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Silence Your Inner Mean Girl
Episode #87: Silence Your Inner Mean Girl
0:00:05.8 Kim Schlag: Welcome to episode 87 of the Fitness Simplified podcast. I’m your host, Kim Schlag. On today’s episode, I’m joined by Keri from Texas. Now, Keri has lost 97 pounds but she gives herself a really hard time because she did not lose 100 pounds, and that mean girl voice in her head really gets on her about those three pounds she didn’t lose. She is struggling to continue to lose weight at this point and that mean girl in her head is really getting in her way. So we talk about how to silence your inner mean girl. Ready? Let’s go.
Hi, Keri.
0:00:47.2 Keri: Hey, how are you?
0:00:49.0 Kim Schlag: I am doing well. Now, Keri, tell me where you’re calling from?
0:00:51.8 Keri: Burleson, Texas.
0:00:54.5 Kim Schlag: Oh, okay, great.
0:00:57.0 Keri: Yeah, yeah it’s not too far outside of Fort Worth.
0:01:00.5 Kim Schlag: Okay, got it, got it. And tell me a little bit about you, because we’ve never really spoken before. We just chit-chatted a little bit in Instagram…
0:01:08.1 Keri: No, and I’m so excited to talk to you. I’ve been following you for a while now. You’re one of my, I would say, top pages that I look forward to seeing posts on, so I’m pretty excited.
0:01:18.2 Kim Schlag: Oh, that makes me super happy. Okay, so you’ve been following me for a while, you live in Texas, tell me more about you. Tell me about your family and what you do.
0:01:27.9 Keri: So I’m 35 now. I have a 12-year-old daughter. I’m married. I currently work at an elementary school, in the kitchen, feeding all the little kiddos.
0:01:40.3 Kim Schlag: Okay, nice.
0:01:40.3 Keri: And I think that’s it. I’ve got dogs that take up most of my time ’cause I am obsessed with them. And I have the one daughter. One’s an Australian Shepherd mix and he’s big and fat, and the other one was supposed to be an Australian Shepherd but she’s a little Terrier. And she’s half his size but she runs the show around here.
0:02:05.6 Kim Schlag: Well, wait, how did that happen that you thought you were getting a big dog and you got a little dog? What happened?
0:02:09.8 Keri: ‘Cause they looked the same when I… I got the big dog as a puppy and he was about a year, so we found her and they looked exactly the same as puppies, and they told us, “Oh, it’s an Australian Shepherd.”
0:02:21.8 Kim Schlag: Oh my goodness.
0:02:23.1 Keri: And then we got her and she only grew half the size, but we love her.
0:02:27.3 Kim Schlag: Oh that’s so funny.
0:02:28.8 Keri: She’s my favorite. I would have more dogs if my husband would allow it, so eventually I’ll win.
0:02:34.2 Kim Schlag: We’re getting our very first dog.
0:02:38.0 Keri: Really? What kind are you getting?
0:02:40.0 Kim Schlag: We are getting a mini Goldendoodle, and it actually, it may have been born yesterday. We’re number nine on a list for a breeder, and so they had two momma dogs. The one had her puppies yesterday and the next one is due to have her puppies in about two weeks, and then we get to choose from among these. And yesterday’s dog had six puppies, so as long as the next momma dog has at least three, we’ll get to choose one of these.
0:03:08.3 Keri: Oh, that’s so exciting.
0:03:10.2 Kim Schlag: Yeah, this will be our first one. Now, Keri, remind me what your question was.
0:03:18.8 Keri: I think I said something to the effect of… I was having a really bad day, so that was part of it. I said something to the effect of I had lost quite a bit of weight but was feeling very discouraged and defeated trying to keep it off and continue the process. So just out of… It was a rough day, so I was… Usually, there’s those question boxes nobody… Either they don’t respond or they give you a quick, “Just keep going” kind of thing, so I did not think anything of it, and I was so surprised when you messaged me.
0:03:55.8 Kim Schlag: Well, okay, so tell me, how much weight have you lost over what period of time?
0:04:00.7 Keri: So I was my heaviest in 2017.
0:04:05.3 Kim Schlag: Okay.
0:04:06.8 Keri: I believe I was probably close to 315, if not more. That was the last time I weighed myself. I was buying clothes that were size, I don’t know, 26. And so I slowly started getting healthier, losing weight. I had some family involved in AdvoCare, so they helped me learn about nutrition and food, and things like that. So I started in January of 2018, and I joi
ned a gym, and my gym is amazing and wonderful, and I’ve lost 97 pounds since then.
0:04:48.8 Kim Schlag: Wow!
0:04:51.6 Keri: And I never got to the 100-pound mark, I don’t know, it’s so frustrating to be that close, but I was my lowest in… At the beginning of 2020, I was down to a size 12, and I felt amazing and I felt really good and really great, and then all the whole world went crazy. And I think this last year has just affected me more than I realized and I think I’ve gained probably 10-15 pounds back, and it’s been challenging. I have a coach who is amazing. Her name is Jen, and I love her dearly, and she puts up with me a lot but I don’t know why, I just struggled this year.
0:05:40.7 Kim Schlag: Yeah, I think…
0:05:44.6 Keri: I have a trainer as well who has totally changed my life and I love them both but…
0:05:49.4 Kim Schlag: That’s fantastic. You have a good team.
0:05:52.1 Keri: Yeah, I do have a very great support system. I would not have made it this far without them and the people at my gym, and my family. This last year, I’ve just really, really struggled and I’ve gotten really good at not letting the number on the scale get to me because the number doesn’t matter as long as I feel good and my pants fit. And I really found that I love lifting heavy but I think eventually, the numbers started to creep up and eventually, it gets to you a little bit.
0:06:26.3 Kim Schlag: Yeah, for sure. Well, first of all, losing 97 pounds is incredible. That is no small feat.
0:06:31.3 Keri: Thank you.
0:06:33.4 Kim Schlag: And you did it over the course of three years. That’s like 32 pounds a year. You did incredibly, incredibly well. Clearly, you’ve got something right here, so that’s exciting.
0:06:45.1 Keri: Thank you.
0:06:47.1 Kim Schlag: And a lot of people are in the same situation you are, Keri, that this past year has… Excuse me, I have to sneeze. That this past year, they’ve really taken a hit in their ability to be consistent. I mean, wow, our world was just really turned upside down, right? And so the question is, what do you do now, right? You’ve lost all this weight, you wanna pick up some momentum again, and you’re just not being able to. When do you think was the last time you were able to be consistent with your diet? Was it right before quarantine started in March? Is that when the last time you were really consistent was?
0:07:26.2 Keri: Probably. I definitely used food as… Even when we did the whole lockdown and the gym closed, I have a few things here and I worked out everyday. I did not miss a workout. Even if I wasn’t at the gym, I set up a little garage gym with two little dumbbells just to make something happen. But it’s always been the food that I struggle with, or I overeat, thinking, “It’s okay, I worked out today,” or “I did extra cardio, I can eat this bag of chips or cookies,” or whatever.
0:08:05.7 Kim Schlag: Yeah. So you feel like even right now, you feel like the fitness piece of it, you’ve got under control. You’re so consistently working out. Like, that’s not a problem.
0:08:14.7 Keri: That’s not a problem. I love my gym, that’s my stress release. Those are the people that make everything better, so…
0:08:22.1 Kim Schlag: Good, okay.
0:08:22.9 Keri: I never miss the gym, even in the pandemic. So I got Corona right after Christmas and I missed, I would say, about three weeks of working out. So going back to the gym was my favorite thing. I couldn’t wait to get back.
0:08:38.2 Kim Schlag: Well, you’ve got that going in your favor, like that piece has really clicked for you, and it’s not stress; you actually like it. So, you know, here’s what I wanna us to think about. Success leaves clues. You’ve clearly been very successful at losing weight. So let’s think back to last January, February time period when you were still doing really well. What were you doing with your nutrition that you think was working? When you think back and you’re like, “Yeah, this I did, and it helped me.”
0:09:08.9 Keri: Probably the one thing was seeing the scale go down, even if it was just a point two. If it went down, I instantly felt like what I was doing was right, and that would make me want to keep trying. And then I measured probably every single thing that I ate.
0:09:29.8 Kim Schlag: Okay. So do you think that…
0:09:30.2 Keri: You know, weighing everything. And that just… I think it became overwhelming. So I started eye-balling things or, “That looks like half a cup.” You know what I mean?
0:09:39.7 Kim Schlag: Got it.
