Ep.84 Modern Body Modern Life - How to Lose Weight for the Last Time

Does the thought of permanent weight loss without diets or deprivation sound too good to be true? We’ve got Courtney Gray, a seasoned life and body coach, debunking that myth right here on "Asking for a Friend." Courtney takes us through her personal journey and shares her no-drama approach to achieving and maintaining your ideal weight, focusing on health, wellness, and the intricate role of mindset.

We also delve into the complex relationship between our eating habits and body image. Courtney encourages us to face the truth about our dietary choices and to understand how societal pressures and childhood experiences shape our eating behaviors. Offering a fresh perspective, she emphasizes the power of self-love, acceptance, and the identification of emotional eating triggers. We discuss alternative coping mechanisms for negative emotions - ones that don’t involve food.

Lastly, we tackle the often-ignored concept of embracing discomfort to spur personal growth. Whether it’s weight loss, body acceptance, or embarking on a new career, stepping out of your comfort zone is key. We highlight the pressures women face during significant life transitions and the importance of finding a balance between physical health and mental well-being. Join us on this enlightening journey towards a healthier, more self-loving you. Let's learn, grow, and transform together.

You can find Courtney at:
https://www.instagram.com/modernbodymodernlife/
https://courtneygraycoaching.com/
https://www.facebook.com/courtneygraycoaching

Podcast 
Modern Body Modern Life
https://courtneygraycoaching.com/podcast

I'd love to work with you! Let me help you reach your health and fitness goals.
https://www.fasterwaycoach.com/?aid=MicheleFolan

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mfolanfasterway@gmail.com

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Transcript

Michele Folan: 0:07

Health, wellness, fitness, relationships and everything in between. We're removing the taboo from what really matters in midlife. I'm your host, michelle Fohlen, and this is Asking for a Friend. Are you wanting to stop overeating and obsessing about food? Would you like to lose weight permanently? For the very last time, courtney Gray is a life and body coach and a podcaster who knows you are intelligent and successful, but you haven't quite figured out how to lose weight and keep it off and still enjoy life at the same time. There is another way, and Courtney will share with us her no drama approach, with no more diets, no more stopping and starting with plenty of tools to maintain the body you want. Welcome to Asking for a Friend, courtney Gray.

Courtney Gray: 1:10

Thank you for having me. I'm happy to be here.

Michele Folan: 1:13

Courtney, I again started following you on Instagram because I thought your advice was so practical and straightforward. That just immediately caught my eye. I'm just so glad that we were able to connect. We have talked on a Zoom call prior to this, so I hope we can recreate that great conversation that we had.

Courtney Gray: 1:35

We can, because it was so much fun. I've been looking forward to today because that conversation was so fun it really was.

Michele Folan: 1:42

Before we get started, though, if you could just tell the audience a little bit about you, where you're from schooling, and even family details. I like to know about your career path too, because I think you've got an interesting career path.

Courtney Gray: 1:56

Oh, thank you. Yeah, so let me dive in. So my name is Courtney Gray. I'm a life and body coach. First of all, I help women lose weight permanently, like you said in the intro for the last time, and I think that we all have experienced going on a diet, losing weight, usually celebrating at the end of it with a cocktail and then slowly starting to gain the weight back, and the whole time telling ourselves that we're doing something wrong and it's just not sustainable. The diet mentality it's just not sustainable. But yet we tell ourselves there's a problem with it, and I did this for years. I'll go back. My story is I have three boys. They're now. We have twins that are 20 and then a 17 year old, and when they were little, I started a business.

Courtney Gray: 2:37

I'm actually a jewelry artist, a glass artist, so I started this business and it was going really well, working from home, raising three boys. I got to this place where I was doing really well, but I wanted to make more money and I felt like I was doing all the things, so I hired a life coach. I've always been into Tony Robbins, jack Canfield, you know, marie Forleo all those people. I thought I'm going to hire a life coach and see if this will help me make more money. And it did. What I didn't realize is it would help me make more money than it would improve my marriage, and then it would improve me as a mom and it really up leveled every area of my life. So much to then I ended up deciding to become a life coach. So I've got certified at the life coach school. I think it's been about three or four years now.

