Ep #38: Junk Food & Garbage Thoughts with Corinne Crabtree

Welcome to The Not Your Average Runner Podcast. If you’re a woman who is midlife and plus sized and you want to start running but don’t know how, or if it’s even possible, you’re in the right place. Using proven strategies and real-life experience, certified running and life coach Jill Angie shares how you can learn to run in the body you have right now.

Hey, rebels, you are listening to episode number 38 of The Not Your Average Runner Podcast. I’m your host, Jill Angie, and today I am speaking with the one and only Corinne Crabtree. Now, Corinne is the mastermind behind the wildly popular PNP tribe. She’s the host of the Losing 100 Pounds Podcast, and she is just a ninja weight coach who helps women lose 100 pounds the same way she did with her no BS weight loss philosophy.

And of course, she’s also a badass rebel runner as you will find out in today’s interview. Now, one of the things that I really love about Corinne is that she tells the truth to her people so that they can get results. There is no sugarcoating at all. Don’t let that Southern accent fool you. She’s all about the truth-telling and all about the no BS.

And of course, she and I both trained at the same coaching school and pretty much every time we get together, there’s a lot of truth-telling amidst the laughing and the swearing. So let’s go ahead and get to the interview.

—

Jill: So I am right here with the one and only Corinne Crabtree, and I’m super excited to have her on this podcast because I know a lot of you follow her. And if you don’t follow her, you should be because she is amazing. So welcome Corinne, and I’m just super excited that you’re here on the podcast, and I’d love to have you tell our friends, our listeners a little bit about yourself.

Corinne: Well thank you. I’m excited to be here because a lot of even my PNP girls are huge fans of your stuff. So it’s been a joy honestly for me to watch my own tribe members follow you now. And just get so excited about running and doing things they never felt they could. So a little bit about me. 13 years ago, I lost 100 pounds. I had been overweight like, my entire life. Basically, when I hit nine, the weight started coming on and it just never stopped. I was that kid that grew up in the fast food, I grew up with the single mom who didn’t make – I was just telling my son the other day about – he had no clue what a mayonnaise sandwich was. And I was like, that’s when you’re broke and you don’t get meat but you get condiment, which one do you want? Mayonnaise or mustard? He was like, “What’s a mayonnaise sandwich?” like it was going to be great. I’m like, “No, we don’t need them.”

So I grew up so poor and just learned really terrible eating habits. You know, just – when we went to a buffet it was like, stuff yourself because my mom worked so many jobs. The only time I remember having family time was when we ate. Like, that was connection time. So there was a lot of stuff that went on for me around food. And then when I was 28 I met my husband and still has – I was probably about 210 or so when I met Chris. And we got married and shortly after I got pregnant and then for about the third time in my life, I went back up to around 250 pounds. And my son turned a year old and there was this one day where I was sitting on the couch and he was playing on the floor and he wanted to play with me and I remember like, this thought was like, racing through my head that I’m just too tired to play. And I remember that thought coming out of – that statement coming out of my mom’s mouth all of my growing up and hating it. And just like, I wanted my mom’s attention. I wanted my mom to play with me, I wanted my mom to have homework time and stuff. But she was always exhausted because she was a single mother making minimum wage, raising two kids and sending them to private school.

And I had a meltdown that day. I was like, oh my god, I’ve turned into my mom and I don’t even work. I’m just like, the only reason I’m sitting here too tired to play is because I’m eating all day every day and it was like that moment where I started just evaluating just what I was doing with my life, which wasn’t a whole lot of anything. I was slipping into depression and eating my way through it and just all kinds of stuff. So my husband comes home that night and I am a freaking wreck and I’m crying and I looked at him and I just said, “Chris, I don’t know what I’m doing but it all changes today. Like, I’ll figure it out but I’ve got to do something.” And my husband from the get-go has always been just Mr. Positivity Pants, and he just believes in everyone. He wasn’t like me who was just like, no, no, no, everything’s going to hell in a handcart. He’s always believed, and so he just said, “You could do anything you set your mind to. When you’re ready, you’ll do it.” And he said, “What do you need from me?” And I told him that I didn’t think I was ready to give up food. I was like, I want to go to the gym each night. I knew in my brain I needed to get out of the house, that I was literally going crazy in the house and my son hated the stroller. Like, I was not the mom that could like, go push their kid and go for a walk. It was like, no, he needs to be up, he would cry, it was all that stuff.