0:09:40.5 Keri: ‘Cause it does get overwhelming, having to measure and plan, and I pack… You cook all the food on Sunday and you pack all the food for the week. It just got overwhelming, I think. And then lockdown happened, then I think I just said, “I’m at home, what do I need the meal plan for? ‘Cause I’m at home.”
0:10:00.9 Kim Schlag: Got it, got it. So two things you talked about there. The first one was that when you would see the scale go down, even if it was a little bit, that that was motivating to you and you wanted to keep going.
0:10:10.8 Keri:< span style="color:rgb(0, 0, 0)"> Right.
0:10:11.3 Kim Schlag: Right. Now, that you can’t directly control, right? You can’t directly say, like, “Scale will go down.” We’ve gotta get you doing the actions that are gonna help the scale go down. But you make a good point in that motivation can often come from seeing results. And so what we need to do to help you get your groove back is to help you start seeing some results, and that will feed on itself. So let’s figure out how we’re gonna do that. The thing you just mentioned, I think, is so key. The idea that you were weighing your food and then you went to eye-balling it, then all kind of heck broke loose. And if it feels overwhelming to you, there would be two things I would suggest to you about that. One, it doesn’t have to be a commitment for life. You’re not gonna say, like, “I now have to weigh everything I eat for the rest of my life.” You could just do it for 30 days, 60 days, and see how it goes, and see what kind of results you get. That’s one thing I’d say. The other thing I would say is to consider the alternative. Is it more overwhelming to start weighing your food again, or is it more overwhelming to have this constant feeling of, like, “I am just not being successful at this thing I really want to be successful at.”
0:11:28.5 Keri: Right. Well, I agree.
0:11:32.5 Kim Schlag: How do you feel…
0:11:33.2 Keri: And I think I used food to deal with stress. And, emotional eating, I would say I do that probably more than I need, more than I care to admit. And I think even if I do really good with my food, if you’re having a bad day, a few bites of this won’t hurt. But I think it does hurt. So I feel like I know what I do wrong, it’s just, why has it been so hard for me to move past it, you know?
0:12:10.0 Kim Schlag: Well. Talk to me about this. When you were successful with losing weight, what were you doing to manage your stress, instead of eating? ‘Cause you clearly weren’t emotional eating that whole time, or you wouldn’t have been losing so much weight, right?
0:12:26.5 Keri: Right.
0:12:27.0 Kim Schlag: What do you think changed, or what can you remember that you would do instead of eating, when you were stressed or emotional?
0:12:36.2 Keri: I don’t know the answer to that. I’ve worked pretty much the same hours. I do think I’m off in the summer, so I’m home during the summer, so not having that schedule definitely set me back. Sleeping all day, being up late. I feel like I thrive better on routine. As much as I hate getting up at the crack of dawn, it’s better for me.
0:13:02.8 Kim Schlag: Mm-hmm.
0:13:03.4 Keri: So I know the summer time throws me off, and… I don’t know. Maybe it’s because I was measuring everything and I was so dedicated to tracking, I didn’t… I made sure to measure out my sweets at the end of the evening, and that’s what I could have, and that’s it.
0:13:22.4 Kim Schlag: Mm-hmm.
0:13:23.8 Keri: Maybe I made sure to factor that in, and then I stopped.
0:13:30.8 Kim Schlag: Right now, are you at a point in your life that you have a schedule? Is school in session regular, and you’re going to work and all of the things?
0:13:39.2 Keri: Yes. And I got a new… The same basic job, just a different school. I just spoke to my nutrition coach about it, because it’s been such a change. It’s the same basic job but new school, new people, more responsibility, and it’s been such a change and more hours, I don’t know if my body is handling it well. I have a lot of back problems that I’ve had to deal with going to the doctor for, and I don’t know if medication can slow weight gain or weight loss down. And I think I’ve been trying really hard the last few weeks to measure and to track and nothing’s happening. The scale’s not budging. I don’t feel great. And I’m just, I think overwhelmed.
0:14:30.5 Kim Schlag: Have you still been in this period of time doing some of the emotional eating where you’re not tracking all the things?
0:14:38.7 Keri: Maybe a little bit, if you want the truth. [chuckle]
0:14:41.1 Kim Schlag: Yeah, yeah. Okay, yeah. Well see that’s the key then. So a couple of things I would say. Your question about the medicine. Medicine can absolutely affect us. It’s not going to affect you in that it will directly cause you to gain weight or stop losing weight, but can affect you in ways such as… Maybe you have increased hunger or increased cravings, those kinds of things, specifically increased hunger. And you can rest assured you can lose weight, so that’s important for you to know. You can still lose weight. Second thing I would say is, when you start tracking and you’re still doing the thing where you’re not tracking at all, it really cheats you because you have the feeling of… I’m trying so hard, I’m doing all the things and it’s not working. And so you have this feel… ‘Cause it’s a lot of work to sort of track, to track most of the time, or to almost be consistent with weight loss with those habits, but if you’re not all the way consistent with them, it’s really frustrating ’cause you feel like there’s something wrong with you or you’re broken. And in reality, what it is, is it’s all of these times where you’re not tracking it. Do you track calories? That’s the system you use with your coach?
0:15:51.1 Keri: We use, yeah, macros. He’ll tell me how many carbs, proteins, fats… Yeah, and then I try to eat the best I can. And I just figure out the macros and eat what I’m supposed to eat.
0:16:06.9 Kim Schlag: Got it. So, getting a little bit of traction and getting you to see some success is gonna be key to you feeling motivated again. That’s the weird thing about motivation. It doesn’t just spring up on its own, you’ve
gotta help it along. Sometimes it appears and you’re like, “Oh yes, I’m ready to go.” But oftentimes when we’re in the thick of things, it’s just not there, and we can create it by what we do. And seeing some progress is one of the best ways to get motivated. I really do think you’re saying to yourself, “Alright, I’m going to track everything I eat and drink for the next 30 days, and I’m gonna see what happens.” Is a really good solution. A piece of it, it’s not gonna be the whole solution, ’cause we really do need to talk about the emotional eating piece. And we need to talk about how to actually set you up to stick with the tracking. Are you open to taking that challenge of tracking everything you eat and drink for the next 30 days?
0:17:01.4 Keri: Yeah. I mean, I got over the coronavirus. I was crazy sick, and then I told myself that once I got better, we were gonna get serious. And the last couple of weeks, I was just sick not long ago, so the last couple weeks, I feel like I’ve done really well, and getting back into the swing of things and back into work. I think this is only my second week back to work from being sick. I’m determined this time. I want to see results. I had my fun. Now it’s time to get back on track.
0:17:37.0 Kim Schlag: Okay, amazing. And that’s gonna be you tracking everything, whether it’s a little bit, whether you like even if you emotionally eat, track it. If you decide like, “Oh my gosh, I’m really upset and I’m eating the ice cream.” Track the ice cream so that you can have a really clear picture of what you ate, ’cause you wanna make sure that your expectations match your behavior, so you can know when you get to the end of the week, and you’re thinking like, “Oh, I emotionally ate four times. It’s probably not gonna be me in a deficit this week.” You can still get it around your head of like, “Okay, next week I’m gonna try and emotionally eat fewer times.” So even in those times, if you find yourself emotionally eating, let’s have you track it. Does that sound good?
0:18:17.0 Keri: That sounds good.
0:18:18.3 Kim Schlag: Okay, and then let’s talk about this emotional eating. What are the things that you most are triggered by? What do you emotionally eat about?
0:18:28.0 Keri: Well, let’s see. Let’s pull out my list. I think a lot of it. I don’t see, I’ve lost a lot of weight, and I lost a lot of inches. I’m not at all what I used to look like, but when I look in the mirror, I still see the old me. Sometimes it’s really hard to see… I can say, the pants I have on right now are a size 12. I used to wear a size 26. I’m half what I used to be, but when I look in the mirror, I don’t always see that. And then that will get me discouraged because clearly I haven’t come as far as I would like to have. And then that spirals, the whole thing.
0:19:17.3 Kim Schlag: Got it. So one of your triggers is literally your body. You look in the mirror and you’re not happy with what you see yet or the size of your clothes, and that’s one of the things that causes you to emotionally eat.
0:19:30.1 Keri: Yeah, ’cause I still see the girl that was 300 pounds. Not all the time, but there’s days where you look in the mirror and you’re just so disappointed and discouraged. And I try really hard not to compare myself to other people, but you can see other people making results, their progress, or look at their before and after, and theirs is in a shorter amount of time. And why am I struggling so much?
