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. Hello everybody. Welcome back. So today I want to talk about a topic that I got from my social media followers. We often post, what do y'all want to hear me talk about? In our Instagram followers asked for something that I have not ever podcasted on, I don't believe, and that is how do you stop listening to all the diet noise around you?  

They get caught up in following people on social media. They get caught up on listening to what their friends say that they're doing. Every time somebody at work does some kind of weird colon blow diet or some kind of detox or does a six week bootcamp, hell, whatever it is, they're wanting to do all the things. So I was thinking about this and I thought, why do we do this? Why do we get so caught up in it? And I think it's because we don't sit and think about what it is that we want for the rest of our life. So when I was losing weight, one of the things that had really cock blocked me for years was I never thought about the kind of relationship I wanted with food. I never really thought about like, well, what kind of eater do I want to be one day?  

Do I want to be the kind of person who can go out and eat spontaneously with their friends when everybody else is having things? Do I want to just eat what they're eating or do I want to be, don't care what everybody else is eating. I really am just choosing based upon what's important to me in the moment, what I most want from me. I never thought about that stuff. What I did do that made me susceptible to what everybody else was doing was I was desperate to lose weight. I mean desperate. And when I was desperate to lose weight, I was willing to try anything, whether it was good for me or not, I was willing to do bullshit. Even if I thought it was like, well, I'm just going to try this, and when I lose X amount of pounds, then I'm going to start eating healthier.  

Then I'm going to make better lifestyle changes, and I bet you have thought that too. I mean, how many times have you thought or started a diet and said, I'm just going to do this until I lose X amount of pounds and then I'm going to figure out my shit. That is a red flag. That is you signing up for failure from the get go. It is a killer mindset because you think that you can just white knuckle you self down some pounds for a few months and then you're going to just start eating normally as if you're just going to be so happy. And so whatever that now that this healthy lifestyle is going to be easy to click into, well, let me say that's never going to happen, and here's why. How you lose weight is the way that you are going to also keep it off.  

So if you are losing weight, you have got to practice habits and behaviors and things that you're going to be doing once the weight is gone. If all you're doing is doing a bunch of shit that's short term so that you can get your feet under you or just for these three weeks or these 30 days or whatever, during that time, you are not practicing how you are going to be a normal eater. And so if that doesn't happen the second, the 30 days are over, the second the three weeks cleanse is over, or the four months of giving up all the carbs, whatever craziness that you institute, the second that's over, you have got to eat in a new way. Well, here's how your brain works. Your brain doesn't just sit and be like, okay, now we're going to figure out our new way and it's going to be seamless and easy because you feel so good about everything.  

No, if that worked, every single one of you would never. You wouldn't be sitting here listening to this going, that sounds like me. So here's what actually happens. Your brain says, okay, well, if we're done with this part of the diet, then I've got to figure out a way to talk to you about food. I've got to figure out a way to be with food, and I'm going to go back to what you used to do because you've got plenty of practice at that. Our brains love habits, our brains love, love, love to do things the way we've always done it, unless we teach our brains how to do it a new way. So when that phase of losing weight ends, you've got two big problems. One, you have no practice at what the new habits are, zero. So you are requiring yourself to lose some weight and then start completely over again, and that is just not easy.  

The second big fatal flaw is that when you first started, you had desperation helping you, your desperation, your rock bottom, your I've had my ass full. I've hit my shit tolerance limit, that's gone. You don't have that. So you have now lost a very painful, powerful motivator to get you to eat in a way that promotes your weight loss. So if you don't have the painful motivation and you have no practice in the new stuff, is it a big wonder why we end up going back to eating the way we did, the way we were eating felt good? In that interim where you're exhausted with trying to white knuckle willpower, make yourself stick to some excruciating diet or workout plan, you're looking for relief. You're like, okay, that phase is finally over. And what do we do when we want relief? Our brain says, oh, I know since you don't have any other way to give yourself relief since you've not been enjoying your new lifestyle, since you don't really like all this, let's go back to what you do.  

Let's just have a couple of donuts and then tomorrow we're going to do so much better. I mean, you've earned it. Look how much weight you've lost. We could just live a little. That is your brain's way of getting you to go back to the way it was eating. So if you don't hear anything today, the first thing is this, is that the reason why you're looking around at everybody else's diet is because you're desperate. And when we're desperate, we will do anything to fix stuff. And when we say, we'll do anything, guess what? Now our brain is hypervigilant looking around at what everybody else is doing. The real answer to this is before you start a diet, you have to train your brain on what to look for. When you are desperate, your brain is just looking for the quickest, easiest way to get you out of pain.  

