Get a Smarter Psychology of Slim and Take Control Back!

Carrie – Welcome, everyone, this is the SANE show and with me I have Mr. Jonathan Bailor and I am Carrie Brown.

Jonathan – Carrie Brown, what’s up?

Carrie – It’s all good.

Jonathan – We have a new microphone.

Carrie – Yes we do. It’s incredibly lovely.

Jonathan – Yes it is, it is an interesting looking microphone and it forces us to —

Carrie – [??]-XXXX words I could use for this, I think [??]-XXXX with lovely.

Jonathan – I was worried that you were going to use one of those words, this is a family friendly podcast. Moving on! So, Carrie, last week we told the epic and surprising story of how a — I can’t even believe this, nearly fifty year old woman with an extremely stressful job, who is on medication proven to make it incredible difficult to burn fat, has, without any hunger, without any sense of depravation, without any calorie counting and after years of struggle, let’s be clear, has restored herself to her optimal health and then as a by-product, has restored her body to her optimal body, which happens to be a size 2 and that’s because you started from a place of approximately size zero, size two, so it’s not going to be the same for everyone, but, as a result of that radical transformation and that epic journey, Carrie, you told me that you’ve seen some psychological changes, which potentially are even more significant than those physical changes. I want to dig into that psychology of SANE or Slim in today’s show.

Carrie – Psychology is my middle name.

Jonathan – Carrie, psychology ground —

Carrie – I’ve had more psychology therapy sessions than you’ve had hot dinners, Mr. Bailor.

Jonathan – Hot dinners, not actually that many, I eat — I’m in mush dinner phase right now because I am an assembler. Actually I’ll tell you this real quick before we get into the psychology, I have a lazy person’s cioppino recipe.

Carrie – Okay.

Jonathan – So are you familiar with the dish cioppino?

Carrie – No.

Jonathan – Okay, so cioppino is a — I believe, don’t quote me on this, it’s an Italian sea-food stew.

Carrie – Okay.

Jonathan – So generally you can order it at Italian restaurants, it’s usually a hardy vegetable-based broth that just has clams, mussels, oysters, salmon, just a bunch of — it’s a goulash. So I said, I like that stuff and I’m also very frugal, so I don’t like spending a lot of money on food.

Carrie – Yes he is, people.

Jonathan – So, I noticed at Costco and remember sea food is, dare I say the SANEst nutrient that’s protein out there. Just sea food, we don’t eat enough of it, we need to eat more of it, it’s usually a safer bet in this country than eating some of the meat options we have if you’re at a conventional grocer. But anyway, I noticed that at Costco there is an abundance of canned sea food. So you can get canned clams, you can get canned oysters, you can get canned tuna and you can get canned salmon, all of which do not require any refrigeration, all require no cooking and all of which are extremely affordable because they’re canned.

Carrie – And they’re extremely filling.

Jonathan – And extremely filling. So, what I did is I said, Buy all that, get an industrial sized can opener, take it —

Carrie – I was going to say, there had to be an industrial cart involved in this shopping expedition.

Jonathan – So I got my big bowl, which is huge, I threw it all in the bowl, I took some all-natural marinara sauce that Costco also sells, which has no added sweeteners in it, nothing artificial, it’s just like tomatoes, basil, olive oil et cetera et cetera, took some fresh mashed — or pressed, I think, garlic, mashed garlic — I just like having a nice plate of mashed garlic and then my wife is really happy afterwards — garlic and just some Italian seasoning, put that in my bowl, had just like three months’ worth of inexpensive, easy to prepare Jonathan Bailor version of cioppino.

Carrie – You’re a weirdo.

Jonathan – So anyway, speaking of weird, psychology, what has been going on in your brain, Carrie? Well, that’s actually — let me — I don’t know if we should ask that question.

Carrie – Yeah, no, that’s probably not the best question to ask.

Jonathan – So in the context of SANEity, what has been going on in your brain?

