How to Handle Inevitable Health & Weightloss Setbacks

Full Episode Transcript:

How to handle inevitable health & weightloss setbacks

Welcome. Welcome to the Hello Body Freedom podcast. I’m really excited to talk about the inevitable setbacks that we end up having. You can call them self-sabotaging behavior. And really diving into how we handled it.

And I’m not sure if you can tell by my voice. This is the best my voice has sounded in about 12 days. I’m going to do my best to not cough. I don’t even know if there’s a button here like a mute button anywhere. But I’ve had the nastiest head cold. It hit me so hard.  I want to say like Friday ish, two Fridays ago I didn’t have a voice last week so we did not record the podcast and, Oh my goodness.

It has been a lot. I haven’t been sick in a really long time. I don’t get sick very often.  And so it is good to be here is good to feel the energy. I’m not a hundred percent, but I’m definitely better than I was. I want to go ahead and,  Talk about a couple of things, but before we dive in, I just want to make sure, this is a podcast, so you might not be watching this on YouTube or streaming live, but if you can see the video, I’ve got my little doggie doogies.

You can see right there. There’s one little doggie doogie Karuna he’s asleep. And this is our newest edition right there. That is, his name is Dallas. We took him in from a family member that needed a break from having animals. So I’ve got my animals with me and look behind me, or I want to show you this.

This is my office. You can see my beautiful couch in the background, all my books and everything over here, but I have, if you can, I’m going to pick up my camera. You can see my altar right there where I meditate, but I just got this Epic rug in and I put all these pillows down and it’s like the most comfortable, wonderful little nook.

And I just love it. I love that I can be here at work at my desk and that I have this beautiful, cushy space over here. And I just did that up this weekend. So I’m just so excited about it. I’m so excited to I’ve been feeling very connected to doing ritual and ceremony. And I’ve been really deep getting back into meditation and following my intuition and higher power and all of that wonderful, juicy stuff in my life.

And that is just a  little something that isn’t necessarily maybe connected to what we talk about here in Hello Body Freedom, but in a lot of ways it can be. We can have those conversations. You can let me know what you think about that.  But this was brought on by me getting sick. I really just started to feel emotionally drained and physically drained.

And. I thought we should make an entire podcast about this.  Especially if you’ve been following the podcast the last like month or so, I’ve been having so many downloads so much just Epic like what is the next step with Hello Body Freedom? And what are we, and what is my next step in terms of getting this just growing and expanding and going deeper with hello body freedom, but also what that looks like in terms of my own life and my own health. So in terms of my health and weight loss journey, my own personal journey that I’m like very open about it was in my early thirties to mid-thirties where I started really getting exacerbated in the world of diets, dieting, diet culture, where I started dieting myself down.

At this point, I had a degree in exercise physiology. I had opened a fitness company. I had studied nutrition in college. I went to Bowman college after to become a holistic nutrition educator. This was post-degree education and really thinking that I knew all the answers in terms of eat this, don’t eat that, exercise this, don’t do that.

But what was going on it was like food had control over me. And I had felt that way in so many different scenarios in my life. I can pick multiple different times in my life where I felt like I would could just eat and eat and eat. And it felt like I didn’t have control over food and it was scary because there were other moments in my life when it just felt easy.

 And I had this, it felt like there wasn’t anything wrong. And when those moments were happening where I didn’t feel like obsessed around food or like food was in control I remember being like scared because I’m like, wow, this is awesome. But I wonder when the other shoe is going to drop. I wonder when it’s going to go away.

And, it would go away. And then something would happen. And I didn’t know what was going on inside of me. I didn’t know emotionally. I didn’t understand how to deal with what I was experiencing inside. And I didn’t have the cognition, the consciousness to realize that food was the thing that I would go to in order to change my state, in order to not feel whatever uncomfortable thing I was feeling, whether it was stress, whether it was anxiety, whether it was sadness or loneliness or just even excitement.

Like I would just get so hyper and happy and excited. I was like very like hyper ADHD type personality in my twenties. And then I would just start eating and eating as a way to suffice this like intensity going on in my body, this intensity going on in my nervous system.

And so I say all of this because, it was in my, Early to mid-thirties that this behavior became exacerbated where I started losing a lot of weight and then massively gaining a lot of weight and then going back and forth. And I got it handled is the point that I’m making. And what we do in Hello Body Freedom is we really work with women to really get to the bottom of the reasons why you are gaining weight in the first place.

