The Livy Method Podcast - Let's Talk Past Diet Trauma with Dr. Beverley David - Fall 2024

Episode Date: September 19, 2024

In this episode, recorded on September 19th, 2024, Gina talks past diet trauma with Dr. Beverley David. Dr. Beverley is a Clinical Psychologist registered with the College of Psychologists of Ontario. She also holds a Ph.D. in Sleep Research (Insomnia) and a Master's in Health Psychology.You can find the full video hosted at:https://www.facebook.com/groups/livymethodfall2024Topics covered:Dr Beverley describes conversations with our members- truth-telling, welcoming, safe and nurturing Understanding what it really takes to lose weight The common desire to pretend our past doesn’t exist when it comes to weight lossCan we truly have a “fresh start” in our weight loss journey?Should we turn the volume up or quiet the noise to get in tune with ourselves?Exploring the feelings, emotions and shame associated with eating - the inner and external criticsThe goals - kindness to self, trusting ourselves and feeling calm around foodWhat the diet industry has taught us to this point Caring, kindness and awareness - the keys to breaking the cycleSeparating difficulties from the past from what we’re working on nowAddressing the feels when we feel like we’re failing - what emotion is driving the bus?Awareness - allowing ourselves to collect data and not feel the need to fix it todayThe Livy Method and working towards our Finally and Forever - the opportunity to turn the pageFind Dr. Beverley:https://www.yourpsychologycentre.ca/@drdrbeverleyTo learn more about The Livy Method, visit www.ginalivy.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm Gina Livy and welcome to the Livy Method podcast. This is where you'll have access to all of the live streams from my 91 day weight loss program. With a combination of daily lives, guest expert interviews and member stories, there is something new almost every day. Miss the morning live? Want to re-listen to one of our amazing guest experts? Well, this is the place. This podcast is hosted on Acast, but it's available on all podcast platforms, including the one you're listening to right now, Spotify, Apple,

and Amazon Music. Dive into Peloton workouts that work with you. From meditating at your kid's game to mastering a strength program, they've got everything you need to keep knocking down your goals. No pressure to be who you're not. Just workouts and classes to strengthen who you are. So no matter your era, make it your best with Peloton. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton.

Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. Keep believing in yourself and keep trusting the process. Just be patient. How does your past experience with dieting and your past in general affect your ability to focus on weight loss, do the things that you need to do and lose weight in a way that you'll be able to move on for the rest of your life? That's the question for my guest today, clinical psychologist, Dr. Beverly David in the house. Hello, hi. Good morning. Happy Thursday. Look, I've already forgotten what day it is.

Happy Thursday. Yes, happy Thursday. And you know what I love about our conversations is that we are able to have fun. We are able to find joy there. We hope that people walk away feeling empowered and hopeful and have a deeper understanding of the things they need to understand that they're probably going to need to work through in order to truly get to the roots of all the things that might be holding them back in terms of losing

their weight besides what they're eating and when and drinking and exercise and all that. I want to ask you before we talk about self-sabotage and diet trauma and all of that, you've been with us for a while now. And I know we had an opportunity to talk to you last Thursday on our guest panel about the secret sauce behind the Libby method. But what do you walk away thinking about our members who are working so hard to reach their goals after our conversations? What's your takeaway from all the conversations we've had? What stands out? I think truth telling.

And I hope people feel that they're able to truth tell. But I feel like in this community, you are very candid and honest in your experience, how you came to it, your motive, your method, your trust in the method. And I think that's quite contagious. I think as a group and as a collective, we feel it, we connect with it. And then it allows us to be truthful, to think, yes, this is something I worry about, or this is something I find hard, or this is something I've tried before. Instead of thinking that we can turn up, pretending that this is our first time and pretending that it's really easy, it offers a better chance, I think, of being real. And through the community and the conversations, I think people then are less likely to feel alone. I think often when we do think everybody else is doing this,

everybody else is fine. And if we would go into you know maybe a group where everybody's just succeeding and we're thinking oh gosh i'm the only one that isn't then we're going to feel very isolated and likely it'll lead us to to feel something and possibly back away and withdraw. So I think this welcoming, it's so welcoming and nurturing that I hope people stay and keep listening and keep, and as you say, keep turning up. Every group, every group, I learn something new and I hear and see a comment that will resonate with me. And I think, wow, I remember thinking that when I was young too. And I remember getting stuck on that belief as well. I didn't know anybody else thought that. I'd almost shame my thinking to think, gosh, I'm so ridiculous that I used to think that. I