So I would go to the gym every night, eight o clock. He’d come home, he works late, I’d go to the gym and I’d get on the treadmill and I would walk for 15 minutes. It took me longer to drive there than actually – and so I did that for a while and just started small habits, losing weight, challenging myself to just do a little better each day, and slowly the weight started coming off. I started feeling better about myself, I started signing up for races, I had a girlfriend that was like, always a runner. She was like, “Come on, you should do this.” And I was like, well, okay. I mean, I’d never done stuff like that before. Ended up losing 100 pounds over 18 months and just didn’t do anything drastic, didn’t do anything special. Just every day asked myself, “What are you ready to do today?” and did it and kept on going. So that was pretty much my plan.

Jill: That’s just amazing. So I love that you went from like, 15 minutes – that your first action was not to like, go on a strict diet or do all kinds of crazy stuff. It was just to like, get on the treadmill for 15 minutes a day.

Corinne: Yeah, I just knew that I had to meet myself where I was at and at that time, like, I needed to figure out a good first step. Like, what was that going to be? I knew in my head that I had to get really good at each step I took because so many times I had done that kind of crappy dieting. Like, I had – do you cuss on your podcast or no?

Jill: Oh yes, please.

Corinne: Okay, I’m just over here censoring myself away and I was like, I need to ask if you’re allowed to cuss on your podcast.

Jill: I can’t believe you had to ask that question.

Corinne: Well, I know, but you know, you never know. But I just knew that I had failed so many times because I had shitty diets that I would start. Like, I did the military diet. I remember eating – it was something like, there was like a breakfast and it involved half a grapefruit and toast with peanut butter and I hated toast with peanut butter and I hated grapefruit. And I gagged it down. But it was like, the promise of weight loss. So I’m all in until about three days in I’m like, this sucks, I’m out. And so I just knew in my mind that I never wanted to – one, I never wanted to lose the weight again. If I was going to lose it, it was going to be the last freaking time I was going to do it. Number two, I was only going to do the things I knew I’d do for the rest of my life. So like, I don’t think even in the beginning that I had some kind of big overwhelming like, I’m going to lose 100 pounds, I’m going to kick ass for the rest of my life and all this other stuff. I was just like, I got to start feeling better. I feel terrible. And I need to start doing things that are going to allow me to feel better, and part of that is I need to get up every day and I need to move. That needs to happen, and so that’s where I started.

Jill: Well, and I think that’s so important to point out is that you didn’t start out thinking, oh, I’m going to lose 100 pounds and I’m going to do it in 18 months because 18 months for 100 pounds, like, damn girl, that’s fast.

Corinne: And people always tell me how slow that is. All I know is that it came off. I’m just like, I couldn’t care less how long.

Jill: I suspect it came off because you weren’t focusing on – did you focus a lot on your weight in the beginning or were you more just like, I just want to feel better and then the weight loss was sort of a side effect of taking care of yourself in a way that made you feel better?

Corinne: I knew I wanted to lose some weight. Like, but it was almost like the secondary reason. I really needed to feel better. Like, I just didn’t feel good about myself, and it wasn’t body shaming and stuff like that. It was more like I am not showing up well in my life. That’s what was really bothering me was that I was spending every single day eating to feel better, laying around, and I just felt like I was just drowning in – I don’t even know if it’s apathy. I just remember sitting there thinking, what are you doing with your life? Like, there’s got to be something better out there. And I didn’t want to go get a job and stuff. I wanted to start with like, really changing how I was showing up for myself. I wanted to take care of me. And I was lucky because I had a husband who was just like, well, let’s do that. you know, he wanted me to feel better. I know it – when you’re Mr. Positivity Pants, it’s really hard to be married to someone that you love and they’re miserable. It just couldn’t have been easy for him. So it was – and I didn’t do it for him. I really was doing it for me, and I also was doing it for my son. I knew that I never wanted him to be bullied and go through what I went through as an obese teenager and an obese adolescent. And so it was really important for me to teach him how to eat well. And I remember when I first started, I didn’t start with my own food but it wasn’t long. It was like, a couple months in where I really was like, you owe it to your child to feed him better, to teach him good eating habits, and the best way to do that is for all of you to start kind of getting on the same page a little. And so I would just start introducing him to better foods. I was like, well, if I’m going to expect him to eat fruit, guess who else should probably be eating fruit. Me. And we didn’t cut a lot of stuff out. I mean, I ate ice cream forever when I first started losing weight. I was still eating out of the carton, I was still doing all those things, but I was just looking for little ways to make improvements that on a gut level felt good in my bones. I never shamed myself into losing weight, or I never felt like I had to do it. It was always because there was something in me that was just like, this is the next best thing and you’ll feel better. And let’s just do that and let’s just practice it until we get good at it.

Jill: I love that so much though because I think that you can’t hate yourself thin, you can’t shame yourself thin. Maybe you can, but it’s never going to stay, right? And then the weight always comes back on and we feel terrible about it. And so I think it’s so important that people understand that the choices that you made and the changes that you made were out of wanting to care for yourself. Not out of some belief that I have to look a certain way or be a certain size.