0:20:00.0 Kim Schlag: Yeah, it’s hard. It’s absolutely hard. Do you know anybody else who’s lost 97 pounds?
0:20:08.5 Keri: Not personally. Online, you see people online, but I’ve never met anyone.
0:20:15.3 Kim Schlag: Okay. It really is an incredible amount of weight to lose, and I don’t think you… I feel like maybe you don’t appreciate how far you have come and how much work that took. That wasn’t by accident. Nobody accidentally loses 97 pounds, right? That was a lot to lose.
0:20:33.4 Keri: I think it was a lot less. I only lost 97 pounds. Only.
0:20:36.9 Kim Schlag: Why do you say that? Oh, because it’s not 100. That really gets you.
0:20:41.0 Keri: It’s not 100. Yeah.
0:20:42.5 Kim Schlag: That really gets you. Interesting. Let me ask you this: So, your 12-year-old, is it a girl or a boy?
0:20:51.7 Keri: It’s a girl.
0:20:53.4 Kim Schlag: Okay. So your 12-year-old daughter. Let’s say she studies really hard at school. She really wants to do well on this big project, and she works all semester for it, and she comes home and she’s super disappointed, really disappointed about how she did, and then you see her grade, and it was a 97, and not 100. What do you say to her?
0:21:18.1 Keri: I would tell her how amazing she did, and what a good job she did, and how smart she is, and praise her.
0:21:24.7 Kim Schlag: “But, Mom, I did not get a 100. I only got a 97.”
0:21:27.9 Keri: But it’s pretty darn close to 100. I mean, you’re a hop, skip and a jump away. It’s practically 100.
0:21:33.7 Kim Schlag: “Well, what did I do wrong? Why didn’t I get the 100? What’s wrong? What’s wrong with me?”
0:21:39.3 Keri: Nothing. [chuckle]
0:21:41.5 Kim Schlag: It sounds crazy, right?
0:21:43.2 Keri: It does sound
crazy.
[chuckle]
0:21:45.3 Kim Schlag: Do you realize that that’s what you’re doing to yourself?
0:21:49.0 Keri: Well, now I do.
0:21:50.5 Kim Schlag: So, 97 pounds and 100 pounds are practically the exact same thing. Let’s say when you were at your top weight loss of 97 pounds, do you really think that you, three pounds less would have looked, felt, moved, been that different?
0:22:10.7 Keri: No, probably not.
0:22:12.3 Kim Schlag: Right?
0:22:13.9 Keri: With the scale… The scale can jump three pounds just because you drank an extra glass of water, you know what I mean?
0:22:19.0 Kim Schlag: That is absolutely true. That is absolutely true.
0:22:23.1 Keri: Yeah.
0:22:23.7 Kim Schlag: Here’s the thing. This feeling is not gonna go away just because you and I had this conversation. You’re gonna have to talk this mean girl out of your head over and over and over until she’s gone. When this comes back up, because it will, you need to be the person who says to yourself, “Keri, I’m not gonna talk to me that way. I’m not gonna allow it. I’m not gonna allow myself to convince myself that 97 pounds wasn’t good enough. I’m not gonna allow myself to convince myself that I’m not good at weight loss or I can’t do it, or I’m somehow a loser at this. I’m very good at this. Clearly, I’ve lost all this weight. You’re gonna need to keep talking that mean girl out of your head.
0:23:02.8 Keri: Yeah, I understand.
0:23:05.8 Kim Schlag: Yeah, ’cause that really is the answer to it. It’s not gonna go away on its own. It’s gonna be something you’re gonna have to practice and you’re gonna have to practice over and over and over. And I would suggest, and some people think it’s crazy, but I would suggest having these conversations with yourself out loud.
0:23:25.6 Keri: Right. I do it at the gym too, ’cause I found that I really like lifting heavy. And I set a goal to deadlift 300 pounds, and I think I did 295 and then I was like, “But it’s not 300.”
[chuckle]
0:23:45.8 Keri: And then I did do 305 on that… What’s that little… The trap bar?
0:23:52.4 Kim Schlag: Yeah.
0:23:52.7 Keri: Is that what it’s called?
0:23:53.5 Kim Schlag: Yes.
0:23:53.7 Keri: I did 305 on that.
0:23:55.0 Kim Schlag: Amazing.
0:23:55.8 Keri: But, because it wasn’t the regular bar, I don’t think I’d count it as being that strong.
0:24:01.0 Kim Schlag: You didn’t count it?
0:24:04.3 Keri: Yeah, because it’s not a real deadlift.
0:24:04.7 Kim Schlag: You’re really hard on yourself. You’re really hard on yourself.
0:24:07.4 Keri: Yeah.
0:24:08.4 Kim Schlag: Yeah. Because 305 on a trap bar is amazing. That’s a lot of weight, and just ’cause it’s not the straight bar, you’re like, “Ah, that doesn’t really count.”
0:24:16.0 Keri: It doesn’t count.
0:24:17.0 Kim Schlag: That doesn’t count.
0:24:18.1 Keri: Yeah.
0:24:18.4 Kim Schlag: And would you say that to one of your gym friends? Would you be like… Is that how you’d respond? You’d be like, “Well, that was good and all that, but that doesn’t really count?”
0:24:26.8 Keri: “That’s not a real bar, though.” I would never…
0:24:29.0 Kim Schlag: Could you imagine saying that out loud to one of your friends there?
0:24:33.1 Keri: No. I would never say that.
0:24:34.3 Kim Schlag: And you wouldn’t even think it.
0:24:35.7 Keri: Of course I would be like, “Oh, my God, that’s amazing.”
0:24:38.6 Kim Schlag: Yeah, you would be. And you need to be that person for yourself. You need to be able to pump yourself up and be like, “What I just did was amazing. It was amazing.” And look, if you still wanna get a 300-pound deadlift with the straight bar, you can do it. You c
an keep working on it. But you don’t have to discount what you’ve already done to keep working on that goal.
0:25:00.1 Keri: Right.
0:25:00.7 Kim Schlag: And all of this negative self-talk isn’t serving you, Keri. It’s not helping you lose more weight to beat yourself up about those three pounds you didn’t lose. It is not helping you lose weight to look in the mirror and think, “I should be further along.” That’s not helping, right? You can see that, right?
0:25:16.7 Keri: I can see it, and everything you say makes sense.
[chuckle]
0:25:22.6 Kim Schlag: So let’s talk some about what you’re gonna do then. So, one thing I would like you to do is really practice this self-talk over and over, okay? So that’s one thing. The second thing we’re gonna have you do, a 30-day commitment. Track everything you eat or drink, including weighing everything you eat that is not either pre-packaged with a barcode or your greens. You don’t need to be weighing your lettuce; we don’t need to be that silly.
0:25:46.7 Keri: Okay.
0:25:47.4 Kim Schlag: So that’s another thing I would have you do. And then the third thing… Wait, I had another, third thing. Give me a minute. I’m having a brain freeze here.
[chuckle]
0:26:00.0 Kim Schlag: Shoot. Oh, we need to talk about how you’re actually going to make that happen. So you have your macros. We know you wanna track everything. How are we gonna help you with this emotional eating piece? When you want to emotionally eat, we need to help you think of other ways to manage those feelings. So we just talked about one, the situation with you, you look in the mirror, you don’t like what you see. Your strategy there really can be this conversation with yourself out loud. Tell me another thing that you emotionally eat about?
0:26:38.0 Keri: My family I would say without getting too in detail there’s always something going on, family drama, somebody is upset about something or somebody has got money problem, whatever it may be. I think I let that get to me, my husband and I are on offices schedule, so I never see him during the week. We’re strangers during the week, we don’t even see each other in passing and then it’s only on the weekends that I see him which I think… If I’m being totally honest that’s weighing on me quite a bit.
0:27:18.6 Kim Schlag: And so you’re lonely?
0:27:21.1 Keri: I’m basically a single mom during the week.
0:27:25.0 Kim Schlag: Got it.
0:27:25.6 Keri: And also it’s been like this since we’ve been married, he’s always worked these hours, my job has changed and my schedule has changed here and there, like I said I’m off in the summer, I follow the same schedule that the kids do, so I’m thankful for that but sometimes it’s just… My daughter is 12, an emotional preteen and it sometimes I think it weighs on me, and for some reason lately it’s just been really, really hard and I don’t think I give that enough credit, I don’t think I acknowledge how hard it is on me that he’s not here.
0:28:03.5 Kim Schlag: Yeah, yeah, that’s a lot.
