#25 Four Habits to Start Getting Healthy Today with Kara Hackelman

0:03 Court reporters hold one of the most important roles in the justice system. We're entrusted with the official records of the courts and we also have to run our own businesses, which is not something most of us were prepared for. I'm Bryn Seymour, freelance court reporter and life coach. Welcome to the Entrepreneurial Court Reporter podcast. Hello everyone. It has been a while I've been adjusting to the new schedule of working full time in court. It's going really well and I will hopefully have more updates coming soon. But today I want to release an episode of an interview that I did with Cara Hackelman. She is known as the concierge weight loss coach. So Cara and I we went to the same life coaching school. We both graduated from the life coach school and got our certifications there for coaching.

0:47 So Cara went on to become a weight loss coach and she is doing great things. She's got a lot to offer on her website, which all the info is in here in the podcast, and you can find it by listening to all the way to the end. So we got a special surprise for you. At the end, and also in the show notes, you can find the links and everything. So enjoy the episode and I look forward to hearing your comments. Please don't forget to leave comments and reviews and ratings Five stars if you like this and if you learn anything from it. There are a lot of amazing tidbits, a lot of amazing tips and things that you can apply immediately in order to start seeing results and just get you started on your journey, if you are trying to get healthy or whatever your goals are.

1:28 Everyone wants to be healthy. That's important in our lives as court reporters. So, even though she's not specifically like, this episode is not specifically related to court reporting per se, but it is something that applies to all of us, because in order to perform our duties at the highest level, in order to do our best, we need to take care of ourselves, as I've mentioned many times in the past. So welcome, kara Hackelman. Hi, kara, welcome to the Court Reporter podcast. Thank you for coming. Thank you, thank you for having me. I'm really sorry if my internet connection is unstable. I'm still in my office. I just started working full-time in court, so kind of like transitioning with the podcast setup and kind of trying to create a studio in here, but it's definitely.

2:12 I mean, I've been getting the pop-ups with unstable internet, so I'm sorry about that, but that is affecting the way you're hearing me at all. So far, so good, everyone's while you'll pause, but then you come back on. Okay, good. So, kara, you are the concierge weight loss coach. Yes, is that right? Yes, I am Okay. So why don't you introduce yourself and tell us about who you are and what you do, and we'll take it from there? Yeah, so I, like you said, I am the concierge weight loss coach, so I help women lose weight. Typically, they are really successful in all other areas of life, and this is just one thing they haven't been able to figure out yet.

2:55 We use some mindset. It's less diet and more mindset, and just general health, taking care of your full body. So water, sleep, you know, eating some good, nutritious foods and not feeling deprived or restricted in the process. So many times weight loss feels so depriving or so restrictive and then we just don't want to do it. We'll say I can't wait until I'm done with this, so I don't have to do it anymore, and that is not what this is. So this is something that is super doable, so that you can just do it forever and never have to diet again, I've definitely struggled and battled with eating issues and overeating and binging and like just emotional.

3:42 I didn't realize that it was called emotional eating. When you're eating you're not actually hungry, you're just eating to for the joy of eating, for the like, temporary, momentary pleasure of eating, when in reality that's not actually helpful down the line, like maybe only in the moment it's helpful, right? So I really make sure that I use the term emotional overeating because in our lives we have so much emotion connected when we're eating right, so you have food and you experience joy because it tastes so good and that's not a bad thing.

4:27 The overeating is the problem that you're going to run into with weight gain, or what kind of problem that looks like, is when maybe you did something right, like you've launched your podcast right At the end of last year and so like we're going to celebrate, and then we just go crazy, hog, wild, eating all the things making ourselves miserable. So then your left feeling bloated and sick and then if your goal was to lose weight, it's not going to help your weight loss goal, so dialing that back to an appropriate amount so that it's not considered overeating. The other one that's really huge is other types of feelings maybe that are uncomfortable, and so when you're not wanting to feel that discomfort or you're a little bit lost and don't know how to deal with a certain situation, you're worried or anxious or stressed, and then you're eating to not feel.

5:25 So sometimes we're eating because it's part of the feeling. Sometimes we're eating to avoid feeling something else, so like if you had a real stressful day in court and then you came home and you were like I just need to zone out so that I forget the day. Well, that would be emotional overeating. So if you're emotional, you're eating dinner, you're eating dinner, but when you're doing it so that you can forget about your day, so that you're not feeling stressed or overwhelmed or frustrated, whatever it is, that would be an emotional overeating. Got it Okay? Yeah, because when I think of emotional eating, I guess, or emotional overeating, I just think of like, yeah, you're trying to avoid some uncomfortable feeling or something.