Courtney Gray: 3:20

That was a transformative experience, and when I had decided to become a life coach, I really thought I already have a business. I'm not going to start making money as a life coach. I'm not going to start another business, I don't have time. And then, of course, my husband was like is that a limiting belief?

Michele Folan: 3:34

that you don't have time. Oh, he's using your stuff against you.

Courtney Gray: 3:38

Oh yeah, don't you hate when they do that. No, you hate that. I really do love coaching and maybe I can help women. So I started kind of telling people I'm a life coach and what naturally was kind of that came to me were entrepreneurs women, you know, young women in their like 18 to 25. And I really loved helping women and I also love helping entrepreneurs because I love making money and all of that and there's so much mindset behind that. But what started happening is I would help women make more money and then they would eventually get to a point where they would talk about how they were unhappy in their bodies and they would say things like well, I would be posting on social media more.

Courtney Gray: 4:13

If I felt like a look good, I lost 15 pounds, then I would do that or this or that. I'm like, well, let's just do that. And so I started really getting into the weight loss thing because I myself my own journey. I know what it's like to not be in a body that you are comfortable in. When I had my twins they were huge, so I gained 75 pounds, so I lost that weight.

Courtney Gray: 4:36

But that wasn't that hard for me, michelle, when I think of like the torture that a lot of us understand where, the torture of not being where you want to be. For me, that was years later, when I was about 12 pounds heavier than I wanted to be, and it was this constant battle in my mind of oh my God, this is just what midlife is like. It doesn't matter, I should just live my life. My husband thinks I look great. I wish I didn't care. And then I'd be like but I do care and I'm just never going to eat this again and I just the battle of it all Horrible. And so I learned how to fix that and through my life coach, school training and through just figuring out how important the mindset is, I not only learned how to lose the 12 pounds and I've kept it off for I think it's been about four years now. Three years, four years, and it's just so much easier. The process can be hard, but now it's so much easier for me.

Michele Folan: 5:29

You bring up a great point, because our lives can be very, or seem very, complete Family's doing well. Maybe you have a career that you love, or you have your volunteering. You have your great group of core friends, your great marriage, whatever it is, and that one thing that tends to hang over midlife women is our perception of our bodies. It's like if I would really be happy if I could just lose 20 pounds, or everything would be perfect in my life if I didn't have cellulite on my thighs or you know, whatever it is. It sounds like much of your work is around mindset, but do you think this is a process that many women skip when they are trying to hit their body goals or weight goals?

Courtney Gray: 6:25

Oh, yeah, I think that many women, many people, women skip it. It's almost the main thing that's left out, but I think it's the most important thing Because, like you said, we're in midlife and we do when we really admit to ourselves we want to lose weight. We would like to put our pants on and not be muffin topping over our pants. Right, we want that. We kind of negotiate, oh, it doesn't matter, but we really do want it.

Courtney Gray: 6:51

And mindset is what is missing. Because the diets don't work. We know that because we've been on them, we've lost weight, but then we regain the weight, telling ourselves that we're the problem. And, yeah, I think mindset is a huge part of it, because, in addition to wanting to lose weight and get healthier because most of my clients not only do they want to lose weight, but they want to be healthier when they go to the doctor's office, they want their numbers to be better, they want to do better than their own parents did for themselves, they don't want to get diabetes, they don't want high blood pressure, all these things but the mindset really is what is missing in terms of being able to not only lose the weight permanently but be able to be in the aging process when your body is aging at the same time.

Michele Folan: 7:33

We talk about diets not working and the listeners of this podcast are mostly midlife and the whole diet mentality comes from years and years. I joke around things like dexatrim and slim fast and even things like AIDS candies. I don't know if you are old enough to remember those, I don't. They were little chocolates and they were basically phenylpropanolamine, which is de-congestant that you can find in a lot of cough cold products today and we think about deprivation and that equating being skinny, but for our bodies that doesn't tend to work. So, working with women in midlife, how do you kind of undo some of that stuff?

