the hunger came in.

Corinne Crabtree:

So for me, I’ve gotten to know my body. And what I’ve really figured out is I’ve got to plan for bland, palatable foods that I can eat on the day of a longer run, on the day of a heavy, intense workout, because otherwise I set myself up the next day to have all the hunger. And I also set myself up the next day to be under-fueled, and to be more tired, and all kinds of things. So I think it’s just a lot of, it’s like anything, it’s are you going to be willing to listen? Or are you going to have a lot of just, “I have all these rules I’ve read in the 4,001 Runner’s World articles that I’ve read, and all the Google searches I’ve done. Now I’m confused, and I’m listening to nothing other than my, I’m scared I’m going to fuck all this up, so now I’m just going to eat.” You know?

Jill Angie:

Yeah. So, I think that’s so true what you said about… So when I’m done working out, I’m usually, especially if it’s a really long run, I’m like, “Okay, I want all the… Bring on the pizza, bring it all on.” And then I overeat and then I feel sick. That’s how I used to do it, I don’t really do that anymore. But I also think that, and this touches a little bit on basic number four, but trusting your hunger and trusting your body’s signals, but also knowing that, for example, if you’re training for a half marathon, if you wait during the actual race until you’re hungry to eat, you’re going to bonk, right?

Corinne Crabtree:

Exactly.

Jill Angie:

And so I think also learning, I usually plan ahead that, “Okay, I’m going to eat before I get hungry, even though I don’t want it, but I might start eating around mile two and have a couple bites here and there throughout a race so that I don’t end up…”

Corinne Crabtree:

Exactly.

Jill Angie:

So that’s one way that you can actually handle that. But yeah, it’s got to be food that isn’t gross, right, that’s going to taste okay, and that takes a lot of experimentation. And so I think you have to be willing to make a lot of mistakes and fuck it up, and then just really be paying attention without judgment and say, “Okay, now I recognize what that signal is at mile two or mile three, that actually is my body saying, I need some food now, even though it doesn’t feel like traditional hunger.”

Corinne Crabtree:

Exactly.

Jill Angie:

Like you said, the way your body talks to you is going to change when you’re doing all these different things.

Corinne Crabtree:

I think that that is really key, because you have to think about, the majority of your life your body is speaking one language. It’s like, we’re just going through life, and we’re doing life, and this is what hunger is for you. And it’s just like, this is the language that we have. When you decide to start exercising, and you’ve never been into exercise before, and you start training if you want to do races, you want to go and start doing 10Ks and half marathons and stuff, it’s like learning a brand new language. It’s not that you can’t communicate, but it takes some time. And you’re not going to know every word right out the gate. It’s like we’re going to have a very sluggish communication for a little while. I’m going to get some words right, and I’m going to get some words wrong. And my body’s going to say words, I’m like, “I’ve never heard that word before.” You have to think about, it’s a whole new language the two of you’re trying to learn together. And I think it’s just important.

Corinne Crabtree:

And I think it’s also… I always tell people, when you start training for halves and stuff, we’re not using our weight loss mindset anymore. I know your market is not, your people, they’re not trying to lose weight, my people usually are. And I always tell them if you’re going to train for a race or something, that has to be the priority. Your weight loss cannot be the priority. That does not be mean that you just have to throw everything away. We take what we do there and we apply it here, but the priority is keeping your body healthy. The priority now is showing up for your workouts, and hydrating, and fueling.

Corinne Crabtree:

And what I notice on this basic that’s the hardest on the hunger side is when we’ve over dieted all of our lives, we get scared when our body starts asking for more food. We start worrying that we’re going to overeat, and then we get into all this emotional drama, and then we just go into fuck it mode. And we’re just like, “Fuck it, I’m just going to eat things. I’m just going to do this.” That’s not listening to your body either. That’s like listening to your fear. That’s like listening to your anxiety. And that’s like listening to what’s happened in your past.