heard that thing once, whether it was a fad, and I believed it. And then I'll see other people talk about that. I'm like, wow, this is this is a safe place to be able to be real and step forward because we've got to feel safe to be able to to walk in a new direction. You know, and I think you provide that forum beautifully in many different ways, whether we're listening, whether we're reading it, whether we're watching it. And the length of time speaks for itself. It's a journey. It's learning. It's learning together. And it gives us enough of a chance to hit some of those roadblocks and then hopefully find a little way around them. Or even if we stay there for a moment at the roadblock, be brave enough to think, okay, I'm ready to now move it and pass around it. So what I don't know, that was a very long answer, but I think you provide opportunity for truth. It's not just what we eat. So much of what you said I am in love with. I am so wowed by my understanding of what people need to do in order to lose weight successfully and amazed about how people are not talking about it.

They're still stuck on the calories in versus calories out. It's like it's not, yes, what you eat is important, but it's so much more than that. But it's really what I've learned through truthful, honest, vulnerable conversations that I've had with my amazing guests that we've had with members. I think I share so much of myself. My life has been not easy, a bit chaotic. You know, I've been going through a lot and I'm very honest in sharing that. I think because I am trying to connect and it's my only reference. My only reference is me and what I'm working through. I love what you said about making it safe to walk in a new direction. I, ah.

Great. Great. I love it when you tell me what I say because sometimes once I've said it I'm like I hope I hope that landed right but that sounds nice that sounds like what I would want to have said again

it landed you also said something about pretending we all want to pretend that our past doesn't exist, especially when it comes to dieting. There's a lot of shame and there's a lot of shame. There's a lot of, a lot of feelings in that. And we want this fresh start. I created this new journal, right? We got this new journal and I thought this is an opportunity for people to have a fresh start each new program. Cause you know, the way we break the program in 91 days,

most people will have to come back and do another round. It's meant to continue to do as long as you need to lose weight. Some people need one group. Some people need, you know, 10 groups. And I thought this is like a keepsake. Yes, it's a tracker and a journal, but it's a keepsake.

And it allows people to have a fresh start. But what's your perspective on that fresh start? Can we just convince ourselves that our past doesn't matter and this is just a fresh start and I'm going to show up a whole new person and I'm going to change my life and do things differently. And this time I'm going to follow through and I'm going to do all the things. Are we just kidding ourselves? Are we trying to convince ourselves? What do we do with that? Fresh start.

We have to believe in it. Every day is a new day. The sunshine comes that, you know, it's going to happen. It's inevitable. We hope that we wake up the next day. And if we are able to recharge and think this is a new day, every moment, we are only present in the present. We spend a lot of the time in the past, we spend a lot of the time in the future, we future, we speak about the future, we speak about the worries

of the what ifs, the what whens, and then we speak about our past in should have, could have, would have. But the present is now. You know, if we're able to think, yes, fresh start, what's today going to have in store for us? And we would speak. People know that I always ask us to speak kindly to ourselves. And so if we were talking to a little person our little self or a child or or a friend we would let them know it's a fresh start every day if they had done something that they perhaps regretted yesterday or didn't do so well at the weekend we would be I hope setting them up to know it's okay it and but we'd own it we'd be truthful. We'd say, I know it's going to be a harder day, you know, or I know you might be full of the feels today, but it's a fresh start, you know,

eyes up, shoulders back, walk forward. So I do believe in fresh starts all of the time. What about when it comes, I say a lot that you want to get in tune to your body. You want to, you want to turn up that volume. For example, if you choose to eat something, right? Like if you, let's say you want to have a donut or a slice of pizza or whatever that is, you're stressing, should I have it? Shouldn't I have it? I want people to get to a place where they have it, they enjoy it. And then that's it. They move it along. They don't berate themselves. They don't get on themselves. And I'm like, if you have the donut or the thing, and you do notice that internal dialogue where you're berating yourself and you're the next day, you're like, oh my gosh, this isn't

working. I'm never going to be able to do this. And then you follow through by starving or punishing yourself. Do you believe in turning up that volume or should we like quiet the noise? What's the approach on that? Like when we had that chatter in our brain as so many people do, I know they stress about what they're going to have for breakfast. They have breakfast and they're already thinking about their next meal or snack. Do we quiet that down or do we turn the volume up? What, what's the right approach there? I know it's probably different for everybody, but I want to hear from you. It's always difficult to know where to start because there's also the reason that that's happening that we'll try to talk about today as well. But two things that you're talking about is we definitely want to cultivate calm around every part of our life. But, you know,

this is about food today. This is about cultivating calm around food. And we're often on autopilot with our thoughts. We have so many thoughts run through our head a day, probably 6,000 thoughts are spinning around. We also make very quick thinking decisions that can sometimes be wrong. We can jump to conclusions. We can have cognitive biases. That's when we believe something because, you know, if we, well, we'll get into that, but we're very fast and that serves us well. Our brain is this ultimate computer that's trying to make things much easier for ourselves. So often we don't catch our thoughts. They just run away with us.

