The Lazy Genius Podcast - #46: The Lazy Genius Loses Weight

Episode Date: January 8, 2018

Lose weight, y'all - the right kind of weight, the right way. Stuff Mentioned in the Episode: How to Set Goals Like a Normal Person The Lazy Genius Sets Goals The Lazy Genius Cleans the Kitchen The Psychology of Eating podcast Download the transcript of this episode This podcast is hosted by Kendra Adachi and executive produced by Kendra Adachi, Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey everybody, you're listening to The Lazy Genius Podcast. I'm Kendra and I'm here to help you be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. It's episode 46. The Lazy Genius loses weight. I mean, it's January right now. This is what we're supposed to be thinking about, right? We'll see. I know that millions and billions of words have been written and said about body image and losing weight and being healthy and all that new year, new you stuff.

but the words keep coming because they don't work for everybody. We've seen that with goals, with holiday traditions, with doing laundry. We're set up to think there's one right way to do everything, and then we end up striving to meet that one way when there are many other ways available to us. The same is true about losing weight. Today we're going to reframe our weight, our bodies, our perception of who we are. What's behind wanting to lose weight? What questions can we ask ourselves to put that journey into the right perspective?

What life are we aiming for? And how can I still eat cake? I will never tell you to not eat cake. Let's lazy genius's business. All right. First thing, why do we want to lose weight? I mentioned in the previous episode, The Lazy Genius sets goals, that we walk around with ideals. We go through the day under a veil of how it's supposed to be, general air, quotes there and give ourselves a very narrow perspective on that ideal and whether or not we're meeting it. The line between success and complete failure is razor thin. So in the last episode, we talked about defining good enough, defining the wide space between success and failure that we often ignore. That space exists majorly when it comes to our bodies and our weight.

and yet we're all just trying to look like Jennifer Garner. She has kids. She has a stressful life. But look at her in those Capital One commercials and that blue dress. I mean, come on, you guys. We see her. We see celebrities. We see the moms at Target who just came from CrossFit and look ridiculous and immediately

feel like we're not enough. That's the goal, right? We should look like that. We should look like those women. First thing. Who says? Whose idea was that? Second thing.

Why? Why does thin automatically equal beautiful? And we all do it. We all see ourselves this way on occasion or feel this way a lot. There is a level of not enoughness that's always under the surface telling us that we matter more if we were thinner. And this is true no matter what size you are. Like that's why people have eating disorders. Even really thin people feel like they need to be thinner. We all feel like we need to be thinner. have believed this for my entire life. I had a father who instilled in me that only beautiful people are valuable. If you're not pretty, you don't matter as much. Your voice isn't worth listening to. Your presence is not worth my attention. He showed me that pretty people are the important ones. That's what he believed and that's what he taught me to believe. Now you might not have had that kind of upbringing and I'm so glad. But we all have it a little, you know, with like magazines. and red carpets and who wore it better. Now, I love that stuff.

If you have been around here for a while, you know that I adore celebrities and movies and award shows. It's so fun. And I appreciate a beautiful person. Hello, Idris Elba. But I know that I'm part of the problem. If Idris Elba was the exact same person, but quote unquote, ugly,

would I care about him the same? Probably not. It's embarrassing, but it's true. so I say all of this I'm super vulnerable right now to remind you and remind me that we're all in this we all do this and we're all wonky for thinking that thin and beautiful equals value yes there are people who have valid reasons for losing weight health problems and such and I'm not saying that we should all just ignore being healthy but we have to get down to our deepest reason why Why do you think you should lose 10, 20, or 50 pounds?

Why does every meal, every bite teeter on that razor thin line between success and failure? Can I eat a salad without feeling like I should have to give myself a high five? Can I eat cake without needing to atone for it the next day? Everything is so weighty. And that, that is the weight I want to lose. I want to lose the weight of the pressure of always evaluating my success and my failure as a human, based on my pants size or the amount of skin that spills over when I sit down, we are not what we look like.

I'm like clap hands at you and me. I mean, we are what we look like. But like who we are and what we have to offer the world and our value as people has literally nothing to do with our weight. Now, if you are unable to move because of your weight, if it is massively affecting your quality of life and your relationships, then yes, losing weight is important. But you also know that that work is far deeper than food. It is for all of us. Our relationship with food is never just about food. We know this. We've watched Oprah. So what do we do?