Courtney Gray: 8:22

Yeah, that's a great question. It's so interesting, this concept of deprivation, because I think that when we go on a diet what happens is we do deprive ourselves. We take out a lot of the things that many of us actually would like to have in our lives. For many people, they would like to have a cocktail or a glass of wine, maybe one a night or whatever that is. They would like to be able to have dessert at their daughter's birthday party. They would like to have these things. And when you go on a diet you take all of that away and so, of course, you lose weight. You're not really learning anything at that point, because you're only learning how to live in this unrealistic world with none of the foods, and then when you bring them back, you gain the weight back.

Courtney Gray: 9:00

But I do think that there are many women and they will come on to like a consultation call with me and they will say I don't want to be deprived, and I think that that's because they realize that that doesn't work. They realize that restricting and depriving themselves and willpowering their way to a smaller size doesn't work. But I always love and you said this in the intro that I'm like very just, realistic kind of no BS. When you all of a sudden realize that you need to do the mindset work and you need to be willing to change up your diet, there's going to be a little bit of deprivation, but for me it's let's eat better than we've been eating, but let's still be able to have a glass of wine if you choose, to have a dessert if you choose to.

Courtney Gray: 9:41

But for many women the problem is is it's this all or none? Thinking like I'm either deprived or I'm not? There is a happy medium, and that, to me, is the beauty of the work I do, is it? Let's find the happy medium where, in that moment, when you're bored because bored is a big emotion for a lot of women they eat when they're bored. When you're bored and you want to go and you want to make some nachos or you want to go and have a bowl of cereal, you're going to feel deprived. In that moment You're going to have to allow the feelings of deprivation in order to get to become the woman who trusts herself around food. But it doesn't have to be all or none, it doesn't have to be you never get to eat the cereal again in order to be the way you want to be, or it doesn't have to be a feast. You get to eat whatever you want. There is a middle ground there.

Michele Folan: 10:25

I was having a chat with a dear friend recently and she was telling me what she was eating every day and doing intermittent fasting and not eating till noon and really just getting in two meals a day and probably 1200 calories a day. If I'm guessing correctly, she's frustrated because she's not losing weight. She's gaining it around her middle, which we know is that curse of midlife. Yeah, and trying to convince someone who has thought of the deprivation mindset less calories is better, you're unwinding that and eating real food versus diet food. And what is your approach, courtney? Because I think you've got a rather tough demographic sometimes that you're having to deal with.

Courtney Gray: 11:15

My approach is, first of all, I really getting the data, because I will tell you, almost every single person that comes and talks with me says first of all, let me tell you I eat really healthy, and what I say to them is so, when you eat healthy until you don't until you don't for most people like I have so many clients that come and they say I've hired a dietitian, I've hired a nutritionist, I know what to eat, but when they are really honest with themselves, they're not eating it.

Courtney Gray: 11:41

Maybe they do a lot of the times, but you can be a snack or you can be the kind of person that never allows hunger because you're snacking all day, all of that. And so I think that what I do with people is I really like let's look at the data, let's really figure out what you're eating. Are you really only eating 1200 calories a day? And if that is the case, how long have you been doing that? And clearly that's not working. So it's time to try something else. It's very, very simple. You've heard this too, and I've heard this is that sometimes your body's going to hold on to weight if you're not eating enough.

Michele Folan: 12:15

Yeah, we're still kind of programmed for our cave days. You know, if you're not feeding your body, your body's going to hold on to fat Because it's preparing you for a long winter with no food. Yeah, our bodies are smart and many women's notions of body image can come from childhood or their teens. And how do you unpack that with someone that may not realize that that's what's really holding them?

Courtney Gray: 12:43

back. Well, the cool thing about the work I do is, a lot of times, the conversations I'm having with people they've never actually had with anyone. People a lot of times will come on to a consultation call and they will just start crying and there's so much emotion wrapped around our bodies and what we want and what we think is possible for us, and all that. So we really have these amazing conversations.