6:13 You're just trying to escape feeling your feelings, and that, I think, is pretty common. Whether we know it or not, we often do that. Sometimes we're even doing it to create feelings, so like if you're more like you might be eating to create some excitement. Oh yeah, I'm guilty. I do that all the time. I think I mean I've definitely gotten better In the past. I've gone through some phases where I had issues with that, but it's, you know, even though I still do it sometimes, it's getting better. So yeah, so I was looking at your website and I saw your story. So I don't know if you want to share your story, like your journey, or I could just feed it.

6:56 I mean, it was really good. I don't remember what part of my story is on there. It feels like my story just keeps getting retold in different ways. So the highlight reel was that I pretty much battled weight since I was even before a teenager. So I want to say I was like somewhere between nine and 11 years old and I would not look back and tell myself now then that I was overweight by any means. But I started out with a mom who you know. We did slim fats together and we did oh, what was that? Richard Simmons.

7:36 I always get the curly hair guy, richard Simmons, together and Weight Watchers together. So I grew up that it was instilled in me that we are supposed to be dieting right, I'm supposed to be losing weight, thank you. It's also like in some families just like known that like we're eaters and and we do all the celebrating with food and overeating and so that kind of is how I grew up. Well, when I became an adult, it kept coming and no diet I ever tried would take it off. And so I don't know which story it is, but like I know that, like my ah ha was, I was sitting on the top of a mountain in North Carolina, we had been backpacking and hiking and I was crying I would have multiple asthma attacks.

8:21 And I was ready to throw the pack over the mountain and my son and best friend were like, please, don't do that, you have all the food. And so, but I knew I either had to, like we were at the peak of the mountain, so like, how, how amazing is my transformation at the peak of a mountain? And I knew that whether I turned back or I went forward, it's the same distance to go back to the car. And so and this was a multiple day hike I didn't tell you that part, and so I had to go some direction and I just kept telling myself like if I do not get this weight under control, I will never be able to hike again, this will never be good again. And so I just made a decision that I was going to figure it out.

9:04 And so when I found life coaching, I truly had barely a speck of hope left. I said like I had more curiosity about it just because it wasn't anything I'd ever heard of before. And so I thought, well, if nothing else, I'm going to do it, just so that I can claim I've truly tried everything else before I figure out how to be happy at the weight that I was at. And now I would love to be able to say oh yeah, you could be happy at any weight, but I did not have the brain power back then to be able to be happy at any weight. There was so much more for me to figure out. So that's how I was drawn to life coaching. And then, once you know something that powerful, if it affects your life in such a dramatic way, you feel so compelled to share it with everybody else.

9:53 That's something that you read online. Was that part of it. Yeah, a little bit. Yeah, I think you just left out the beginning part where you said that you're a wife and a mom and you put yourself last and take care of everyone else, which I think is pretty common, for, like, I think that happens to a lot of us, especially moms. You know you're putting yourself last over and over and over again and that can take a toll on you. And so you said that you were a scout leader. You volunteered at the school, at the church and helped all of your friends and family, but you know, just kept putting yourself last. Yeah, and my husband. He was going to tattoo the word no on my forehead because I apparently did not have it in my vocabulary.

10:37 It is. It really was a form of people pleasing, and a lot of it is self validation. When you feel like your worth is just not there and you're trying to find your worth, you're looking for it in like how you help people and when they thank you, you feel like, oh, maybe this is finally something like, maybe I've, I've done something that's good enough finally, and so, yeah, it's, it's not. It's when you don't start with a good, solid validation of yourself, like your self worth is just not good and so you're looking for it in everything outside of you.

11:20 Wow, yeah, I think that's. That's a bit like I said. It's a really common thing that people go through, especially women, and like when you were talking about how you grew up with, you did slim fats with your mom, like me too. Basically, my mom was always doing different diets, slim fats. She did that. I did it with her too. I tried everything she tried because I felt like I should always be losing weight and like like I wasn't good enough and like you know just that your body image is like who you are. Yeah and it's. And then you're from a young age, you're really, you're really impressed upon you that it needs to be a certain thing.