0:28:06.2 Keri: Yeah, and you don’t wanna tell, him can’t help it, he’s working. And if he could change it he would, but it’s just that’s just the way it is, and most of the time I do fine, most of the time I’m busy, I go to the gym, I come home, bedtime is no big deal. But for some reason lately, I don’t know if it’s because we were just off for three weeks together ’cause we all had to stay home ’cause we were all sick, I don’t know if being home with him for those three weeks and now it’s back to him being gone, I don’t know if that has something to do with it, I don’t know if it’s the new job, the more hours, I don’t know maybe all of it combined.
0:28:44.9 Kim Schlag: So talk me through the last time you emotionally ate, what happened? Something happened like was it one of these nights you were home home without your husband, did your daughter do something to stress you out, were you feeling lonely, kinda talk me through what happened, what you were feeling and what you ate?
0:29:02.3 Keri: I would say the last time was probably about a week ago, I think I had a bad workout just because I’ve been off for three weeks so I don’t take some minutes to get back in the groove, of course you’re not gonna come back in best looking like you did two months ago after being sick, so I think my workout wasn’t as great as I wanted it to be, my back hurt, I worked all day, he’s not here, my daughter had some kind of melt down and everything I do annoys her these days, so I think all of it is hard for me.
0:29:35.8 Kim Schlag: I so relate. [chuckle]
0:29:37.4 Keri: I think all of it was just like, I am trying so hard and I’m not getting anywhere, so it’s mindless eating and I don’t have a lot of junk in the house to be honest with you, lots of yogurt and peanut butter and trying to keep it very clean in here. So a lot of it is just mindless handful of tote chips or I buy healthy popcorn, well, maybe I didn’t weigh it and I ended up eating half the bag not even thinking, I feel like I do a lot of mindless munching when I’m not even realizing that I’m doing it.
0:30:19.0 Kim Schlag: Got it. Okay, so in a situation like that the thing I would suggest to you is, for the next couple of weeks really start paying attention to when you have this urge to emotionally eat and start noticing these patterns, it seems like during the week you’re feeling lonely, you’re feeling stressed because you have to deal with all the problems and the sassy teenager, start kind of noticing what it is that brings about the desire to just grab
that food, note what it is, write it down on your phone, keep a running log of what are the things and what are the things that you typically eat, then using that information come up with an approach to manage it, because you’re still gonna have those feelings, right? And so when this happens, the first goal would be to just notice when it’s happening and notice, like oh, here it is again, I want to emotionally eat, and then give yourself time and space to make a different choice. And you do that by putting the food away in the cupboard, leaving the room, going somewhere away from the food, don’t walk away with the tote chips in your hand and give yourself 20 minutes.
0:31:25.4 Kim Schlag: Tell yourself in 20 minutes, if I still want the tote chips I am going to go and have them, I’m gonna give myself permission to have them, and then in that 20 minute space you’re gonna use that 20 minutes to self-soothe in a different way because that’s what you’re doing with the food, you’re trying to self-soothe distress and upset and all of that with the food, and so to do that you need to have something planned. So the other thing I want you to do is brainstorm ahead of time two or three things that would help you feel better in a moment like that and the things that might work are different for everybody, for you maybe it would help to go outside and pet the dog, maybe it would help for you to walk around the block, maybe it would help for you to call your girlfriend, maybe it would help for you to go grab a kettlebell you like to lift, maybe it would help for you to go do some hard lifting for just… And it needs to be something you can do in the moment, it can’t be something that you need to leave your 12-year-old at home alone and you can’t do that, it has to be something very practical that you could do, that you can see that would help you feel better, maybe it would be writing in a journal, maybe it would be listening to music, maybe it’ll be laying down, all kinds of things.
0:32:31.0 Kim Schlag: Brainstorm what you think would help you feel better in those moments instead of just food, and then make a running list of those. And then over time you practice these things, you practice the waiting, you practice leaving the room and then you practice using that 20 minutes to do whatever the things are that you came up with, and see which ones work and which don’t work for you. And that is an approach that is actually going to help you do two things; and one, it’s gonna help you stop getting all these extra calories from the food, from the emotional eating, you’re not even hungry when you’re eating that’s the bad aid; and two, it’s gonna help you deal with these emotions in a productive way because the food isn’t helping anyway, right? Now, it’s not like you’re finished eating the popcorn and now your daughter is not still being sassy to you.
0:33:16.4 Keri: Right, all of a sudden I’m not driving her crazy.
0:33:19.8 Kim Schlag: Right, you’re still being the annoying mom to her, and so it helps us come up with a way that’s more productive to deal with, whatever the situation is. Sometimes the situation that needs to be dealt with is like there’s a hard conversation that needs to be had, or there’s like… It could be lots of things that need to help you. But it gives you the space to deal with that versus covering it up with food.
0:33:41.4 Keri: Right, I think that’s a good plan.
0:33:44.7 Kim Schlag: Okay, great. Well, I know we’ve covered a lot of ground here today. You’re gonna have to re-listen to this so you can hear about all the things we talked about [chuckle] and all the things you’ve agreed…
0:33:55.0 Keri: Some of it’s common sense, and I just need to be told again.
0:34:00.4 Kim Schlag: Don’t we all, right? That’s a whole lot of this fat loss process, is just having it brought to our attention again. Like, Oh right, that’s the thing I need to do. That’s the thing that I was working before. Because the reality is, Keri, you have every reason to believe that you can be successful at losing the rest of the weight you want to. You have a lot of evidence to show that you can be successful at weight loss. You do.
0:34:21.5 Keri: Well, thank you. I need to remind myself of that.
0:34:26.3 Kim Schlag: Absolutely. How much more are you hoping to lose, Keri?
0:34:30.7 Keri: At this point, I don’t have a number, I just want smaller pants.
0:34:36.3 Kim Schlag: Got it.
0:34:36.5 Keri: And I’d like to be able to see the muscle that I’ve spent so much time working on.
0:34:41.4 Kim Schlag: I love that.
0:34:42.9 Keri: It’d be nice to see it and not just know it’s there. I’m always telling everybody, you can feel it, it’s under the fluff.
0:34:51.6 Kim Schlag: [chuckle] It’s there, it’s there.
0:34:52.2 Keri: You just can’t see it. I’d love to be able to fit into smaller… I don’t have any desire to be rock hard abs or anything, but it would be nice to just be more confident and fine, be able to wear a dress and not feel like I look crazy, and have arms that resemble that I workout. I’d like for people to look at me and say, Oh man, she worked out.
0:35:19.7 Kim Schlag: So you wanna look as fit as you feel. You know you’re a strong person, you know you have all this athletic ability, and you wanna look like that person.
0:35:27.5 Keri: I do. I’d like to look like I workout.
0:35:30.2 Kim Schlag: That’s amazing. And there’s every reason in the world for you to be confident that you can do that.
0:35:37.3
Keri: Well, thank you. I think I have such a problem with arrogance and people who are bragging and arrogant. I think I go the complete opposite, where I don’t want to brag or be arrogant about things, so there’s a fine line between confidence and arrogance. I’m usually confident in myself. I’m a confident, outgoing person.
0:35:58.3 Kim Schlag: Yeah.
0:36:03.2 Keri: It’s my self-talk, that I think.
0:36:05.1 Kim Schlag: Yeah, that inner mean girl. You need to talk back to her more.
0:36:07.9 Keri: Yeah, we need to shut her up.
0:36:09.4 Kim Schlag: We need to make her hush, because you really do… You have every reason to believe you can be successful at this, you’ve been successful at it so far. So much, so much weight loss. You’re so strong in the gym and there’s just no reason you can’t do this. So practice talking back to her and practice saying to yourself. Talk to yourself like you would your daughter. If she’s down, you do not kick her when she’s down, and you need to do that to yourself. You need to talk to yourself the way you would talk to her.
0:36:37.6 Keri: Got it.
0:36:39.1 Kim Schlag: All right, my dear. Thanks so much for coming on and we’ll talk soon. Keep me posted on how this all goes.
0:36:45.0 Keri: All right, thank you so much.
0:36:46.1 Kim Schlag: Bye-bye.
[music]
0:36:51.9 Kim Schlag: Thanks so much for being here and listening in to the Fitness Simplified podcast today. I hope you found it educational, motivational, inspirational, all the kinds of -ational.
If you enjoyed it, if you found value in it, it would mean so much to me if you would go ahead and leave a rating and review on whatever platform you are listening to this on. It really does help to get this podcast to other people. Thanks so much.