Courtney Gray: 13:03

Sometimes they can say you know, I grew up with a mom that was I'm a little bit of a bigger person. My mom was very thin and so there's that element that can cause some drama in the mind there. And then they said and she was always trying to restrict me, always trying to restrict me. So they know already that you know, these are intelligent women like you, they know. But we really dive into what their thoughts are about that and how that is affecting how they literally put things in their mouth. And it's a process of really going okay, what are your thoughts, what are your feelings, and that it really affects what we put in our mouth.

Michele Folan: 13:39

There's got to be a degree here of body acceptance too, and having realistic expectations of what our body can and should look like. It's one thing to have goals, but I think they should be goals that are built out of self love, right.

Courtney Gray: 13:55

I mean, oh yes, oh yes, oh yeah. There's a lot of people out there that even you can see. This in diet culture is we're like, okay, I'm going on a diet for two weeks and we know at the end of that two weeks that we're going to feel great and we're going to be so proud of ourselves. The flaw in that thinking is we really need to be proud of ourselves and loving ourselves now. We really need to see our value and stop shaming ourselves now in order to get there and have it be sustainable. You can't shame yourself and lose weight and then, at the end of it, feel great and just go throughout the rest of your life feeling great. It just doesn't work that way. You need to find your value now and acceptance and also, like you said, be realistic. We are aging at the same time.

Michele Folan: 14:38

Yeah, and I'm sorry, but social media can really play games with our minds. I'm almost 60 and I look at some of these influencers that are you know. Come on, they're getting 130 grams of protein a day, they're spending two hours at the gym and they look great. But I can't do that and I'm not going to.

Courtney Gray: 15:03

And maybe you don't want to, is a better thing to say.

Michele Folan: 15:05

Right, oh I really don't want to. Oh my God, you know, I'm just happy that I can fit in the genes that I bought six months ago. So that's goals, goals, courtney. If you're thinking about food all the time, are we either not feeding ourselves enough, or could we possibly be using food as a reward? It's definitely the latter.

Courtney Gray: 15:33

I think, if anything, the problem if we were going to generalize is not that we're not feeding ourselves enough. I think it's. We're probably usually overeating, and we're overeating because we are turning to food to make us feel better. This is what I teach all my clients is like the human being was designed to stay alive, like our primitive brain was designed to help us conserve energy and stay alive by being safe and not feeling pain, and the brain doesn't want us to feel any pain, even if, all of a sudden, something's happening with one of our kids and we feel a little bit of anxiety. You know we've all been there if we have kids where you're like, oh my God, where's you know what's going to happen, you're worried about your child. Whatever your brain is saying, you need to find pleasure. You need to get away from this stress or anxiety or guilt, whatever it is you're feeling, and we are in a society now that has equipped us with the fastest way to get pleasure is by eating. It's really faster than anything, and so that is the problem we are turning to food to solve for any kind of potentially negative emotion, and so in the work I do with my clients is we figure out what their triggers are.

Courtney Gray: 16:39

We figure out like a lot of us have triggers, like my triggers are right around three o'clock in the afternoon, three to four o'clock. I eat great all day and still, even though I'm the weight I want to be and I feel in control, I know going into three, four or five o'clock is when, if I am going to want to over eight, that is going to be when it is yeah. Another trigger for me is when I'm having fun with my friends and a lot of them are drinking. There's a part of me that's like this is so fun and so that's a trigger for me to think I need to join the party. And so I go into every situation that I know is a trigger and I'm ready to go like and I'm ready to talk myself out of doing something that I really ultimately don't want to do, because my primitive brain is going to say you need to feel amazing as quick as possible and food is the avenue for most people.

Michele Folan: 17:25

I will lump alcohol into that too. Yeah, I know this isn't necessarily conversation about alcohol, but but alcohol is easier, michelle, because we don't have to drink Like.

Courtney Gray: 17:35

I really haven't drank in like four months. Sometimes I do drink, but I after I never love it. I'm always like why did?

