Natalie Tierney: [00:00:00] Hello, Berry Nation! It's Natalie. I am here by myself today.
I wanted to come on [00:00:15] and chat with you guys about two terms that we use quite often in the Berry Nation support community and also on the Berry Nation podcast. We have a lot of new members and a lot of new [00:00:30] listeners. Hi, hello. I'm glad you're here. I'm glad you found us wherever you are on your journey.
Whether you're a pre op, you're thinking about surgery, maybe you have a date, [00:00:45] maybe you just had your surgery, you're looking for community. Maybe you've had your surgery for a while now and you're looking for that support system to get you through these tough, tough hurdles that [00:01:00] bariatric surgery can present.
You found a really great home in the Berry Nation podcast. If you're looking for a little bit of extra support, that happens almost [00:01:15] daily via Zoom just like this. If you're watching the podcast on YouTube, it happens just like this. You go on Zoom, you chat with professionals, with support, um, [00:01:30] sorry, with, uh, therapists that lead support groups, and you speak with people just like me and you, bariatric peers, bariatric patients.
So, If you're just finding the podcast, hi, I'm so glad you're [00:01:45] here. And if you're looking for a little bit of extra support, maybe you've been listening to us for a while, join us over in the Berry Nation support community. You can go to berrynation. com to find out more. So, [00:02:00] the two terms that I wanted to chat about today are pause and pivot and space and grace.
We've been talking about those a lot, quite often, uh, in and out of the [00:02:15] community, and I just thought it was time to define what they mean when we, uh, when April, Jason and I talk about them on the podcast, when we talk about them in the Berry Nation support community, what do we mean by [00:02:30] that? So I'll start with space and grace because that was one of the first terms that we came up with here in Berry Nation.
Um, it was actually brought to you, to us, by Jason [00:02:45] Smith. Uh, he is our co host, our co founder of Berry Nation. Um, and he really talks about, all the time, you gotta have the space and grace. This journey is difficult, this journey takes [00:03:00] time. And, yeah, let's break it down. So, space and grace. Space from the situation, whether that's physically removing yourself [00:03:15] from the environment.
For me, my kitchen, my living room, tend to be where I get the most snacky, so sometimes I'll go for a walk. Sometimes I'll go to bed. I just need that space [00:03:30] from the trigger, honestly. Whether it's just sitting down, watching TV, um, sometimes it's just getting ready in the morning, uh, hanging out, watching TV, or uh, flipping [00:03:45] through my phone.
Um, I want snacks. I wanna eat something. Maybe it's a work thing. Maybe you come home, you're stressed, you're about to make dinner. And you just want a snack, or you want to binge, or you want to do something like [00:04:00] that. So we're going to remove ourselves from the space. It could also be mentally, if you're like, Hey, I can't have this conversation right now.
Give me, give me a day or two to respond. That's also space. [00:04:15] Grace, uh, and this is my definition, uh, but I think April and Jason would agree. The grace part does not necessarily mean Giving yourself an excuse, right? Sometimes the grace can be a little bit of [00:04:30] tough love. Sometimes the grace is just the understanding that we give ourselves.
And it can be the same as the understanding that we would give a friend, right? We can be so hard on ourselves. So, [00:04:45] space. Removing ourselves from the trigger. Saying, hmm, I'm feeling emotional right now or bored eating. And I want a bowl of popcorn. Okay, let's remove ourselves. Let's [00:05:00] take a walk and come back in 10 15 minutes.
The Grace is, hmm, okay, I felt like eating popcorn. Maybe, maybe I should make a snack or maybe I should make like a meal with some protein in it. [00:05:15] Um, and maybe while I'm eating my protein packed meal or snack. I can think about why I felt compelled to, to eat in that moment, or maybe I'll bring this [00:05:30] up with my therapist later or a bariatric friend to talk through it.
