You know what makes me crazy? The lie that weightloss has to be some massive, overwhelming life transformation.

It's bullshit. And I should know – I spent years believing it.

When I weighed 250 pounds, I thought the only way to lose weight was to go "all in." Cut the carbs, quit sugar, exercise daily, stick to a perfect plan... and then beat myself up when I couldn't keep up with it all.

Weightloss doesn't feel hard because you're lazy or lack willpower. It's because you're trying to change everything all at once.

I lost my weight when I got out of that cycle. Listen now because I'm sharing:

• How ice cream every night actually helped me lose 100 pounds
• Why a "perfect" diet plan sets you up to fail (and what to do instead)
• A simple shift that made weightloss click for me – even with a crying baby who never slept
• The power of small, "not-good-enough" changes

Listen now to discover how to make weightloss feel easier (without giving up everything you love).

Stop waiting for the perfect moment to transform your entire life. That version of you who can change everything overnight? She's not coming. And you don't need her to lose weight.

Hello everybody. Welcome back. So today I want to just talk about weight loss being hard, how I made it easier on myself because I know that a lot of you struggle with, you want to lose weight really bad, but also you have this other thought that pops up, but it's going to be really hard. So back when I weighed 250 pounds, I get it. I really always thought losing weight is just going to be this big ass thing. It has to be overwhelming. Basically, I got to do a 180 or I'll never lose weight. So I thought if I wanted to see the scale move, I had to go all in. I was going to have to cut out carbs, stop eating sugar, hit the gym every day, stick to my plan perfectly, and then what would happen every single time is I could never do it. 

And it was so frustrating. I mean, I spent from probably the age of 11 all the way up into my early thirties doing every kind of diet, ever known to man or known to woman. And I remember thinking, why can I not get my shit together? How could someone who wants to lose weight so fucking bad dream about it, want it, cry about it, think about it all the time. And yet when it came time to doing it, I either couldn't get started or if I did get started, I was flaming out super fast. So when I decided I was going to lose a hundred pounds, I had to look at my life. I remember sitting on that couch crying my eyes out thinking, I can't keep going like this. Something has to change. And I also remember thinking, I also can't do it like I've always done it. 

I've always felt in the past. So there has to be a reason. And so when I was looking at my life, I realized I had a crying baby who hated strollers. He did not sleep. Logan, I swear to God, it was 18 months before that child slept through the night. And when I say didn't sleep through the night, I mean he woke up five times a night. We did not realize he probably had autism from the get. I just thought I had a baby that didn't sleep. I'm sure he was overstimulated, but I didn't know that stuff. I just thought like, oh my God, this is terrible. And I was tired as fuck. And so I had this life that felt like it was just bursting at the seams that I just couldn't put anything else on myself. So if I was going to lose weight trying to layer a diet on top of all of that, it wasn't going to be just hard. 

It seemed impossible. So if I did try to lose weight every time, I would fail to stick to an extreme plan. So it made sense to myself that I was going to have to do something different. This time I remember trying every diet and then eventually breaking and thinking that I was just lazy, that if I wanted it bad enough, I would making it work. But when I was sitting there considering losing weight, again, it dawned on me, I don't think I'm lazy. I don't think that I don't want, I knew I wanted it bad enough. I want all of you to understand there is a difference between wanting it bad enough and being able to pull the trigger on the things required to get what you want. It's not a lack of want or desire. Most of the time it's a lack of the things that we're going to cover inside this podcast. 

But I remember sitting there thinking, I know I'm not a lazy person either. It's not like I'm eating because I'm lazy. It really made sense to me. I mean, I am someone who, I was always an overachiever when I had jobs, I was always first one in last one out. I was the most reliable. I was the most dependable. I mean, even to this day, I am still that way. Even though I run my own companies, I know that I am anything but the lazy one. And so when I was really thinking about it, I had to realize I don't think the problem is laziness, and I don't think the problem is the wanting of it. So if that's not the case, I've got to figure out what it truly is because what I found out was that weight loss wasn't failing me, and it's not failing you because you aren't trying hard enough. 

It's every single diet that I did, and I want you to ask yourself, this is probably because most of the plans that you tried to follow made the weight loss a lot harder than it needed to be, especially in the beginning. So I want you to think about this. How many times have you started something that asked you to give up all the food you love or half the food you love? How many times did you try to lose weight where you had to commit to a workout schedule that feels like you're training for a damn marathon where you had to be in the gym an hour a day, six days a week? I will venture to guess if you are anything like me at first, you are motivated. You can pull the trigger. Sometimes we can't. After years and years of doing dumb ass shit, we get to where we can't even pull the trigger anymore. 