Courtney Gray: 17:40

I do that. So I haven't drank in about four months and I'm going to go to a friend's giving this weekend and I won't drink and it's no problem. But we have to eat, yeah. So at least at the very least for most people, three times a day you have to make a decision and we are not equipped. We were never taught how to trust ourselves. We were never taught how to not think from our primitive brain and use our prefrontal cortex for powerful decisions that align with our goals. We were not taught how to do it.

Michele Folan: 18:09

Well, you know, what we weren't taught to do as well is really what to eat, because we know the US RDA on food is antiquated, we know the food pyramid is antiquated and I think a reeducation of really how to eat and how much protein is in two eggs, that sort of thing there's a lot to learn out there. I'm fortunate I have guests like you on my show that have really helped me learn how to eat intuitively and to look at food as nourishment and energy. But you know, not everybody has access to that, and I think that's also a really important part of what you can do as a coach.

Courtney Gray: 18:57

Yeah, and I will tell you one thing, too that we haven't talked about yet is a lot of times people will use I don't know what to eat as little bit as an excuse to not move forward with their goals. Mm-hmm, because what we do is we say we're confused, we say we don't know, but we are again. We're pretty amazing women and we have more resources than ever. But if we stay in confusion, then we don't have to move forward. You know, I talked to so many people, people that want to lose weight, but even women, especially in midlife. We have more money, more resources, more freedom, more support than we ever have. But there's a lot of people and this is going to sound like a call out.

Courtney Gray: 19:34

I don't mean it to be, but there's a lot of people that are feeling like, if I knew what to do, I would do it. If I had clarity, I would do it. And there's a lot of people that have friends that are like, yeah, this is just what it is, this is what we experience in midlife, this is just how it is, and so I think that that is a little bit of a crutch. I think that if we really really say to ourselves I am going to learn how to do this and stop kind of using that as an excuse, it can be really powerful.

Michele Folan: 20:03

I agree with you, and I would love for you to just talk a little bit about your coaching program. I know you do one-on-one. Do you do any group coaching or is it all one-on-one? It's all one-on-one at this point? Yeah, okay, and I'd love for you to share some success stories, because these are my favorite.

Courtney Gray: 20:22

Yeah Well, so I'll say I work one-on-one with women. I love one-on-one. Eventually I might do groups someday, because actually there's a lot of power in hearing other women talk about this thing that I feel like we are so many of us are experiencing in society but yet no one really talks about. I'll just say really quick, as I remember when I was really struggling with all of this and I would sometimes be one of the smaller of my friends at the dinner table or whatever, and if I ever said anything like, oh, I'm just so frustrated, it almost, and my friends are wonderful, but it's almost unacceptable to talk about it. It's almost like no, this is just, you look amazing and let's stop talking about it because you look great and you should just kind of get over it a little bit. And so that's the power I think of one-on-one coaching is talking to someone where they can admit this means a lot to them and admit that, even though a lot of their friends say this is midlife, we just have to get over it, that they want more for themselves and they're ready to do the mindset and strategy work to do this. So that's the power of working, I think, one-on-one with a coach and I work with women for six months. It takes time to do this work. It's not an eight-week boot camp. Right At the end of eight weeks you're not going to be done. It's really transformative. And you ask for client results.

Courtney Gray: 21:36

Yeah, I have women that are coming to me that are like I cannot eat out at a restaurant because I'm telling you, when the waiter comes, I tell myself I'm going to eat a certain thing, and then the waiter comes and I completely changed my mind and so they don't trust themselves. And then usually around it doesn't take a full six months, usually around four and a half five months they really start going. They come to the call and they go. Oh my God, I actually can go to a restaurant, tell myself I'm going to eat a certain way and actually do it. And I have many different processes. I teach them in order to do that exact thing how to feel and control around food. It's a game changer.

Courtney Gray: 22:15

When they start with me and a lot of times they say I'm worried. I know I'm making this investment in myself and in my body and in my health, but I'm worried that this isn't going to work and I go. I know you're worried, I know, I know you are, but then what ends up happening is, right around five months, five and a half months, they start coming to the call and saying I'm different now, like I feel at peace. And I will tell you, michelle, that women want to lose weight, they want to feel good in their body. They want to feel good, they want to feel like they look good, but they also want to stop the mind drama. They also want to stop associating food with so much joy, and that is the gift that my program does for them.