Corinne: It all started with literally how I wanted to feel in my body, the things I wanted to do in my life. I remember when I first started losing weight and the weight was kind of coming off, going to see my brother-in-law who is an Ironman athlete. My husband is not an athlete at all. Like, I am always shocked when Chris exercises. I’m like, “What are you doing?” I mean, it’s like, stop the presses. Just like yesterday, he hasn’t exercised in weeks and yesterday he comes downstairs in his running shoes, I’m like, “What are you doing?” “I’m going to go out and run for a little bit.” I’m like, did lightning strike or something? I mean, it’s always so odd to me. So my brother-in-law though is like, done several Ironmans. He’s just you know, all in. And so when I went to visit him – we took Logan up there. He said something to me one day. I was asking him about running, he’s like, sure you can do that. He was like, you should just try a triathlon. It’s easy. And I was like, what? I mean, I’m just like, I didn’t even play volleyball hardly. I mean, like, I played volleyball in eighth grade but I sat on the bench. I mean, it was just like, only put me in when literally everybody else was taxed or needed a break. You know, that was it. And he just – I mean, it was just amazing to me and I was like, well yeah, maybe I’ll figure this out. And I just went back and looked up to see if there was a local riding group. I bought a bike, I was just like, well, I guess I’ll need a bike. I just – I don’t know. I just wanted to – everything for me wasn’t about like, I needed to look a certain way. There were times where I did start losing weight because I like, wanted to look good, but it was like, way into the process. After a while I was like, wow, I have a shape. I didn’t even know I had a shape. You know, that was motivating. But the most of the weight loss was all about I wanted to feel athletic. I wanted to feel healthy. I wanted to be a really good example for my kid. You know, it was all very motivating things. I was not losing weight to run away from my self anymore. I was losing weight to create the new version of me, the one that I wanted.

Jill: God, I love that so much. I love that. Okay, so you just talked about ice cream a moment ago and you tell this story about yourself and ice cream that I think that you need to tell it on this podcast because I mean, I think it parallels running as well. Like, starting to run and just like, doing a little bit at a time, just doing what you’re capable of and not expecting more from yourself. So can you share that story?

Corinne: Yes. So when I first started losing weight, so all my life I’ve been an ice cream lover. And it was either – not mint chocolate, that’s my husband’s favorite. Chocolate chip. By the way, everybody should know that the day mint chocolate chip was made, like, the devil was in play. I just think mint and ice cream should never be put together. I either ate chocolate chip or Neapolitan. That was my two favorites. And I would eat out of the carton every night and I would eat until it was either gone or just until I had such a headache or like, I didn’t stop because I’d had a little. I would stop because I was miserable or I’d run out. That was the only two ways I ever stopped. And so when I was losing weight, I remember – like, I’d been going to the gym a little bit, doing little things, thinking one day, I wonder what it would be like if I just decided today I no longer eat out of the carton. Now I put it in a big bowl. And I thought, I’m going to do that. And when I did that, I put it in the biggest bowl I could find and I made an agreement with myself that from that moment on, I was not going to eat out of the carton ever again. That from now on, I was a bowl eater. And then I did that for a while, and I’m not talking about a little bitty delicate bowl. It was like, a nice man-size bowl. And then I went to more of a delicate bowl. And I just started – I remember thinking, well, I probably don’t need all of this, what if I just tried three quarters of that amount? And I just started stair stepping it down until eventually one time I was like, shit, do I even need to eat ice cream every night? What if I just eat fruit with my kid? Like, there’s a novel idea. Like, it would have felt I think for me, in the beginning, restrictive or punitive or punishing because my mind wasn’t there yet. Like, I was just so willing to take as long as I need to lose the weight, to let my mind like, kind of come along for the ride. So I just did little things but I never – I swear, I didn’t do stuff that I didn’t feel like I was an eight or better on a scale of one to 10, that I could do it and keep doing it no matter what. So that’s kind of my ice cream story, and I did that with several things. I did it with exercise, like, I remember when I decided I was going to finally learn how to lift weights. I didn’t start with just walking into the meathead section. I went to body pump first, and I remember telling myself, you get to be in the back and you don’t even have to stay for the whole damn thing. Like, just get someplace where you can put your shit away real quick and then if it’s too much just leave, but you will be coming back. That was always my agreement is that you don’t stop and not come back anymore. You just stop and then you still have to come back next time and figure out how much longer do you want to stay.

Jill: I love that. So it’s like, okay today I’m going to do 10 minutes of body pump. Next week I might do 12.

Corinne: Right. Yes.