The reasons why you would be overeating or using food as the coping mechanism in the first place. And so I am now in my, Late forties. And so I am really on the other side of that. I am in this place of my weight has not changed for, we’re going on 12 years now. My body image has healed.

My relationship with food is just Epic. It is neutral. It is wonderful to neutral. There is not a negative relationship that I have with food. I never feel like food is in control ever. I eat what I want when I want it. And it is real freedom.  I really see the shackles that I was under for so many years of my life, decades of my life.

And then to have this level of freedom on the other side where food is not in control, where I’ve got me includes, this lifestyle that we live because eating is a part of our lifestyle.  Food that we put in our mouth, the people that were around, the situations we’re in, we have to fucking eat, right?

And so to have this level of peace and serenity is just epic. Now, I’m saying all of this because If you’ve been following the podcast at the beginning of this year or maybe even into December, I was really talking about what it means to quantum leap. I’m feeling this quantum leap energy in my life right now, which, business-wise, but also with my body, because I am moving into my late forties I’m fully going into perimenopause.

I can feel and see changes happening in my body. And over the last four years, I haven’t been strength training. So I’ve been looking at this year in terms of and forget the year. I’m looking at this moment in my life of I am ready to do something. How many of you can like really relate to that?

That space where you’re like, I am so sick of feeling the way that I’m feeling. I’m ready to feel strong again. I want to feel in control of food. I want to feel that I got this energy and vitality in my life. And that is definitely what I am craving more of. And so I’m looking at that from the lens of my business, but also from the lens of my health in my body and really taking it to the next level, noticing that over the last four years.

Even though my relationship with food is neutral and awesome, even though my weight is fine, I am like totally happy with my size and my weight and my clothes and all the things I can see ways in which my strength training, my taking care of my body, dancing, all of these other things that I’ve let go need to come back in my life.

And I’m really craving that journey. And so when you compare yourself to that when you put yourself in there and you’re like, yes, I am on that journey, I am ready for it, I’m ready to heal the reasons why I’m overeating.  I’m ready to take better care of myself. And that is where I want to talk about today is that When you are signed up for an absolutely effing ready to get to that next step, you are ready to do whatever it takes.

You’re ready to read the books, you’re ready to hire the coaches. You are ready to step into the next phase of your health and weight loss journey to really truly elevate yourself, elevate your life, right? Elevate the way that you feel, elevate your health, all of these pieces. And then What ends up happening?

Guess what? The inevitable setbacks, right? You get sick. I’m raising my hand up in the air. That’s exactly what happened to me. On my ass, feeling like shit sick, losing my voice, all of the ways, okay? Or you get injured. Or you end up having an overeat or you you don’t do something that you say you’re going to do.

You end up eating the ice cream when you said you were not going to eat the ice cream. Or you end up binging one night. Then you said,  all of these things are setbacks on the journey. To where you were up-leveling your life to getting to that place with your weight, with your health, with your energy, with the quality of life that you’re living day to day.

And that is the big piece that I want to talk about today. I really want to dive into what do we do When you get really excited and really motivated and you start showing up and you start doing the things and you start moving and you’re getting your heads, your mindset right.  You’re learning, you’re hopefully, doing work like what we do here at Hello Body Freedom, which is really untangling the reasons why you were overeating in the first place, right?

You’re doing all the steps and then  Boom. You get sick, you get injured. Or life happens, right?  Something crazy happens in your life where you get really sidetracked because of your work or family obligations or something like that. And that’s what we want to dive into because the end of the day,  you are not going to be on a sustainable weight loss journey

if you don’t figure out how to handle your setbacks.  Setbacks are not the exception, they are the fucking rule. You are going to get sick, you are going to get injured, you are going to get busy, you are going to overeat, you are going to say you’re going to not eat the ice cream and then end up eating the whole fucking tub one night.

Like all of these things are going to be a part of the journey to getting to where you want to be with your body, with your health, with your weight loss journey, right? Unless you want to go the traditional route, which is to starve yourself on a diet to lose 30 or 50 pounds as fast as you can. Go ahead and do that and just watch yourself gain it back.

That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about people who are done with bullshit diets done with the fads. And you are literally going, I am stepping into the human that I want to become. And guess what? The weight loss.  Is the byproduct of who that future self is. Okay. That is the level of up-leveling I am talking about.