Now, when we cultivate calm, when we take the pause, we want to start noticing what's happening. Now, a lot of people push that away. They don't want to notice. They don't want to take the pause. so you're going to be teaching the mindfulness piece, as am I, to be thinking, what's going on right now? And am I hungry for this donut? Do I want this donut? And just like you've said, we absolutely can have it, but we just want to slow down to know the why. Then if we are having it, we want to also slow down to know the why then if we are having it we want to also slow down because we don't want to shame ourselves and blame ourselves if we now review it as a as a mistake or um something that we didn't mean to do by down, we've got a better chance of proceeding in a way that we're

actually conscious of that next decision. And then we're driving our own bus, we're deciding to, and then we can say, I'm going to really enjoy this. If I, you know, I really, you know, I'm at a birthday party, I would really like a piece of cake, or I'm at a celebration, I would really like to enjoy whatever it is, X, Y, and Z. But we want to be present, because also we want to be able to enjoy it. A lot of people will rush, and they won't actually have tasted it or felt it in their mouth. They will just then feel that uncomfortable afterwards. You know, where did I, where did that just go? It just was a moment that I didn't cherish. So it's slowing down and it's cultivating the calm, but it's also naming those things so that then they don't, they're not as chaotic.

In the end, they do become quieter. It's noticing the chaos and it's helping to quiet the chaos because often we just load onto it. We'll say, should, you know, this happen, I'm this, I'll be, you know, I'll never get it. Everybody gets, and then we pile and pile and pile instead of just noticing whatever we thought, whatever we felt and whatever we did. You said something there, shame in eating. I mean, right. Like I, it's like we put another shame in eating. And then it got me thinking, like, I want to, for everyone who's joining us live and by keyboard or on their phone, um, give me like a heart or a happy face or thumbs up after taking a second to think, do you feel ways, whether it's shame or it's guilt or stress, every single time you eat?

Like, I'm just thinking about this because we've been trying so hard to lose this weight, constantly counting and weighing and measuring. We're bombarded by messages of what we should eat, what we shouldn't eat. Beyond weight loss, what, what food causes insulin spikes and what food causes high cholesterol and what food causes inflammation and we're bombarded. It's like every second, every, every time we eat, we're not just eating. We are like, there's a lot of thoughts and feels and shame involved

every time we eat, I think, because of our past history, at least for me. I'm to a place where I remember that space in my brain, right? Oh, I'm in the line getting a coffee. Oh, there's a cake pop or a donut. I should get one. No, I shouldn't get one. I don't want one. I'm fat. I can't have it. Whatever. I get up to the front. Don't eat it. Don't eat it. Don't eat it. Don't eat it. I'll have a muffin, please. Right. And then I'll, okay, I'll just have a bite. And then I had that bite and I'm just like, okay, I'll just have the whole, I might as well eat the whole thing. And now I've ruined my whole day and I'm not going to eat the rest of the day. And then I go and eat. Should I have it? Should I have it? But I am hungry. Okay. I'm going to, I'm going to have it. And then I won't eat anything for dinner tonight. And then I'm hungry.

And so then I eat chips at night. And then the next day, okay, I'm going to try to not eat all day. It just occurred to me the magnitude. I know we're talking about the impact of your past diets, the magnitude of all those thoughts and feels that we have around food that have got us to a place where we're stressing and we have, I don't think the right feels associated with eating foods that are meant to nourish our body. Does that make sense? I know that was a lot, but I just had this kind of moment. Well, where do I start? Sometimes we have to start at the very beginning. And the very beginning is when we're actually in our mummy's tummy. We're noticing if our mum is nourished or not nourished. We are affected by the environment that we are being developed in. Even though we're in the safety of the womb, we know the outside is influencing us. The stress levels, the cortisol levels, whether, you know, the pregnancy is easy or difficult,

and then out we come. And then one of the first things that happens, hopefully skin on skin now, but we know that in not so long ago history, a lot of that wasn't happening, we were often separated, that would have severely stressed the baby. They have been cocooned in this beautiful place and now they're born and they're without their caregiver. We know a lot more about that now that we need. We are humans. We need connection. We need love and we need attachment in order to survive. It's not selfish. It's an absolute need. We rely on other humans to be our caregivers. And then quite quickly, what do we do? We're introducing the breast. If we are unable to breastfeed, we're introducing a bottle. So we're nourishing that child. Now, we know that we need more than just that.

