My name is Chow. of you are struggling to lose plant-based diet. is for you There are thousands of podcasts and resources. of a plant-based diet. The reality is that being vegan does not I guarantee losing weight. feeling frustrated and confused where to start or you know exactly what you should be doing But you just can't seem to enough willpower to do it. In this podcast, you'll learn the truth about plant-based right loss. just as important proven methods of behavior and what you know
Can't wait to get started. Let's do this. hello and welcome to the podcast i'm so excited for this episode because i'm going to be speaking with rebecca who has lost over 40 pounds nearly 50 pounds inside of lean of plants over the past four months She has an incredible story of overcoming shame about her way of feeling like her body was broken and that there was something wrong with her metabolism or her genetics.
and now being able to lose in a way that feels sustainable for the first time. She actually lost 70 pounds already losing with Optivia and then gained all of the weight back. as you can imagine is incredibly demoralizing so if you've struggled with gaining and losing in the past
If you've found like nothing is ever sustainable, if you've ever wondered if there's something wrong with your body or you've been stuck in a shame cycle, then give this episode a listen because it is for you. So nice to see you. I'm so excited to chat and hear more about your story. Thank you for helping on.
I'm excited. Just walk me through a little bit, Rebecca. Tell me a bit about your dieting history. Yeah, I would say I... first kind of became aware of weight in high school I was like moderately active so I worked and I walked a lot so I was you know quasi healthy.
throughout high school and college but then it wasn't until I got married and then we kind of got comfortable and started making just you know we didn't know how to cook healthily and so we were just making a lot of quesadillas and you know just stuff at home and then that's when the weight really started to pack on and so then i that was probably when i first started to really notice like okay We're gaining weight. What do we do about it? but I did get really good at ignoring the mirrors.
and not looking at my reflection. So I'm really good at avoiding things. I wouldn't step on a scale. I wouldn't look in a mirror too closely. How long ago was that? We got married in 2013. So I would say that it was kind of a slow progression on from there. I tried keto. I tried, you know, like a cabbage diet or something where I only ate cabbage soup for...
And, you know, I tried all of these things and I would say that was probably 2015, 2017, where I was trying all these different things and I would lose maybe 10 pounds here or there and then gain it right back. So it was just kind of a slow progression where it just added on and added on. yeah tell me like when you think back to that What did you think was the issue like what did you think was the reason that you were gaining weight what did you think was the reason that
when you would do a diet that you couldn't keep it off or the weight would come back like what was that what was kind of going on your head at that time yeah I think probably in my head I thought that it was genetics like I was just destined to be that way you know a lot of my family has struggled with their weight
I thought probably I had a metabolism that didn't work right or I was just big boned and just meant to be overweight. I didn't really understand at all. Did you have any concept of why? the diets that you were doing were working or not working? No. I would say I knew that I was losing weight. I could see the numbers on the scale go down. But it was a lot of, you know, I could only eat this certain thing in only this small amount. So there was a lot of hunger involved.
It was a lot of portion control, so a lot of small amounts of food. So, yeah, I don't I didn't have any idea. I think at one point I understood calories in versus calories out. You know, you needed to try to keep things level. But I did not understand at all, like the science behind it.
Okay. And so when you would gain the weight back, was that because you would quit the diet or what would happen in those instances? Yeah, I think I would go for as long as I could and then I would get tired of... having to spend hours and hours and hours in the kitchen prepping all of this food.
Or I would just say like, hey, I really want to go through the drive-thru and just get some greasy French fries. Like, you know, it's just I'm hungry and, you know, I wasn't prepared to handle those cravings.
And so then I would just go one step and then I would just tumble way down really fast because I was like, well, I've already messed up now, so I'm just going to keep on going. Yeah. How did that feel when you think back to... just like the general kind of way that you like felt about yourself or you felt about your behavior and your habits like what
like what kind of comes to mind is there anything that you kind of look back on you're like there's there was moments where you're like i just i really don't feel good about myself or like how did that's assumptive how did you actually just feel no i i definitely felt like there was something wrong with me you know i've seen other people be able to do this and you know i just kind of that like why can't i do it it wasn't i would say with all of the things that i tried
I did what some of my friends had posted that they were doing this program called Optivia. And when I signed on with them, I signed up because it was a very easy plan. It was, hey, we're going to send you a box full of pre-prepared food. you know, all you have to do is eat this and cook one meal and that's it. So I was like, okay, yes, this is easy. That's what I want. And it worked. I lost a lot of weight, you know, really quickly. I lost like 70 pounds in six months. That's crazy.