That's a story for another day. But most of us have had plenty of diets where we felt like we were motivated, we could get going, we could do it, but then life would happen. We would either get busy, something would go wrong, and everything that we were doing suddenly felt like it was impossible to do. So what I want to tell you is there's nothing wrong with you. You are not lazy. You do not lack desire. You do not lack wanting it bad enough. You don't need more willpower. That is all a bunch of shit that we hear. That's just not true. What the truth is, and you can take it to the bank from somebody who's lost a hundred pounds, and I have coached thousands of women on how to lose weight and keep it off. Most diets are never designed to fit into what I call a real life. 

So when I finally lost my weight, it wasn't because I found the perfect plan. It was because I stopped trying to do all the bullshit at one time on day one. What I did differently this time was I decided when I was sitting on that couch, I don't know what I'm going to do, but I'm going to figure this out and I'm not going to do any damn thing until I'm ready to do it, and I'm not going to do anything that I don't think I could keep doing for the long haul. It doesn't mean I'm going to get it right every time, but I could see myself realistically doing this until the day I dragged my last breath inside these lungs. So the first morning I woke up, the only thing I focused on was I'm going to have to make some small simple changes, just little things that didn't feel like I was starting a second job. 

It didn't stress me out. It didn't make me feel like, oh my God, I am compounding more shit on top of all the shit I already have going on in my life. So what I want to do is I want to give you some examples. I want to tell you a couple of the first changes I made. So you can see why making the small changes actually is the best route to eventually losing all of your weight. So one of the first changes that I made was every night after my husband would take Logan upstairs to go to bed was very lucky, Chris. He just loved our child so much and he would come home and the first year especially because I was breastfeeding, even when he would come home, he wouldn't get a lot of time with Logan. I'd be trying to feed him and everything. 

And it was really important to Chris to put him to bed because that might be the only quality time he got with Logan. So I always felt like I was very fortunate because not, I mean, I know that a lot of you younger listeners are sitting there thinking, oh my gosh, you and Chris had equal responsibility, blah, blah, blah. I didn't grow up that way. I didn't grow up with a father. I grew up with a mother who did it all. My daddy was not around. And so for me, seeing my husband take care of my child in any way, even if I was shouldering the majority of it, I really appreciate the fuck out of it. Just I did. So every night he'd come home, he'd take Logan upstairs and I would immediately go get ice cream the container, not the bowl, the container. 

And I was never hungry, but I was so tired. I was already dreading the next day, half the time I was sitting there feeling guilt, even though Chris wanted to spend time with that baby, I would sit there and feel guilty that my husband had worked all day and now he was having to do this. Even though I had worked all day long with a crying ass child who needed to nurse around the clock. You know how it is. I felt guilty. I had that mom guilt working and I was stressed. I would sit there so tired and emotionally worn out, but then thinking that I should be cleaning up the kitchen and doing this and doing that. And so I'd get the ice cream because it was literally the only way that I could unwind at night. Otherwise, I stayed worked up. I would do more chores. 

I would wear myself out. The only way I was getting a break every day is with that ice cream. So when I decided I was going to lose weight, I'm going to tell you right now, there was no fucking way that ice cream was going away. If I took my ice cream away, I was also taking away the way that I got over guilt. I was taking away the way that I didn't feel dread for the next day. I was taking away the only stress relief I I was taking away everything that I needed in order to cope. And since I didn't have coping skills yet, no wonder I couldn't lose weight because every time I tried to diet, my coping skill went out the window. So I thought about it and I was like, okay, then if I'm going to lose weight this time, I can't do like I normally do, which is make ice cream the villain. 

Because honestly, if you think about it, ice cream wasn't my villain. Ice cream actually was serving a big purpose. It was saying, I'm here for you until you learn how to be there for yourself in another way. And when I look back on it, I'm like, Corinne, I'm so fucking proud of you for not giving that ice cream up at first because it would've broke me. I would've never been able to keep losing weight. I would've never been able to keep making changes. I would've never gotten that a hundred pounds off had I not decided to not give up my ice cream. So instead of giving it up, I decided to do something small. I had been eating straight up out of the gallon when you buy ice cream. I did not buy little pints of Ben and Jerry's. I was buying half gallon ones because we didn't have a lot of money and that was cheap. 

And Ben Jerry was too expensive for me, and I just grab it and sit on the couch and I'd eat it until I was either sick or I hit the bottom one or the other. That was the only way that I ever stopped. I decided, you know what I'm going to do starting today? I feel like I could do this for the rest of my life. I feel like I can make this change. It doesn't feel like I'm punishing myself. I put my ice cream in a honking bowl, not a little tiny teacup. I put it in a honking bowl. I figured if I could just stop eating like a half a gallon of ice cream every night, but just eat a large size bowl and get to where I say you have all you want in one sitting, but we're just not going to go back. 