12:01 I was, I was talking to someone else on Monday and they somehow we got on the conversation about like societal norms and things and I had just happened to read some I cannot remember where I read it at but like even early, like as long ago as like the 1950s, women's job was to keep our children fed, our house clean and our husband happy and maintain our body size under 150 pounds or a single digit clothing size, so that our husbands wouldn't stray. That was part of a woman's job. Wow, the 50s you said. That's what it said. I mean, I feel like that culture is still kind of instilled in people like and in the diet culture, and it just causes so much weight loss and then weight gain and going back and forth and not really getting to the root of the issue.

12:59 Oh, definitely yeah, and I, in my clients, lose weight. Sometimes we have to figure out what some of those root beliefs are, and so that's part of the training of life coach is we figure out what people are thinking, that what your thoughts are are dictating so many of your actions. You think something and then you're feeling a certain way, so that's what drives all of the things you do. And so when that root belief, that inner core belief, is that you're not enough or your body is not okay, it changes how you show up in life in so many other ways besides just what your body is.

13:41 Right, that is so true. And going back to Brooks' story too, and probably yours and everyone else who experienced getting to the root of the problem, it's just so amazing how much your life opens up. You know, after so many years of living a life of like restriction, right, restriction, we know, leads to binges. So it's like a constant cycle of like binging and then restricting and binge Like it's. If that's the style that you grew up in, like I did and like you probably did and whoever else has struggled with any kind of weight and eating and food issues, that is where it takes time to get to the root and to really like, completely be free from, from that kind of mentality.

14:29 And you don't have to always be chasing what the root belief is, but eventually, if you're working with a coach, you'll figure it out. So a lot of times with clients, I start with something simple Like we're going to just take care of, like, natural body health, so like we're focusing on your water intake and we're focusing on making sure you're getting sleep. And then, because, well, here you go, I met with a potential client earlier today and it was right before this call, so it was about 430 pm and she hadn't eaten anything for the entire day, and so she just got into working and doing stuff and never ate, and so she's not even putting herself amongst her priorities.

15:14 And so with that specific one, we were talking about how, like, oh and like, listen to your hunger queues. But for her specifically, like, what we were talking about was just creating a plan, so she gets used to prioritizing her body and her health. I said would you ever have kids? Just say, I don't feel like cooking dinner for you. You'll eat again tomorrow. And she's like well, no, I'm like, but that's what you're doing for yourself. Like you're not, you're not prioritizing your own health, your own body's needs, you're just dismissing them and your body has gotten used to not getting what it needs, so it quit telling you it needed anything, just like children.

15:56 You know that would happen in neglected children too. So what are the four steps to simple weight loss? Yeah, so, like I said, we're gonna do our water, at least 64 ounces of water a day. Your body will tell you how much you need. Seven to nine hours of sleep. Sleep is so important. Yeah, there's a water break, right. So your sleep is so important because if you're really wanting to lose weight or just have a healthy body, our body goes into its deepest, best repair cycle. It repairs itself, it regenerates while we sleep, when it can take all the rest of the function minimal so that it can put all the energy into repairing.

16:39 That's when most weight loss happens too is when you sleep. So water, sleep. Make a plan of what you're gonna eat, what you're gonna feed yourself, get used to doing what you say. You will right. That's the third step. And then the fourth one is listening to your hunger. So you're eating when you're physically hungry and you're stopping when you've had enough. And so that's part of that mindful eating process really honing in on what your body's hunger cues are and knowing what is important and what's an urge or a craving versus some of that emotional eating, versus what the physical hunger is. And insulin plays a huge part in that.

17:21 So your body's hormones if you're not feeding yourself balanced, nutrient dense kind of food and I'm not talking like chicken and broccoli all the time like just normal foods. If you're too out of balance and your insulin is off track, it throws your hormones off, so like getting used to just having food when your body is hungry, getting that back in track again. So drink at least 64 ounces of water and your body will kind of let you know. How will your body let you know if that's enough or like if you need more or less? Absolutely. So I'll start with some of the nicer things, like your lips would be a little dry, or your throat is dry, your skin looks dry, your eyes might feel dry, so basically you'll feel like a general dryness.

18:13 The other part is that a lot of times our body will send up a signal that says hey, bryn, I'm hungry, and you're really not physically hungry, you're thirsty, and it knows that if you feed it it's gonna also get probably some water that happens to be in the food too. So sometimes you're extra hungry and really it's just that you're thirsty. And then the one that I say for last the color of your urine. So your urine needs to be pale yellow and it needs to be clear, not cloudy, so not like clear to color, but like not that you couldn't see through it.