I’m not talking about restricting yourself on a bullshit diet. That is a whole other level of needing to let that shit go to move on to what we are talking about today. So if you are still stuck in diet land where you’re going on one diet to the next diet and you think that’s the answer and that’s, and you just stumbled across this for crying out loud, what I’m going to want you to do is go to hellobodyfreedom.com. 

And just join my free challenge. Like hellobodyfreedom.com. You will see it at the very top of that page. Join the free challenge. And like school yourself on why you’re that, whatever fad diet and quick weight loss scheme that you’re on, why it will never work. So we need to get you out of that.

That’s not who I’m talking to.  When you are really in the journey of changing who you are,  all of these things are going to happen to you. Okay.  And here’s what happened to me being sick for and on this journey really locking and loading my fitness my getting nutrition. Getting my sleep. Getting my hydration doing all of these pieces that start to feel really good And then the next thing you know I am out for the count. 

So I want to give you the three steps that are mindset strategies and mindset steps that you need to be able to take if you want to get past the injury that you just had right here, you are 35 pounds down. You finally got your walking routine down and the next thing you know, your knee blew out.

And now you’re in a downward spiral, right? Here I am on my epic quantum leap year and I got sicker than a dog, right?  And it really feels like it like set me on my ass, right?  So here’s what I am doing and here’s my step-by-step of what I’ve noticed has gone on inside of me and I want you to be able to take this with you and really use it for yourself the next time you fall on your ass because you’re going to.

You’re just going to. Okay? The problem isn’t falling on your ass. Again, that is a part of the journey. It’s a part of what it means to be in the messy mix of being a human on your way to evolution, on your way to evolving yourself into the person that you want to be. I feel like I sound so deep-throated right now.

I feel like I sound like a man.  It’s still like draining, man. It’s so bad. Alright, let’s do this. Number one thing that I did as I was sitting around, unable to get off the couch, couldn’t get out of bed, feeling like shit, knowing that I’m missing workouts, knowing that all this work that I just put in, here’s the first thing that I did.

Number one, I fully. Owned it. Meaning I saw me getting sick as my fault.  I mean that I literally, instead of blaming and shaming the whole entire world for, Oh Josh coughed on me and I know that’s why I got sick and he should have, been more careful. And then I, like all the things, okay no. 

I decided to go, you know what I know this is. I know That me getting sick is self-sabotage.  This is literally my body’s way of trying to keep me stuck. And I know I played a part in it, right? I know, because what we want to do, let me just let you sick. It’s not my fault that I got an injury.

It’s not my fault that I’m sick. I really believe in these moments. That we’re talking about as we’re trying to up-level into who we are trying to become. We have to be able to see the ways in which we are consciously and unconsciously getting in our own ways.  Full stop. It’s so easy to go Audra, you got sick.

Okay, it’s not your fault. You’re sick. You’ll get better. No. I’m gonna look at this as the journey to getting to where I want to go. Self-sabotaging things. And what do I mean by self? I want to say sabotaging things and self-sabotaging things, conscious and unconscious ways of me trying to keep myself at the status quo are going to come up over and over again.

And so I am choosing to believe that this is my body’s attempt to keep me stuck. Here I am.  And I can see that I am playing a part in this. I’m not saying hear me. I’m, this isn’t like an all-or-nothing thing that I’m saying. I’m saying that there is a part that I played in getting sick,  okay? I could have been putting more nutritional, I think of like nutrition as like a bank account, right?

The more, every time I eat the healthier food, the superfoods, I hydrate, I do all these things. It’s like putting nutritional money in the bank account, right? And my bank account was probably low. So that was probably a part of that. Okay. I could have been way more diligent around other people knowing that everybody is getting sick right now.

It’s winter. I could have been wearing my mask more. I could have increased washing my hands. I am literally deciding to own the fact, part of the reason I am sick is my fault. Okay, that is the very first thing. This is a really powerful thing because when you start to take agency over yourself and you start to go, damn it, what I do matters, and how I get to here matters is very different they go there’s nothing I can do about it anymore.

Yeah, I’m ruined. So that is the very first thing. The very first step is owning it.  The next thing that you want to do, part two, step two,  is you really want to catch your thoughts while you’re in the middle of it. If you just injured yourself if you just got sick after you’ve been on a roll and you’re moving and it feels like a setback, okay,  if you just overate or binge ate or, did a behavior that is not in alignment with you really moving forward, it literally feels like it sets you back.