Corinne Crabtree:

I think it’s just really important, I always tell people, trust that you’re going to learn how to talk with your body, and the two of you are going to… Y’all are not just going to coexist. I always love it when somebody tells me, “I just want to be able to coexist with my body.” And it’s like, yeah, that’s what everybody wants. Everybody wants to relate, let me go find me a roommate that I can just coexist with. It’s like, no! You want to have a wonderful relationship, you want to look forward to being together, you want to enjoy each other’s company. Sometimes y’all don’t talk the way you need to, but you want to know you can get to the other side. And so it’s like with this one, we just have to remember we want to respect what our body’s telling us, we want to honor it. It’s going to take trial and error. Sometimes we’re going to overeat a little bit, and our body will tell us when we’ve overate. And sometimes we’re going to under-eat a little bit, and our body will tell us.

Corinne Crabtree:

We just got to stay open and stay curious about it, and that is kind of where this next basic starts coming in. And that is number four, which is the planning one. Where in Weightloss, I teach people every single day, before your day starts, with that golden hour brain of yours that’s conscious and has the best organization ever, you plan what you’re going to eat for the day based on… So I always teach them, I always say, I want you to plan for your life. If you know you got a stressful day coming up, that’s not the day that we’re going to have a Martha Stewart miracle dinner at night. That is the day that we’re ordering the pizza, and we’re going to figure out how we’re going to order pizza, and we’re going to lose our weight. We’re not going to sit here and try to climb Mount Kilimanjaro because we’re trying to lose weight.

Corinne Crabtree:

So we always plan for our life. Same thing when you’re exercising. Now what you’re going to do is each day, you want to plan your food and you want to plan your exercise every single day with that really intentional, conscious part of your brain, that’s making good, solid decisions for you, that knows the intensity of your workout. It knows the quality of sleep you got the night before, it knows everything about you. And you make a plan based on that. You do not make a plan based on what you think you should be doing, you don’t make a plan based on what your neighbor’s doing, you don’t make a plan based on you’re worried that you can’t lose weight. We don’t make plans from that shit. We make plans from being the person we want to be for the day.

Corinne Crabtree:

And so when you make a plan, you plan the exercise, and it teaches you over time, you start noticing, where were the areas it was easy to follow the plan? Where were the areas the plan didn’t work? I needed more food. I didn’t plan the right foods. I noticed, as much as I do love pizza the night before a long run, I was shitting my pants at mile three. I’d like to not do that anymore, so maybe pizza is not the best fueling option for me. On that night, I have something else, and I save pizza for two days afterward, because that’s when my colon is more receptive to it. We start using… Well in my membership, we’re always talking about our… “Remember that time I shit my pants? Let me tell you about the time I shit my pants” story.

Jill Angie:

We talk about that in my membership as well.

Corinne Crabtree:

It’s like…

Jill Angie:

Runners shit their pants more than anybody I know.

Corinne Crabtree:

I mean, all people shit their pants. I’m just like, I got story after story, and most of the time I wasn’t even running when it happened. I’ve been just driving my car when it’s happened.

Jill Angie:

Right? We need a whole podcast about the unsung epidemic in the United States of people shitting their pants and being afraid to talk about it. Anyway.

Corinne Crabtree:

Well, but it’s one of those things where you just learn, the more you write about it, the more you plan each day, then what you can do, and this is what I want y’all to think about, is we’re not going to look at what didn’t work as if something’s wrong with me. We’re going to look at it as like, “This is good information to know. What I’m planning didn’t work well for my body. So, what do I need to plan next time?” It becomes a learning experience, and then it snowballs. And then, the more you do that, the more you start understanding what food your body likes, what food it doesn’t, the foods that you just want to be able to eat, but your body’s like, “I’m just telling you, it’s a no on certain days. Please don’t try to do 10 burpees and then scarf a donut down. Because the rest of the day, I feel like asswipe.” You know? It’s really being intentional in listening.