18:53 Okay, I knew that. I kind of like knew the urine one but the dryness one I feel like, okay, I definitely like my lips are always so chapped and so, but no matter how much water I drink, because I tried, I think I tried tracking the water intake and I tried drastically increasing it and, like I don't know, I think I have a chronic chapped lips problem. But so sometimes it's a nutrient issue. And if you're like, I drink a gallon of water a day and so if I am drinking my gallon of water and I still have some chapped lips, well, first of all I'm gonna ask myself like, do I have like congestion where I'm mouth breathing?

19:33 If no, then the next thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna look at my nutrition and maybe I need to have some healthy fats in my diet so that my body will stay moisturized too. Can you elaborate on the mouth breathing thing? Is that something that you should not be doing Like should be breathing through your nose? Well, if your mouth breathing all the air is coming through your lips and your lips are not naturally designed to take that much air across them and stay hydrated. Your nose produces everything in your nose and it has its own natural you know layer in there to keep things moisturized. Your body heats it and kind of keeps it humid in your nose so that it'll not dry out.

20:22 There's the answer for me, then, because I think, like the way my mouth was designed is like I have to actually make effort to close it, like to close my lips. Can you refresh my memory? What was the second one? Yeah, the second simple step is sleep seven to nine hours. Oh, really. Oh, I have sleep as the third one, okay, so I guess I missed the third one then. Yeah, so you're asleep seven to nine hours and just getting used to having that sleep so that your body can go into its repair cycle at nighttime and that's also when the majority of fat is lost is when our body's in that repair cycle at nighttime, when we're sleeping.

21:02 The third thing is to write a meal plan, and the meal plan is what you're going to feed yourself. It gives you the opportunity to give yourself great food that you like, because I don't want you eating food that you don't like. So, food that you like and food that you've thought through so that you make sure you have the groceries in the house or the meat's laid out, or you've thought through your busy schedule so that it's actually doable to eat that food. And then, yeah, so doing what you say you'll do and learning to take care of yourself, making yourself a priority. That is why that is so critical to make a plan. And then the fourth step was to practice mindful eating by following your hunger cues.

21:52 So when your body's physically hungry and when it's physically had enough. Okay. So going back to the sleep one, so you said so. I think sleep is so fascinating. It's like I actually wanted to have an interview, a podcast interview with like a sleep expert, because it's just so I have so many questions about it and I know you're not like a sleep expert, but I mean, you know, well, it's fun to be is. I just got to have one on my podcast. So, oh my gosh, there's a sleep doctor and I reached out to her and she came on my podcast and let me ask her a ton of questions. So it was so much fun because it plays such a huge part in weight loss. So I don't know, maybe she talked to me about, but what was your?

22:35 What? were you wondering about. Oh, I found it. Bonus episode May 2023 with Dr Audrey Wells, sleep and obesity super sleep MD. Okay, so that's episode. So it's a bonus episode after number 80. So it's like 80 and a half. Yeah, she shared some really great insights about how better sleep starts when you wake up, and I thought I have always heard about your bedtime and your wake up time and like sleep aids, but I never had considered how, like, when you wake up, it sets the stage for how you're going to sleep at night, can. What do you mean by that? Yeah, so she said that when you wake up in the morning, like, don't hit your snooze button, set your alarm for exactly what time you plan to get out of bed.

23:21 That's like the one thing I wanted to ask the sleep expert. I was like I need to find a sleep expert because, because, like that's so interesting and I know that when you hit the snooze button it's so like it's not good for you, it's not good for your mind, it trains you to get into the habit of doing that and it also interrupts your sleep. So you're not really getting more sleep, but you're actually getting more tired. So, I don't know anything but yeah, you're, you're 100%. So what she said was like it's training your circadian rhythm. So the circadian rhythm is your body's natural rhythm of sleep wake up, sleep, wake up. And so we talked about that. Now, when you wake up in the morning, do not use the snooze and then turn lights on, so that your body knows that when the lights are on, it is time to be awake.