We know in the research and terrible examples that if we just feed a baby and give them what they need, but we don't love the baby by talking to them and noticing them and being alongside them and in tune with them, they do not thrive. So it's not just about what we're getting in the nourishment, but we need to have our brain and heart nourished. We need to feel like we are important. We need to have that interplay of turn-taking where we learn very early on in our lives if we matter, if we matter to another human being. And that's the attachment dance of knowing that someone is there unconditionally. If we need, if we cry or if we gesture that somebody is noticing that we need something.

Now, that is the first introduction to our internal voice. You know, what we hear around us, you know, are you hungry? Would you like, you know, if you've got, we're listening, you know, would you like some more? Things like that are going in. And if we haven't experienced that, if we haven't experienced somebody that's kind to us or patient with us, then our inside voice is going to be influenced. Okay, so that internal critic might be louder in people that didn't have somebody that was able to be alongside, to soothe, to narrate, not always to solve, but to be with them in that distress or whatever it is um and so that's where our inside starts talking to us so that when we're older adults hopefully we've got this narration you know if we're a bit grumpy instead of being sort of very blaming we might think okay i'm grumpy i

wonder if i'm burning the candle at both ends. I wonder if I've eaten. I wonder if I've seen my friends this week. So we work through a nice sort of problem solving matrix, and then we're kind. Okay, so our brain at the same time is very quickly learning. Now your members probably know about classical conditioning but it's how humans and animals learn when we pair something together we quite quickly learn that that's that's linked okay so um if we know that when i cry somebody comes we're going to learn that, okay, that actually this behavior is going to elicit care, and this is wonderful. If we learn that we cry and nobody

comes, we've learned something else, okay? So when it comes to food, if we fast forward and we bring in Pavlov, and we think, okay, what we learned about Pavlov is that he noticed, and now we're talking animal psychology, he noticed that every time he was approaching the food bag for the dogs, the dogs would salivate. Now, salivation isn't not thinking I'm going to try and create salivation. This is a physiological response that when they saw the experiment to go towards the feed, and we all know it if we've got pets, if we're, you know, walking towards the drawer or whatever it is, our cat will meow, our dog will wag his tail. They're anticipating food and they have a physical reaction. So they've paired the draw or they've paired the Tupperware with the anticipatory, I'm going to eat. Now, if we as humans have begun to pair food with feeling really bad and guilt and shame, we've started pairing it okay so now that's when you're saying does everybody

when we have that bite feel bad so that can absolutely happen or if we've had somebody perhaps telling us oh you sure you want that or you know with a commentary even if it was maybe an outside commentary an actual person or our own you know for like should commentary, even if it was maybe an outside commentary, an actual person or our own, you know, for like, should I, should I have it? Should I? We're actually pairing that experience. And now when we're here and noticing that, we want to notice, wow, that is quite a strong relationship that I have built. What, you know, if somebody says, Oh, there's going to be a buffet, how does that make you feel? If they say, Oh, we're going to have some a nice dinner next weekend? How does that feel? Okay, so we that's where we're pausing, we're starting to think,

does it elicit something in you? That's very quick. A thought, a feeling, or even a behavior. You might say, oh my goodness, what am I going to do? A feeling, it might be anxiety. Our behavior might be, no, thank you, I'm not going to make it. Or our behavior might be, okay, well, if I've got to go to that thing on Saturday, I'll starve myself for the whole week before the Saturday. So we start doing stuff. But until we start pausing, we won't notice that these are happening. So we just want to be very kind and starting to observe things. In case nobody's told you, weight loss goes beyond the old just eat less and move more narrative. And that's where Felix comes in. Felix is you, weight loss goes beyond the old just eat less and move more narrative. And that's where Felix comes in.