It does not care if keto Karen says she lost her hair while she was doing keto. You're desperate to lose weight. You override that part. It was like, well, I'll take some pills. I'll take some biotin or something. I won't lose my hair. If your friend Bob is going to some kind of Hell's Kitchen bootcamp every single day of a month, and that's how you're going to lose weight and you know, got a bad knee, you ain't got no time for all that shit, but you're desperate for change, guess what? You'll probably go, but you will drag your ass there every day saying, I hate this, this sucks, this hurts, blah, blah, blah. And when you lose just enough weight, guess what? You start making excuses. You're going to say, eh, I'm not going to go today because my knee hurts. I'm not going to go today because my kids need something.  

And next thing you know, ain't going no more. Hell's Kitchen has been put out with an extinguisher. So when you are desperate, it's real easy to look around and find an override. Your red flags override what you know can't do for a long time. But if you'll sit and you'll think about, here's what I never want to do ever again to lose weight, here are the things I just know. Don't work for me here art late. I can't. For me, when I first started, I was like, Corinne, you can't start off too fast every single time you start off really hard and heavy. The second you make a mistake, you give up. So we are going to start with the smallest of changes so that you can get used to winning so that you can get used to things happening for you, and before you know it, you'll have a little bit of momentum and it will be easier for you to add some stuff in without overwhelming yourself.  

And then I had to teach myself. I also, I can't do anything that's going to require perfectionism because I talk to myself like an asshole. So I need to do stuff that's got some flexibility. I need to do things to lose weight that don't require streaks, that don't require me to eat this, not that. I've got to figure out a way that allows for flexibility so that I am not beating myself up all the time. Because if I beat myself up, I know what's going to happen. I'm going to want ice cream. I'm going to want to make myself feel better with food. I thought a lot about, here are the things I absolutely don't want to do. I thought about here are all the things that I know don't work for me that fizzle out. I, one thing that's good about women is when we've done a lot of diets, guess what?  

We know. We know all the little things that trip us up. So you need to make a list of that stuff that is now your list of here's the shit that I can't be looking for in a diet. If a diet requires some of this stuff, it's probably not going to work for me. Then the other thing that you do is, so make a list of that, then get you a clean sheet of paper. Then I want you to make a list of what if I lost all my weight? This is what I think my life would look like. Here's how I would be eating every day. Here's what it would be like when I'm in social situations with food. Here's what it would be like if I'm pissed and food is around. Here's what it would be like when I'm getting ready in the morning.  

Here's what it would be like when I'm really busy and I can't eat as someone who's lost their weight, here's what I would be like at that next meal. You need to think about that stuff because what ends up happening is something really cool. When you get really clear on what it is you don't want and what it is you do want, then your brain will start filtering out some of this horseshit. The reason why you're noticing all kinds of distractions is simply because you're desperate and you don't have a vision for what you really want. Let me say that again. The reason why all of those distractions pop up and they look appealing and stuff is because you're desperate and you don't have a vision for what you really want. So the question people said is, how do you stop trying to copy other people versus figuring out what you need and what works for you?  

This is how you do it. You have got to sit down with some paper and the very first step is you got to know what it is you don't want, and then you've got to know what it is that you think life will be like, because unless you have those two pieces, you will keep getting distracted. We want to turn on the part of our brain called the reticular activation system, and I've talked about this in the podcast, but I'll review it just one more time. The RAS is simply where your brain has a filtering system. It filters out all the things that you don't need to know at any given moment, and it only allows in the things that it thinks are important to you. So here's how, if you have a functioning RAS, if you go to a party and everybody's talking in the room and you're like in a good conversation with someone, if two or three people down, someone said your name, so let's pretend it's me, and I'm talking to, let's say my best friend Jane.  

