Ep #104: Weight Loss – Discomfort

Welcome to the Life Coach School Podcast, where it's all about real clients, real problems, and real coaching. Now your host, master coach instructor, Brooke Castillo.

Well hello, my friends. Today we are talking about weight loss. I know that so many of you are so excited. I've gotten your emails and I know that you want to talk about weight loss. Yes, I am doing a webinar. Yes, I am opening up a Stop Overeating Masterclass. It's all happening. I'm all excited, too. Here's the deal: I have just been working with a group of six people at a time on weight loss and have had extraordinary success with them in the work that I've done. For those of you who don't know, I have I would say an unreasonable combination of skills when it comes to weight loss. I am, first and foremost, a recovering overeater. I suffered a lot with emotional eating in my life, and I figured out how to stop doing that by using the emotional tools and learning how to coach myself instead of overeating all the time.

I also have the skill set of really understanding hormones. My son was diagnosed with insulin resistance and had some pretty severe insulin issues going on with him. I, of course, dove into all of the research on insulin, and how to affects weight loss, and how it affected him and his weight, and really have an understanding of hormones and how they affect weight loss, as well as that emotional component of what goes behind weight loss. Then I also have a really good understanding of how we use weight and the weight pain and the weight struggle to avoid living our full lives. I think that combination of skills is what really makes me an exceptional coach in this area.

I don't feel like I'm bragging when I say that. I really just think that it's where my skill set lies. I would bet anyone I can make them thin. I bet you 50 grand that I can make you thin, seriously, if we do this work together. I understand the body enough, and I understand hormones enough, and I understand the mind enough, and the brain, and how all of those components work together to contribute to us being overweight and why we struggle to lose the weight. I'm going to talk about some of that here today. Before I get started, I just want to let you know that I am teaching a webinar. This webinar will be epic. It will cover a ton of details about overeating, and stopping overeating, and all of the components that go into those issues. I will definitely be addressing them.

You can enroll now, as of this recording, by going to thelifecoachschool.com and clicking on the navigation that says "Overeating," or there should be a hello bar at the top that you can click that will say "Overeating Webinar." You can click and enroll. I am charging for it. It is $97. We definitely want people on there that are engaged and that have questions to ask. If you attend live, you'll be able to participate and ask me tons of questions. I'll stay on until all of the questions are answered. It's a 90-minute webinar. If you can't attend it live, you will get a recording. You of course can send in an email question ahead of time and I will answer it live if you're unable to attend live. What will happen is you'll register for the webinar and then you'll get an email with instructions on how to do that if you can't attend live. There will be a live one and the replay.

Of course, I usually have done webinars for free. Since there's so much effort and so much work going into this one, and it's such good, awesome material, and I'm also going to use this webinar as an invite for those of you who are interested into applying to my Stop Overeating Masterclass, so that is why I am charging for this one $97. It's a bargain. I promise you. If you are interested in Stop Overeating Masterclass, I will be talking about that program that is my very high-end, expensive program that lasts for six months, where it includes weekly coaching directly with me. If you're interested in that, make sure you sign up for this webinar. I think that is everything. For those of you who are interested in the exact details, it is March 17th at 3:00 PM Pacific Time is when that webinar is. Again, if you can't make it live, no worries. Just make sure you purchase your ticket, and we will send you a replay.

Let's talk about weight loss discomfort. The reason why I'm calling it discomfort is I feel like I talk a lot about the idea of discomfort with my clients when it comes to losing weight. It's something that most of us who are emotional overeaters do not want to do. We do not want to ever feel uncomfortable. We want to always get our comfort, and we always want to get it from food. One of the things that's been really interesting is having people come to me and say, "Okay, Brooke. I want to lose weight with you, but I want to accommodate my need for comfort." What that looks like is basically, how do I lose weight comfortably? I do think that a lot of diets out there promise this. I think they teach us that we can go through the process of losing weight comfortably, and I think that's why a lot of us end up not doing it.