It was crazy. And then the idea is that once you lose the weight, you're supposed to be able to reverse diet back to a normal. kind of diet this program is also kind of like a pyramid scheme so a little bit so there is also like coaches and you know you're supposed to sign up and then you're supposed to sign up your family and your friends and and all this too so i did get involved in that and become a coach in the program
It wasn't until, you know, gained all the weight back within a year of losing it. And I went into this huge depressive cycle. you know trying to distract myself with spending money on anything that i could to you know feel better because i was you know, in that cycle of like, what's wrong with me? Like I, you know, I don't, I don't know what's wrong. So I'm just going to spend thousands of dollars on.
something to distract me. It wasn't until I went through that process where I really kind of hit the bottom and was like, there's something wrong with And I sat there for months and finally I told my husband, I really want to speak to a nutritionist. learn more about food and what I should be eating and what I shouldn't be eating. And so we did that. I did that for three months and learned about intuitive eating. I learned a lot of really helpful things.
and I really felt like I understood what freedom meant. when it comes to food, which that's even changed now. But at that time, I felt very freeing. I felt like I had gone through therapy with my nutritionist. It was just a really, really healing experience and it was really good. But I still was struggling with my weight at this time. Like I've worked with a trainer.
the weight wasn't really going anywhere at that time well let's let's go from there because i'm really curious how that would have felt to be doing so much of this kind of mental work where you were feeling like you were starting to gain food freedom or starting to have an understanding of food and then also working with a trainer and putting in the work there but not actually seeing something change on the scales like how
how was that for you did that feel conflicting in any way was there anything where you're like well maybe i should just accept myself at this size or at this weight or like how how was that for you in those moments Yeah, definitely. That is a very popular theme, I think, in the intuitive eating community where it's just very accepting, which I think it's really good because our bodies are all made differently.
And my nutritionist did tell me at the time, like, it's normal to go from a swing, you know, you start and you go like way all the way over into intuitive eating, and then you kind of swing back down into, you know, like a normal range. So I knew that the white wasn't going to come off necessarily very quickly at that time. Several months down the road, I was then getting frustrated again.
Why am I here again? Like, why is this not working? I've now spent money on this program and that program and this program. And like, why, why is this not getting me where I want to be?
yeah when you when you think about that what kind of like started to you on this path that you are now because you've lost like close to 50 pounds over the past four or five months which is absolutely insane so and you seem i mean you seem like you're pretty happy with it which is awesome you've done the internal work and now you've you've done the mahi you're getting the treat
tell me what started to change for you where you started to seek out or look for something that was going to give you the best of both worlds where you had that mental freedom but you could also see that you were moving in the direction of health or moving in the direction of wanting to lose weight which is something that's important to you i think i had ever since you know this has been a long journey but i have basically lived my whole life on processed foods just in america like that's just
kind of what we have an abundance of. And I had never really thought about eating a lot of plants or going plant-based or anything like that until I saw a documentary on Netflix. This was back in... january of 2024 the twin experiment on netflix i watched that and i was like i said oh okay like let's try this you know let's try it and see what happens you know it can't hurt and so i i did that and but i had not made a commitment to where i was going to be 100 in so i i was kind of
dabbling where I would have maybe two out of three meals were all plant-based and then I would have meat or dairy. And I did that for a while and I definitely started to feel better. You know, physically I was, you know.
feeling not as like sluggish as I used to and then I was just on YouTube one day and I stumbled across one of your videos and you explained the thought of calorie density where, you know, the small amount of something can have this many calories and then this huge amount of veggies can have this little amount of calories and i was like it was like a light bulb went off in my brain i was like oh That makes so much sense. I was like, why did nobody ever tell me this before?
So, and that, you know, was kind of what started me on this story. I watched more of your videos. I started losing weight immediately after I implemented some of your ideas. And so before I actually joined the program, I think I had lost 15 pounds. that's crazy well like what was the some of the first things that you so you watched that video understood calories i also had that it's so crazy when i look back because i also had that moment where i'm like
It's just calories and I'm just eating too many from the foods that are high in calories. I just need to eat more of the lower calorie foods and I'll be... It felt like too simple. Obviously it works. We're here. I'd love to know what you... started to change but i'm also just so stuck on this like why did we not why did no one ever tell us it's too easy yeah yeah
I believe in conspiracy theories sometimes, but I'm just like, there has to be a reason why they didn't want us to know. Yeah, I know. Maybe because there's no big broccoli. I don't know. Maybe we need to create a big broccoli.
i think i mean part of it i reckon this is just the theory that i have is the more complex we can try to make something same the more that the complex the problem solves or the more complex the problem is the more expensive the more involved the solution has to be and i think like for like that's just legitimate it's legitimate that if you have like a hard to solve complex problem like it's going to cost a lot
and which is why it's like i think the real problem is habits it's hard to change your habits like that is it's a costly expensive process if you can't change your habits then you probably need some accountability you probably need some help with that you probably need some commitment devices because we're talking about behavioral change that's difficult
but when it comes to actually understanding what to do for weight loss it's so incredibly simple that there's but there's no money in that no one actually benefits from saying like hey like yeah if you want to lose weight really just eat more vegetables there's not really anything that you can generate from that in terms of you can't sell a pill you can't sell a product you just need to go to the supermarket and buy 10 broccolis there's no money in it
Yeah, there's no money in it. That's what it is. Yeah. Interesting. Okay, so what did you change? You walked away. What happened? Yeah, I immediately started eating oats for breakfast every morning. I would have... oats and raspberries and banana with some soy milk in there, which I love. I'm a sweets person, so putting raspberries and bananas in there, it's just delicious. I did oats every morning for breakfast. I did a potato and broccoli every lunch.
every single lunch. Oh, the OGs, like you're just saying. It's like, I feel like it's like talking very early to me. It's like, oh, it's for breakfast and then potato and broccoli for lunch. I love it. I immediately started to get, you know, made fun of at work um you know i would kind of stink up the break room a little bit with my broccoli and we're like somebody would be walking through the hallway and smell my broccoli and be like oh rebecca's fixing her lunch it's it's potato time that's
to like oh it's potato time Rebecca's gotta go eat her potato yeah I mean how was that for you like how was that for you to to have people commenting in that way um I've I've always kind of felt like I've been a weird like an odd duck you know i like to make fun of myself and joke and laugh and so um i kind of just rolled with it and you know If it brought conversation up about plants or why I made the changes that I did, I would go deeper.