If two or three people down said, Corinne, even if I am talking to Jane, what happens? I will pause and say, did somebody just say my name? Because your brain is filtering out the 30 conversations going on around you. You wouldn't be able to tell. I wouldn't be able to tell Jane shit about anything anybody else is talking about. But if someone said my name in the room, I could tell you someone just said my name. That is your RAS. Your RAS knows what's important. And so in order for your brain to stop seeing unimportant stuff and to start seeing what is important, you have to do this kind of stuff. You've got to write down, here's all the things that don't work for me. For me personally, when I first started, I knew that I needed small changes and because if I made a few small changes, I would start feeling better and I needed small changes that were going to be so easy that if I was sad, crying, tired or whatever, I could still do them.  

So what you want to do is you want to be thinking about what is it that you can do even in your worst moments. So for me, it was like, okay, I got to be able to do things when I'm extremely tired. I can't put anything on the list right now that is going to be easy for me to talk myself out of. If it's going to be easy for me to talk myself out of it, I'm not starting there. I am only starting with things that I feel like I could do, and I always give this tip to all my clients, those things. For most people, especially if you're desperate to lose weight, your brain is going to have an automatic triggered thought and it's going to say, you're not good enough. That's not good enough. You should do more. I remember my brain saying that and having a come to Jesus moment with myself and said, I said, Corinne, that is not true.  

What's not good enough? Starting something that's too hard, knowing that you are not in a position right now to do it. Also, what's not good enough is telling yourself that doing small things isn't good enough. I was like, that's the new not good enough. We're going to rebrand this thing. I'm going to remind myself that me making an effort is way better than me sitting there every day eating my face off, hitting my rock bottom over and over and over again. So I had to have that moment. So you just want to make a list. Some other things for me that I knew I didn't want to do in the very beginning, I knew I wasn't going to go to bed without eating ice cream. I'd been doing it for years. That was the only time of day that I felt like I had for me, and in the very beginning, I wasn't ready to give it up.  

I also knew that eating ice cream every night was not something that I was going to be able to do, but I knew for right then. I needed to figure out a way that I could eat ice cream but do it better. And that's when I decided, okay, right now I eat ice cream straight dope out of the carton, and I'm not talking a little small pint of Ben and Jerry's. I bought half gallons or a gallon and I would just sit on the couch and I would eat it until I was either sick or until my spoon hit the bottom. So I made an agreement with myself. It's like, all right, if I'm not ready to give up my ice cream, because I knew that there would hopefully be a day that Corinne didn't need to eat ice cream every night that when I ate ice cream.  

It was because I truly wanted it because I was having dessert because it was like the good stuff. I don't ever remember sitting and eating ice cream back in the day and ever feeling good about it. I mean, it tasted good. It was helping me stop beating myself up or feeling like a big ass failure, but I wasn't sitting there enjoying ice cream. I was escaping my life and I was escaping my mind. And now I can tell you almost every dessert I have had in this last year, not because I'm some kind of weird calorie counter or anything, because I can tell you each one what I had and how delicious it was and how fun it was. That's the relationship with food I wanted. So when I was sitting there, I was like, there's probably going to be a day when I don't need ice cream every night.  

I just want to have ice cream when I'm really going to enjoy it. But right now I can't let it go. That's too much for me. So I've got to figure out what is step one for someone who one day eats ice cream because she enjoys it. So for me, step one was, we're not going to eat out of the carton anymore. You can put as much as you want in a huge fucking bowl. You can even go back and get seconds if you want, but we're going to stop eating out of the carton. And when I did that for a few nights, I realized I didn't need to go back for seconds. I did eat it out of a big bowl, and once I started noticing like, okay, I can make some changes, it was easy for me to then, because momentum was building, momentum comes when you start taking actions.  

So it was easy for me to say, okay, maybe I could just serve myself one scoop less. Let's see how that goes. So it all rooted in, I had to decide what it is I didn't want, where I wasn't going to start, and what kind of relationship with food did I one day want? And I will tell you, during that whole time that I was losing weight, I didn't get tempted to do any bullshit stuff when my friends were doing all kinds of crazy stuff to lose weight, I stayed in my own lane. I didn't feel like I needed to get distracted because I was so aligned with thinking about this is good for me, this works for me. I know what I can do right now, and I know what I'm working towards. My RAS started filtering out all of the distractions. So I really want you to hear this is that if you want to getting distracted by other people's shit, it's easy for, I will tell you, you could look this up and people's like, okay, clean your newsfeed.  