Because here's the truth: I don't think there's anything about weight loss that is comfortable. I think that, first of all, it's change. If you've been listening to my past couple webinars, I've been talking about how change is very uncomfortable for us and how the process of change can be very discombobulating. That, in and of itself, just being in the process of changing from somebody who struggles with overeating, from somebody who's overweight, to someone who doesn't struggle with overeating, who's not overweight, is an uncomfortable process. I have two clients who've already reached their goal weight within Stop Overeating Masterclass. They would both tell you that in that process that they were very uncomfortable and still are uncomfortable, because they haven't really arrived in these new bodies.

The reason why we overeat in the first place is to attempt to get some comfort. The problem is that it never works, and so we're constantly seeking additional comfort, additional comfort, trying to get more comfortable, and in the process making ourselves more uncomfortable, which of course has us seeking more comfort from food. One of the paradigm shifts that I want you all to consider is that losing weight should be uncomfortable. Not overeating should be uncomfortable. You can do it. You can tolerate it. You can manage it. In fact, and you guys have heard me say this a lot on the podcast, your ability to be uncomfortable is directly related to your ability to be successful. Why is that? Because your willingness to feel emotions, all emotions, all negative emotions, is directly related to the actions you are willing to take.

I want you to think about overeating, and I want you to think about why you do it, because you're seeking comfort, and if you don't do it what you're going to feel instead. People will say to me, "Well, I don't want to feel deprived." People are having cupcakes. People are having cake. People are drinking wine. People are insert popcorn. Whatever it is. "I don't want to feel like I'm being deprived." I'll say to my client or somebody, I'll say, "Well, why not? Why aren't you willing to feel that emotion?" Because if you aren't willing to feel the emotion that is present for you, you will constantly keep creating the result. What is it about feeling deprived that's so intolerable, that you would rather be obese than feel deprived? You would rather be obese than feel uncomfortable.

I know this. I've been there. I don't want to feel agitated. I don't want to feel restless. I don't want to feel frustrated. I don't want to feel deprived. Instead, I will just continuously eat. Here's the deal: if I'm willing to feel temporarily uncomfortable, then I get the long-term comfort of being in a thin body, of turning off the chatter in my brain, of the constant struggle, of the constant battle between not being able to lose weight, and what should I eat, and how much should I eat, and why am I always struggling with this. If every time I had the opportunity to overeat I was willing to feel an emotion instead, that would accumulate as a pattern of action for me, and that would become effortless.

Here's what I want you to hear. This is basically exactly what I just did with stopping drinking, is I would go into an environment where I wanted wine and I didn't want to feel deprived, and I decided that I would allow myself to feel whatever it was that I was feeling that I was trying to escape from. For me, what I recognized is that it was restlessness. I would go into these environments where they were serving wine and I was meeting friends, or I was going to a party, or there was a networking event, or whatever, and I would feel restless. I would feel like I couldn't quite be in my own skin, and so I would have a glass of wine. Some people, you guys go to parties and they have appetizers, or you go out to dinner and they have a beautiful meal, or you go to a friend's and they're cooking something for you.

Instead of saying, "No thank you," and feeling whatever is true for you, instead of feeling restless, or deprived, or agitated, or frustrated, you eat instead. Then you don't have to feel the discomfort of the emotion. I get this. I understand. I had someone say to me, "Life is too short to have to pay attention to all of that all of the time. I just don't want to have to deal with that." I think life is too short not to feel the truth of what you're feeling. I spent all my younger life trying to avoid what was true. Life is too short to be in the emotion that I'm truly feeling. What I found was when I'm in the emotion that I'm truly feeling, then I get to be with myself. I'm not constantly running away from myself. I'm not constantly feeling out of control. I'm not constantly feeling like I'm eating against my own will. I start to feel like I'm in complete control because there's no emotion I'm not willing to feel.