I don't want to try to force somebody into eating broccoli every day. But I will say it's been clear. Everybody has definitely seen the changes.
yeah in me too so that's been fun to talk about um when the time comes up but yeah i just kind of i i jumped in you talk about taking action and just just jumping in and that's what i did and i was like okay i'm going all in And I'm going to eat a potato and broccoli every single day for lunch, which I also had to apologize to my husband because I used to make fun of him for eating the same thing for lunch every day. And I was like, you need variety. Like, are you bored out of your mind?
Oh, I mean, say that again for the people in the back because that is something that I get all the time. Don't you need variety? Tell me how you reconciled that both in your brain and then just in general habits. How are you even okay with that? I realize... somewhere along the way that I don't have to live to eat like food is important i need food to survive but like i i eat to live i don't live to eat
And I've kind of like kept that as a mantra where like food can be fun and exciting, but it's not something that has to take up like every thought of my day. Like, you know, how amazing this meal is going to be. And I do change up the flavors every now and then. So I keep the same like base.
for lunch it's potato and broccoli but I'll change it up like one day I might do hummus with some everything bagel seasoning the next day I might do more barbecue sauce or a soy sauce base so you can change up the flavors and it tastes different but you're still eating the same thing essentially yeah i read this quote from chris pratt because he kind of had this quite insane transformation in terms of weight and got super ripped for some of the movies that he's done.
and I was just looking up now he said that the way that he was eating was he was happy when he was eating the processed food. And so the times between, he was thinking about food and he was happy when he was eating. And he said, now eating is boring, but the times between eating, I feel great. Whereas before eating was fun, but the times between I felt like crap. And I think it is that kind of like That is kind of the difference in my mind where it's not just the fact that
The food you're not living to eat and that you don't enjoy your food. It's that you Feel so good about yourself when you are able to follow through on short-term well you're able to follow through on doing something in the short term that has a long-term payoff and I think like that
in my mind like that's something that you don't understand until you've lived through or maybe like like having kids or getting married or falling in love any of these things that you can't really understand until you experience them it's not that
You just make a decision and you go, okay, food is boring and that's going to be positive. It's the trust that you have in yourself is incalculably beautiful to feel that if you have a goal and you say i want to achieve x i want to lose 40 pounds i want to lose 50 pounds i want to become a healthy person when you experience on a day-to-day basis that you can do the actions that are leading you towards that goal even if you don't have it yet
That feels so good as a human being to just keep commitments to yourself. like that's what feels good like i get so much enjoyment from eating potatoes and broccoli because i know that i want to want to eat it and i'm making myself do it It's not that potatoes and broccoli taste like the best thing in the world, it's that they're connected to an act of dedication, an act of discipline, an act of choosing who you want to be every single day.
it's like that vote the vote for who you want to be like this is who i want to be i'm putting a vote in every time i eat oats for breakfast and every time i eat you know potato and broccoli for lunch yeah yeah and i think that over time becomes more satisfying because you associate i mean if taste is just brain chemistry anyway which It kind of is. Then if you're connecting something satisfying with something that tastes a certain way, you're going to start to enjoy those.
Like that's kind of wild as well. I 100% believe that. And I believe like the, like the food itself plays a role too. Like when I was eating a lot of processed food. uh when i would get hungry like people knew when i was hangry like kind of get out of my way type thing like whoa she's she's hangry leave her alone for a little bit because she needs to go eat her food
And I really did feel like, you know, shaky and jittery, like I've got to get my next fix type thing. And so now, you know, eating whole foods and plant-based. i don't feel like that toxic hunger anymore um it's just kind of like a just a very gentle hunger like oh i'm hungry like let's go have a potato So, and even that.
has been kind of funny to to see or like with the people that i work with like one of the guys said oh my gosh it's 2 30 and you haven't had lunch yet like i would i expect you to be biting my head off by now You know, it's okay. But I also have a plan in place. Like I know ahead of time what I'm going to have for lunch every single day. If I am not at work, at work, it's really easy. I put frozen broccoli in the freezer and I bring a potato every day.
Yeah, so I've made it super simple for myself. But if I'm out and about on my day off, I do not leave the house without. potato or veggies so i know that i always have something with me in case i were to get hungry because i want it to be easier to have something in the car than to go through a drive Such good stuff and like you've really dialed in your habits, which there's been a knock-on effect in other habits in your life, which I do want to touch on a little bit later.