Well, no shit, Sherlock. If you're online and you're constantly getting whiplash because you're looking at every single diet unfollow stuff, I mean, you don't need me to tell you to do that. That's the easy stuff. You can unfollow your friends for a while or you could just put 'em on pause. If somebody in your life comes to you and says, Hey, I'm doing X, Y, Z, just tell them I'm doing this over here. You want to compare in 60 days to see which one worked better. You could do that. Those are the tired ass things that anybody can suggest you do. But this is what I'm not seeing in the diet industry. I am not seeing diets actually talk to women about what it is that's driving all of these behaviors. Why is it that we do get distracted by other diets? Why is it that we are desperate to do bullshit that we know is not good for us?  

And it's because for many of us, no one's teaching us that we need to find things that are going to work for us. No one's asking us to dream and to think about what kind of relationship do you want with food? Who do you want to be in those late nights when you're tired and exhausted? If you want to one day be someone who goes to bed instead of ghost of the pantry, then we have to start working on that. Now we have to start figuring. For me, if you go back to my ice cream story, my step one wasn't to just go to bed because I was so tired at night. My step one was to keep taking care of my emotions with food just in a different way until I could wean myself off the food while I was working on giving myself more rest during the day, figuring out how to ask for help from my husband without shame, without embarrassment, without feeling like a burden, without guilt.  

How was I going to start during the day, cutting myself some slack, not telling myself that I was a bad role model for my child? That I'll be really honest, the first year of Logan's life, I sat every day thinking about how I'd made a mistake. I wasn't cut out to be a mother. I never once sat there and thought about anything that I did right? And I will tell you, I just want to go back and I want to hug. Corinne back then was a tough year. What was one of the hardest years of my life, and I've had some hard ones, and that one was probably the hardest year of my life, and I hung in there. I ate to get through each day so that I could take care of my baby. That is nothing to be ashamed of.  

I just did my best. And then for all of you, I want you thinking about if you don't want those distractions, if you really do want to lose weight in a way that changes your life, if you want to really lose weight in a way where you feel like, this is how I want to be with food. This is the life I want. This is the freedom I want around it. I don't want to be scared of food anymore, and I don't want to feel like there's things that I just can't eat because something's wrong with me. Then we start with first painting the picture of here are the things I'll never do again and order to lose weight. They don't make sense for me. And here are the things that I dream about when it comes to my relationship with myself and with food and my body.  

And we turn on the particular activation system so that we can find the program that's going to be a good practice in becoming the person we want. Because when you lose weight, whatever you do in the beginning, you are establishing the habits. So for me, on my day one when I decided, you know what? I'm not going to eat out of the carton anymore. Here's the habit I was establishing. I started the habit of thinking about how was I going to truly enjoy my food life? How was I going to establish a habit of paying attention to what Corrine most needs in any moment and be willing to give it to her? Because it wasn't easy, not at all to do weight loss in a slow, methodical way. I had only ever done it one way, harsh and fast, big sweeping changes. But I wanted to be someone who one day would look up and say, you know what?  

You really know how to take care of yourself. You know how to think through things. You're not so impulsive anymore. You don't just react with food anymore. You don't just cave anymore because I was practicing from day one being thoughtful, thoughtful around food, and that's what I want for all of you. That's what I teach my women all the time. I always tell 'em, if there's one skill to develop in weight loss, it's this think before you eat. That's it. If I had to boil it all down into one thing, it would be, ladies, we have to develop the habit of thinking before we eat. Not because we're taking foods away from ourselves, but understanding is this the best thing for me? Am I going to give myself a few seconds to collect myself and make a wise choice? I'm going to think before I eat.  

So here's what I want you to do. I would love for you to sit down and paint a picture of what it is that you're like, I draw the line. I don't want to lose weight like this anymore. Here's the things that are a no for me. So that when you see it on social, when you see your friends doing it and stuff, and when they want you to join in, you have something in you that comes up and says, let's think about this. Is this really what you want? Or do you really just want to lose weight? Because there's so many ways to do it and so many ways to do it for yourself, not against yourself. And then I want you to paint the picture of the life you do want, and I want you to give yourself that gift. And if you need help with things like this, because this is where real weight loss happens, it's in these kinds of moments, then you know where to find me. Join no bs.com. Seriously, go to the link in the show notes, join us. I would love to help you lose weight until next week. Have a good one and make your lists. Thank you so much for listening today. Make sure you head on over to no bs recourse.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. I'll see you next week.