Carrie – So, you mean since you return to a size two?

Jonathan – Correct.

Carrie – Okay, so, where to start?

Jonathan – Well, you mentioned something earlier about the way you perceive food and also just after having been, quote — after seeing yourself as, as you put it, chubby, for so long, now seeing yourself as, and correct me if I’m wrong, Carrie, remaining effortlessly [05:00] slim and actually, Carrie, just to really drive home that I’m not exaggerating when I say effortlessly slim, really quickly, please explain to the listeners how you’ve actually taken steps to slow your fat loss because you’ve been a little concerned that it’s happening too rapidly.

Carrie – Right, I’ve actually started eating bread and potato, just to try and stop any more loss, because if I get any smaller than a two, I am literally going to have to replace my entire wardrobe. I’ve already had to go out and buy some new pants because almost every pair of pants in my wardrobe was certain to flap around the back and frankly look silly…

Jonathan – And —

Carrie – And so —

Jonathan – And so just — the only reason I said to the listeners is not to obviously like, you know if you’ve listened to the show for any period of time, that it definitely hasn’t been all — if you read Carrie’s blog, it hasn’t been all bunnies and rainbows for Carrie, so this isn’t just like, Look, Carrie’s so awesome, it’s more like to say an individual who’s approaching fifty, incredible stressful job, all these medications and you actually had a pretty substantial surgery, which generally affects weight, can you share that, just really quickly?

Carrie – Right, you mean my hysterectomy?

Jonathan – There you go. So a lot of people who have that procedure done think it’s a death sentence in terms of their waist line because it has such a hormonal impact. I say that only to say that you’ve got all this stuff going on, you perceived yourself as chubby for years, years and years and years and now you’re actively having to take steps, through eating starch, to slow your fat loss because it’s happening so quickly, what’s that doing to your psychology?

Carrie – It’s — because it has happened so fast, my brain hasn’t caught up with reality and so I still — there’s still a part of me that still thinks chubby, but then I, you know, slide into these pants or I just — I pull on jeans that three months ago I could barely get in and now I pull them on without undoing the zipper. And so, I’m just — my brain’s having to catch up with the reality of the situation because it has happened so fast and it’s been so easy, but it’s very different to live in a slim body than it is a chubby body, for me anyway. It was the way I saw myself, the way I valued myself, the way I felt when I was in a room full of people, the way I dressed, it was — and I didn’t realize, I think because I never imagined that I’d get back to being a size two that I never realized how my brain had kind of moved into this you are chubby, you are bad, you are, you know, you want to wear buggy clothes, you don’t want people to be able to see all of that kind of stuff. I hadn’t realized how that had become part of my thinking until now. Certainly three months later, I’m a size two and I’m skinny again and now I’m going, Wow, this feels really good, I feel, you know, I don’t — I can walk into anywhere now and feel confident. I feel confident because I’m slim, I feel — and that’s not just in an egotistical way, but in a I am in control of my body way.

Jonathan – Yes.

Carrie – That I got my body to look like this and I’m in control of it and I can dial it up and dial it down, I can put on weight or I can lose weight and I can, you know, I can do that, so I’m in control. It’s actually had a hugely positively impact on my brain and the way I perceive Carrie Brown.

Jonathan – That statement about, I feel more in control, that is a goldmine, Carrie, because I think so often, trying to slim down one’s body is perceived as an effort of vanity and I think that that is not accurate. I think what a lot of us can sometimes experience is, life is hard and it’s complicated. Right, there’s a lot of challenges, there’s a lot of things that we don’t have control over and like you said, when on top of all of those things that you legitimately have little or no control over, you feel like you can’t even control your own body? That which — like if I can control anything, brain says to yourself, it’s got to be my own body. Right, like I choose like whether or not I can — I walk up those stairs or not and why can’t I just choose to change how my body feels and if you can’t — it’s a bit like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, if you don’t have shelter or water, you’re not going to be worried about, you know, achieving your professional goals.