Felix is redefining weight loss for Canadians with a smarter, more personalized approach to help you crush your health goals this year. Losing weight is about more than diet and exercise. It can also be about our genetics, hormones, metabolism. with online licensed healthcare practitioners who understand that everybody is different and can pair your healthy lifestyle with the right support to reach your goals. Start your visit today at felix.ca. That's F-E-L-I-X dot C-A. Whether you're in your running era,

Pilates era, or yoga era, dive into Peloton workouts that work with you. From meditating at your kid's game to mastering a strength program, they've got everything you need to keep knocking down your goals. No pressure to be who you're not, just workouts and classes to strengthen who you are. So no matter your era, make it your best with Peloton. Find your push, find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. I love that you took the time to explain. And for everyone who is watching or listening, I want you to rewind again and really listen to that from that understanding of why this is so

important. Not actually because of weight loss, but because once you've reached your goal, the goal is to be in a place where you are calm around food, where you can trust your body when it tells you when to eat, what to eat, how much to eat, where you can be surrounded by your favorite foods and just be like, Oh no, I'm good. Or, oh, I'm going to have one, or I'm going to have a bite of something. And that is it. Or you can go to a beautiful restaurant, your favorite restaurant, eat the food, decide it's so delicious, you want to overeat, and you walk away feeling stuffed, but you are nothing but joyful. And like that was delicious and wonderful. Yes, I can barely breathe. I'm so full. Yes. When I get up the next day, my weight might be up on

the scale, but it is so hashtag worth it, but it takes the work to get to that place. I love that you brought up kindness because we're going to talk about, I actually talk about how kindness for a lot of people might be the key to weight loss. That kindness, understanding, giving yourself grace. I want to, I want you to summarize or respond to that in a, in a different way. I love the detail, tracking it back to early on in our lives. But I want to say to you, what do you think the diet industry has taught us? Often there's something wrong with us, that we don't fit that model so that we have to change. Often there might be something that we're seeing as the ideal, we might misunderstand that it takes

time. We might think, oh, it's a quick fix. Because often they'll say, you know, get into your bikini in two weeks or get into those jeans in, I don't know, 48 hours, it's, it's false advertising. And unfortunately, some of those techniques, it's not unfortunately, it's just, it's just, we want to observe that some of those techniques will absolutely have provided, given us, given us objective data, we, we might have noticed, oh, I did lose weight. Of course you did, because you just didn't eat anything. But then your body's in panic, then your body's in stress. And then the next time it gets to eat something, it's going to hold it and store it and think, don't worry, I'll take care of you, because our body's so smart. It's so smart. So once we've done that,

we're yo-yoing, we're not being consistent. And that's a little bit like attachment. If we're consistent, if we know that person is consistent and kind and caring, we then trust that person. We then trust the world. We assume that most people are going to be like that. Now, if we're not being nice to our body, our body's going to stop trusting us. Sometimes I'll feed you. Sometimes I won't. Sometimes I'll feed you and then I'll tell you off. Now that's like gaslighting ourselves. Like that's just totally horrible. It's like saying, hey hey open this present and then whack you open the present and you like it's it's very provocative it's very upsetting but we want to break the cycle of these behaviors and

and and by noticing them instead of just pretending I'm it's not happening I don't want to look there it's like looking in the moldy tupperware at the back of the fridge. Sometimes, you know, it's there. We don't want to look in it yet. But I hope through the course of this 91 days, we're going to have a little look and think, OK, where does this come from? When did it start? Can I talk to myself with kindness, curiosity, compassion? And a lot of people will be very worried about that because they'll think, hang on, if I'm kind to myself, I'm going to eat more. I have to be mean to myself. Otherwise, I'm going to be unruly. I'm going to I'm going to eat for forever. Okay. And that actually doesn't happen. You know, when we give ourselves permission, actually we find permission and sort of a relaxed calmness around it. We

actually find we don't maybe need that extra bit or that thing. So that's often where I get the resistance when working with this, that people think, hang on, if I let myself without any sort of berating or nasty consequence after, then I'll be unraveled. But actually, when we're caring and kind, we find that then we're able to break the cycle. Yes, when you are caring and kind, you have it in you to want the best for you. I don't believe people, as much as they think they might want the donut, really actually want the donut if they break down how they feel while they're eating it, how they feel after. And I think people will be really surprised how their body is on their side. If you just leave it up to your body, it's not going to, doesn't really want the donut. Neither probably do you, or we want to get to a place. If you do decide you have it, you actually enjoy it. Okay. I want to talk about sabotage. I want to talk about people being disappointed in feels on the scale, but I love that you took us back to have that understanding of why we might be

thinking the way we think, why we might be feeling the way that we feel. And I want to preface to everybody, this is just starting the conversation. This conversation today is about bringing awareness. It is way too early in the program to assess what you're going to be dealing with or working through what's going to bubble up to the surface for you. So Dr. Beverly is going to be back with us time and time and time again. She's going to bring us tips and tools to work all these things. But I think step one really is awareness. How do we go though from honoring how we got here and all the feels and the baggage, for lack of a better word that comes with, to letting it go to be able to be in the present moment and really focus on the things that we need to do now without constantly thinking back what happened before? Can we do that?