Before we do that, potato and broccoli for lunch. You've got your oats for breakfast. What's dinner? Dinner, I try to change it up a little bit every now and then. That was hard. Dinner was hard. Breakfast and lunch was easy. But coming up with dinner that my husband could also be a part of too, which he will do some veggies, but he likes chicken and dairy and all of this.
That took a while to kind of figure out, but I kind of created a plan where I was going to have the same thing for every day of the week. So every Monday we were going to have a pasta. style meal and every every wednesday we would have a stir fry that made it a lot easier to try to have like okay i know that this day i'm going to have this and I'm going to have this, but I have potato for dinner a lot of days.
But then I'll also do some like whole wheat pasta sometimes with zucchini and I make up my own marinara sauce with a bunch of carrots and like a bunch of veggies thrown in there for the sauce. Or for stir fry, I like to do like onions and mushrooms. some tofu with a ton of broccoli. okay yeah very similar to me yeah so do you do you do something where if you don't know what you're going to eat like if you don't have something set it's kind of just a potato-ish meal yeah yep i've got i've got
potatoes in my fridge, potatoes in my pantry. I know that I'm never going to run out of potatoes. But I also have, you know, like a lot of frozen veggies that would just be really easy to throw into a pot or swim in the microwave. So I always have something on hand.
it's very similar to me it's it always fascinates me where the people who are seeing the most con success and consistency like they do pretty much all have very very simple systems and they might look different between individuals but The thing they have in common is incredibly simple and there's no decisions that need to be made on a day-to-day basis. You just know what you're going to do and you always have those things prepped and ready to go.
And I want everyone who's listening to really take notice of that, that you're not having to think. about what you're doing you know what you're going to do you know when it's pasta night you know when it's stir fry night and if it's not one of those nights that's it's something to do with potatoes and i do exactly the same thing i know what pasta night is i know what stir fry night is but
if for some reason i'm not going to have those things like last night i got home from the gym it was late kids had been at girls brigade i'd been kind of doing other stuff so i was eating dinner at like nine which is not ideal but i had potatoes i had sweet potatoes i had cooked up broccoli I literally put it all in a blender with some tofu and some soy milk and I just made a soup because I know that
i'm going to be eating potato and broccoli so i just had it in a different modality it's so easy that's that has been huge for me is just making it easy um i feel like that's what we look for too it's like it has to be easy that's why going through the drive-through it's so popular because it's so easy but like you said keeping it to where i'm not having to make a decision in the moment is is huge because usually if i'm left to making a decision on the fly
it's going to be the wrong one. So having planned ahead is very important.
It's almost like you took the concepts that did work for something like Octavia, which is it's simple, it's easy, your food's there, you know what to do. And then you took all the best bits and then you just melded them with... the best bits of eating this way which is that you don't have to go hungry you can feel full and satisfied you can eat a ton of food you can make it plant-based which is going to be the healthiest option for you
but you recognize that the ease is the thing that's most important and this is it always kind of shocks me that optavia or things like that do actually work in the short term you can even bypass like a bit of hunger in the short term you can bypass like taste in the short term as long as you kind of offset that with so much ease And I think that's the part that a lot of people don't understand.
that if they are thinking if you think about weight loss in terms of boxes and ticking certain boxes or behavioral change in terms of if I take this box this box this box I'm more likely to get myself to do something the most important box to tick is always going to be easy it's always going to be working with the fact that humans are inherently lazy but we think that we have to put tick a taste box
it's like no one's going through mcdonald's because or taco bell because it's the tastiest thing on the planet you could make something better at home the reason that we're going through those things is because they're so easy plus they're tasty
but then when people try and change their diet they do it in my mind they do it wrong because they go well let me put so much effort into prepping something beautiful and delicious because they see influencers doing that when in reality it's like you can if you you're gonna win if you go even if it sucks In terms of like, it's a plain potato with some broccoli and maybe some straw ball hummus.
over the long period of time if that's easy you beat taste with ease because we're not hardwired to have a certain type of taste we're hardwired to have a certain type of ease which is crazy i think that's why that definitely why things like Optivia has worked for as long as it has and you can I think the bypassing the hunger works in that program. because you're eating a very small amount.
The prepackaged meals were like 100 calories each, but you would eat that every hour or every two hours. So you were kind of tricking your body into thinking that you weren't hungry when you, in reality... We're very much hungry. I think on average, like I did like 800 calories a day.
like 800 to a thousand calories a day that's crazy yeah so knowing what i know now it makes a lot of sense as to why finally my body said hey i'm really hungry you're gonna go just binge whatever you can get your hands on right now Yeah, totally. I went through the drive-through at Arby's. And this was like after I fell off the wagon and I was like, things are going to heck. I'm just going to go all in. I was too embarrassed to pay for.
my meal with my joint debit card with my husband because I didn't want him to know how much money I was spending. So I used my own personal fund money because I didn't want him to know. It was embarrassing.