I have to look at what my thoughts are and I have to be able to catch them. And then as I’m catching them, what that means is I’m taking these unconscious loops that I’m spitting out in my mind and I am catching them. I’m shining a flashlight on them. I’m turning them bright and conscious.  And then I’m asking myself, what the hell am I making this mean?

Okay. And so here I am stuck in bed, feeling like shit, having to cancel my life.  I’m on like two weeks now. It has just been like a real like mind fuckery. And here’s some thoughts that I’ve had. I’m going to share these with you.  I’m so weak. I’m never going to get to where I want to go.

Why even try? It’s always something. If it’s not this, it’s going to be something else, and I’ve never really gotten to where I want to go in the past, right? I haven’t actually, I’m thinking of my clients right now I haven’t thought I’ve never really got to where I want to go with my weight loss or something like that, right?

For me, it’s I haven’t really succeeded in this level of Health and vitality and feeling this good in my body haven’t succeeded at this level in my business. Like, these are the things I’m telling myself, right? So if I can’t succeed and I’ve never had it what makes me think that I’m gonna do it now You know, look, I can’t even get out of my own way.

Here I am owning the fact that I’m sick. I know it’s part of my fault. Here I am getting in my own way. So what’s the even point? What’s the point of all this? Because I always just sabotage myself.  You’re just basically gonna die and you’re never gonna reach your goals. So like, why even try? What does it even matter?

All that it does is just make you feel like shit because you know you’re gonna fail.  Does anybody have words like that, that they say to themselves?  These are definitely thoughts that have come out of my head over and over again. Now I’ve done so much thought work that while I’ve been sick on a scale of one to 10, they haven’t been a 10 even close.

They’ve been closer to maybe like a four, right? Cause I’m feeling icky. The shitty feelings, the shitty thoughts, they all come together. So now I’m going to share with you. Other thoughts, right? Cause I’m here. It is part two. Steps two is you’ve got to catch your thoughts. You’ve got to catch the things that you’re saying to yourself.

So here are the ways in which I am counter counteracting any of that negativity and that stuff that’s ultimately designed to keep me stuck. We’ll talk about that in a second. So here we go. Okay, Audra,  you are always going to have setbacks. That’s just how it works. It is literally your job to get back up, right?

There is no straight path. The journey to get to where you want to go, it’s messy.  And You are in the middle of the mess. And this was part of the mess. Part of this mess for you to get to where you want to go is to fall off, to get really sick, to not show up for your workouts, to basically not be able to get out of bed.

Part of it. Welcome to life, Audra. This is a part of the game, right? And yes, I own that I played a part in this sabotaging thing. I could totally look at this as though, Oh, I got sick. It’s not my fault. No, I know that in some ways I did play a part in sabotaging my goals. And if that’s the truth, which it is, I also know that I can play a part in getting back up.

I can put on my big girl panties and I continue, I can continue to be the person who fucking shows up for her life. Who decides even if I’m sick, I’m not going to let this set me back very far. This might push me back by three steps, but watch me go 20 steps further now.  Okay. Now listen to me, I just handed you two very different ways that I talk to myself.

Okay. Two very different ways. So the third step is once you are catching your thoughts, you must decide what you want to believe. Okay. Because very likely if you are new at this, the first set of thoughts where you’re beating the shit out of yourself, negative self-talk all over the place shaming yourself, those thoughts are probably really loud and really strong.

Okay. And then when they’re so loud and then they’re so strong, you actually believe them and then you like attach to them. This is why step two is you’ve got to catch your thoughts. You have to be able to see the shit coming out of your mouth. Okay. So I know that I had a level of that. It wasn’t at a 10.

It wasn’t as strong as it used to be, but I know it was there because I don’t feel good and because I really do want these goals that I really want to see myself up level in this way. So I’m looking at this and it’s easy for me to go down this rabbit hole of woe is me and nothing’s ever going to work and why even try. 

But my ability to choose different thoughts, my ability to have a whole other way of thinking that is  180 degrees opposite from the sabotaging shitty thoughts that are keeping me stuck versus the ones that are like gonna raise me into the woman who I know I am meant to become, who the woman I know I’m meant to be, the woman who I know she can show up that way right now, showing up as my future self.

Go back a couple of episodes and listen to that.  Okay. And so the third part is you have two different ways that you can think. There’s actually multiple ways you can think, but if we just put this like simply one direction is totally fucking not helpful. There is nothing about beating the crap out of myself and telling myself I’m a loser and that I’m never going to succeed.