How do we lose the weight of the pressure and the guilt? I don't exactly know because this is still a journey for me too, but I'll offer up a couple of questions that have helped me tremendously over the years to combat that emotional weight. The first question is, is how would I be different if I was at my ideal weight? I heard a version of this question many times on a podcast called The Psychology of Eating. I'll link to it in the show notes if you want to check it out. The show notes today are at the lazy genius collective.com

slash lazy slash weight. The podcast is great. A nutritional psychologist named Mark David, he has a one-on-one session with someone in each episode and then really breaks down all the specifics and nuances of that person's relationship with food. Most people come into the conversation saying variations of things I've heard myself say. Like, I just can't get motivated or I do really well tracking my food and then eat a cupcake and fall into a pit of terrible eating or I'm just so tired of feeling this way.

I don't listen to the show as much anymore, but when I did, I would often hear myself in something the person said. It's very easy to relate to, no matter what the situation is. And Mark's counsel is also really great most of the time. But one of the questions he would ask almost every person is how would life be different if you looked and felt the way you wanted to? The answers were rarely about physical feats, like being able to run a marathon or the ever popular, play with my kids, reason. They were almost always a version of, I just feel more confident when I would walk in a room.

And I always loved Mark's response to those answers because he would say what I will say to you now. Why do we have to wait to feel that way? What's stopping us from being confident no matter our weight? Why does that ideal hold everything in its skinny little fingers? And then that's why we live with that haze of failure because we don't feel like we can be fully present. in our bodies or act confident or walk in a room and feel pretty without feeling like a total fraud. Overweight people, and I use that term with my eyes severely rolling, overweight people have

no business being confident, right? And if they are, we're always so surprised and inspired. We hear ourselves say things like, good for her. You guys, why good for her? Is she not allowed to be confident and dress cute because she's a size 16? Why is that a thing? Why do we do that? And when we think about it, we know it's ridiculous. We know that is ridiculous. How somebody looks has no bearing on their value or their importance in the room. And yet we're surprised when non-Gwyneth Paltrowers act like Gwyneth Paltrow, when they act like they belong and wear form-fitting cute clothes and don't hide in the corner hoping nobody will look at them. We treat that situation like it's an exception. But we're playing into that by voluminous. voluntarily living under the guilt of our own weight ideal. We keep ourselves from living fully because we don't look quite like we want to yet.

I do it too and it's so sad. So let's start asking ourselves how we think thin life would look different and then just start living that way before we're thin. Amazon presents Jeff versus Taco Truck Salsa, whether it's Verde, Roja or the Or orange one. For Jeff, trying any salsa is like playing Russian roulette with a flamethrower. Luckily, Jeff saved with Amazon and stocked up on antacids, ginger tea, and milk. Habaniero, more like habanier, yes. Save the everyday with Amazon. Aw, isn't something we need to travel for. It's something waiting for us in everyday life,

whether in a city street or a moment with a work of art. I'm Dr. Keltner, host of the Science of Happiness podcast. Join me for Cities of Aw, a special series on how our public spaces can spark awe, wonder, and enhance the quality of public life. You can find us wherever you listen to your podcasts. We said last week that marking off checkboxes is sort of lauded as the end game, but it's not. The same goes for how we look. Being thin is not the end game, but we treat it like it is. can you imagine how free we would feel if we stopped living under the weight of that constant

endgame pressure? Oh my gosh, it would be so amazing. So start asking yourself what life you think you'd have if you were thin and then just do the work of living it. Just live it. Whether you're thin or not. Next question. Let's start asking ourselves what role food plays in our daily lives. How do we see it? Is it good or bad? Is it weighed down by different emotions? Is it a means to an end you haven't really named? I don't want to be under the weight of thin pressure, but I also don't want to be under the weight of my own emotional eating. Double fisting chocolate chips because I'm lonely, or because somebody hurt my feelings, or because my kids are driving me crazy, and I distract myself from a hard emotion. Like, I'm resenting being a mother a little bit. Like, that's why I'm eating the

chocolate chips. I don't want to deal with that emotion, right? I don't want to deal with the fact that I'm like, I don't want to be a mother right now. And that makes me feel bad. And so I eat chocolate to distract myself and make me feel better. But then all I'm left with is like bloating and repressed emotion. No work is done. Maybe some harm is done. So being aware of the role of food is really crucial to losing the emotional weight of food. I love food. So much, you guys. I love to cook. I used to teach people how to cook in my house. And if you listen to last week's episode, you know that I want to open a bakery. Like that's my real life dream that I'm pursuing.