It was just a lot to deal with, falling off like that. There's so much shame as well around trying to be consistent because you see you see people who are and it does feel like it's easy for everyone else and when you're struggling and you're going why do i have to eat so much or why do i binge i remember like hiding those things and In my early 20s when I was probably the most obsessed with trying to get skinny. That's when I felt the worst in terms of I just suck like what is wrong with me?
and i would eat these tiny portions i would try to do low carb i would go to bed at eight so that i wasn't tempted to go out with other people and eat things and other people had a social life i would literally just go to bed because i was and a lot of time it was big in bed i could feel my stomach just growling with hunger
But then every week or so, I would have this massive binge where I'd be eating a whole loaf of bread with jam and peanut butter and putting all these very weird combinations of food together, which is obviously not a healthy thing, but then feeling so much shame around it. Yeah, I think the shame cycle plays such a huge role in how we end up where we're needing to lose 40 to 60 to 70. yeah yeah and the thing is it's like back then for me i wouldn't have even wanted to tell anyone because
And I didn't want to tell anyone because the desire to lose weight is still there. But you feel like you constantly have to pick. You have to pick between having a desire to lose weight but then also eating healthy in a way like this and i think that that is kind of what
taught to some extent in intuitive eating where it's like get all this right with your relationship with food have all these things checked off in terms of how you view food and that's all amazing but if you still want to lose weight you're getting empowerment at the cost of actually achieving a goal that is still important to you. So it's conflicting constantly. So you almost start to have...
Well for me at least and a lot of women I've talked to you have this constant doubt in yourself because you have a doubt that your desire is positive. You have a doubt that even wanting to lose weight could be a positive thing. which is irrelevant anyway like i don't think it matters whether it's positive or negative it's just a choice that you make if you want to lose weight you want to lose weight it doesn't matter why in my mind um i don't think it's super black and white but
This cycle where you just constantly have lack of trust in yourself in every single thing you do. There's just this trust that just gets broken and broken and broken. And the thing that I, I mean, even just hearing your story, it's like so many women listening to this are going to identify with just feeling like, well, like what, why can't, like that shame, like why can't I do this? What's wrong with my metabolism? What's wrong with my genetics?
to having a binge and then not being able to put that on your card because you know that like your partner's going to see that but it's not anything to do with us it's not that our bodies are broken it's not that our brains are broken it's that we're hungry we're not eating enough food and we're hardwired to be lazy
so we're trying to do all this difficult stuff and then our body's like nope don't do difficult things because humans don't do difficult things unless they're forced to yeah tell me a little bit about what started to change for you you started to lose weight you immediately implemented low calorie density, started eating oats, started eating potato and broccoli. What made you join Lean of Plants?
I learned that I could, I mean, I already knew that I could lose weight once I had a program because I had taught myself that in the past. But what I did not have confidence in was being able to keep the weight off for long term and learning those habits that I needed to make this something that I could take with me the rest of my life. So that's why I decided to join Lingua Plants Program and have a coach to just focus on habits. And I have loved, loved.
like learning about habits and creating habits for myself and yeah it's impacted my life in so many ways what's the what's the kind of contrast in terms of what you think about in terms of habits now or what you know about habits and how you implement that versus where you used to be and how you used to see them. I feel like now I have a very you know kind of simple approach to how to create a habit.
versus in the past when I had tried to do something or tried to work on a project that I wanted to do, I could... and overthink it for days. And I needed to have the perfect plan. I needed to have the perfect amount of time in order to start this project. So I would sit there and just not start it because I didn't have the perfect day or the amount of time I needed or the perfect plan in place.
So I would procrastinate and put things off for days and weeks and months. And so now I feel like I have a very kind of proactive mindset where I'm... okay, I know that I need to just take the first step in whatever this is that I'm trying to work on. Just spend two minutes on it. And then from there, it's a lot easier to keep moving and finish.
whether it's a project or something I need to work on for work, just to start it is huge. Have you seen this change other areas of your life apart from food? Absolutely. Like with my job, I make glasses for a living. So I also manage the office. And we're in busy season right now. And I have a lot of office types, the stuff that I need to do, like make a schedule and do employee evals and all these things.
And I have always had the worst time with getting those done on time because I would put it off and put it off and put it off. But now I have learned how to kind of stack my habits where I... walk on the treadmill every morning for 30 minutes and I can use that time if I don't have anything you know demanding on my time like I'll just read a book when I walk because that's my
That's what I take a lot of joy in is reading. So now I have to earn reading a book if I have work to do. So I have to spend at least 20 minutes. working on work stuff while I'm on the treadmill and then I have 10 minutes to read if I get done with that which 9 times out of 10, I usually just spend the whole 30 minutes working because I'd rather get done with whatever it is that I'm working on. Right, but I can imagine that having that kind of reward or knowing that that
you only have to do 20 minutes, get you started, and then when you get to the 20-minute mark, you know that you're in the zone and you want to keep going. I love that so much. It's so easy to procrastinate because of perfectionism. when yeah 100% agree you just have to start you just have to keep you just have to take that first step because
It's not about getting it right. It's really just about getting it going. And that's how I have it. We get rewarded by action, not by perceived future action. It genuinely just is. You have to actually do it. Did you ever struggle with, I mean, it sounds like you did. In terms of like perfectionism, tell me a little bit about how you deal with setbacks or how you deal with failure and slips and how that's changed.
Yeah, I'm kind of like a jack of all trades sort of thing. So I have been successful in a lot of the things that I've tried, whether it's... you know crafting related or you know just whatever side quest i'm on at the time um i have been successful a lot of the times whenever i would try something new So if I did fail, that was a big scary thing. That was really upsetting.