0:00:05.8 Kim Schlag: Welcome to episode 87 of the Fitness Simplified podcast. I’m your host, Kim Schlag. On today’s episode, I’m joined by Keri from Texas. Now, Keri has lost 97 pounds but she gives herself a really hard time because she did not lose 100 pounds, and that mean girl voice in her head really gets on her about those three pounds she didn’t lose. She is struggling to continue to lose weight at this point and that mean girl in her head is really getting in her way. So we talk about how to silence your inner mean girl. Ready? Let’s go.
Hi, Keri.
0:00:47.2 Keri: Hey, how are you?
0:00:49.0 Kim Schlag: I am doing well. Now, Keri, tell me where you’re calling from?
0:00:51.8 Keri: Burleson, Texas.
0:00:54.5 Kim Schlag: Oh, okay, great.
0:00:57.0 Keri: Yeah, yeah it’s not too far outside of Fort Worth.
0:01:00.5 Kim Schlag: Okay, got it, got it. And tell me a little bit about you, because we’ve never really spoken before. We just chit-chatted a little bit in Instagram…
0:01:08.1 Keri: No, and I’m so excited to talk to you. I’ve been following you for a while now. You’re one of my, I would say, top pages that I look forward to seeing posts on, so I’m pretty excited.
0:01:18.2 Kim Schlag: Oh, that makes me super happy. Okay, so you’ve been following me for a while, you live in Texas, tell me more about you. Tell me about your family and what you do.
0:01:27.9 Keri: So I’m 35 now. I have a 12-year-old daughter. I’m married. I currently work at an elementary school, in the kitchen, feeding all the little kiddos.
0:01:40.3 Kim Schlag: Okay, nice.
0:01:40.3 Keri: And I think that’s it. I’ve got dogs that take up most of my time ’cause I am obsessed with them. And I have the one daughter. One’s an Australian Shepherd mix and he’s big and fat, and the other one was supposed to be an Australian Shepherd but she’s a little Terrier. And she’s half his size but she runs the show around here.
0:02:05.6 Kim Schlag: Well, wait, how did that happen that you thought you were getting a big dog and you got a little dog? What happened?
0:02:09.8 Keri: ‘Cause they looked the same when I… I got the big dog as a puppy and he was about a year, so we found her and they looked exactly the same as puppies, and they told us, “Oh, it’s an Australian Shepherd.”
0:02:21.8 Kim Schlag: Oh my goodness.
0:02:23.1 Keri: And then we got her and she only grew half the size, but we love her.
0:02:27.3 Kim Schlag: Oh that’s so funny.
0:02:28.8 Keri: She’s my favorite. I would have more dogs if my husband would allow it, so eventually I’ll win.
0:02:34.2 Kim Schlag: We’re getting our very first dog.
0:02:38.0 Keri: Really? What kind are you getting?
0:02:40.0 Kim Schlag: We are getting a mini Goldendoodle, and it actually, it may have been born yesterday. We’re number nine on a list for a breeder, and so they had two momma dogs. The one had her puppies yesterday and the next one is due to have her puppies in about two weeks, and then we get to choose from among these. And yesterday’s dog had six puppies, so as long as the next momma dog has at least three, we’ll get to choose one of these.
0:03:08.3 Keri: Oh, that’s so exciting.
0:03:10.2 Kim Schlag: Yeah, this will be our first one. Now, Keri, remind me what your question was.
0:03:18.8 Keri: I think I said something to the effect of… I was having a really bad day, so that was part of it. I said something to the effect of I had lost quite a bit of weight but was feeling very discouraged and defeated trying to keep it off and continue the process. So just out of… It was a rough day, so I was… Usually, there’s those question boxes nobody… Either they don’t respond or they give you a quick, “Just keep going” kind of thing, so I did not think anything of it, and I was so surprised when you messaged me.
0:03:55.8 Kim Schlag: Well, okay, so tell me, how much weight have you lost over what period of time?
0:04:00.7 Keri: So I was my heaviest in 2017.
0:04:05.3 Kim Schlag: Okay.
0:04:06.8 Keri: I believe I was probably close to 315, if not more. That was the last time I weighed myself. I was buying clothes that were size, I don’t know, 26. And so I slowly started getting healthier, losing weight. I had some family involved in AdvoCare, so they helped me learn about nutrition and food, and things like that. So I started in January of 2018, and I joi
ned a gym, and my gym is amazing and wonderful, and I’ve lost 97 pounds since then.
0:04:48.8 Kim Schlag: Wow!
0:04:51.6 Keri: And I never got to the 100-pound mark, I don’t know, it’s so frustrating to be that close, but I was my lowest in… At the beginning of 2020, I was down to a size 12, and I felt amazing and I felt really good and really great, and then all the whole world went crazy. And I think this last year has just affected me more than I realized and I think I’ve gained probably 10-15 pounds back, and it’s been challenging. I have a coach who is amazing. Her name is Jen, and I love her dearly, and she puts up with me a lot but I don’t know why, I just struggled this year.
0:05:40.7 Kim Schlag: Yeah, I think…
0:05:44.6 Keri: I have a trainer as well who has totally changed my life and I love them both but…
0:05:49.4 Kim Schlag: That’s fantastic. You have a good team.
0:05:52.1 Keri: Yeah, I do have a very great support system. I would not have made it this far without them and the people at my gym, and my family. This last year, I’ve just really, really struggled and I’ve gotten really good at not letting the number on the scale get to me because the number doesn’t matter as long as I feel good and my pants fit. And I really found that I love lifting heavy but I think eventually, the numbers started to creep up and eventually, it gets to you a little bit.
0:06:26.3 Kim Schlag: Yeah, for sure. Well, first of all, losing 97 pounds is incredible. That is no small feat.
0:06:31.3 Keri: Thank you.
0:06:33.4 Kim Schlag: And you did it over the course of three years. That’s like 32 pounds a year. You did incredibly, incredibly well. Clearly, you’ve got something right here, so that’s exciting.
0:06:45.1 Keri: Thank you.
0:06:47.1 Kim Schlag: And a lot of people are in the same situation you are, Keri, that this past year has… Excuse me, I have to sneeze. That this past year, they’ve really taken a hit in their ability to be consistent. I mean, wow, our world was just really turned upside down, right? And so the question is, what do you do now, right? You’ve lost all this weight, you wanna pick up some momentum again, and you’re just not being able to. When do you think was the last time you were able to be consistent with your diet? Was it right before quarantine started in March? Is that when the last time you were really consistent was?
0:07:26.2 Keri: Probably. I definitely used food as… Even when we did the whole lockdown and the gym closed, I have a few things here and I worked out everyday. I did not miss a workout. Even if I wasn’t at the gym, I set up a little garage gym with two little dumbbells just to make something happen. But it’s always been the food that I struggle with, or I overeat, thinking, “It’s okay, I worked out today,” or “I did extra cardio, I can eat this bag of chips or cookies,” or whatever.
0:08:05.7 Kim Schlag: Yeah. So you feel like even right now, you feel like the fitness piece of it, you’ve got under control. You’re so consistently working out. Like, that’s not a problem.
0:08:14.7 Keri: That’s not a problem. I love my gym, that’s my stress release. Those are the people that make everything better, so…
0:08:22.1 Kim Schlag: Good, okay.
0:08:22.9 Keri: I never miss the gym, even in the pandemic. So I got Corona right after Christmas and I missed, I would say, about three weeks of working out. So going back to the gym was my favorite thing. I couldn’t wait to get back.
0:08:38.2 Kim Schlag: Well, you’ve got that going in your favor, like that piece has really clicked for you, and it’s not stress; you actually like it. So, you know, here’s what I wanna us to think about. Success leaves clues. You’ve clearly been very successful at losing weight. So let’s think back to last January, February time period when you were still doing really well. What were you doing with your nutrition that you think was working? When you think back and you’re like, “Yeah, this I did, and it helped me.”
0:09:08.9 Keri: Probably the one thing was seeing the scale go down, even if it was just a point two. If it went down, I instantly felt like what I was doing was right, and that would make me want to keep trying. And then I measured probably every single thing that I ate.
0:09:29.8 Kim Schlag: Okay. So do you think that…
0:09:30.2 Keri: You know, weighing everything. And that just… I think it became overwhelming. So I started eye-balling things or, “That looks like half a cup.” You know what I mean?
0:09:39.7 Kim Schlag: Got it.