Jill: I love that. So what I’m like, so – just love about all of this is how you were not in a hurry to your destination. You’re just like, I’m just going to focus on what I can do right here today to make myself feel better. Because I think in both running and weight loss, and pretty much everything in life, any time we’re trying to learn a new skill is we spend so much time comparing where we are now to where we want to be that we miss the incremental changes that are happening along the way.

Corinne: Yes. Well, I think that’s super important because when we are very out of tune with the version of ourselves that we’re wanting to create, what happens is that the small things that we do each day, we start talking ourselves into how insignificant they are.

Jill: Yes, exactly.

Corinne: They’re not good enough. So I do a lot of work with people and I mean, we both do this. we do a lot of work with people on connecting yourself to the person that you’re wanting to be, and like, really understanding who she is and stuff because when you know that person really well, she will be the first one to tell you that little stuff matters. You can’t get to her without it. To this day, all the things that I started off doing when I was losing my 100, I still do them today. You know, they never went away. And so they’re a part of the process. And I didn’t need to do – this is the other thing. When you have like, 100 pounds to lose, I didn’t need to start with all the things. I was going to get some wins just starting. And I never allowed myself to talk myself out of that stuff. I just – I remember thinking about when I would think things that felt crappy, I would immediately tell myself, “And that’s that crap you used to tell yourself that kept you overweight. We don’t think that anymore. What is the next best thought we can come up with?” I always have loved telling people, what is your next best thought? Just find it. When you’re looking for that thought, guess what can’t happen? Your old crappy can’t be talking in your ear.

Jill: I love that, and I’ve actually talked to my listeners about this is that so often we recognize the negative thinking that’s creating the result that we don’t want and we say, okay, I’m going to think this other thing and we work towards creating a new thought process, but then the old thoughts creep in because our brains are programmed to think them, it’s habitual. But instead of thinking, oh, that’s right, I’m not going to think those things anymore, we make it mean that we’re failing.

Corinne: Right.

Jill: Right? And so can you speak to that a little bit because I know that you do so much work with your tribe members around this exact concept?

Corinne: Yeah, so I actually coaching one of our tribe members yesterday on this concept. So she’s lost some weight and she has this belief that she’ll never get below 164 pounds. And so she keeps losing 30 and 40 pounds all her life, you know, this core belief. And I said, “Well, why do you care about that thought?” And she’s like, “I just need it to go away.” I said, “Why?” And she said, “Well because it keeps playing in my head.” And I said, “You don’t need that thought to go away. You just need to quit giving it credit.” Well, I am a big believer in thoughts won’t quit coming. Like, there’s several ways that they have to stop. One is you have to know which ones you’re trying to eliminate. Two, you have to have a new one to – like, I always tell people like, if you think a crappy thought then you need to be willing to purposely think a good one at least five to 10 times for every crappy one. And they’re like, “But that’s so tiring.” It’s like, yeah, so is believing your old garbage.

Jill: Exactly.

Corinne: You might as well do something about it. And then the other part of it is separating out like, I don’t need these thoughts to go away right now. I just need to quit making them a big effing deal. That’s all that’ll happen. And when you pull that apart, then what happens is they come in and then you have a pause, it’s like, oh yeah, I remember, I don’t believe you anymore, and then you practice the new one. They eventually – if they’re not getting fed, they quit coming back to the buffet. You are not sitting there and giving them a lot of credit. They have no reason to keep coming back. So I was just telling her, I was like, quit putting all your energy and effort into being pissed that your thoughts aren’t changing fast enough and put your energy and effort into just being like, it’s okay to think that but I’m still going to keep doing my actions. Like, I’m still just going to, you know, make my plan today. Because I keep thinking I’m going to not be able to bust 164 doesn’t mean that well then today I shouldn’t make a plan. Like, that doesn’t make sense. You put that out of your mouth. It’s like, you can think that but you still make a plan.

Jill: Exactly. Oh, I love that so much. I love that. But really, I think the reason so many people get derailed is because they’re listening to those negative thoughts and just – they’re just buying into them. They’re like, oh, here’s a shitty thought, I think I’m going to just jump right in the pool with that one.

Corinne: Right. It’s like, just because you have one doesn’t mean you have to do it. It just means like – it’s just there. So then decide. I think people really forget that thoughts are a decision for you to make. Like, here I have my thought Am I a yes or am I a no? Here’s my next thought. Am I a yes or am I a no? I mean, you do get to have that power over them if you decide that that’s all it really is.

Jill: Right, that it’s not a fact about you. It’s just a belief that you have and we get to change our minds whenever we want. We’re women, this is what we do, right?

Corinne: Exactly.