Can we separate those two? Well, we've got to be intentional about it. If we can, and if people, again, when I ask people to do this, they're sometimes reluctant, to set a time aside, whether it's in the journal um to think about that because we don't we don't want it we want to try and prevent it from churning all day and all day and all day so you might you might think about it at a nice part of the day to think okay you might think about the why why why am i doing gina why is it being hard in the past how do I want this to be different um and just notice because we don't want to to shame the thinking we don't want to blame the thinking we just want to notice it and then put it away for the day because then it can help it just

come whenever it wants to if we do notice it coming whenever it wants to, then we can say, oh, actually, I've thought about that earlier in the day. I've reflected on my why. I've reflected on the hows or whatever it is. You know, how have I found myself here? What would I like to be doing? How do I want to be different?

And be really kind to all of that and and realize that it's going to take time just like if people have just started university people have just started school again it's September we haven't finished yet we we don't want to act like we failed when we haven't even studied and we haven't even taken the exam. So we don't want to fast forward. We want to think we're here, we're learning. And it's a stepped approach intentionally because we're learning, we're noticing, we're fine tuning. And it's this method in the madness. We're not going to ask you to take the algebra exam tomorrow so we want to trust it and even if you weren't so good at algebra last year

it doesn't mean you haven't turned up with a hmm i feel ready to take on this information because again if i somebody says maths to me my whole whole body shuts down. I'm like, I can't do it. I can't do it. So that might be the same for somebody with the word food. I can't do it. Okay. So I want to be thinking, actually, I'm different. I'm different than I was last year. I'm different than I was at school. I'm braver. I can put my hand up and say, could you explain that again? Really didn't get it. When I was young, I wouldn't have been able to do that. I would have pretended that I understood algebra. And then I would have got lost in the mess. So you're different. Today, you are different.

Tomorrow, you're slightly different. Every day, we're leveling up. So if you're here and you're in the present and you're thinking, okay, I didn't manage it last time. It doesn't matter. You're here now. You're leveling up. And you've got fresh start, fresh eyes. And don't assume that you're bad at maths.

It might have been the way it was taught. I'm using a metaphor, of course. and don't assume that you're bad at maths. It might've been the way it was taught. I'm using a metaphor, of course. It might be the way it was delivered or taught or the perceptions that you think you're not good at it. You might have taken that on when actually it just might've been the delivery, the speed of things, the wrong place at the wrong time. And so catch that, put it to the side and think I'm here now with different

resources a different mindset a different teacher a different pace a different community and we don't have to fake it we don't have to pretend we know how to do it we can ask the questions and say I'm a bit stuck, you know, and that's, be, be, be, be involved in your own learning. Maybe you, you've got to be, you've got to be, be involved in the learning and be involved in the solution. Um, yeah, that was good. That was good. I want to build on that. The, the failure part of it are people feeling

like they're bad at diets. And I have done 23 of these programs and it hurts my heart the same every time when I see people come into the program a week in, two weeks in, and they say, I've done, I'm doing everything. The scale hasn't moved. What am I doing wrong? And I'm just like, oh, I totally understand it. But I'm like, if you truly are, now you do have to be real to yourself. Are you skipping meals and snacks? Are you drinking the water? Are you like, are you, are you doing the things that you need to do? I got, I have to put that honest part in there because sometimes people are doing more than they did before, or they're trying really hard, but that doesn't necessarily translate into actually doing the things. But if you truly are doing the things, it's not that you've done anything wrong.

It's just that it takes time. And again, taught for this quick fix. And on other diets, I lost weight right away. And I could say a million times, it's now how quickly you lose or how much you lose in the beginning. But I know it's deeper than that. People get on the scale. They're doing the beginning. But I know it's deeper than that. People get on the scale, they're doing the things and there are big feelings that come along with that scale. If it's not moving,

if they're not seeing the number that they want. I saw someone early in the conversation say, I know how this works. My scale is up 2.6 today. And I got some big feels about that, even though I know that my weight goes up before it drops. So how do we, how do we deal with that and not let us not let it frustrate us to the point that we stopped showing up that we, what do we do? What do people do with that? Because it's not going to go, people's feels are valid and they're not going to go away. And I, in fact, I love getting on the scale to bring up those feels. Cause to me, that's like a ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. These are the things that you need to be aware of and work through. But given the fact that we are a week into the program and it's not about the