0:09:40.5 Keri: ‘Cause it does get overwhelming, having to measure and plan, and I pack… You cook all the food on Sunday and you pack all the food for the week. It just got overwhelming, I think. And then lockdown happened, then I think I just said, “I’m at home, what do I need the meal plan for? ‘Cause I’m at home.”
0:10:00.9 Kim Schlag: Got it, got it. So two things you talked about there. The first one was that when you would see the scale go down, even if it was a little bit, that that was motivating to you and you wanted to keep going.
0:10:10.8 Keri:< span style="color:rgb(0, 0, 0)"> Right.
0:10:11.3 Kim Schlag: Right. Now, that you can’t directly control, right? You can’t directly say, like, “Scale will go down.” We’ve gotta get you doing the actions that are gonna help the scale go down. But you make a good point in that motivation can often come from seeing results. And so what we need to do to help you get your groove back is to help you start seeing some results, and that will feed on itself. So let’s figure out how we’re gonna do that. The thing you just mentioned, I think, is so key. The idea that you were weighing your food and then you went to eye-balling it, then all kind of heck broke loose. And if it feels overwhelming to you, there would be two things I would suggest to you about that. One, it doesn’t have to be a commitment for life. You’re not gonna say, like, “I now have to weigh everything I eat for the rest of my life.” You could just do it for 30 days, 60 days, and see how it goes, and see what kind of results you get. That’s one thing I’d say. The other thing I would say is to consider the alternative. Is it more overwhelming to start weighing your food again, or is it more overwhelming to have this constant feeling of, like, “I am just not being successful at this thing I really want to be successful at.”
0:11:28.5 Keri: Right. Well, I agree.
0:11:32.5 Kim Schlag: How do you feel…
0:11:33.2 Keri: And I think I used food to deal with stress. And, emotional eating, I would say I do that probably more than I need, more than I care to admit. And I think even if I do really good with my food, if you’re having a bad day, a few bites of this won’t hurt. But I think it does hurt. So I feel like I know what I do wrong, it’s just, why has it been so hard for me to move past it, you know?
0:12:10.0 Kim Schlag: Well. Talk to me about this. When you were successful with losing weight, what were you doing to manage your stress, instead of eating? ‘Cause you clearly weren’t emotional eating that whole time, or you wouldn’t have been losing so much weight, right?
0:12:26.5 Keri: Right.
0:12:27.0 Kim Schlag: What do you think changed, or what can you remember that you would do instead of eating, when you were stressed or emotional?
0:12:36.2 Keri: I don’t know the answer to that. I’ve worked pretty much the same hours. I do think I’m off in the summer, so I’m home during the summer, so not having that schedule definitely set me back. Sleeping all day, being up late. I feel like I thrive better on routine. As much as I hate getting up at the crack of dawn, it’s better for me.
0:13:02.8 Kim Schlag: Mm-hmm.
0:13:03.4 Keri: So I know the summer time throws me off, and… I don’t know. Maybe it’s because I was measuring everything and I was so dedicated to tracking, I didn’t… I made sure to measure out my sweets at the end of the evening, and that’s what I could have, and that’s it.
0:13:22.4 Kim Schlag: Mm-hmm.
0:13:23.8 Keri: Maybe I made sure to factor that in, and then I stopped.
0:13:30.8 Kim Schlag: Right now, are you at a point in your life that you have a schedule? Is school in session regular, and you’re going to work and all of the things?
0:13:39.2 Keri: Yes. And I got a new… The same basic job, just a different school. I just spoke to my nutrition coach about it, because it’s been such a change. It’s the same basic job but new school, new people, more responsibility, and it’s been such a change and more hours, I don’t know if my body is handling it well. I have a lot of back problems that I’ve had to deal with going to the doctor for, and I don’t know if medication can slow weight gain or weight loss down. And I think I’ve been trying really hard the last few weeks to measure and to track and nothing’s happening. The scale’s not budging. I don’t feel great. And I’m just, I think overwhelmed.
0:14:30.5 Kim Schlag: Have you still been in this period of time doing some of the emotional eating where you’re not tracking all the things?
0:14:38.7 Keri: Maybe a little bit, if you want the truth. [chuckle]
0:14:41.1 Kim Schlag: Yeah, yeah. Okay, yeah. Well see that’s the key then. So a couple of things I would say. Your question about the medicine. Medicine can absolutely affect us. It’s not going to affect you in that it will directly cause you to gain weight or stop losing weight, but can affect you in ways such as… Maybe you have increased hunger or increased cravings, those kinds of things, specifically increased hunger. And you can rest assured you can lose weight, so that’s important for you to know. You can still lose weight. Second thing I would say is, when you start tracking and you’re still doing the thing where you’re not tracking at all, it really cheats you because you have the feeling of… I’m trying so hard, I’m doing all the things and it’s not working. And so you have this feel… ‘Cause it’s a lot of work to sort of track, to track most of the time, or to almost be consistent with weight loss with those habits, but if you’re not all the way consistent with them, it’s really frustrating ’cause you feel like there’s something wrong with you or you’re broken. And in reality, what it is, is it’s all of these times where you’re not tracking it. Do you track calories? That’s the system you use with your coach?
0:15:51.1 Keri: We use, yeah, macros. He’ll tell me how many carbs, proteins, fats… Yeah, and then I try to eat the best I can. And I just figure out the macros and eat what I’m supposed to eat.
0:16:06.9 Kim Schlag: Got it. So, getting a little bit of traction and getting you to see some success is gonna be key to you feeling motivated again. That’s the weird thing about motivation. It doesn’t just spring up on its own, you’ve
gotta help it along. Sometimes it appears and you’re like, “Oh yes, I’m ready to go.” But oftentimes when we’re in the thick of things, it’s just not there, and we can create it by what we do. And seeing some progress is one of the best ways to get motivated. I really do think you’re saying to yourself, “Alright, I’m going to track everything I eat and drink for the next 30 days, and I’m gonna see what happens.” Is a really good solution. A piece of it, it’s not gonna be the whole solution, ’cause we really do need to talk about the emotional eating piece. And we need to talk about how to actually set you up to stick with the tracking. Are you open to taking that challenge of tracking everything you eat and drink for the next 30 days?
0:17:01.4 Keri: Yeah. I mean, I got over the coronavirus. I was crazy sick, and then I told myself that once I got better, we were gonna get serious. And the last couple of weeks, I was just sick not long ago, so the last couple weeks, I feel like I’ve done really well, and getting back into the swing of things and back into work. I think this is only my second week back to work from being sick. I’m determined this time. I want to see results. I had my fun. Now it’s time to get back on track.
0:17:37.0 Kim Schlag: Okay, amazing. And that’s gonna be you tracking everything, whether it’s a little bit, whether you like even if you emotionally eat, track it. If you decide like, “Oh my gosh, I’m really upset and I’m eating the ice cream.” Track the ice cream so that you can have a really clear picture of what you ate, ’cause you wanna make sure that your expectations match your behavior, so you can know when you get to the end of the week, and you’re thinking like, “Oh, I emotionally ate four times. It’s probably not gonna be me in a deficit this week.” You can still get it around your head of like, “Okay, next week I’m gonna try and emotionally eat fewer times.” So even in those times, if you find yourself emotionally eating, let’s have you track it. Does that sound good?
0:18:17.0 Keri: That sounds good.
0:18:18.3 Kim Schlag: Okay, and then let’s talk about this emotional eating. What are the things that you most are triggered by? What do you emotionally eat about?
0:18:28.0 Keri: Well, let’s see. Let’s pull out my list. I think a lot of it. I don’t see, I’ve lost a lot of weight, and I lost a lot of inches. I’m not at all what I used to look like, but when I look in the mirror, I still see the old me. Sometimes it’s really hard to see… I can say, the pants I have on right now are a size 12. I used to wear a size 26. I’m half what I used to be, but when I look in the mirror, I don’t always see that. And then that will get me discouraged because clearly I haven’t come as far as I would like to have. And then that spirals, the whole thing.
0:19:17.3 Kim Schlag: Got it. So one of your triggers is literally your body. You look in the mirror and you’re not happy with what you see yet or the size of your clothes, and that’s one of the things that causes you to emotionally eat.
0:19:30.1 Keri: Yeah, ’cause I still see the girl that was 300 pounds. Not all the time, but there’s days where you look in the mirror and you’re just so disappointed and discouraged. And I try really hard not to compare myself to other people, but you can see other people making results, their progress, or look at their before and after, and theirs is in a shorter amount of time. And why am I struggling so much?