And, you know, I could sit and overanalyze every single thing that I did, like why I did this wrong and why I failed. And now I feel like I can kind of get the grasp that failure is good because that means that I actually tried. like i need to try it i need to do the thing and if i fail it's okay we're gonna do it again um like i've actually for my job i have to take a test
It's over a topic that I'm not really familiar with because it's another part of the business that I don't have anything to do with. I have to study really hard for this test. I have failed it. I'm having to go and take it again. And so I had kind of that, I started to go down this rabbit hole of like, oh my gosh, I'm so terrible. I'm so dumb. I'm so stupid. Like, how did I fail this test?
And then I had to reel myself back in and say like, okay, we failed. Okay, that's fine. What are we going to do differently the next time? yeah and um so i've really been able to kind of pull myself back out of the that shame spiral a lot easier than i used to that's amazing and the thing that i want to ask you is
Mentally, it sounds like you feel better. Mentally, it's a more enjoyable life to not be in a shame spot. It's a more enjoyable life to not overthink things and not be stuck in perfectionism and shame in terms of actual results. Are you able to progress faster or does that mindset hold you back? Like how has that impacted you to take action faster, to fail faster, to be okay with failure? Does it just feel better or is it actually genuinely getting you better results?
I would say I'm genuinely getting better results because when I would be in my procrastinated state where I have to have everything perfect before I can do this thing. Most of the time, I would never even start it. And, you know, I have a lot of joy in projects like woodworking and crafting and all this. And so it brings me joy when I'm actually in the moment. the procrastination just keeps it it keeps me from having joy so being able to
actually start something and enjoy the process of it, it brings me a lot of fulfillment and a lot of joy. But then it also reminds me too that I am keeping promises to myself, which is huge. um because i i have told myself that i am going to be proactive and so when i take my two minutes every morning and plan out my day that's like my proactive thing then i'm keeping that promise to myself and that feels really really really good
Yeah. And then the more that you take the action, the more you learn what actions are actually positive, the more you build trust in yourself to be able to take more action. And that's where you can actually do something long term and get those long term payoffs because you just keep doing it.
and then it becomes so you know just like remote like i don't have to think about it because i'm just used to doing the same thing every day yeah exactly i mean so you joined lean of plants because you wanted to build long-term habits you didn't want this to be another Octavia lose 70 pounds and then gain it back.
i mean you're close to 50 pounds down so we're not quite at the 70 pound mark but how are you feeling about this time around keeping the weight off how do you feel about like the trajectory of your life now with what you've learned I have so much more confidence now and I don't have this fear of the unknown kind of thing like I did then the last time I lost weight because it just was like, well, how am I going to do this?
in the future type thing and it's just so easy it's like i'm just going to keep doing the same thing that i'm doing now and it's like i don't even have to think about it do you feel like you can do this for the rest of your life How does it feel to know that? It feels really, really good. Yeah, it's just so, it's kind of crazy to think about really versus like where I was.
just a couple years ago, just less than a year ago, to be in a space where I am not worried about what the future looks like. Because I know that I have a solution and it is very easy and I know exactly what to do. When you think about your mental space or your mental capacity now and think about your life.
I know for a lot of women, and I felt this too, thinking about losing weight, thinking about feeling like a failure, thinking about everything that I was going to eat every day, it dominated my conscience for 11 12 13 years if not more and I don't have to think about those things I don't have to think about waking up in the morning and looking in the mirror and not liking what I see
because it's a reflection of my failure. Now I can wake up and I'm thinking about work. I'm thinking about the impact I can have. I'm thinking about my kids. I'm thinking about
things that feel genuinely important because I have the brain capacity to do so. It feels like food is this tiny, tiny portion of my life. It feels like weight in my body is this it's just really just there as this function to the rest of my life whereas before it was my life have you experienced any of that or when I say that like what comes up for you
terms of how you used to feel about food and used to feel about your body versus how you feel about it now the second you said that i was like oh yes um in the in the past where i had i had gotten so good at ignoring my body not looking at it my body in the mirror or not thinking about how I looked in clothes because it was. a reflection of my failure and I didn't want to. be reminded of my failure because
That was a painful thing at the time. I had convinced myself that uh my towel had shrunken like it had gotten smaller um i'm just like how did oh i must have put in the dryer for too long like my towel got smaller yeah that it did it took up so much of my brain space to constantly be choosing to be unaware of my body and how it was moving through the world. And that's so sad. don't think like but yeah i would say that now um like i said like i don't have to think about things because i've got
The system's in place, and it's just easy. And I do have so much more free space in my brain to where I can think about others. And it is such a relief.
That's so cool and I was talking about this to someone the other day because I don't think it's about how much weight you have to lose or how much kind of overweight you are if you want to use those terms it's not about whether your body is inherently right or wrong at a smaller or bigger size i don't think it's about that i think it's about the disconnect between wanting something, having a desire to do something, trying to do something, trying to achieve a result for whatever reason.
but constantly not being able to do that. And that's where potentially in my mind, the lines get blurred in terms of things like body positivity or things like choice and it's what I always want to help people to understand is that it doesn't matter what you choose in my mind it's like You get to choose what you do with your body. You get to make the decisions about what's important to you. If that's weight loss, if that is being...