24:07 And then, as the evening goes on, we usually start dimming lights, or we'll just have the side lamp on or the TV on, and it's like our let down of light, so that our rhythm knows that it's getting close to time to sleep. Yep, yeah, because wow, and it's, that's okay. I can't wait to listen to that episode because I really want to know all about how, how to really build that habit, because once you've gotten in great, once you've gotten ingrained, to keep pressing the snooze, it's like probably harder and harder to stop. We talked about about napping and how to nap efficiently. We talked about the PAP machine.

24:52 She walked us through how to take a power nap. That was really amazing. Okay, I'm gonna. I'll definitely link the your podcast and specifically that episode in the show notes. Okay, so going. Moving on to meal planning. So I'll comment on that, because I have experienced the power of like how powerful that can be to just get intentional with planning. And even if you're not planning, like, okay, I'm going to eat salad and water, and like, super, super healthy, I'm not going to eat anything bad. That's what we would try to. That's like. The restrictive mentality is like to plan only the healthy things and not to plan the cake and the ice cream or whatever.

25:37 You know you're going to end up eating or you most likely you're, you know, craving and end up eating later. But it's unintentional. But if you intentionally like, I found that if I intentionally plan those things, I actually don't want them as much, and so it stops the binging and like, stops the. That like intense, like really powerful, they call it over desire. It stops the over desire, yeah, and then you're fine with just having a little bit, or even not having it at all, like if I plan extra free, like you get yourself and you feel loved, like I feel like I love myself and I'm.

26:19 I love that and I want to. That's one of my goals is to like be more consistent with that because it is really powerful. So why don't you share? You can share a little bit more about that and your experience with it too. So since that's the only thing that's truly even slightly dieting. With what I work with people, that's the thing they want to restrict. Because they're like no, no, no, like it makes a hundred percent sense that I should have water and I should have sleep and I should eat when I'm hungry and when I'm not not eat right. So the the meal planning. They're like oh, that takes too much time. And I'm like well, what sounds good for lunch today? And they can like tell me in five seconds, oh, I think I'm going to have leftovers, or I think I'm going to have a salad, or I think I'm going to run through the, you know the drive through and get whatever.

27:06 And I was like OK, well, that took you like point, you know, two of a second to like instantly know what you wanted. So it's not that it takes too long. And then when I talk to people and I'm like OK, so if it's not hard and if it's not taking too much time and it's something that's actually beneficial for you, how do you see it helping you? And so then they're like well, it's not depriving, if I'm planning the foods I love, right, it's actually making sure I have time to fit them in, like, oh, I'm going to look forward to having whatever and then you have it and you're good. You know, like I've got myself, I've put it on the plan and I have it.

27:48 So now I'm not building up or giving extra power to any certain food. The other thing is so, like if any of the people are listening and they have kids, like we have standardized testing where I live, like you probably had it when you were in school some kind of routine testing or finals week or something and as a mom, you're like I want to make sure that, like there's no extra stress when my kid is going through like that testing time. I want to make sure things are easy. Or maybe when you started to do the SATs, to be able to go to college or something else, and so, like you're making sure they have bedtime, that they're getting, you know, plenty of food, like brainpower food and all that stuff.

28:31 Like you said, you're really feeling loved, you're really taking care of all of your child's needs. Planning is your opportunity to do that for yourself. So, like, what do I like? What does my body need? What do I have time for? Because if I said we were going to have pot roast and I honestly don't get off work till 6. 37 o'clock I don't have time to make pot roast. Maybe I'm going to run through my husband is addicted to Chick-fil-A. Maybe I'm going to run through and get a big salad or nuggets or actually they have fabulous soup and I'm just going to plan that ahead of time.

29:14 So while my brain is thinking about what is important and what do I want and how can I best take care of myself and I don't have any cravings or urges that I've just got this hangering, or however you say that that's the word For a certain food I can make that plan ahead of time so that it is something I love and it fits my time schedule and it's going to feel really great in my body. It's a way to mother yourself, take care of your own self, love yourself. Okay, so I just have two more questions for you before we wrap up. Number one is so just, I guess, going off of what you were just talking about is planning and how important it is.

29:59 And I've, like I said, I've experienced the power of that and, even if it's not necessarily, yeah, like planning what you love, just to at least build that muscle, the follow through muscle, like your self-accountability, your ability to do what you say you're going to do. Because if you are so kind to yourself that you plan what you know you love and you know you can follow through, then you get better and better at that skill of do you call it accountability or like your follow through Self-accountability? Yeah, self-accountability, yeah, so that actually I did an episode about my experience I mentioned, talked about building your follow through muscle or your self-accountability, and I was planning on talking more about that, but I just briefly mentioned it.