That's going to be our first big change. Now, to most of you, that's like, how the fuck do you lose weight doing that? Look at me. I lost a hundred pounds doing that. Here's how it happens, because leaving behind the carton and switching to the bowl did stuff for me. First, it taught me to notice that I could stop eating ice cream, that it wasn't as if I had no control. Now, I felt like I was controlling the ice cream other than just falling into it every night. I was making the decision to do a little bit better. It also showed me that I didn't have to do something crazy and restrictive to start making some forward progress. And I'll tell you the other thing about eating it that way, what it did for me, the first few nights where I did it, I felt so good about doing something a little bit better that by about the third or fourth night I was serving just a little bit less. 

I noticed it was really easy for me to make even more small tweaks to the original tweak. I just had to get some momentum going. So for me, making one change created the snowball effect of being able to make other changes down the road. Now, I know it doesn't sound like a lot, but it is everything. And that is the thing about small changes. At first, they don't feel like much. In fact, your brain probably is going to scream it's not good enough. There were times my brain was screaming, it's not good enough. And that's when I just said, look, Corinne, what's not good? Enough's sitting on the couch, eating out of the carton had to be very real with myself. I had to remind myself, here's what not good enough really is. I know you think this is not good enough, but it's just not true. 

It feels true, and this is what I want to tell all of you. When you're making small changes in the beginning when you're trying to lose weight, very often when your brain says it's not good enough, it feels true. But what feels true doesn't always mean it is the truth for me telling myself no. What's really true is that when you sit on your ass, you make no changes. You're not trying at all because you think something's not good enough. That's the definition of not being good enough. That also felt true. So I talked to myself about that over and over and again. So those little shifts in the way I spoke to myself and how I was serving my ice cream and stuff, it all added up over time, and that created a kind of progress that I could keep doing for the long haul. 

So here's another example. When I was losing my a hundred pounds, I also used to eat really fast. I mean, I'd barely notice what was on my plate because I was already thinking about what I was going to eat next. I mean, I was a gruber. Sometimes I relate it to, I ate as if I was in jail and somebody was going to shank me for my plate. So I was trying to get it ate so fast that nobody could get it. So when I was losing weight, I was like, okay, what else do I need to figure out for myself? What else is something that I do that I could just do differently, that I could maybe improve upon? And I noticed, I was like, I wonder if I slowed down my eating, if I would maybe eat a little bit less, if I'd at least enjoy it if I wouldn't. 

Because I remember also with food in particular, eating fast. I would eat it so fast that I would feel physically like I had enough. But emotionally I hadn't because I'd ate so fast, I didn't really enjoy it. I didn't really get what I needed out of the food. And so I realized I need to slow down not even giving myself in time to even enjoy the experience. And I want to keep eating because I don't want the eating experience to end because that was where I was getting so much of my joy. So one day I just decided I was going to slow down. I didn't overhaul my whole meal. I didn't cut out all the foods I was eating. I didn't add tons of vegetables and stuff. I made one simple change, and it was hard because I was not used to eating this way, but I'd take a bite and I'd put the fucking fork down in between every bite. 

And I mean, it felt weird. I mean weird. And it would almost make me want to crawl out of my skin. And I thought, you know what? I would rather it be difficult to eat this way, but still eat the foods I really love. I want to see if I can just keep the foods I love, but eat 'em in a new way and see, do I get the enjoyment? Will I maybe get full and really know it and not have to overeat so much? And I will tell you, it did work. I started to notice when I was getting uncomfortably full, and it was a lot easier for me to stop because I was like, okay, I'm really in touch with things. And because I was eating slower, I got to enjoy the food a lot longer. I was meeting those emotional needs that the overeating was creating for me. So that one small changed. It helped me eat less without feeling like I was missing out on things. And this is just a couple of reasons why small changes work. When you're not trying to change everything all at once, it just doesn't feel overwhelming. It doesn't feel like a burden. 

When I was trying to change things, there was enough awkwardness in what I was doing. Even when I served myself ice cream in a bowl, I had to think about it. It felt awkward. I was worrying like, well, what if I don't get enough? And I'd be like, just eat a big ass bowl and let's see how you feel at the end. And I realized, okay, this is working. So you're going to have to, the more things you change, the more awkward moments you're turning the dial up on. That's why so many diets fail because when you're trying to overhaul everything, like I'm cutting out sugar and I'm going to work out five days a week and everything else, it doesn't last long because you've also turned the volume of awkwardness up. You've turned up the volume of having to do so many different things that having to think it wears you out and you're simultaneously while you're doing that, if you're cutting out things and you're an emotional eater, you're also on top of feeling awkward as fuck. 