scale yet, but people want that scale to move. What do they do with that disappointment or that fear of, is it fear of failure? Is it like, what is that? I know that's a lot. We probably need to book a whole other segment and we haven't even got to sabotage yet. We're going to, I know you're going to come back and talk specific, but this I think ties into sabotage because people will sabotage themselves if they think, oh, this isn't going to work for me. I know. OK, I'm going to stop talking and let you talk because I got a lot of questions. So you said feels are valid. They totally are, aren't they? Because we do a lot of things because of our feelings um and that's part of of the noticing and the slowing down because what I'll often talk about is did your feeling move to the front of the bus and start driving the bus so what what

does disappointment do where does it then take you where does you know where does frustration take you what route you know where are we going now um so we want to get to know the feels we want to name them um so that it's just not there we want to actually think okay i'm gonna name the emotion a lot of us are not very good at naming emotion so we want to practice that by naming an emotion even if it's hard to get think am i disappointed am i aggravated am i um devastated am i deflated am i like what is the what what might be an all right name it and when we name it like dr seagal always talks about is we tame it. Our left brain, where our language is, is listening.

So once we've named an emotion, our brain thinks, OK, I am disappointed. We might look for where we feel that in our body, because often we have a physical reaction to our feelings. Do I feel heavy now do I feel hot do I feel anxious in my like a sort of twirly butterfliness in our belly um do I become fidgety so we want to start noticing and then we want to think okay I've noticed that I want to get to this is data collections why 91 days is wonderful because it's it's better data collection than a week or a weekend we want we're gonna have fluctuations we're gonna have changes in our weight as well as our thoughts and our feelings some days that number on the weighing scales won't bother us as much that might be because we're happy and we're

looking forward to something some days that weight that number won't bother us as much. That might be because we're happy and we're looking forward to something. Some days that weight, that number won't bother us as much because we've slept well and we're doing really well at work. Okay. And then some days that numbers can do something different. Okay. It might look different. And now this time, it's a way of evaluating our self-worth.

And it has nothing to do with your self-worth. You are always lovable. You are always worthy. You are always important, regardless of the number. But I want you to notice that. And I want you to notice, wow, on that day, it didn't bother me as much. What's that all about then? I'm rested.

I'm happy. You know, I had a really great weekend. Whatever that is, our feelings have a really important way of sort of changing the way we perceive it and critique ourselves. So we want to notice that. So every morning, be able to catch it. Think, OK, how did that feel today? And if you've got the journal, or if you've got the app, connect it. Think, okay, actually, this time it was all right. This time I did trust my body that it's going to go up, it's going to go down. You know, just like the moon does, we don't panic as the moon changes its phases. We want to trust it. And then we want to think, when our emotion does move to the front of the bus, where's it going?

Because we don't want it to. We want to think, don't let that disappointment ruin your day. You've got 86,400 seconds in a day. OK, don't let that piece of information derail you. I want you to externalize it. I want you to say, that might derail me. Like speak it out loud. Speak it out loud so that you can hear it and think, whoa, that's disappointing. That's going to derail me. And then if we can chain it, when we chain a a psychologist we're looking at what happened but what happened before okay and sometimes it might have started last week we might have thought oh yeah I asked that person to go to the cinema and they said no and then I asked that person if

they wanted to catch up for coffee and they said no and then I had a bad review of that article I wrote and actually it might not be so obvious. Sometimes it's way more subtle. Okay, maybe it's, they've left the cupboard open, they've left the toilet seat open, they've like, it might be little things. But then it leads us to go blow it, blow it, I'm feeling this way, I'm feeling frustrated, I'm going to do X, Y, and Z. So we want to notice when the frustration has done that to us. And then with our data collection and with time, we're going to start understanding and not allow the bus to go that way. And to think, actually, I'm going to park up. I'm going to ask frustration to

move away from the steering wheel. And I, my rational self, the self I want to be, which, you know, we all do what we do. We're allowed to bring ourselves along truthfully. We can then drive the bus and think, actually, I don't want to sabotage by going to, you know, feel bad forest, you know, where everything sucks, you know, don't go down that route. The forest of no return. Who would go there? Who would say, I know, I'm going to go to the forest. It's comfortable there. It's got a familiar, familiar. It's familiar. Okay. Um, I have two big takeaways. One right now, we're not trying to fix it. First of all, you don't need fixing. Okay. If this is resonating with you, you're like, what do I do about it? I got to fix this. We're not trying to fix it. You are trying to understand it. You are trying to

trust it. You're trying to collect that data so you can work through it. So I think that's a big takeaway. The other thing I definitely want to talk about is body positivity. Um, next time we chat and the sense that you, you can love yourself exactly the way you are and still want to make change. There's nothing wrong with making change. And my biggest takeaway, when you were talking about how your feelings and, and, and how you feel physically when you're feeling the feels. And I'm thinking about weight loss, and I'm also thinking about menopause right now. How's it going?