There is no way that is actually going to help me get to where I want to go. It’s just going to hold me back. It is based in fear. It is steeped in lies and fear of how awesome life could be on the other side. There is definitely a part of me as there is a part of you, as there is a part of all of us that knows that we’re safe and alive right now.

So why would we want to up-level and do anything else? We’re safe and alive right now. Okay. And being able to catch these thoughts and catch that part of you and literally part three, make a decision. Do I want to believe this? Okay. Most people that never ever move on in their life and really truly hit sustainable lifestyle changes in their life where they ultimately up-leveled their health, their vitality, their energy, their weight loss is not just sustainable but is like In them, it’s so much so that there, there’s just no possibility for them to get back to where they ever were with their body and their health and their weight, right?

That level of transformation is what we’re talking about,  okay? I have never seen anybody get to that level without really, truly catching the old thoughts that led them To the weight gain, to the health concerns to all to feeling like shit in their body. There is a way of being and thinking that led them into that place and there is a whole other way of being and thinking that will get you out of it and get you to where you want to be and be living at that vibration at that higher evolved space.

Okay?  You have to decide which one you want to believe and it is hard at first To get past the shitty thoughts. This is why we need help. This is why I love coaching. I have a coach. I have a therapist. Hello Body Freedom clients have an entire team of coaches. It matters to help you get to that place where you can come to and go, all right,  these shitty ass thoughts that are keeping me stuck, these are fear-based and they are unhelpful. Therefore I am not going to believe them. I’m going to go, what else can I think instead? What are the more helpful thoughts,  right? There are always setbacks. My job is to get back up. I know that there is no straight path, but this journey is messy and this was just a part of the mess.

It’s a part of it. Yes. I messed up, but I can get back on. Yes. I played a part in myself, sabotaging behavior, but I can play a part in stepping up to the plate of my life,  pulling up my big girl panties, and continuing to show up as the woman who shows up for her life, who this matters. What’s my next best decision, right?

Literally, this is the piece you get into the place of noticing these two different places. And instead of putting all of your focus and attention on these shitty thoughts, which they don’t just magically go away either. It’s not like you just get rid of them, right? There are loops that you’ve had for probably a long time, but while you can’t get rid of them and we’re not trying to get rid of them when you instead put your focus on a totally different way to know and believe, That is actually helpful.

That is not fear-based. This is where the money is. This is where the health and the vibrancy and the vitality. This is what is waiting for you. And this is how to handle setbacks. Okay?  Can we make a case for both of these to be true? Yes. But when you really get clear with, Okay, I know that there’s evidence of the self-sabotaging, shitty, negative Self-talk, but there’s also evidence that I am this woman who is showing up for herself.

I can find it. I can find it all over the place. This is just a setback and I can get back on. Watch me get back on. And when you start to get in focus in that direction all of a sudden. The easiest next last step, which is what is my next best decision?  What is my next best decision? What does it take to put these big girl panties on?

What is my next best step?  And quite frankly, being sick, it’s take my vitamin C, take my meds, maybe take a nap if I need to. I’m in this place right now where I’m starting to finally feel some energy and I want to get back to working out. So I’m playing with that. I’m like, okay, when is the right time to get, getting back in and easing my way in, in a gentle way.

So I don’t end up like causing more harm than good. You know what I mean? And it’s beautiful because now I’m focused on in the direction that is going to pick me back up. This two-week setback is going to be a blip of nothingness on the course of moving forward. All right. And I love that I’m going on this journey with you.

And so if you want to go on this journey with me if you want where you could be a year from now.  We’ll blow your mind when you start really getting clear about what it takes to change your thoughts, your emotions, your behaviors in the direction that you want to go with your health and your wellness and your body and your weight loss.

And if you want to drop me a comment and just drop me a comment and just go to What do I want you to drop? I’m still a little space cadet y.  Quantum Leap. Quantum Leap Year. If you are ready for your Quantum Leap Year, then drop the message anywhere you can. Facebook message, Instagram message, TikTok message.

And I will send you the link, and I will teach you all about your Quantum Leap Year. I will teach you all about what steps I am taking and how to get there, and what steps. They’re really intertwined with the same steps that we give our clients. It’s very powerful. And so if that’s what you want, rock it out.

I cannot wait to see you there. And I can’t wait to see you in the next episode. Thank you guys so much for being here. I love this. And I will see you next time. Bye everybody.

• Hello Body Freedom
• Institute for the Psychology of Eating
• Path to Food & Body Freedom Challenge