Michele Folan: 22:55

You're making it a lifestyle publish. This is not punishment. Yeah, it's that whole thing of using food as a reward. The reward is feeling good, being happy in your body, being healthier. I know people sometimes are reticent to say I need help with this or this is important to me, or to seek out help, whether it's coaching, maybe it's therapy but I don't think there's any shame at all in saying I want help to do this the right way, and we all should be supportive of each other as women. Yeah.

Courtney Gray: 23:35

Well, you know where the shame comes in. I think for some women, the shame is I want to lose 10 pounds, and I've been wanting to lose 10 pounds for 10 years and I keep battling with myself, telling myself it doesn't matter. Everyone tells me I look amazing. My partner tells me get over yourself. You look amazing, but I want it, and it's almost like there's a shame where I shouldn't want it, and so that's the gift that I feel like I give my clients is let's lose the weight, but let's also make you realize you really are amazing and let's have you feel that Exactly Now.

Michele Folan: 24:09

I so agree, and you're very fit, and I would love to know you've kept this weight off. You look fantastic, as do you. Well, well, thank you, but what does your routine look like? Do you have a routine?

Courtney Gray: 24:24

The biggest routine I have is my mindset work that I do every day. Every morning I journal about, like, where I'm going, where I am now where I'm going, so I will start the day and I will do the sound. So corny I'm sure people have said this before, but I start with five gratitudes of like what's really I'm grateful for in my life and it could be the coffee, it could be that it's not raining, it could be that I get to do a podcast with Michelle today. I start with gratitude and then I go into and I really dial into where I'm going, where I'm going in my body, like right now I am really trying to actually gain muscle. I've always wanted to just be more athletic and be stronger. That's really valuable, especially as we go into the later years of our life. I'm having to do things differently. I'm having to my son, who's a wrestler. I was talking to him months ago and I was like I said I'm frustrated, I'm lifting heavy weights but I can't seem to gain muscle, whatever we talked about it. He goes you need to eat more protein, all this kind of stuff, and he walked in I'm lifting weights in the bedroom and he walked in a few days later and he goes oh, oh yeah, you're not lifting heavy enough. And I go no, no, this is really heavy for me. He goes no, mom, I'm telling you, it's not. That's why you're not seeing gains. What you said I'm looking at it now that's not enough. And so to me, like when you ask, like what I'm doing is, I'm really challenging myself to do things differently. And within even a month, I started seeing results.

Courtney Gray: 25:47

When I started really lifting heavy and I really seeing where my resistance to lifting heavy, I kept telling myself this is the mindset work. I kept telling myself I'm going to injure myself if I lift something too heavy Every day. I write down I'm not going to injure myself. If I do injure myself, I'm going to go to physical therapy and I'm going to get right back to it. Those kind of little sneaky thoughts from our brain keep us stuck.

Courtney Gray: 26:10

Yeah, and a lot of people say, oh, I can't go to the gym because I don't look good enough to go to the gym. Yet that little thought in your brain is keeping you from achieving your goals. No, so I do my mindset work every day and then I really am very intuitive with what I want to do? I don't have a. Do this three days a week, do that four days a week. I run a little bit, I do yoga, I do Pilates, I lift weights. I do all the things and I really think what feels amazing today and what would be really hard. It's almost like what am I resistant to and that's what I end up doing.

Michele Folan: 26:45

Back to the weight thing. Yeah, at least my generation You're a little younger than I am, but it was the cardio, cardio, cardio generation. Let's do a step class, let's do jazzercise, let's do aerobics, right, yeah, and just that mindset of not just little five pound dumbbells but doing 15 pounds over your head. Yes, I was at the gym yesterday morning at my hotel, and I'm sore today. Yes, that's so good. Yeah, but I have to listen to my body, right? So that's the other piece. We have to be intuitive and we have to listen to our body. So if you're hurting, if something doesn't feel right, don't do it. Take a break, all right, bye, Bye, bye.