0:20:00.0 Kim Schlag: Yeah, it’s hard. It’s absolutely hard. Do you know anybody else who’s lost 97 pounds?
0:20:08.5 Keri: Not personally. Online, you see people online, but I’ve never met anyone.
0:20:15.3 Kim Schlag: Okay. It really is an incredible amount of weight to lose, and I don’t think you… I feel like maybe you don’t appreciate how far you have come and how much work that took. That wasn’t by accident. Nobody accidentally loses 97 pounds, right? That was a lot to lose.
0:20:33.4 Keri: I think it was a lot less. I only lost 97 pounds. Only.
0:20:36.9 Kim Schlag: Why do you say that? Oh, because it’s not 100. That really gets you.
0:20:41.0 Keri: It’s not 100. Yeah.
0:20:42.5 Kim Schlag: That really gets you. Interesting. Let me ask you this: So, your 12-year-old, is it a girl or a boy?
0:20:51.7 Keri: It’s a girl.
0:20:53.4 Kim Schlag: Okay. So your 12-year-old daughter. Let’s say she studies really hard at school. She really wants to do well on this big project, and she works all semester for it, and she comes home and she’s super disappointed, really disappointed about how she did, and then you see her grade, and it was a 97, and not 100. What do you say to her?
0:21:18.1 Keri: I would tell her how amazing she did, and what a good job she did, and how smart she is, and praise her.
0:21:24.7 Kim Schlag: “But, Mom, I did not get a 100. I only got a 97.”
0:21:27.9 Keri: But it’s pretty darn close to 100. I mean, you’re a hop, skip and a jump away. It’s practically 100.
0:21:33.7 Kim Schlag: “Well, what did I do wrong? Why didn’t I get the 100? What’s wrong? What’s wrong with me?”
0:21:39.3 Keri: Nothing. [chuckle]
0:21:41.5 Kim Schlag: It sounds crazy, right?
0:21:43.2 Keri: It does sound
crazy.
[chuckle]
0:21:45.3 Kim Schlag: Do you realize that that’s what you’re doing to yourself?
0:21:49.0 Keri: Well, now I do.
0:21:50.5 Kim Schlag: So, 97 pounds and 100 pounds are practically the exact same thing. Let’s say when you were at your top weight loss of 97 pounds, do you really think that you, three pounds less would have looked, felt, moved, been that different?
0:22:10.7 Keri: No, probably not.
0:22:12.3 Kim Schlag: Right?
0:22:13.9 Keri: With the scale… The scale can jump three pounds just because you drank an extra glass of water, you know what I mean?
0:22:19.0 Kim Schlag: That is absolutely true. That is absolutely true.
0:22:23.1 Keri: Yeah.
0:22:23.7 Kim Schlag: Here’s the thing. This feeling is not gonna go away just because you and I had this conversation. You’re gonna have to talk this mean girl out of your head over and over and over until she’s gone. When this comes back up, because it will, you need to be the person who says to yourself, “Keri, I’m not gonna talk to me that way. I’m not gonna allow it. I’m not gonna allow myself to convince myself that 97 pounds wasn’t good enough. I’m not gonna allow myself to convince myself that I’m not good at weight loss or I can’t do it, or I’m somehow a loser at this. I’m very good at this. Clearly, I’ve lost all this weight. You’re gonna need to keep talking that mean girl out of your head.
0:23:02.8 Keri: Yeah, I understand.
0:23:05.8 Kim Schlag: Yeah, ’cause that really is the answer to it. It’s not gonna go away on its own. It’s gonna be something you’re gonna have to practice and you’re gonna have to practice over and over and over. And I would suggest, and some people think it’s crazy, but I would suggest having these conversations with yourself out loud.
0:23:25.6 Keri: Right. I do it at the gym too, ’cause I found that I really like lifting heavy. And I set a goal to deadlift 300 pounds, and I think I did 295 and then I was like, “But it’s not 300.”
[chuckle]
0:23:45.8 Keri: And then I did do 305 on that… What’s that little… The trap bar?
0:23:52.4 Kim Schlag: Yeah.
0:23:52.7 Keri: Is that what it’s called?
0:23:53.5 Kim Schlag: Yes.
0:23:53.7 Keri: I did 305 on that.
0:23:55.0 Kim Schlag: Amazing.
0:23:55.8 Keri: But, because it wasn’t the regular bar, I don’t think I’d count it as being that strong.
0:24:01.0 Kim Schlag: You didn’t count it?
0:24:04.3 Keri: Yeah, because it’s not a real deadlift.
0:24:04.7 Kim Schlag: You’re really hard on yourself. You’re really hard on yourself.
0:24:07.4 Keri: Yeah.
0:24:08.4 Kim Schlag: Yeah. Because 305 on a trap bar is amazing. That’s a lot of weight, and just ’cause it’s not the straight bar, you’re like, “Ah, that doesn’t really count.”
0:24:16.0 Keri: It doesn’t count.
0:24:17.0 Kim Schlag: That doesn’t count.
0:24:18.1 Keri: Yeah.
0:24:18.4 Kim Schlag: And would you say that to one of your gym friends? Would you be like… Is that how you’d respond? You’d be like, “Well, that was good and all that, but that doesn’t really count?”
0:24:26.8 Keri: “That’s not a real bar, though.” I would never…
0:24:29.0 Kim Schlag: Could you imagine saying that out loud to one of your friends there?
0:24:33.1 Keri: No. I would never say that.
0:24:34.3 Kim Schlag: And you wouldn’t even think it.
0:24:35.7 Keri: Of course I would be like, “Oh, my God, that’s amazing.”
0:24:38.6 Kim Schlag: Yeah, you would be. And you need to be that person for yourself. You need to be able to pump yourself up and be like, “What I just did was amazing. It was amazing.” And look, if you still wanna get a 300-pound deadlift with the straight bar, you can do it. You c
an keep working on it. But you don’t have to discount what you’ve already done to keep working on that goal.
0:25:00.1 Keri: Right.
0:25:00.7 Kim Schlag: And all of this negative self-talk isn’t serving you, Keri. It’s not helping you lose more weight to beat yourself up about those three pounds you didn’t lose. It is not helping you lose weight to look in the mirror and think, “I should be further along.” That’s not helping, right? You can see that, right?
0:25:16.7 Keri: I can see it, and everything you say makes sense.
[chuckle]
0:25:22.6 Kim Schlag: So let’s talk some about what you’re gonna do then. So, one thing I would like you to do is really practice this self-talk over and over, okay? So that’s one thing. The second thing we’re gonna have you do, a 30-day commitment. Track everything you eat or drink, including weighing everything you eat that is not either pre-packaged with a barcode or your greens. You don’t need to be weighing your lettuce; we don’t need to be that silly.
0:25:46.7 Keri: Okay.
0:25:47.4 Kim Schlag: So that’s another thing I would have you do. And then the third thing… Wait, I had another, third thing. Give me a minute. I’m having a brain freeze here.
[chuckle]
0:26:00.0 Kim Schlag: Shoot. Oh, we need to talk about how you’re actually going to make that happen. So you have your macros. We know you wanna track everything. How are we gonna help you with this emotional eating piece? When you want to emotionally eat, we need to help you think of other ways to manage those feelings. So we just talked about one, the situation with you, you look in the mirror, you don’t like what you see. Your strategy there really can be this conversation with yourself out loud. Tell me another thing that you emotionally eat about?
0:26:38.0 Keri: My family I would say without getting too in detail there’s always something going on, family drama, somebody is upset about something or somebody has got money problem, whatever it may be. I think I let that get to me, my husband and I are on offices schedule, so I never see him during the week. We’re strangers during the week, we don’t even see each other in passing and then it’s only on the weekends that I see him which I think… If I’m being totally honest that’s weighing on me quite a bit.
0:27:18.6 Kim Schlag: And so you’re lonely?
0:27:21.1 Keri: I’m basically a single mom during the week.
0:27:25.0 Kim Schlag: Got it.
0:27:25.6 Keri: And also it’s been like this since we’ve been married, he’s always worked these hours, my job has changed and my schedule has changed here and there, like I said I’m off in the summer, I follow the same schedule that the kids do, so I’m thankful for that but sometimes it’s just… My daughter is 12, an emotional preteen and it sometimes I think it weighs on me, and for some reason lately it’s just been really, really hard and I don’t think I give that enough credit, I don’t think I acknowledge how hard it is on me that he’s not here.
0:28:03.5 Kim Schlag: Yeah, yeah, that’s a lot.