Jill Angie:

So I think the planning and then the evaluation of the plan, and like, how did that go? Take notes, and then, incorporate that into future plans. It’s interesting, I’ve always been a morning exerciser, but I started working with my current trainer about a year-and-a-half ago, and she trains in the afternoons in the evenings. And so I have an afternoon spot twice a week, which means I have to plan when I’m going to eat my lunch really carefully, because on Mondays I work out with her at 2:00, on Wednesdays, it’s 3:00 PM. I have tried, trial and error, there are certain things I cannot eat for lunch if I’m expecting to deadlift some serious weight later on that day.

Jill Angie:

And I think for me, I’ve been doing work on my brain for years and years, so for me it was more just writing down, what am I eating? What are the results of my workouts? And just evaluating it without drama, and I got to a place real quickly of, I know exactly when I need to eat and what I need to eat on those days. Whereas I think if I had just been not really planning it, or not really paying attention, of then being annoyed, like, “Oh, I had a smoothie and then I wanted to throw up during my workout, I’m such an idiot.” Right? Just wiping all of that drama out, and just looking at it like a science experiment. And if I tweak this variable, this is the result. And did I like that result? Yes or no. And then going from there. It’s just so much less stressful than, I have to get this right, every workout is important, and if I fuck it up, there’s never going to be another chance. So exhausting to think like that.

Corinne Crabtree:

It is. I always tell people you’re not the problem. The process is.

Jill Angie:

Yes.

Corinne Crabtree:

And when you make you the problem, you’re not working on the process. And when you’re the problem, you almost always will give up on something, because you won’t want to be a problem. It feels like ass to call yourself names, it feels like ass to think that you’re broken, it feels like ass to think you’ll never get it. And what most of us do is rather than tweaking our food plans and continuing to work out, we’re like, “Well, let me just quit making those food plans so I don’t have to feel like a asshole.” It’s like, that’s not a solve! That’s not going to teach you how to evolve fueling yourself. It also is such a disservice to you, because you’re like, “The only way that I can not beat myself up is to now take away everything that triggers me to beat myself up.”

Corinne Crabtree:

I’m like, no! Learn how to talk to yourself nicely! That way you can keep doing things that are going to help you in your life to get you where you want to go. I always tell people, please don’t take away the triggers that beat you up. Take away the beat-up talk. Get real focused on that. We all owe it to ourselves to be kinder, and nicer, and gentler to ourselves. And we’re the only ones that can do it. We’re the only people that have authority over what goes on between our ears.

Jill Angie:

Yeah. It’s literally the only liberty we have on this planet.

Corinne Crabtree:

Pretty much, pretty much.

Jill Angie:

That’s it.

Corinne Crabtree:

I always tell people we don’t have control over anything. We don’t even have control over what we think. We have control over what we allow our brains to keep thinking. So if your brain is always automatically throwing up trash, that’s normal. All of us do it. What’s not normal is believing all of that trash. That is the part we got to stop. That is the part that I want you focused on and to realize… I know your listeners know this, but we got two parts of our brain. We got the automatic part, that literally its sole job is to make sure that we stay safe, and we don’t have to work hard. It’s just trying so hard to make as much of our thinking as automatic as possible.

Corinne Crabtree:

And I always tell people don’t hate on that part of your brain just because it throws shade at you. It’s like, “Bitch, I got a job. I’m over here trying to tell the heart what to do, the lungs what to do, the blood what to do. I got all this stuff going on, and you want me to have good thoughts about you too? Sorry, but I’m not doing that.” It’s like, “If you want that, the other half of your brain is sitting there like a lazy fuck. Turn on your conscious brain. That’s their job, not my job.”

Corinne Crabtree:

So it’s making sure that you understand that just because you have automatic negative thinking, it doesn’t mean something’s wrong with you. You also have this other part of your brain that can come in and say like, “I see you, I understand you, but we’re just not doing that right now. Let’s just redirect over here.” So we all have that power within us. And that is about the only control we really have.