Carrie – Right.

Jonathan – So there’s this hierarchy. So once you get that sense of control, it’s not about being about a size zero, or a size two, or a size four, or a size six, it’s more about regaining that sense of control. Because once you master [10:00] your own body, everything else seems a heck of a lot easier to master.

Carrie – Right.

Jonathan – Is that fair?

Carrie – Yeah, that’s absolutely fair. I just feel overwhelmingly more confident about everything, like if, well if I can do that then I can do anything, I can of feel like superwoman at the moment.

Jonathan – Which is excellent and I — the other thing that is hard about this journey, but you’re experiencing you now, Carrie, is, once you go completely SANE, as you have over the past few months, you will see the world differently and once you see the world from that perspective, like until you see the world from that perspective, it’s hard to understand how wonderful the world looks from that perspective.

Carrie – Right.

Jonathan – So right now, if you’re in the place that Carrie was about two years ago, so size eight, feels like she has no control of her body no matter — even if she eats 800 calories a day, then in a moment of stress after a hard day’s worth of work, eating a glazed doughnut is going to make you feel good. It’s going to make you feel good and you don’t know any, like you don’t know how good you’d feel if you weren’t at that physical state that you’re in. But once you get there — so this is why we sometimes recommend just for twenty one days, twenty one days, might take a little bit longer, might take a little bit shorter, just go SANE —

Carrie – Hardcore.

Jonathan – Totally SANE, hardcore SANE, for twenty one days, because it’s not that on day twenty two you’ll stop doing that, it’s that on day twenty two, you will know what it feels like to be SANE, to be healthy and to be in control and Carrie I want you to speak to this, I guarantee you that that will feel better than any processed, addictive, toxic, edible product will ever taste.

Carrie – It does, I mean, I just, you know, it used to be I’d be curled up on the couch with the cat watching a movie and I’d look down and I’d see my chubby legs, and my immediate, you know, my psychological reaction would be, Ugh, you’re a failure, you’re fat, you’re, you know, all of that stuff. It doesn’t happen now, I look down and go, Hmm, cute legs. You know, but it just — it’s changed everything about the way I see myself, and maybe it shouldn’t but it has.

Jonathan – Yup. And that —

Carrie – And maybe a lot of that is social crap that we, you know, that the world tells us, but no matter, that is how I feel, that’s how I felt then, this is how I feel now, and it’s been awesome.

Jonathan – It is, it is, there’s a lot of cultural nonsense involved in this, but the reality is, given that cultural nonsense, given the cultural nonsense that we’re exposed to, being chronically dissatisfied with how you look and feel is a bit like having a low grade infection in your brain. Because, for example, having a low grade infection in your body, you’re just constantly having to fight something off. It would be like trying to run around with a parachute strapped to your back. It’s just — it’s slowing you down. As Carrie just mentioned and I’m sure as a lot of us have experienced, when you are chronically dissatisfied with your ability to control your body, it’s like any time your brain gets a chance, it’s this low grade punch in the gut. It’s just, You’re not good enough, you’re not good enough, like Carrie said, Look at your chubby legs, look at your chubby legs, when you go fully SANE and get that control back and get your health back, imagine if that — what now was a low grade infection in your brain that makes you feel bad, flipped and turned into a low grade continuous turbo boost. So now, at all those moments when you would look down or look in the mirror or [indiscernible 13:52] and be like, You’re bad, you’re bad, you’re not good enough, you’re bad, every single one of those instances switch to, You’re a rock star, you can take over the world, and you can’t even help it, your brain just does that automatically.