0:28:06.2 Keri: Yeah, and you don’t wanna tell, him can’t help it, he’s working. And if he could change it he would, but it’s just that’s just the way it is, and most of the time I do fine, most of the time I’m busy, I go to the gym, I come home, bedtime is no big deal. But for some reason lately, I don’t know if it’s because we were just off for three weeks together ’cause we all had to stay home ’cause we were all sick, I don’t know if being home with him for those three weeks and now it’s back to him being gone, I don’t know if that has something to do with it, I don’t know if it’s the new job, the more hours, I don’t know maybe all of it combined.
0:28:44.9 Kim Schlag: So talk me through the last time you emotionally ate, what happened? Something happened like was it one of these nights you were home home without your husband, did your daughter do something to stress you out, were you feeling lonely, kinda talk me through what happened, what you were feeling and what you ate?
0:29:02.3 Keri: I would say the last time was probably about a week ago, I think I had a bad workout just because I’ve been off for three weeks so I don’t take some minutes to get back in the groove, of course you’re not gonna come back in best looking like you did two months ago after being sick, so I think my workout wasn’t as great as I wanted it to be, my back hurt, I worked all day, he’s not here, my daughter had some kind of melt down and everything I do annoys her these days, so I think all of it is hard for me.
0:29:35.8 Kim Schlag: I so relate. [chuckle]
0:29:37.4 Keri: I think all of it was just like, I am trying so hard and I’m not getting anywhere, so it’s mindless eating and I don’t have a lot of junk in the house to be honest with you, lots of yogurt and peanut butter and trying to keep it very clean in here. So a lot of it is just mindless handful of tote chips or I buy healthy popcorn, well, maybe I didn’t weigh it and I ended up eating half the bag not even thinking, I feel like I do a lot of mindless munching when I’m not even realizing that I’m doing it.
0:30:19.0 Kim Schlag: Got it. Okay, so in a situation like that the thing I would suggest to you is, for the next couple of weeks really start paying attention to when you have this urge to emotionally eat and start noticing these patterns, it seems like during the week you’re feeling lonely, you’re feeling stressed because you have to deal with all the problems and the sassy teenager, start kind of noticing what it is that brings about the desire to just grab
that food, note what it is, write it down on your phone, keep a running log of what are the things and what are the things that you typically eat, then using that information come up with an approach to manage it, because you’re still gonna have those feelings, right? And so when this happens, the first goal would be to just notice when it’s happening and notice, like oh, here it is again, I want to emotionally eat, and then give yourself time and space to make a different choice. And you do that by putting the food away in the cupboard, leaving the room, going somewhere away from the food, don’t walk away with the tote chips in your hand and give yourself 20 minutes.
0:31:25.4 Kim Schlag: Tell yourself in 20 minutes, if I still want the tote chips I am going to go and have them, I’m gonna give myself permission to have them, and then in that 20 minute space you’re gonna use that 20 minutes to self-soothe in a different way because that’s what you’re doing with the food, you’re trying to self-soothe distress and upset and all of that with the food, and so to do that you need to have something planned. So the other thing I want you to do is brainstorm ahead of time two or three things that would help you feel better in a moment like that and the things that might work are different for everybody, for you maybe it would help to go outside and pet the dog, maybe it would help for you to walk around the block, maybe it would help for you to call your girlfriend, maybe it would help for you to go grab a kettlebell you like to lift, maybe it would help for you to go do some hard lifting for just… And it needs to be something you can do in the moment, it can’t be something that you need to leave your 12-year-old at home alone and you can’t do that, it has to be something very practical that you could do, that you can see that would help you feel better, maybe it would be writing in a journal, maybe it would be listening to music, maybe it’ll be laying down, all kinds of things.
0:32:31.0 Kim Schlag: Brainstorm what you think would help you feel better in those moments instead of just food, and then make a running list of those. And then over time you practice these things, you practice the waiting, you practice leaving the room and then you practice using that 20 minutes to do whatever the things are that you came up with, and see which ones work and which don’t work for you. And that is an approach that is actually going to help you do two things; and one, it’s gonna help you stop getting all these extra calories from the food, from the emotional eating, you’re not even hungry when you’re eating that’s the bad aid; and two, it’s gonna help you deal with these emotions in a productive way because the food isn’t helping anyway, right? Now, it’s not like you’re finished eating the popcorn and now your daughter is not still being sassy to you.
0:33:16.4 Keri: Right, all of a sudden I’m not driving her crazy.
0:33:19.8 Kim Schlag: Right, you’re still being the annoying mom to her, and so it helps us come up with a way that’s more productive to deal with, whatever the situation is. Sometimes the situation that needs to be dealt with is like there’s a hard conversation that needs to be had, or there’s like… It could be lots of things that need to help you. But it gives you the space to deal with that versus covering it up with food.
0:33:41.4 Keri: Right, I think that’s a good plan.
0:33:44.7 Kim Schlag: Okay, great. Well, I know we’ve covered a lot of ground here today. You’re gonna have to re-listen to this so you can hear about all the things we talked about [chuckle] and all the things you’ve agreed…
0:33:55.0 Keri: Some of it’s common sense, and I just need to be told again.
0:34:00.4 Kim Schlag: Don’t we all, right? That’s a whole lot of this fat loss process, is just having it brought to our attention again. Like, Oh right, that’s the thing I need to do. That’s the thing that I was working before. Because the reality is, Keri, you have every reason to believe that you can be successful at losing the rest of the weight you want to. You have a lot of evidence to show that you can be successful at weight loss. You do.
0:34:21.5 Keri: Well, thank you. I need to remind myself of that.
0:34:26.3 Kim Schlag: Absolutely. How much more are you hoping to lose, Keri?
0:34:30.7 Keri: At this point, I don’t have a number, I just want smaller pants.
0:34:36.3 Kim Schlag: Got it.
0:34:36.5 Keri: And I’d like to be able to see the muscle that I’ve spent so much time working on.
0:34:41.4 Kim Schlag: I love that.
0:34:42.9 Keri: It’d be nice to see it and not just know it’s there. I’m always telling everybody, you can feel it, it’s under the fluff.
0:34:51.6 Kim Schlag: [chuckle] It’s there, it’s there.
0:34:52.2 Keri: You just can’t see it. I’d love to be able to fit into smaller… I don’t have any desire to be rock hard abs or anything, but it would be nice to just be more confident and fine, be able to wear a dress and not feel like I look crazy, and have arms that resemble that I workout. I’d like for people to look at me and say, Oh man, she worked out.
0:35:19.7 Kim Schlag: So you wanna look as fit as you feel. You know you’re a strong person, you know you have all this athletic ability, and you wanna look like that person.
0:35:27.5 Keri: I do. I’d like to look like I workout.
0:35:30.2 Kim Schlag: That’s amazing. And there’s every reason in the world for you to be confident that you can do that.
0:35:37.3
Keri: Well, thank you. I think I have such a problem with arrogance and people who are bragging and arrogant. I think I go the complete opposite, where I don’t want to brag or be arrogant about things, so there’s a fine line between confidence and arrogance. I’m usually confident in myself. I’m a confident, outgoing person.
0:35:58.3 Kim Schlag: Yeah.
0:36:03.2 Keri: It’s my self-talk, that I think.
0:36:05.1 Kim Schlag: Yeah, that inner mean girl. You need to talk back to her more.
0:36:07.9 Keri: Yeah, we need to shut her up.
0:36:09.4 Kim Schlag: We need to make her hush, because you really do… You have every reason to believe you can be successful at this, you’ve been successful at it so far. So much, so much weight loss. You’re so strong in the gym and there’s just no reason you can’t do this. So practice talking back to her and practice saying to yourself. Talk to yourself like you would your daughter. If she’s down, you do not kick her when she’s down, and you need to do that to yourself. You need to talk to yourself the way you would talk to her.
0:36:37.6 Keri: Got it.
0:36:39.1 Kim Schlag: All right, my dear. Thanks so much for coming on and we’ll talk soon. Keep me posted on how this all goes.
0:36:45.0 Keri: All right, thank you so much.
0:36:46.1 Kim Schlag: Bye-bye.
[music]
0:36:51.9 Kim Schlag: Thanks so much for being here and listening in to the Fitness Simplified podcast today. I hope you found it educational, motivational, inspirational, all the kinds of -ational.
If you enjoyed it, if you found value in it, it would mean so much to me if you would go ahead and leave a rating and review on whatever platform you are listening to this on. It really does help to get this podcast to other people. Thanks so much.
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