Jill: But it’s so interesting because I think so many people have these thoughts because they’re sort of programmed into them from a young age, especially women. We’re programmed to believe that we have to be thin to be attractive or worthy or like, we’re basically raised to constantly criticize ourselves. And so we just get really good at that criticism because we’re taught that. And I think one thing I wanted to talk about with you is you know, there’s a lot of people out there saying you need to learn how to love yourself, right? And I did a Facebook live about this this morning is that we need to learn how to love ourselves. Everybody’s yelling at us to do that. Nobody’s teaching us how to do it. So basically, because we’re so critical of ourselves and we can’t figure out how to love ourselves, we’re like, okay, that’s just one more thing I’m fucking up, right? Let me just like, criticize myself because I can’t figure out how to love myself, and it just turns into this spiral. But I think a lot of women, at least the ones in my community that I’ve talked to believe that okay, if I learn to love myself, I will no longer be motivated to lose weight, or if I decide to lose weight, it means that I don’t love myself. So does that come up in your community? Is that something that you ever struggled with?

Corinne: I have in the past. I think for me and my community, what happens is when people find me, it’s because they have decided they do want to love themselves by like, taking care of their health. A lot of my women come to me because they are just sick and tired of being sick and tired. And I think it’s probably because they listen to my podcast. Mine’s a little different, but I will say this: no one loses weight hating themselves. No one like – I do agree with you on this. People are not teaching women how to truly care about themselves and how to truly love their bodies and truly love themselves. I think that it is such a disservice to think that if you weigh 250 pounds, that you have to hate where you’re at in order to want to lose the weight. I hit a rock bottom, but I didn’t start making changes because I hated myself. I started making changes because I wanted more from myself. That was a huge differentiator for me. And I think that what women have to do is they have to really ask themselves, why am I not choosing to lose my weight? And if you have a list of reasons why – like, we’ve been doing this work, I don’t know if you’ve been watching in the tribe, but the whole compelling reason thing. I think making a list of the reasons why you are losing weight is really important to make sure you’re not choosing terrible reasons to do it. Like, demotivating or scary reasons like the other day somebody said the reason why I’m losing weight is because I’m tired of feeling fat all the time. It’s like, well I promise you that on Friday when there’s a free hot donut and you need to figure out why you’re not going to eat it and it’s free and delicious, thinking I’m so tired of being fat is not going to be a reason. That’s going to feel terrible and hopeless and be like, see, the reason I am fat is because I always have these temptations around me. Negativity breeds negativity. But when your – if you have that as one of your reasons, then you need to ask yourself, if I’m tired of this, then what is it that I do want? I think we do not spend near enough time thinking about when it comes to our weight, our health, our fitness, our mindset, all of it, thinking about what it is we want to create and what it is we do want, and for every shitty thought you have, there’s always a good flip to it. And that’s the one we want to stay focused on because it’s a lot easier to make changes when you’re going towards a better version of yourself rather than trying to escape the one you hate. It’s not going to happen.

Jill: Yeah, I could not agree more.

Corinne: That’s kind of what I teach and it’s like, I don’t think everybody has to lose weight. I don’t think everybody – I really don’t. But I think everybody needs to figure out what they do want and like, if you are going to lose weight, you need to find the reasons why you want it that feel good to you, that feel really good for you so that you can keep reminding yourself of that. Because all of us who have been programmed and conditioned, we have – I call it fat girl thinking. It’s where – it is that whiny scriggly bitchy ass voice in your head that tells you all the reasons why you’re not good enough, why you’re terrible, if only that kid when I was 12 years old hadn’t bullied me I wouldn’t have problems today, like, she’s the constant reminder of why you should not change what you’re doing, why you should not become a better version of yourself. And whatever better version that is for you.

Jill: Well, and what I love so much about your tribe is how that is really the focus of your group. Because you know, I’m a member of the group and I love seeing the transformations. It’s amazing because I love seeing how happy everybody is but what I really, really love is how much emphasis there is on dealing with your thinking. And it’s not all about your thinking about should I eat this food or shouldn’t I eat this food. Like, there’s so much discussion about like, hey, I’m struggling in my marriage, I need help rearranging my thinking about my husband or my relationship with my mom, or you know, this happened at work. And a lot of it has nothing to do with food and just everything to do with elevating our thinking so that we can live our best lives.