Courtney Gray: 27:30

Bye. Yes, and it's such a balance, listening to your body but also realizing that sometimes our brain can be sneaky and it can try to stop us from doing new hard things. It's such a balance.

Michele Folan: 27:42

Absolutely.

Courtney Gray: 27:43

And Michelle, I'll tell you about my eating, because I talked about my working out and so I'll just tell you about my eating too is yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I eat very well most of the time. In probably two days a week, I have dessert and I love it and I eat it with abandon and I don't shame myself for it. Again, I'm not a big drinker, but even when I was drinking probably three times a month, it didn't affect my weight at all. I kind of schedule my food out for the day, like I look and I know what I'm going to eat for the day. But I will tell you this is the one thing that I think people don't understand is that if my son brought in, I don't know, he wouldn't do this, but if all the sudden he brought in a bunch of nachos and said oh mom, here, it's 3pm, do you want some of these nachos? I'm done with them. I am going to want those nachos, and that's.

Courtney Gray: 28:24

I think people are waiting to get to this beautiful, magical place where they don't want the food anymore, and what I teach my clients is yeah, for the rest of your life, you're going to want different foods because they're amazing. And I teach them how to actually go. I want that, but what do I want more? And I have this beautiful, like three step process where I teach them how, in the moment when you're sitting there in front of the nachos or you're for many women, you're at work, your friend goes oh, here, they were serving muffins at the meeting I brought you, when they're homemade and they're amazing. How to sit there in that moment and want the muffin and not eat it. That is brilliant.

Michele Folan: 29:02

I love that.

Courtney Gray: 29:03

Yeah, I'm not going to pass up the donut, typically, yeah yeah, yeah, and I want the donut, but I'm good now and I will pass it up most of the time.

Michele Folan: 29:11

Well, I'll give up something to have the donut yeah.

Courtney Gray: 29:16

And everyone's so different. That's the beauty of this work, michelle. Some people are like I want to eat dessert. Some people come to me and they're like you know what, I'll intermittent fast, but I want to have wine every night, all right. Or some people come and say I don't want to intermittent fast. Or everyone is different and we can figure it out.

Michele Folan: 29:31

Yeah, my trade off is when we go out to dinner. Now, if I'm not drinking, I'll maybe get a dessert to share. I'll do that Fabulous. Yeah, it's all about compromise, All right? So let's face it Again midlife can throw us some curveballs with a lot of things. Right, Our health like things can start going awry, and we're typically not always happy with our bodies. If someone is really truly feeling hopeless about their bodies, what words of wisdom would you share with them?

Courtney Gray: 30:08

Oh well, I think that hopeless is such a sad place to be, and I think that you need to find someone to talk to, and possibly someone outside of your friends group, because a lot of times we surround ourselves with people that are kind of feeling the same way and speaking the same language about it.

Courtney Gray: 30:24

I think that there is hope and I think that for many people understanding the brain and understanding why they're struggling with food, that is really not their fault. We were designed to seek pleasure and now we're in a society where the food is our go-to for pleasure. So if you're bored or stressed or guilty, you're turning to it and it's okay that you are, but you need to learn how to not. Yeah, it's very simple. Like I said this the other day, I made a reel that I posted to Instagram and I just said I don't shame myself for not being good at golf because I've never learned how to play golf, but we shame ourselves for not knowing how to take care of our bodies and knowing how to feel and control around food. We've never really learned.

Michele Folan: 31:05

And you know there's like a balance of carbohydrate and fat and fiber and all that stuff and again doing that, that's not intuitive, right.

Courtney Gray: 31:18

Yeah.

Courtney Gray: 31:19

We have to learn that so okay, but for most people, michelle, I will tell you and why I think my work is so important. For most people, even if they hire a dietitian or a nutritionist or a coach that says here is exactly what to eat. You have to be able to eat it. Yeah, and that's the work. I really think there's a lot of people telling themselves the story If they knew what to do, they would do it. I disagree. I think that that is the problem is, we don't know how to do it. We don't know the mindset, we don't know how to get ourselves to change the way we eat. And so, yes, we do need to know. Okay, maybe I need more protein, what can I do here? What can I do there? But you would be amazed at how much weight you can lose and how much progress can be made just by getting yourself to learn how to trust yourself and actually show up and eat the food you're telling yourself. Or you need to eat. Back to the mindset piece. It totally is. Yes.