30:43 And but that really is the way to build, that is, by kind of knowing yourself, knowing what you are going to end up doing anyway, and just planning for it, right, Like planning what you actually love to do, and then later on, you can actually end up being healthier Once you have that skill of following what you, what you, planned. Then you can start planning things. That might have been difficult in the beginning, but at that time it's easier. Yeah, making it easy to that's the big thing make it easy to do what you say you're going to do. So, like that, like I said, the power I was, like that would not be easy for me to do what I say I'm going to do, even if I really wanted to.

31:23 So find how to make it easy. Like, don't set the bar so high. Like you know, maybe this one's my favorite. So you say you're going to do, you're going to practice weight loss, right, you want to like focus on some weight loss. And the first thing people do is they dump everything out of their pantry because we can't have any, any urges like no, no food in the pantry that I can't 100% lose weight on, cause I don't know how to lose weight eating foods I love. Then we go to the store and we spend a ton of money on foods that we think we're supposed to eat to be able to lose weight, and then we eat all of them. My favorite used to be the snack well, cookies that were supposed to be low fat, and then people would eat the entire box of snack well.

32:08 Low fat cookies, and so that's the kind of thing they do. Now it's moved on to like protein bars or protein drinks, and so they think they're supposed to have that, or organic vegetables or something, and so we do all those things and we just keep making it harder and harder for us to show up and do what we say we're going to do. Just keep it real simple. Start exactly where you are. If you're eating Big Macs every day, maybe you say I'll eat a Big Mac with no sauce or no cheese. Or maybe I'm eating a Big Mac but I'm getting a small fry, or I'm even skipping the fry. You just start exactly where you are, so that it's so easy to do what you say you're going to do. You would have to intentionally not do it.

32:49 Just out of curiosity, did you do like Brooks program, or did you do Corinne's, or like, did you make your? You obviously not by now you have your own program. But like, how did you get into the groove of things and figure it out for yourself? So I found Corinne first, and she's another life coach school graduate that graduated from the same school you and I did. So Corinne is who I found, and then from her I wanted to know more about the mindset piece of it, the thoughts and beliefs part, and so then I went to Brooks and I yeah, so that's the direction I started, and then mine is kind of a combination of both.

33:32 So did you do the stop overeating course after taking Corinne's? Something you said reminded me of what she did Like. If you know you like to eat Big Macs, plan to have a Big Mac without the sauce or something. That's one of the things that she like. It was like a light bulb moment for me when I heard her talk about her. Plan was basically, she knew she always ends up eating like half of the pizza or whatever. Like half a box of pizza she does. She tries to restrict and then she ends up eating like half a box. She was talking about ice cream. She sits down every night with the whole carton of ice cream and then she challenged herself to put it in a bowl. Yes. So she started planning, but instead of trying to restrict, like her mind was like before, trying to restrict, but what?

34:15 That would cause her to eat a lot and end up eating the same, like keep eating the whole thing of ice cream or the whole box of pizza. But she started to plan okay, I'm going to have three huge slices of pizza instead of instead of half the box, or instead of four. And I was like, wow, you can do that, like what? And so I actually just took that and started planning based on what I learned from her, and I actually lost. I think I lost like five pounds in three weeks just by just by planning and following the plan, even though I wasn't restricting at all. Oh yeah, so that was trying to be a little bit better, and we think we have to have grand all or nothing type, like I'm all in or I'm all out.

34:59 I'm, you know, like I'm either winning and losing or I'm a failure and I'm quitting. And it's not so black and white. It can be just a little bit better, and each time you do just a little something different, that's a little bit better. It's going to make it so that it's not hard and it's not like overwhelming to do it, but it makes it so that it's doable. And we like, we like winning. So like, if you are constantly losing it again, you want to quit the game. But if you're winning at it, you're like, well, keep playing, and so I want you to win at your weight loss. So make it so that it's so doable. It would be silly for you not to just go ahead and do it. And if it's just leaving the sauce off that was the big thing of the big back You're going to just leave the sauce off, right that.