Having like a certain BMI if that is not like that doesn't matter that's irrelevant No one needs to tell you in some ways like what you should do you get to make those choices If you want to and you're disempowered to do so, that's why looking in the mirror and seeing what you see feels horrible. It's not because there's anything wrong with you, it's because there's a disconnect between what you say you want and what you're trying to achieve and what you actually see.
and that's where it's like you don't have to change the desire you don't have to you have to be able to change your ability to achieve your goals you don't have to change your goals to be happy you can just be empowered to achieve them in a way that actually is healthy for you And the coolest part about that in my mind is that That feeling of knowing that you are achieving things that you say are important to you that
feeling can happen so fast like you don't have to lose 30 40 50 pounds you don't have to get a six pack to feel those feelings you can feel that tomorrow when you go my actions are aligned with who i say i want to be That's the coolest part. You're midway through your journey or however way through your journey. I'm not kind of finished in my journey. It's not about what I look like. It's about knowing that I do the things that I say that I'm going to do. That's what feels good.
that can feel good when you as soon as you start taking action not having a perfect plan not achieving a result just when you start taking aligned action Yeah, it did when I first started and I started making oats for breakfast. It felt so good to have a plan and to keep that promise to myself and to stick to it. And then I think it just built.
you know you start small and then like the longer you can keep doing that the more trust you have in yourself and yeah yeah and you see the results as well and the results start to confirm that what you're doing is actually working which is really exciting
I'd love to hear from you in terms of top pieces of advice. If you were to give, let's say, three pieces of advice for someone who's listening who... was in a situation like where you are, where you're wondering if there's something wrong with your body, you're wondering if it's your genetics, you're wondering, or you're stuck in a bit of a shame cycle.
what would you tell that person to start to get out of that and to start to lose weight in a way that they can actually do that for life this time. I would say, number one, learn about calorie density. I love that you went practical. I always loved that. It's like, just eat vegetables, learn calorie density.
oh yeah i mean that was like the biggest thing for me and then to like pick an easy simple you know system to put into place like whether it's oats for breakfast or broccoli and potato for lunch and just do that over and over and over again music to my ears and yeah and then big for me like just never leave the house unprepared always have something with you so whether that's
a potato. I've made more of my friends try a japanese sweet potato than i ever thought i would in my life yeah um and i didn't even know that they existed until you know i saw you talking about them and i was like i need one of those i have to try it we do love them I don't know what they put in them. It's so magical. I was eating one this morning. I was like, this is like the best thing I've ever eaten in my life. It's so good.
I've tried to explain how it's different than the normal orange sweet potato and I can't like it's just like whether it's more nutty or like i i don't know it's so good yeah it really is i was with my family the other day and my sister was like oh do you have any dessert i was like i i have sweet potato with cinnamon
That's what I have and she's like you really must not have had anything good in a long time I'm like well, that's not I just genuinely like it. I have had you know cookies or bagels or like i have had genuinely good stuff i've had croissants and all these things it's just really genuinely freaking amazing yeah it is and you know what i've done too is put them in the air fryer with some like frozen raspberries on top
like yeah like like a little sunday action yeah if i'm really extra like this morning actually i was leaving the house and i i had i put one in the air fryer and then i put jam on top So good. we could geek out about sweet potatoes every single day i guess the final question i have for you rebecca is how impactful has it been or what do you see as being the benefit for you joining the lane of plants having that accountability learning about habits
Where do you see this has been a benefit for you and who do you think can benefit from something like this? I think having an accountability partner has been huge. out. Because it's one thing to make a promise to myself, but it's another thing to make a promise to another person. And like Ruthann is my coach and I love her to pieces. I don't want to let her down. I don't want to let myself down either, but I also don't want to let her down. So if I make a promise to her, then I want to keep it.
use the program and have a set amount of lists where I can physically check off a box of okay i did this i did my 10 000 steps today i took a picture of my food taking pictures of my food too and then having a coach look that over too has also been huge Is it really, like, if I'm going to go and eat something, you know, just, like, a random, like, sweet or chocolate or something, I'm just like, do I want Ruthann to know that I'm eating this? Yeah.
You know, just kind of like that just little second, you know, to make myself stop and think about it before I just like jump in and make a decision. But yeah, I think that the program has made a huge difference in my journey just because I know that I'm really dialing into a lot of my habits that I probably wouldn't have on my own. And I think that anybody and everybody can take value in that. It's one thing to sit down and read Atomic Habits.
which I am doing, you know, with a tiny little habit of I have to read a page a night. My husband said, when are you ever going to finish that book? And I'm just like, i'm already two-thirds of the way through by just reading at least one page every night yeah by that tiny little habit But it's one thing to read the book and another thing to go through that book and then also go through your program and then put the actions into place. Because that's the biggest thing is those action pieces.