You're cutting out emotional coping skills and you're not replacing them. So you feel doubly is worse. If not, triply is worse. So when you try to do everything at once, it's only a matter of time before it feels overwhelming. Hard usually lasts. Some of us can last a few days. Some of us can make it a week or two. Some people can even do this shit depending on how fucking miserable they are when they begin where their rock bottom is. They didn't even make a couple of months. But then eventually all of the strictness, all of the will powering, having to get through each day, all of the awkwardness and stuff, it catches up to you and the first day you have to work late. The first day your kid gets sick, first day you get sick first period you have the first time. The scale doesn't move. 

You put in the first time. Things don't go wrong, insert whatever you want to go wrong. Everything seems to fall apart. So when you focus on small changes though, those little wins you're getting, they're just building momentum. You're making changes that make sense. You're starting to enjoy them. Your brain, even on a bad day has no reason to give them up because it's like, oh, it's just like when you have a bad day and you don't automatically give up your emotional eating. It's like when you're doing things that make sense and you enjoy that don't seem overwhelming, then a bad day doesn't get you off those changes. So let's say you're having a crazy day and you don't have time to cook. If you have an extreme plan, it might tell you that ordering some takeout is like, no, we don't do takeout. You need to eat your prepared meals or whatever it is. 

But when you're making a small change mindset, when you're just looking for the little things, then your mind will say, you know what? We're going to order the takeout, but here's what we'll do differently than we normally do. I did that. Well, I did that when I was losing weight. I just want y'all to remember I was losing weight back in 2005 through 2 0 7. We didn't have Uber Eats and stuff, but we did have drive-throughs and we had the restaurants and I went out to eat a lot. There were just nights where I was going to cook us a dinner and we were going to eat a little healthier, and I'd just be really tired. I'd had a bad day with Logan. But when I was in small change mindset, I remember us going to IHOP and I remember telling my husband, I am going to order the omelet that I normally order with pancakes, and I am not getting the butter patty. 

That's what I'm going to do and I'm going to eat slow. And it felt like such a win because I was figuring out a way for that day to give myself a win. What could I change? The big thing for me was I used to do on extreme diets. If we went out to eat and I broke a rule, suddenly I was like, fuck it. I'm just going to get what I always get. I'll start over tomorrow. And then I'd have a heap of guilt on the other side, and then tomorrow just seemed to never come. And if tomorrow did come, then I would overly restrict the next day and I would start the snowball effect of overwhelm too hard and all the things. So you want to make sure that when you start small changes, that the first thing that you do is you pick something that's easy to do, that you think even if life is messy, if the shit hits the fan, I would keep doing this. 

I could figure out a way to make progress and win. That's the first thing. Then the second thing is you want to make sure that you're telling yourself you're doing a good job. The hardest part of making small changes is overcoming the part of you that thinks you're not going to be good enough, that it's not good enough. I always tell my clients to remind themselves that anytime they think what they're fixing to do isn't good enough to use it as a signal to do it anyway, not to use it as a signal to quit because most of the time what you think is not good enough when you're not in your emotional diaper, when you are not sitting there shitting the bed, if you were a day or two later and you were looking back, that version of you probably says, I wish instead of giving up, you would have done something small. 

Most of the time, if you think about what would my future self want me to do, she never says, I want you to always do it right. I never want you to fuck up. I want you to do it perfect. Most of us, if we go to that version of us two days after a hard day where we are faced with the choice of fuck it, eating and eating all the things, or just breaking a plan or not doing something but doing something small, most of us would say, you know what? I would give anything if she just give herself a chance. I would love for her to do the best she can in that moment, even if the best isn't the perfect thing. And that's what you've got to do. If you want to lose weight, this is the person you have to become. 

And diets don't teach you how to be a new person. All they do is tell you, here's what you can eat. Here's what you can't eat. Here's how much you can eat. Here's your calorie range, and here's how many times you should be working out. That's diets. You're not trying to start another diet. You want to lose your weight for the last fucking time. And if you want to lose your weight for the last time, it means we've got to start doing things differently than you have in the past. So I challenge all of you to pick one small thing you can do today to make your eating just a little bit better. Sometimes the smallest changes are the absolute hardest changes for us to make because we just think they're not going to be good enough. And I'm here to tell you, that's all a lie. 

Stop trying to change everything on a dime. If that freaks you out, stop trying it. There's not a version of you coming that one day is willing to turn her whole life around in a nanosecond. I just don't think you have to do it that way. And I think it's the hardest way to lose weight of all. Alright, thank you for listening today. If you got something out of this, I would love for you to share it with someone who might need to hear it. Please let more women know about the No BS Losing 100 with Corinne podcast because I know weight loss doesn't have to be so damn hard. And together we can make this a lot better. I'll see you next.