I'm going to talk on the next podcast about desire, but here's one of the things that I want to just mention here, is that when you allow yourself to feel what's real for you, your desire for the escape is unnecessary. If you're constantly struggling against yourself, this is why. You are trying to find a way to be comfortable and not be overweight. The way that you're trying to solve discomfort is by eating. What you're actually creating is discomfort in your body. I'm going to repeat that. Really listen to this. The reason you're overeating is to avoid discomfort. What you're creating is discomfort by trying to avoid it. When you are willing to experience whatever comes up for you when you don't eat, that's when you truly establish a relationship with yourself, and the need for any kind of escape disappears, so you're not constantly struggling against it.

The opposite of that is, I need to find a way to lose weight where I'm never uncomfortable. We're always out there looking for gimmicky things, a way to trick us into not thinking that we didn't not eat. We're always trying to find ways to lower the calorie count or eat in a way where we never have to be uncomfortable. Heaven forbid we would ever feel hungry or ever feel deprived. You can go to any party and eat whatever you want. You can always have bread. You can have as much sugar as you want. You can have everything you want. This is what we want. We want to have everything we want and a thin body. I love, love, love, love that the universe doesn't work that way, because it requires us to be more sophisticated in our relationship with our self.

We have to be, instead of just being able to avoid our self all the time with food, we have to be able to get real with our self and say, "Look, if you're feeling uncomfortable, I'm going to sit here and be uncomfortable with you. Instead of forcing food down your throat, instead of making you want to eat and escape it, I'm going to hear you out." If I go to a party and I want to have a cupcake, because it feels like everybody else is having one and I don't want to feel deprived, and I don't have a cupcake, and I allow myself to feel whatever is true for me, and I survive it, and I'm okay, that's what I learn how to do. That's what I learn how to do. I learn how to be uncomfortable.

Here's the magic: when you learn how to be uncomfortable temporarily, you get the benefit of being comfortable long-term in your body. Now I hear so many of you saying this, because when I teach this what happens is my students all say, "Okay, but how? How do you do that?" We've talked about this before. It brings up, I'm so confused. I don't know what to do. You're not confused by this. Here's the hard sell: I'm saying to you you can either eat a cupcake or be uncomfortable. That's always been the option. We beat ourselves up for picking the cupcake. Duh! Of course we're going to pick the cupcake. When we haven't thought this through, when we haven't thought of what is the benefit, what is the long-term benefit of being uncomfortable, of course in the moment we're going to choose the cupcake. We're going to choose that taste of that cupcake versus being uncomfortable.

When you back up and you really look at, hey, I'm going to be in this situation, eating the cupcake will be easier for me because that's my pattern. That's what I have taught myself to do. I feel uncomfortable, I eat a cupcake. I feel uncomfortable, I eat a cupcake. When there's a cupcake there, I eat a cupcake. That's what's familiar. That's what's normal. It's going to take much more effort not to eat the cupcake. We don't want it to take any effort. We want it to just come naturally and easy. We don't want to have to think about it. Well too bad. If you want to connect to yourself and have a deep relationship with yourself, and if you want to change, you have to learn how to be uncomfortable enough to change. You're going to have to stay focused, pay attention, and put some effort into noticing that.

When you decide not to have that cupcake, you are going to feel uncomfortable. This is different than feeling resistance. That is a huge point that I want to make sure you understand. If I am resisting the cupcake, I'm going to feel resistance. I'm going to feel like I really want the cupcake, but I'm going to resist it. Again, I'm going to talk about this a lot more in the next podcast. That is different than I'm resisting the cupcake and I'm resisting the emotion. That is different than I'm going to choose whatever emotion is real for me right now over the cupcake. One feels tense and closed down, because I'm resisting the cupcake and I'm resisting the emotion that I'm feeling, so I'm just going to sit here in resistance, and I'm going to feel closed down and tight and out of control.