Carrie – Yeah, I mean, seriously, I’ve spent, you know, years and years whenever I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror or a window or whatever, the result would be disappointment, every time and you know that really wears on you after a while. I don’t get that now. Now I’ve catch sight of myself and well, I’m still — because my brain is still catching up with my body, I’m still like, Oh, oh, that’s me, you know, so it’s — I still have to get my brain to catch up with what’s happened, but I feel completely different about myself in a very positive way. And I think for me, maybe the added pressure I had was that for two years I’ve been, you know, developing SANE recipes and, you know, and I didn’t feel like I looked the part and I’m doing podcasts and telling you all how to do it, but I don’t look the part, and I wasn’t able to do it with my body, so that added a lot of pressure for me because I continually [15:00] felt like I was letting Jonathan down and I was letting you all down, I was letting the site down, but I just — I couldn’t make it work, but now — so now I feel like — I feel like I’m worthy of you, now.

Jonathan – And I hope, folks here what I hear which is the furthest thing from vanity in that commentary. What I hear is and this is going to be trite but if you’ve ever ridden in an airplane, you know that they tell you that if you’re travelling with small children and there’s a loss of cabin pressure to apply your oxygen mask before you apply the oxygen mask to a child, because when you are fully SANE, what you get, I mean, Carrie struggled for years and years and years and it was just as simple as actually go SANE. And — so when she actually went SANE, she essentially applied her oxygen mask and is now able to apply oxygen masks to everyone else, right. So this is the furthest thing from vain, is it vain to keep yourself hydrated? Absolutely not, because if you don’t drink water, you’re not going to be able to contribute to this world, you’re not going to be able to contribute to your family, you’re not going to be able to rock your mission. So, is it vain to go completely SANE? Absolutely not. It’s going to heal you and it’s going to enable you to do that which you were put on this earth to do. And there is, frankly, nothing more selfless than that, because you’re dedicating yourself to your ultimate purpose by invigorating your health and optimizing yourself. And I think that’s really, really exciting.

Carrie – And don’t give up because it feels really great.

Jonathan – So, speaking of feeling great, you did mention some ironic things you noticed in terms of SANE psychology, Carrie, where your perception of food has changed.

Carrie – Yes, I no longer have all these hated food groups. I now, so, you know, I used to — and the women particularly out there will understand me when I say, you get to the point where you look at pizza or you look at ice cream and you feel like you’ve gained weight, just looking at it, right, because that’s how it feels. And so you have all these foods that you look at and they set off this torrent of guilty, bad, if you eat that you’re going to gain ten pounds, if you eat that you’re weak, you’ve failed, it’s just all this negative stuff about all these foods and I now don’t have that. I see — it’s all food, we all have a choice, so now when I look at pizza I go, well there’s pizza and that’s a choice, but I prefer to do, you know, the non-starchy veggies and the chicken and all of that good stuff over here, but I no longer have that — I no longer beat myself up every time I think about a bad food choice. It’s — I no longer have that guilt. And if I do go out and I do decide [??]-XXXX, you know, it’s a lovely summer day and I just fancy ice cream and I don’t have any that I’ve made and say no ice cream in the freezer, you know, I’ll have an ice cream and I’ll enjoy it and — but there’s no more beating myself up about it. It’s just that, okay, so that wasn’t the healthiest choice, but I really enjoyed it and now I’m going to go back to eating the healthy choices. So that whole guilt thing, torrent of bad messages, is gone away.

Jonathan – To me it sounds like that’s another flavor of the message of control that we talked about earlier where sometimes, if we don’t feel like we’re in control. So it’s this — it’s late at night, wasn’t a good day, go into the cupboard, just eat an entire bag of Oreos, there’s this guilt trip because we felt like we fundamentally were not in control. We were not in control of ourselves in that moment, but when you’ve gone SANE in this way, you have that control back, you have the ability to choose, and if you consciously choose to eat something that’s inSANE on occasion, first of all you’ve broken the actual neurological addiction, so it’s not going to cause you to go bananas, secondarily, how you approach it will be different, it will be less this sense of almost a desperation and taking solace, almost like using food as a drug.

Carrie – Right.