Michele Folan: 32:09

I've been asking all of our guests this, and I would love to know what one of your main pillars of self-care is, what's something that you practice every day?

Courtney Gray: 32:19

It's the thought work. It's really understanding my brain and understanding that my brain is not always working for me. It is trying to just keep me alive, it's not trying to keep me thriving and so really separating myself, you know, practicing what I preach and practicing what I teach my clients. It's really understanding these are the goals and my brain is going to be a bit of an obstacle, but how to actually show up and follow through in the moment, that is to me, the ultimate self-care. If you can get to where you decide where you want to go and you understand how to follow through and trust yourself. Ultimate self-care. Love it Better than any foot bath or massage or anything like that.

Michele Folan: 33:05

I would love for you to also tell listeners how they can find you and your podcast, because not only do you have some great Instagram advice and posts that you put out there, but your podcast is awesome, by the way, oh thank you, yeah, it's very exciting.

Courtney Gray: 33:23

So CourtneyGrayCoachingcom and a G-R-A-Y, I actually have a new podcast coming. So on the 12th of December I'm going to be hitting 100 episodes of my podcast. Right now, my podcast is called CourtneyGray Podcast and I'm hitting 100 episodes, and that day I'm actually launching a new podcast. It's going to be called Modern Body, Modern Life, and I'm so excited for it, and the reason I'm changing things up is I'm just changing a little bit how I'm talking about things. I definitely want to talk heavy on the weight loss, weight management, because I feel like this is even after you lose weight, you're always going to be trying to get healthier and, as you age, editing and pivoting and figuring things out for yourself. And I want this podcast to really be about a modern way of looking at all of this, a modern way of looking at our bodies, our health, advocating for ourselves when we go to the doctors. All of this mindset is a huge piece of it, and so I'm really excited for this new podcast, my old podcast, the one the CourtneyGray Podcast, is hitting like I said, it's hitting 100 episodes and it has been so fun and I have a huge following.

Courtney Gray: 34:32

But in the beginning, you know, I told you I was. I am a jewelry artist and so in the beginning, a lot of the episodes were about entrepreneurship. And so I don't know about you, Michelle, but when I find a podcast I did this with your podcast when I find a podcast I love, I listen to a few episodes and then I go back to the beginning. I'm just always intrigued by like how did it all start? I always do that. Maybe I'm the only one I know, and so I feel like when people go back to the very beginning, it's a little confusing because I'm talking a lot of entrepreneurship. So I'm really excited about modern body, modern life, because I feel like it's going to just be a fresh start, and I'm just really excited about doing this new podcast.

Michele Folan: 35:11

Well, first of all, congratulations on hitting 100 episodes and also congratulations on the pivot, because that can be hard to say. Okay, I've had success doing this, and to make a bit of a shift can be a little scary, but I think that sounds like an awesome idea. So good luck with everything. Thank you.

Courtney Gray: 35:33

Yeah, it is scary. And I will tell you one thing, michelle, is I think that it doesn't matter what you want to do, whether you want to lose weight or whether you want to pivot, like with a career or anything. I think that being willing to feel uncomfortable is the key to all of it. And again, in a society where we are trying to always be comfortable, and for a lot of women right, they raise their kids, their kids leave home and then they're like, oh my God, this is amazing but terrifying. And they're used to trying at all costs to be comfortable. And in order for them to go to whatever their next level is whether it's weight loss or whether it's body acceptance or whether it's a new career, whatever it is they are going to have to be uncomfortable. And can you get comfortable being uncomfortable? That is the deal, amen.

Michele Folan: 36:18

Yeah, courtney, this was a lot of fun. Thank you for being here today and I look forward to catching up with you soon.

Courtney Gray: 36:26

I know. Thanks so much for having me, michelle, it was so fun.

Michele Folan: 36:38

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