Or maybe I'll bring it to a Berry Nation group. So space and grace are, [00:05:45] are the first term really that we use often. And first tool that we have really curated in Berry Nation. The second one is to pause and [00:06:00] pivot, and it's in the same vein as Space and Grace, but pause and pivot is to me a little bit more gritty, a little bit more thought provoking.[00:06:15]
Well, they're both kind of thought provoking. But I think the pause and pivot after I explain it will make a little more sense. So pause, there's a lot of power in this pause. Okay. [00:06:30] Um, we just had a member, uh, today posting about how you come to this point in your journey, we call it the commitment where maybe your weight loss has stalled.
You don't really quite know what [00:06:45] to do, you kind of, you're tired, you've been doing all this work, and you, you come to a crossroad. Maybe you hit a wall, and that wall can seem challenging. Well, sometimes [00:07:00] that wall is there to, to rest, to pause. So, we encourage ourselves and our Berry Nation support community members and all of you listening to maybe view that [00:07:15] wall as a place to pause and rest.
Um, in society these days, uh, with bariatrics, even if you're not a bariatric patient, right, [00:07:30] it's very easy for us to act. In motion, right? We build up a lot of momentum, and then we think we just have to think and think and think quicker and quicker and quicker. When in [00:07:45] reality, when we hit those walls, it doesn't mean that we failed or that we've given up or that we can't go on.
It just means we hit that wall so fast. Maybe you should just like take a minute and pause [00:08:00] and reflect.
And as we're pausing and reflecting, we can plan about where we're going to pivot. So, I know for [00:08:15] myself, when I think of pause and pivot, I'm going in a trajectory, let's take that newly post op stage, you just had surgery, you're losing all the weight, and everything is going really quickly, and then all of a sudden you hit this, [00:08:30] you hit a stall.
Or, you don't want a bariatric anymore, you don't want to do this anymore. Right? You come to a, a wall. You hit it pretty hard. You've built up all [00:08:45] this momentum. You're going, you're going, you're going, and you're thinking on your feet quickly and, and rapidly, and maybe those decisions aren't the best for you.
Maybe they are, but you're making decisions really, really fast. So when [00:09:00] we hit that wall, we think, okay, I'm going to sit and rest and reevaluate. And as we reevaluate, we can kind of take a look around [00:09:15] and go, hmm, you know, that trajectory I was going on, all of a sudden doesn't really make sense for me.
All of a sudden, it doesn't [00:09:30] really seem like the way that I want to go anymore. And sometimes we hit that pretty soon after our bariatric surgeries, um, because we have been [00:09:45] eating at a pretty low calorie deficit, right? Or we're tacking on, we're trying to have it stack all the time. And sometimes that's just not sustainable.[00:10:00]
So from, I'm keeping on to this anecdote with the newly post op stage. Calorie deficit is really low. Uh, you might not be eating a lot of veggies. Um, you're probably adding [00:10:15] in more movement. You're probably learning more about Bariatric Mindset, whether it's in the Bari Nation Support Community or amongst others.
Uh, peers, maybe you're listening to the podcasts, right? [00:10:30] So we hit this point where we gotta figure out what's sustainable for us. And that is the pause and the pivot. So we're gonna pause from that, that rapid [00:10:45] trajectory. We're on a roll. We got the momentum. We hit that wall. We're gonna sit a minute. We're gonna think about where we want to go.
Where we want to be [00:11:00] in six months, a year. And we're going to choose that trajectory. We're going to pivot to match that trajectory that we have thought about.
So that's [00:11:15] space and grace, and that's pause and pivot. And I hope that by breaking this down, uh, maybe it makes a little bit more sense when we When we reference them, um, this [00:11:30] world has a lot of lingo, a lot of, uh, terms to, to remember, uh, between bariatrics and then just day in day, day to day life. So I hope that this helped kind of break that down and I hope that [00:11:45] as you continue on your journey, whatever trajectory you are on, you can onboard these tools to help you stay on track, stay where you want to go.
And if where you're headed is not where you want to [00:12:00] be, maybe take a pause and think about how you can pivot to make your journey the best it can be. All right, guys, thank you so much for [00:12:15] listening. I hope this helped and we'll see you next week on the Berry Nation podcast.