What I'm suggesting is that you literally choose the discomfort. You don't resist the cupcake and you don't resist the emotion. You choose discomfort over the cupcake. I know it's kind of a mind shift and it's a little bit tricky, but it's everything. When my students get this, their life changes, because they release the need for willpower, they release the need for resistance, and they release all the anxiety. What they choose instead is discomfort, or restlessness, or agitation, or insecurity, or whatever they are really feeling in the moment, and they allow themselves to feel it through, and then they're free of it. The desire for the cupcake is gone. The resistance is gone. The discomfort is gone. Ultimately, they get that long-term feeling.

One of the things that I talked about that's really important is the walking into the room of your emotion. Whatever is true for you, instead of holding that door closed and fighting it, walk into it. Notice it. Look around. Tell yourself, I choose restlessness over chardonnay. I choose agitation. You know why? Because that discomfort is what is true in my life. The more honestly I live my life, the less resistance is required, and the more I can control everything that happens. I can control what goes in my mouth. I can control what I weigh. I can control how I act in all of the situations because I'm not pushing everything under wraps. The other piece that's so important is I learn how to change whatever it is I want to change in my life, because I'm willing to be uncomfortable. I'm willing to go through what happens when we change. That is discomfort.

If you guys have questions about this, I want you to go to thelifecoachschool.com/104. You can get the link for the webinar there. You can also bring your questions live to the webinar. We're going to talk more about discomfort. Next week I'm going to talk about the desire to overeat, which is something that most people don't talk about it. That is the issue. The issue is not that you overeat. The issue is that you have a desire to overeat. Where do you think that comes from? Why do you think you have it? How do we solve it? That's what we're going to talk about next week. I just want to give you a little bit of an incentive to come on over and sign up to the webinar. I'm going to end with 10 things you must know to help you stop overeating.

One: the hormone ghrelin determines when you're hungry. Two: certain foods increase ghrelin artificially. The hormone leptin tells you when you are full. Many people are leptin-resistant, and this is completely reversible. Five: the reason we overeat is not because we love the taste of food. In fact, we usually don't even truly enjoy overeating. Six: when our bodies become fat-adapted, we are hungry less often and have more consistent energy. Seven: mental rehearsal and decisions ahead of time are essential ingredients for sustained weight loss. Eight: understanding the desire to overeat is the most important part of stopping. Again, we're talking about that next week on the podcast. Nine: overeating is often a defense mechanism or distraction from discomfort. We talked about that today. Number 10: we are conditioned psychologically to overeat, and we can be conditioned not to.

You guys, come on over to the webinar, sign up. I can't wait to meet with you live on March 17th and teach you more about weight loss. Those of you that are interested in my Stop Overeating Master Class and being in a group of six women who will be going through the process of losing tons of weight, actually, up to 50 pounds, I think, is the six-month equivalent of what we're on track to do here. We still have a couple more months in the first six months that I've done. It's a significant amount of weight loss. We do a significant amount of very hard work. I don't want you to get the idea that you won't be uncomfortable, because you absolutely will. We're going to create a solution that works and a solution that is permanent for you. Have an amazing week, you guys. Come over. Check out the webinar. Otherwise, I'll be talking to you more about weight loss next week. Have a good one, guys. Bye bye.

Thank you for listening to The Life Coach School Podcast. It is my honor to show up here every week and connect with people that are like-minded, wanting to take their life to a deeper level with more awareness and more consciousness. If you are interested in taking this work to the next level, I highly encourage you to go to thelifecoachschool.com/howtofeelbetteronline. It is there that I have a class that will take all of this to a deeper application where you'll be able to really feel and experience how all of these concepts can start showing up in your life. It's one thing to learn it intellectually, it's another thing to truly apply it to your life. I will see you there. Thanks again for listening. Intellectually, it's another thing to truly apply it to your life. I will see you there. Thanks again for listening. Intellectually, it's another thing to truly apply it to your life. I will see you there. Thanks again for listening.