Yeah, exactly. You just genuinely have to take action. We're gonna finish this up. This has been so cool to hear your story, hear the changes that you've made. I love the focus on taking action, beating perfectionism, beating procrastination, but also just building really, really practically simple systems, eating a potato and broccoli. How does that feel?
being on the side of the journey where you are like close to 50 pounds down knowing that you are going to be able to maintain that we have a toolkit where you can keep losing and then you this doesn't feel like just another diet like you've actually built simple systems simple habits along the way how do you feel today when you wake up and you go and you look in the mirror like how does it actually feel i feel like
It's a little different. It's weird to kind of look in the mirror because I was so used to... not paying attention to anything about my body you know in the past when I was unhappy with things um and now I'll look in the mirror and kind of be shocked and be like well but who is that like looking at me because It's a strange game that your brain can play when you're... avoiding things but um i i am having a lot of fun in looking at clothes
um we're used to i would not take any joy and you know just like oh you know it's just it's not going to look good on me so it doesn't matter what i wear type thing i had to have all these choices and then i'd try it on and be like this doesn't look But so now I'm having a lot more fun with kind of playing with you know what's gonna accentuate this part of my body and just like oh i i need to um you know try to my husband's making fun of me
He doesn't even hear me right now, but I know he's making fun of me because I've been talking about creating an hourglass shape with your clothes. i'm i like to shop and buy clothes so it's a lot more fun to go shopping now but i'd say when i look in the mirror though it's just it's very freeing and i feel very confident in what i see and then also what i feel on the inside. So I think confidence.
Yeah, confidence is huge. Have you seen having more confidence affect other areas of your life? Definitely. I think that I used to always put on a confident front. And that's just been very easy for me. I feel like confidence has brought out a lot more joy and fulfillment. That's actually... My boss.
we have zoom calls and my boss texted me after one a couple weeks ago and he said i just want you to know that we're noticing that you just seem full of joy and very fulfilled and um vibrant i think he used the word vibrant and like that it really meant a lot to me to know that other people were noticing what i was feeling on the inside yeah i see i mean i don't obviously i don't know you very well and this is the first time that we've but I noticed this kind of
Quiet vulnerable confidence and I think when I see that in someone that's my favorite kind of confidence because it's just it comes from an acceptance of who you are in a piece with yourself that your decisions align with who you want to be you're not trying it doesn't appear to be like you're trying to hide anything I think that comes across in this interview as well and it's it is a really really cool thing to see when someone has that because
that's just honest and i think like authenticity is something that feels really good because you know it feels integral you know that when you say that you're going to do something when you're trying to do something that you actually are able to move towards that and put your money where your mouth is to an extent. You stop having to prove so much because you go, like, I am who I am. And I know that if I want to change that, I can start to do that.
It's cool to see. I see that in you. Don't make me cry. Me too. If you cry, I will cry, so don't cry.
no i just i i want to say thank you to you um like life-changing moment who knew when sitting on youtube was gonna you know i was gonna find something that would just change my life in the way that it has but um and you know you put all of your content out there for free for people to just like see it so but yeah like you you've made a huge impact on on my life and and very appreciative to you and the program you've built and laying the plants but yeah
loved every second in my journey so i think we'll leave that there um i'm super grateful for your story and i know it's going to have an impact on other people as well so thank you for giving back thank you for saying all that but also thank you for giving back that means the world to me and This has been incredibly inspiring. Thank you so much for hopping on the podcast today. This has been fun.
This was definitely one of the most inspiring interviews that I have ever done. Rebecca, absolutely love talking to you. More importantly than just one person's story is whether this can work.
for you because maybe you're listening to this episode and you're thinking well that's great for her but how do I actually make this work for my you are not seeing results on your own then most likely you either have a knowledge or an implementation gap and what that means is that you either don't know what to do in order to
Put in the reps that are going to get you losing weight. You just genuinely don't know what that looks like You don't know how weight loss works. You don't know what habits you need all those kind of things or which is probably a combination of the two by the way You just don't know how to implement that or you're not able to implement that consistently, therefore changing your behavior so that you actually get the result. And I would say 99% of people...
have an implementation gap. That's why I pay for coaching. It's why I have accountability. It's why I surround myself with people who are going to force me to change in an environment that is going to force me to change. Because implementation is hard. We're hardwired to choose the path of least resistance.
So if you feel like weight loss is serious for you, if you look and you think back to the years that you have spent dieting, the decades and the Money and the time and the mental energy that you have used up to this point weight loss if it hasn't worked so far then I want to encourage you to try something different to take a leap of faith and hop on a call with my team because maybe we can help you to actually achieve that
Maybe you just need that little bit of help and support. Maybe you just need someone to come alongside you and to teach you how to use the path of least resistance, how to use behavioral change, how to build habits in a way that feels easy. Maybe that's all it's going to take to completely transform and change your life.
If that sounds like something that you want, then I'm going to put a link in the description for you to hop on a free call for my team. We'll talk about that. We'll build up an action plan. There's no obligation. And I would love to have you. An interview maybe six months from now if you take that leap and your life is completely forever transformed regardless I hope that you take everything that was said in this podcast and you can utilize that.
So many good nuggets from this, keeping things simple, escaping that shame cycle. I am definitely going to be using so much of what I learned today as well. All right. That is it from me and I'll see you next week for another episode. Bye.