35:46 Or even if it was pizza, maybe I'm not going to eat the crust, I'm just going to eat the pizza. I'm going to not cross or I'll, you know, just have three pieces instead of six, like whatever the thing that feels like so silly that it's doable, it like it's not going to be the thing that makes me lose all my weight. But it's the next thing for me to do. It's like building that skill of that accountability, so that in the you know, in the future, once you have that skill, if you want to eat salads you'll probably be able to do that. And that just brings up the point of like Brooks course is like so different. I mean, it seems so different, but I think ultimately they end up doing the same thing right, Because Brooks is seems very extreme.

36:27 The stop over eating course. It's like stop eating sugar, stop eating flour, immediately. And it'll be hard in the beginning but it gets easier. So I guess how I want to ask you do you what, do you think about that? Do you eat sugar and flour? Like? What's your opinion? I do. I say that I eat anything that I like. I've just learned how to eat it in a different way. And so the my background started that I had a lot of autoimmune condition issues IBS, joint pain, asthma, hard time breathing, just I had psorias, like just tons and tons of of issues.

37:08 And so for a while I was going to doctors and a lot of them had conflicting information and so for a couple of years I did the no sugar and no flour stuff and I found other places to overeat, other ways to overeat, so you can still gain weight not having sugar and flour. And so I would wrap. And the other thing, the most important thing is when you think about yourself, when you're standing there at your goal weight, are you 100% not having sugar and flour ever again? And if you're like yeah, you know it's kind of like if you were a smoker and then you've got told that you have lung cancer, you're like I'm done walking away from the cigarettes forever, it's not a problem.

37:54 Well, if you can't say I'm going to walk away from it forever, then I want you to lose how you're going to live it. So figure out how to have the pizza or the Big Macs or whatever the thing is, so that you're not like I can't wait to be done with this diet so that I can eat normal again, because all normal met is how you started. So it'll just be a matter of time before you're looking to do something again, whether it's a diet or start over or whatever, and it's really. I know that everybody talks about lifestyle changes, but really this is you just learning some doable habits that work for your specific body so that, as you've lost weight, it doesn't feel like you need to stop doing those habits.

38:43 It's something that, like you know that you feel so great doing you can't imagine not doing it. Do you have friends who go to bed like you might be out having fun, and then they're like I got to go to bed, I'm tired, and they like excuse themselves and they go home. They go to bed and you're like well, we kept them out longer than normal and they just have created that habit for themselves and they just know what they like. They know that they like to be in bed by a certain time and they feel their best when they have more sleep, and so that's going to be the same thing you're eating, you're going to learn. This is like Okay. So part of my stuff was lactose issues and IBS issues, like the urgent bathroom stuff, and so if I had like a milkshake, I'm running into the bathroom.

39:32 Well, I have learned that if I have like the kids size milkshake, I'm probably okay, and even then I don't know that I always finish it. Or I might have like a half a cup of ice cream, but not a huge bowl of ice cream. So I've learned how to have what I like, but in a way that my body responds to it, and sometimes it's, you know, responding with IBS, bathroom issues. Sometimes we're talking about bloat or even weight gain, and so you learn how to have the foods you love in a way that's just a little bit different, so that you can feel your best. How do you plan? How do you make it sustainable that you, or do you personally okay, do you still to this day, like set aside time to plan and, if so, like how?

40:17 How does that look for you and how do you continue to make sure that you always set aside the time to do so? Like I said, it's gotten so that it's so much easier when I do it. And so you know like when you leave house and you forget your earrings or your rings or your wedding band or something, and you just feel like you're naked all day, like you, or you've left your phone behind, like it just feels so off. And so I just figured out what habit works for me, what, how it works for our family, and so I do that. So mine, how it looks now, is a little different than when I started, because in the beginning I couldn't commit to more than one day. I didn't know how to commit and it felt very restrictive to commit, and then if I had to change for any reason, my brain wasn't available to be able to like just, you know, have that, that's the next best thing, or that that's just an ideal day.

41:14 And so now I create like an ideal plan for the week, and so a lot of it's based on like well, what food do we have in the house that I want to try to like work into the meal so that we use what we have. And then a lot of times I'm doing this on Wednesdays. So yesterday I set the plan for what we're going to have for next week, so that I I use this simple thing called emails, and so it gives me a bunch of recipes and I use some of them, some of them, I just do our own thing. And so then it sends my groceries I just use, like Walmart here locally, and it picks my groceries for me and I pick them up on Friday morning, and so it's become so simple for me.