People who want to open bakeries have to eat a lot of cake. So I'm not knocking food or dessert or any of it. I love at all. But what I don't love is having it be in control over me rather than the other way around. I want my experiences with food of all kinds to be like at worst. functionally nourishing and at best positively emotionally gratifying hot homemade chicken soup on a cold exhausting day is food for the soul man but we all know the difference in that scenario and hiding in a closet with a pint of ice cream we know we know when food has taken over the situation

when we're using it to keep us from doing the hard emotional work of admitting we're lonely or hurt or that we don't love motherhood as much as we thought we would. But often the knowing is enough. Recognizing the emotional connection with eating is often enough to start the process of taking away its power. It's still slow and frustrating sometimes, but the answer is not to throw out every cookie in your house. No, the answer is to be honest with how you use that cookie to meet needs. It shouldn't be meeting. It's such a crazy paradox, you guys. We use food to meet a need. It was never meant to meet.

And we restrict that same food to become a person we could be right now. It's so bizarre. If I live with my thinnest self hanging over my head, I will never be content. And if I live with an arbitrary weight ideal without knowing why, it will always be there weighing me down in unnecessary guilt. The funny thing, my thinnest self that I sometimes strive for, you guys, the thinnest I ever was, I was eating 800 to 1,000 calories a day. I was basically anorexic and that's the person I think I should look like. Like when I imagine like, oh, well, I used to look like this, I was a 22 year old anorexic.

It is ludicrous to think that that is my ideal. And yet it makes all the sense why I feel like being thin. is impossible because it is looking like that again is impossible and even if it wasn't am i willing to do the ridiculous work of making it happen in a healthy way i cannot shake my head hard enough at you so why am i still living under the pressure of being a size zero to two when i wasn't really eating any food and i was 22 years old like why am i doing that why am i living under that pressure why are you we don't have to continue defining ourselves by how thin we are, how we stack up against the other moms and carpool line. And at the same time, we can recognize that we have given food power that it was never meant to have.

I truly believe that losing this kind of weight, losing the guilt of being thin and the emotional dependency on food, is a choice. It's a choice we have to make a lot, sometimes many, many times a day. But it's a choice. it has nothing to do with our genetics or the amount of time we have for exercise or that we can't afford a gym membership or any of the random excuses we throw out to make ourselves feel better for not being our ideal. Scrap the ideal. It doesn't make any sense. It really doesn't. And if the main difference in your quality of life is that you'd be able to walk into a room and be more confident, you can do that now.

And we can start to change that idea being such a big deal. by letting each other live confidently no matter our size. We don't have to get squirrely when a friend who does CrossFit looks like a rock star and a bikini at the neighborhood pool. We don't have to resent her. We don't have to be surprised when a woman who's not a size four where something fitted and isn't constantly pulling her clothes over her stomach. We can be part of providing a safe place where people can lose the weight of guilt

and emotional dependence on something that was never intended to bear the weight of a soul. Yes, it feels good to move our bodies. Our energy probably is better when we eat more kale than sugar. But those daily decisions are more easily made when we lose the real weight, when we lose that guilt and that emotional dependency. So let's lose that weight in 2018, okay? If you have any thoughts or questions about this topic, you can leave a comment on the post of this episode,

the lazy genius collective.com slash lazy, wait. And just a reminder, I'll be live on Instagram at The Lazy Genius on Thursday, January 11th. Is that right? I think it's the 11th around 1215 Eastern to answer any of your questions and talk more about this. And remember, even if it's just for today, you can live like a thin person without being thin. Grab that life, man. You don't have to let the size of your pants stop you. Okay, let's do a quick lazy genius tip of the week. I encourage everyone to get one of those dish scrubbers with dish soap in the handle.

You guys, cleaning the kitchen is easier when you do it the lazy genius way. I will link to the podcast episode about that in the show notes, but it can be so annoying to run a sink of water for one pan, especially when the temptation is just to leave it until the next morning when you're super not in the mood to wash dishes. Those little scrubby brushes are magic. wet the pan, scrub with built-in soap and rinse. I know it's very simple and Target has a whole row of them, but I live for 34 years without one of those things.

And the last two years of having one, stop it. It is the best. It's one of the easiest ways to keep the kitchen clean without requiring gallons of water every day. So grab one the next time you go to Target, see if it works for you. Okay, guys, that's it for today. Thanks so much for listening.

And remember to be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. See you next week. You ever felt like you were living just a B or B plus life? It's so dangerous to live that. More dangerous than a B minus or a C plus life? Because when you're living a B or B plus life, you don't change it. You think it's good enough.

Is it? I'm Susie Welch. I host a podcast called Becoming You. People think, okay, an A plus life is not available to me, but there is a way. We are all in the process of becoming ourselves. Listen to Becoming You wherever you get. get your podcasts.