It's a lot. When you started talking about the cupboards, I'm like, oh, yeah, it's big things, it's little things, it's all of the things. There's a lot of feels. Okay, so a lot to unpack here. I don't want anyone walking away being like, oh my gosh, how are we going to do this? It's not any one thing you take on or work through. It's the little things that you do each day. It is your sense of awareness. It is how you are showing up. You are going to change and evolve

throughout this process physically and mentally. So like I said, it's not something you're showing up, you are going to change and evolve throughout this process physically and mentally. So like I said, it's not something you're going to, well, I'm going to fix this today. And that's the takeaway today is this is a conversation about awareness, an introduction, you might say, to the conversations that we are going to have moving forward. And I hope really highlighting and validating that it's not just calories in versus calories out. Dare I say not that at all. Healthy, sustainable weight loss, physically, mentally, there's so much more to it. And I hope this gives you an understanding of all the past diets that you've

done. Yes, physically, you might have gained that lost that weight. And then but there's so many reasons why you gained it back. And, and bigger than that, the living method is different. It is different for so many, in so many ways, and for so many reasons. And I hope you walk away feeling super jazzed about that because this really is your opportunity. And this is like this whole conversation encompasses what you, your understanding to get to a place of finally and forever weight loss. What does finally and forever mean? It means not that the, there won't still be stuff to work through for the rest of your life. Um, But to really turn the page on your weight journey or your history with weight, kind of like turning the page on an old boyfriend or

something that happened in your life. And it'll always be part of you, but you'll be able to move on from it and move forward. I know that was a lot. I adore you. I love you. I am so grateful for you. I just love that you get it and you know what our members need and the kinds of conversations that we need to have in order to truly be successful. Dr. Beverly David, you can follow her on Instagram. She gives some great tips. Dr. Dr. Beverly is her Instagram handle. If someone wants to work with you, which I'm a massive fan of doing therapy, we're going to get into cognitive behavioral therapy, which can be a real cornerstone of someone's journey.

Where do they find you? How do they work with you? You're probably booked out 10 years in advance at this point, but I know you have an amazing team. If someone does want to work with you, find you your psychology center.ca. Yeah. Yes. And if you want to email me two groups, I'm opening the date soon, very soon, two groups, my sleep course for insomnia and my calming your anxious brain, I want to set the date. So if you want to be in either of those those write to hello at your psychology center.ca and put either sleep in the heading or anxious brain in the heading and then i'll be able to find you easy to say okay the date is boom um it'll be in october um yeah i want i thank you gina for letting me come on. I want everybody to know,

if this felt overwhelming, I'm sorry. But overwhelming doesn't mean bad. And think of anything, go back and think of any first day or first week, you know, how we're learning. And, you know, that first day we were driving, we couldn't do it yet. And then I wonder if you're good at it now. I wonder if it's calm. The first day of school. And just like Gina said,

there's so much to it. We could be so intelligent, but there's lots to school, isn't there? There's the friends we make, the teachers we have. It's the timetable we're given the opportunity so remember it's so like that don't make this different to any other learning um and finding out about ourselves um because it's just the same okay i i see uh ronda dr beverly's sleep program was great. You're going to be back. I mean, we're going to talk about the psychology and behind weight loss and dieting and all that. But you are also, what people don't know, a sleep researcher. So we're actually going to do a sleep series and you're going to talk about the psychology behind sleep, which is so fascinating in the way that it's going to tie into your weight loss journey. But I love that, calming the anxious brain and talking to you.

My goodness, if you are interested, head over to her website, your psychology center.ca. Thank you so much. Thanks to everyone who has joined us live. Remember that you can watch it again. It's definitely worth listening to again and again and again. It will be stored in the guides. You can also download and listen by way of our podcast, The Living Method, available on all podcast platforms. And if that is where you are listening to us now, thank you for listening. Until next time, I'm already looking forward to our next conversation. Thank you. Thank you.