41:59 And so how I plan, it isn't a big deal and like, and I'll know, like, if my joints are starting to feel a little achy, I'm like okay, what is it Like? Has it been really hot? If I've been doing a lot of extra exercise? Maybe I want to like rain back a little bit of the sugar, or maybe some of the salt, or have I had some fried food? That I'm not agreeing with me. So I'm planning to make my body feel great, like what's easy and quick in our, in our family, what's going to work, the foods we love, how I feel. And so, yeah, I usually do like a week of dinners when I make a plan and I'm fine with swapping them. I'm fine if, like the day before, we're like hey, we're going to go out to dinner.

42:40 I'm even fine if, the day of if you called and said, hey, girl, let's go out to dinner, and like, maybe I planned taco night, I'm going to try to find something at the restaurant that's just as close to that and really honor my intention of what I was planning. I don't overthink it like I used to, for sure, but that's a practice for sure, and it just it makes it so much easier for me to know like it's kind of like have you heard of that like your future self and your past self, and so my future self, like my present self, I'm like girl, thank you so much, that was so much easier this week. Or, you know, like, whenever I am making the plan, I'm like girl, I've got your back, I'm going to make sure you get food.

43:25 You like I'm going to make sure that it's super easy for you to follow. That's a really good habit to have. It's like kind of communicating with your future self and thinking of considering your future self Like will I appreciate this later? Yeah, that's so awesome, okay. So just to recap, okay, let me see if I got this right. The four healthy habits are drinking water, getting good sleep, making meal plans and learning how to listen to your hunger cues. Practicing mindfulness Absolutely. What I do in my business is anytime you can't follow those things. That's really where the goal of coaching comes in is to help you follow those four simple, simple steps, and anything that prevents you from doing that we figure out together so that it makes it easy and doable.

44:15 And do you do one-on-one coaching sessions? Yeah, I do the one-on-one sessions and then I host a group session once a week that all of them that want to attend can come to so that they still feel like they have community. Some people are being private and they want to do it just one-on-one and other people they really like having that community support and so to hear, like, what other people are going through. So I still have a weekly call that I invite them all to. I usually present a little topic that is applicable to what they're going through at the moment or what the next step for them to learn and feel good about, and then we group coach or discuss whatever the topic was or what's going on.

45:00 Oh, that's so awesome. I love that. The community feeling. I think that's so important. I love that so. Hopefully, if any listeners want to reach out to you, where can they find you? So I want to gift your listeners so I have just a real easy, quick start course. So I know we kind of broke down the different simple steps. There's a few other things that make that so much easier and so this just free five-day course super easy. The videos are super short and it just gives you basic knowledge. And these are the steps that I took and lost the majority of my weight. I've lost over 60 pounds and that's the simple steps that I did it.

45:42 And then, whenever I started to plateau is when I got into finding a coach to help me with it, and so I designed this free course for everybody to get started right there, so that it's designed so you will lose and you will get some quick success with that. And then, when you're ready, I want you to come work with me for sure. So to get that, just go to my website. Coachingcaracom CARES with a K, so coachingcaracom, and then forward slash free course. Oh, that's awesome. I think I'm going to totally take that course. You said it's five days, and how long each day does it take? I think everything's under like 15 minute videos If I wanted to do it like all in one day.

46:25 I could do it all in one day If you wanted to spend a weekend loving on yourself, doing some CARES, setting yourself up. Yeah, you totally could. It's not very long, and so when you sign up, you get like the first little welcome video and you get to see what the other videos are going to be. But each video says, go check your email. And so your email gives you the link that has the whole page of videos and you can just click on them when you're ready. I'm still going to send you an email that goes with the video each day, so that you're getting some insight there too. I don't want to bombard you with emails, but I do. I go ahead and give you all the videos at one time. Awesome, I'm so excited to try that. So coachingcaracom forward slash Free course.

47:07 Coachingcaracom slash free course. So definitely check that out. I will check that out and thank you so much for coming. Is there anything else that? Any last words you want to share? Anything else you want to say? I just want to reach out to everybody that weight loss does not have to be hard. It does not have to be so imposing that you need relief from doing it, and so I wanted to be simple and doable something that you do for yourself, not to yourself. I love that. Well, thank you so much for joining us, and I will let you know how I do with your course once I get the chance to do it. Oh yeah, I'd love to hear, so have a great rest of your night and I'll talk to you soon.

47:49 Thank you, bye. Thanks so much for joining the course.