Jonathan – [indiscernible 19:10] versus using food as a treat.

Carrie – Right.

Jonathan – Right and I think that’s — I think that’s the big difference, can you treat yourself? Of course, you do it whenever you want, it’s just a series of choices, but you can’t treat yourself to heroin, heroin doesn’t work that way.

Carrie – Right.

Jonathan – Right, it doesn’t work that way, and if you’re currently in this chronic sugar addicted state, an inSANE state, these treats aren’t treats, but once you get that sense of control back and you can choose to see them as treats, I feel like that too empowers you.

Carrie – Yeah, it absolutely does, it’s just — that whole, if I eat that I’ve failed, if I eat that I’m not good enough, that’s just gone away. And the other thing is because I was hardcore SANE, I just — a lot of the pull of the starch and the sweets has just — it’s just completely gone away, I don’t really enjoy it, they — insanely sweet now.

Jonathan – Yeah.

Carrie – I don’t enjoy them as much, I haven’t found one thing that was as good as I remembered when I ate it.

Jonathan – Yup.

Carrie – So hands up, went out on Saturday with a girlfriend and her two little kids and we went to Pizza Hut and I ate pizza and it just didn’t give me that — it just didn’t taste like I — in my mind as good as it was. So it was — I enjoyed it but it wasn’t like it used to be, so that kind of addiction has gone away. And I enjoyed it, but, you know, I’m not going to rush to do it again. And I did go into a carb coma afterwards, went home and had two hour nap, and I just don’t enjoy the way that feels because I don’t feel like that ever now, so when I do, it’s much more noticeable. And I don’t want to feel like that, I mean, I don’t, you know, I don’t want to waste two hours of my Saturday sleeping because I’m, you know, I can’t stay awake just because I ate pizza.

Jonathan – And it highlights a great point for us to close on, Carrie, and that’s — we’d talked earlier in the series and I talk about that in the book, The Calorie Myth, about using the metaphor of a broken ankle. So you talk about your broken metabolism, and how you, Carrie, for example, before you went — you know, you had a completely broken metabolism when you were at a size eight, then you because you’re naturally slim person, not that size eight is objectively large, you’re a naturally slim person who is originally at size zero slash two went up to a size eight, that was overweight for you, you had a broken metabolism. You then did some things, you went pseudoSANE to try to heal a little bit and you did, that brought you down to a size six, but still not at your natural, healthy state. You then applied a therapeutic dose of nutrition, you went completely SANE, and, in only a few months, you healed your metabolism. And after having healed your metabolism, two things you’ve mentioned, one, you ate pizza and it didn’t make you gain five pounds, two, you are intentionally eating certain starches now, because you actually want to slow your fat loss so you don’t run out of clothes.

Carrie – Right.

Jonathan – Now, think back to that broken ankle analogy. When you have a broken ankle, it — you put it in a cast for or a little while, you can’t use it, like you’re hard core, the ankle is in a cast. But then once you’ve given it that opportunity to heal, certainly you won’t want to do the same things you did to break your ankle originally but, your ankle is healed now. So if you happen to roll it a little hit, it’s okay, and that’s the beautiful thing here is when you go as we’ve seen here with Carrie, when you go SANE, really, that doesn’t mean you can never do anything else.

Carrie – Right.

Jonathan – It means you get back to that state of healthy, you get back to lowering your set point and then your body will fight to keep you at that healthy point.

Carrie – Right.

Jonathan – Which is great.

Carrie – Absolutely right, and that has been, you know, Jonathan has always said these things but I’ve never experienced it but now I have experienced it and I can tell you for me, certainly, it was absolutely true that once I healed the hormones, it was magic. Just magic, I just melted.

Jonathan – I love it, I love melting, people. Sounds a little odd but anyway, folks I hope you enjoyed today’s show as much as I did and remember this week and every week after, eat smarter, exercise smarter and live better, we’ll chat with you soon.

Carrie – See ya.