Corinne: Yeah, and we can quit coping with all those things with food. Like, why don’t we just fix the real damn problems? It’s funny because it’s like, I just think it’s really important for us to spend a lot of time thinking about the person that we want to be, whoever she is, and not being afraid to dream about her and not being afraid to craft her in our minds. Because I know for me personally when I was losing weight, like, I had this athletic version of me. I was never an athlete, ever. There was no reason why I should dream of being an athlete outside of the fact that I wanted to. And it was super important for me, and it was everything to think about, well, gosh, what would the athletic version of me be doing? How does she fuel? I can tell you one thing, she’s not doing restrictive and depriving diets or over-exercising to compensate for eating something. That’s not how the athletic version of me behaves. The athletic version of me takes care of me. You know, she’s going to have a pre-game hype up speech, not like, I’m worried what everyone’s going to think speech. Like, I mean, seriously, and I had those moments where I would go to races. Like, the first time I had to show up for a race by myself, well, I’ll tell you, the hardest race I ever went to by myself I’d signed up to do the Chicago marathon and I had trained all by myself and my family was supposed to go with me. My husband and my son. And my son was not having an amazing week. He’s on the spectrum and we knew the day before we were supposed to go to Chicago that taking him to Chicago was going to be like, the worst thing ever for him. He had had a very over-stimulating week and I was like, do we need to try an airplane and hotels and new environment? Like, no we don’t. I had to get on that plane by myself, go to Chicago, like, the big city. I’m a redneck, I’m like, oh my god, subways and shit, I’m like, what do you do? And I had to figure it all out, show up for the race, get my sore ass back to the hotel, shower, like, in the bathroom, and fly home. But I did it because I knew that like, all the nerves that I was feeling was normal but what would an athlete do? They would go do their race, and that is what I did. It was probably the proudest moment – I mean, I have done a lot of great things, but one of my proudest moments in my entire life was doing that race all by myself. Because it just made me shut down all of the bullshit that I was thinking about myself.

Jill: Right, because how can you argue with that evidence ever again, right? Like, because that’s what an athlete does, right? They do fly there, they go in, they do the race, they figure that shit out, they take a shower, they fly home, they go on with their life, right?

Corinne: Yes.

Jill: An athlete doesn’t have a meltdown at the start line going oh my god, what’s going to happen, right?

Corinne: The closest to a meltdown I had was I couldn’t get my – this is before we had like, the iPhones. I had an iPod or something, and I was going to start with Eye of the Tiger, and I could not get Eye of the Tiger. And I was just like, I’m getting close to the start. I was having like, a damn near panic attack. It finally came on but it was a great day and I knew I was going to take like – it was like a five-and-a-half-hour marathon or something like that, but I enjoyed every second of it. I just remember thinking when I first got started, you are here, you might as well love it. I mean, what other option do you really have, you know, at this point? It didn’t go down the way I wanted but the amazing thing for me was because I still decided to show up, I think the experience was even more amazing than even if my boys had been with me. I would have been consumed with are they getting to the finish line okay, is Logan okay and stuff. So it was I think one of the first times I think I felt like I really showed up like a boss, you know?

Jill: I love that so much. So let me ask you this because you talk a lot about the future version of yourself that you imagined when you were starting, so did you actually write it down? Did you write out a journal like this is what my future self does, these are the beliefs she has, these are the activities she does? Or was it just more a picture you had in your head?

Corinne: It started off as a picture. So I – you know, when – I’ve always been a journaler, first of all. Even when I was a kid, like, my first diary I had at nine, and I have like, stacks of these things. But I wrote a lot and I don’t know that I ever actually wrote a specific future-self letter like I have my girls do now, but I definitely – I remember journaling and I would always focus my journaling a lot around what I’m doing and what I want to do tomorrow. And then as I built confidence up, I think I started like, thinking more about the future focused version of me. Like, kind of stretching it out, like, I think I’m going to – what would that athlete me do and stuff? It was very organic. It isn’t like how I teach it. Now I’m just like, here’s your future-self letter and how we do it, you know? So I learned from myself that those components were so key to my weight loss because I was always figuring out how to feel good and put my focus on where I wanted to go and quit putting my focus on where I didn’t want to be in everything, even when I would sign up for crazy races and stuff. I did the same kind of stuff. I would write about, you know, not even just the times. How I wanted the event to go and things like that. I thought a lot about that stuff. But I’ve always been a journaler. I think it’s one of the most important things anybody can do for themselves. I think when you can see the things you’re thinking, it’s a lot easier to direct them into the direction you want to go. When your brain is like, full of all your thoughts and it’s competing with all the things you’ve thought in the past, it is so easy for what you used to think to win because it’s so there on autopilot. And it’s supposed to be because that’s what’s been practiced. But just because it is there on autopilot, don’t excuse yourself out of not doing it. It’s not a good reason to not think about your future. This is the situation so now what am I going to do about it?