Jill Angie:

Yeah. Agreed. And I think that is really the key to all of these basics as well. When you are thinking with that part of your brain, then you’re thinking with like, “Okay, how can I take the best care of myself?” Well, I’m going to make sure that I’m fully hydrated, I’m going to make sure I get the best quality sleep that I can get. I’m going to be more mindful of what my body’s telling me when I’m exercising with regard to running. And when I’m not exercising, also, to support the exercise. And I’m going to make plans and just evaluate them, instead of being pissed off if they didn’t go as expected.

Corinne Crabtree:

Plan your sleep, plan your hydration, plan your food, and plan your exercise. Plan all of them. The more you plan, you can see what you need to tweak, and you’ll get to where you want to go through that.

Jill Angie:

Yeah. And also, because I make a plan every day and I would probably say I follow about 75% of it. Because there’s always, during the day I’m like, “Oh, all right, well actually that doesn’t make sense. I’m going to do this differently or whatever.” And I always like to think of it about if I’m going to drive somewhere, and I put my address in the GPS, and the GPS gives me this beautiful plan. And then I get halfway there and there’s an accident or a traffic jam, and the GPS is like, “Oh, we got to divert.” And I don’t say, “Well, obviously I should just go home.” I’m like, no.

Corinne Crabtree:

I’m a poor planner [crosstalk 01:10:46].

Jill Angie:

Or “This is where I live now. Right on the side of the road.” Right? Like, no! You just kind of roll with it and move on, and so I like to think of my daily plan the exact same way, like, “Oh, all right, didn’t see that roadblock coming. How am I going to roll with it?” Instead of like, “Oh wow, I’m terrible at planning.” That’s not super helpful to think. Feels like shit.

Corinne Crabtree:

No. We call it, in my membership, we always talk about one of our biggest strengths as a No BS woman is we know how to pivot like a motherfucker.

Jill Angie:

Love that. I’m totally stealing that. Pivot like a motherfucker.

Corinne Crabtree:

Right.

Jill Angie:

It’s good. It’s good stuff. All right. Well, so this has been amazing. I know the folks listening have been able to resonate with a lot of this, and I hope there’s been a lot of aha moments for everyone. Before we close out, is there anything that you would like to… First of all, how can people find you?

Corinne Crabtree:

They can find me at nobsfreecourse.com. So if you do want just a simple, free… Basically I just teach you the basics when it comes to weight loss, in a simple video format, where I’m just going to introduce you, kind of like what I did today, just even simpler. So you can find me there. You can also listen to my podcast, Losing 100 Pounds with Corinne, me and my co-host, so I’ve lost a 100, my co-host has lost 80 pounds, and we didn’t do anything that we don’t tell everybody else. It’s like, keep it simple, keep it basic, keep it real, and you’ll get there. It doesn’t have to be complicated. So those are the two best ways to find me.

Jill Angie:

Also, if you want to see Corinne twerking, go to her Instagram. Because it’s amazing. That video makes me laugh. So I’m just like, that’s goals right there. And what’s your Instagram? Is it corrine_crabtree?

Corinne Crabtree:

Yeah. It’s C-O-R-I-N-N-E_crabtree.

Jill Angie:

I love it.

Corinne Crabtree:

Yeah. It’s…

Jill Angie:

Okay.

Corinne Crabtree:

Yeah. I definitely… It’s very colorful on my Instagram page. It’s sometimes…

Jill Angie:

It’s a happy place.

Corinne Crabtree:

Yes, sometimes it’s all motivation and deep cuts into our psyche stuff, and then every now and then I’m just in my bathing suit twerking, being like, “Yeah, I’m 47, bitches!”

Jill Angie:

It’s good. It’s a good place. So everybody makes sure that you’re following Corinne, sign up for the free course. Check out her podcast. It’s all really, really great stuff. So thank you so much for joining me today, this has been fun.

Corinne Crabtree:

Thank you for having me.

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 podcast. Help you lose your weight without all the bullshit diet advice. I’ll see you next week.