Jill: I love that so much. I mean, and it’s true. We go in the direction we’re looking. Like, if you’re driving a car, if you’re looking behind you, you’re not going to be going forward. Like, the car is literally just going to be like, going all over the place. So looking forward, looking in the direction you want to be and focusing on that point is…

Corinne: It’s like if you’ve ever shot pool, that’s what they tell you to do. They tell you to look at the pocket where you want to go and shoot the ball towards the pocket. Like, you’re always looking at where you want to go. If you’re going to shoot pool and you’re over here looking at somebody else, good luck with that.

Jill: Yeah, the ball’s not going to go where you want it to go at all.

Corinne: No.

Jill: Yeah, that’s just such a great concept is just looking forward instead of looking elsewhere, and that’s what we’re doing with our thoughts when we give attention to all those negative thoughts. We’re just – by looking at them, we’re just going to continue generating more of those thoughts I think.

Corinne: Or even looking around at what other people are doing and stuff. It drives me crazy when my girls are looking around like, so and so is doing this and so and so says that, and I’m like, but what are you doing?

Jill: Exactly.

Corinne: It always ceases to amaze me that some – like, a lot of my clients can tell me everything they saw on their Facebook feed that day that somebody else is selling to lose weight loss, and what their friends are doing to lose weight and stuff, and I say, well, show me your plans for the last three or four days, what are your food logs like? And they’re like, well, I haven’t really been writing nothing down. And I’m like, I wonder why you’re lost and confused. Like, quit paying attention to what they’re doing and pay attention to what you’re doing. We all need to keep our eyes on our own paper.

Jill: I love that.

Corinne: It’s such an easier lifestyle too.

Jill: And I agree.

Corinne: I find myself hard enough to keep up with, much less try keeping up with everybody else.

Jill: I know, it’s so true. Well, and it’s funny because I get so many people that join the Not Your Average Runner group and one of the first questions they ask is okay, what intervals is everyone running? And I’m like, it doesn’t matter. Like, it just doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter how fast anybody else is running, it doesn’t matter what other people’s shoes are, it does not matter what intervals. Run your own race, stay in your own lane, and you will get where you want to be.

Corinne: Yes. So important. I mean, it’s everything. I just think that you know, when it comes to learning to run and when it comes to losing weight, you only have so much mental energy. Do not waste it by looking around at what everybody else is doing. Keep really focused on what you’re doing and how is it working and is it going to get you closer to where you want to go. And this keeps you in a very like, positive mind space. I think that you know, women in general, whether it’s weight loss, running, or just life, we need to spend more time figuring out like, I’m always telling my girls, I know y’all joined to lose weight but we’re really here to create the best versions of ourselves. Because like, when we start working on all the other crap, that food stuff cleans up real fast. Like, it suddenly is not as hard. Because we don’t need it for a crutch. You’re using it as like, yeah, I like to eat tasty food and you’ve taught me how to do it in a responsible way, and now you’ve taught me also how to actually like my husband and not yell at my kids. And like, go to my job every day and appreciate that I have one rather than looking for drama all the time in my life.

Jill: So good. And it is, it’s like, we think that we want to lose weight because we’re going to feel better and really, like, that’s just a symptom of the whole feeling better journey is the weight loss.

Corinne: Yeah, people need to learn how to feel better. And then if the weight is supposed to come off, it will. I don’t care what I weigh as long as I walk through life feeling pretty damn good.

Jill: Exactly. That’s winning, in my opinion, for sure.

Corinne: I had this conversation, I’ll tell you this super-fast. My husband and I were talking about this the other day. I keep saying one of these days, I just want a house that has a pool. Just want a house that has a pool. And he finally said, “You’re such a goal setter, why don’t you just put that on your damn goal list and work towards it? Like, you figure out how to get us one, you figure out all this other stuff.” And I was like, why do I keep wishing for it? I should probably start really creating the path to get there. And I was like, sitting there thinking that’s what life’s about is to – life is too short to keep wishing for things. It’s like, I may not get a pool for 15 years but I would rather spend the next 15 years knowing I was working for it than sitting around wondering why I never have it. You know?

Jill: So perfectly said. And why don’t you just put one in the backyard? This is what I’m thinking.

Corinne: It’s like, it’s about a patch the size of my fist and it has a slope. Honestly, we couldn’t put one in this house. But I keep dreaming. Ever since I was a little girl I wanted a house with a pool.

Jill: I see this. I see this for you in the next five years because I know you and when you decide you want – like, when you make that decision, when you flip that switch, it’s as good as done.

Corinne: Yeah, I just told him, I said I just – to me, that is like, retirement. Like, some people dream of cars and all this other stuff. I’m just like, pool. I just want a pool. I love summers, I’m a July baby. It’s like, my happiest memories, my mom always worked when I was young, she worked at hotels and every year the hotel would let us have a pool party for me. So some of my happiest memories were my pool birthday parties and stuff. And then we lived in apartments so then I would like, have pool parties when she didn’t even work for a hotel. So I will have it. I will have it.

Jill: It will be so. I love that. I’m going to be checking back in with you year after year like, okay, how’s the pool?

Corinne: And as I get older, I’m going to need it to jog in.

Jill: You will. You know what, I just saw one of these little – this is totally on the side, but somebody posted a video in the Not Your Average Runner Podcast group today of a treadmill in a pool, but the pool is the size of the treadmill. So basically just like a big tank of water that has a treadmill in the bottom and then you can run in it. I was like, I must have that.

Corinne: Oh gosh, what is her name? The famous marathon lady. She’s like…

Jill: Oh, Deena Kastor.

Corinne: Yeah. So she was injured probably like, eight years ago and she had to do that for like, a year. She trained for, I want to say, New York the year that either she won it or something. But she trained for months on end in one of those pools. Like, running three hours a day just to keep conditioning and stuff up so that when she could get back on the road to get ready for New York, she was ready. I read an article in Runner’s World about it, how she talked about she had to have somebody there talking to her and that she was like, you want to talk about learning how to manage your mind. Be in a little room, in a pool, on a treadmill for three hours, that will teach you how to like, find all your thoughts and like, you know, all kinds of – she said, “I would almost get in a meditative state.” So anyway, I thought that was cool that you mentioned it.

Jill: Yeah, that’s cool. Someday. Someday it’ll happen. Alright, so where can everyone – what’s the best way for people to work with you if they have been inspired by this conversation?

Corinne: If you’re brand new to me, the best way to find me is to go to pnp411.com. That’s where I have like, all 11 years of blogs, my podcast is there. And then I have a free course. It’s just a video with a little workbook that’ll teach you how to get committed and do the baby steps. If you’re like, interested in like, you know what, I may not want to lose all my weight but what I’d like to do is just start getting healthier, it’s a perfect course for that. It’s the kick start. So I always tell people to start with that because it really gives you a flavor of what I’m about and that way if you don’t like me, like, no thanks, and if you did, alright, here’s the podcast. And we have a podcast group too and I have a membership that’s open four times a year, but if you just go to pnp411.com, that’s the best way to get started because it’ll introduce you to my Facebook page, my Instagram, and all that kind of stuff.

Jill: Okay, and so we’ll have links to all that stuff in the show notes, but you guys, seriously, check out the podcast. What’s your podcast called again?

Corinne: Losing 100 Pounds with Phit-n-Phat.

Jill: It’s so good. I listen to it regularly, it makes me happy every time I listen to it. You and I go running together a lot. You didn’t know this.

Corinne: I go running with a lot of people and I shower with a lot of people I have heard. A lot of my girls are like, I listen to you in the shower, and I’m like, wow.

Jill: I’m a little uncomfortable with that. So funny. Awesome. And so people will be hearing this episode on August 11th, so when does membership open because I know that there’s going to be a few people listening that are like, no, I just want to get right into the membership. So when does that open?

Corinne: Middle of September. I think we’re opening around the 10th of September. So when you listen to this podcast and let’s say you’re interested, get to pnp411.com. I always do before we open, I do a little like, back to basics challenge for people that teaches you all about like, water and sleep and things like that. And that is a great week. So it gives you a real taste of I love this PNP message, or you know, maybe this wasn’t what I was really looking for. Because I am not about the quick fix. A lot of people try to sign up with me and the first thing they know, they’re like, what’s your meal plan and what’s this, that and the other. It’s like, no, no, no, we work on our mental and I teach you – I’m like loaves and fishes. I teach you how to fish, I teach you how to multiply. My job is not to spoon-feed you like an infant what to do. So everybody gets invited to that as long as they’ve gone to pnp411.com and signed up. That’s an amazing week. It’s fun. We do some Facebook lives, we do a lot of just education, a lot of like, motivating, like, community stuff, so it’s pretty cool.

Jill: I love that so much. So good. So good. Alright, well thank you so much for joining me today. It has been a pleasure. It’s always a pleasure. And yeah, so I’ll make sure we get all those show notes and have an amazing day.

Corinne: You too. Thank you.

Jill: Alright, thank you.

Hey rebels, I hope you enjoyed my chat with Corinne. And if you want to be part of her tribe or just learn more about what she does, head on over to pnp411.com to take her free course. And don’t forget to subscribe to her podcast, Losing 100 Pounds. And as always, all of those links are going to be in the show notes at notyouraveragerunner.com/38. Until next week.

Thanks for listening to this episode of The Not Your Average Runner Podcast. If you liked what you heard and want more, head over to www.notyouraveragerunner.com to download your free one-week jumpstart plan and get started running today.