The #1 Thing Between You and Change EP: 61

 Thank you for listening to the Top Self Podcast. I'm your host, Shanenn Bryant, and I appreciate you bringing me along with whatever you're doing, driving in your car. Maybe you're listening to this on your workout. Maybe you're listening as you're cleaning the house, whatever you're doing. I appreciate you bringing me along and hopefully I can make this time super valuable to you. 

 I've been talking about this health journey that I'm on and wanting to spend the month of January really talking about health with you because I am seeing more and more how it connects and ties in with this jealousy thing. 

So if you've been following me, you know that I did a 10 day detox. I have been using a continuous glucose monitor to track my blood sugar level and really trying to dial in my health and through that. there's been some really amazing things that have come up that I think will help me be a better coach for you on this jealousy thing. Will help me to give you some other ideas of what to do. So I wanted to just share one way that I felt like this tied together. So bear with me 'cause I wanna talk about the detox diet and then why I think that ties into jealousy.

I recently just started round two of the 10 day detox diet, meaning I did 10 days. I stuck to it to a tee, and it was so good that I'm doing it again. Not only did it completely change how I was feeling physically, but as I mentioned, it also made a connection for me with this whole jealousy thing. So I wanna share how I think these two things are similar.

So first, let me tell you about the detox, and I hate calling it a diet because it really was a detox, a way to jumpstart your immune system again, a way to flush out some toxins in your body. So let me just tell you first about how that first 10 days went and how I was feeling, and I'm gonna preface this by saying if someone else would tell me what I'm about to tell you that this detox did for them, I'd be like, okay, okay, sure it did.

I don't think I'd believe them. Even someone close, I just wouldn't think that it would do either. Maybe not that I didn't believe them, but I would maybe think as sometimes probably you do when it comes to the jealousy thing, when maybe you hear some of my successes and you think, oh, that would never work for me or that's never gonna be for me, or I'm not strong enough to do that. That's how I felt going into this detox with a couple of things. One, I didn't think I was strong enough to make it through the 10 days, and two, I didn't think that it would change me physically so much. So you may not believe me, but I wanna share it because it is factual.

It happened, I experienced it myself. Otherwise I may not have believed it either. Okay, so first, of course, you know. As I said, if you've been following me, I've been complaining about major hip pain for months and months now. Really actually over a year. I've been from doctor to doctor trying to figure out how can I make this better?

How do I, how do I feel better? I broke my ankle, not this past November, but the November prior, so November, 2022, and it just wasn't healing properly. It just felt tight all the time. It felt stiff, it would swell up, and I was having a hard time walking. So I started out going to physical therapy for my ankle, but then my hips started hurting and I was told that I had bursitis. So, you know, that inflammation in my hips, that, um, inflammation in that little buri in your hips. So over this past year, both my ankle and my hips got so bad that unfortunately just the last couple months I had to stop seeing my personal trainer.

I wasn't able to work out, I couldn't do any of the things that we had been training, 'cause I just, even walking the dog, poor Samson, my buddy, um, we've definitely been on shorter walks because even walking was causing a great deal of pain. So I started going to physical therapy for my hips and I've been in physical therapy for one or the other most of this year.

 I just wasn't really getting any answers. So I knew I had to start digging in myself and take matters into my own hands, just like I did with jealousy and go, okay, you know, who, who can help me with this? Who are experts in this field? What are the things that I should do?

So I had some blood work done with my family doctor, but I also had a more in-depth blood panel done by Dr. Ben. Galyardt, who was a guest on this podcast from F8 Well Centers. we're waiting for the results of those to come back to see if there are any other things that are connecting the dots, because everything that I've been doing, nothing was working.

So all of this pain that I had been in is really what got me started thinking about health and how important it is because I've mentioned, you know, it doesn't matter how great your relationship is, if your health is in the toilet. It doesn't matter how good you're doing at your job. If you feel like you can't even walk, if you feel like you can't even live a normal life without being in pain.

So I started researching food that can reduce inflammation, and I started getting deep into how foods affect your body and how important food and exercise and keeping your stress down is, and how it can be tied in with this topic of jealousy. I have learned so much how food affects your mood and what stress really does in the backend pushing your blood sugar level up, which causes weight gain, which also causes you to feel worse about yourself. So, so many things, and I also, I already knew how exercise can help, but this just intensified that. I have seen how powerful nutrition is to this whole process and this research and study and having great guests on and interviewing them in the past to prep for the January theme of health.

With all of that and my research, It all led me to this 10 day detox that I've been doing, and I have to say I've never seen myself as someone who'd be fascinated with this topic of food. I'm fascinated with the brain.

I'm fascinated with the topic of jealousy. I am fascinated with relationships, but I never thought food would be one of them until I went through this myself and admittedly. I have probably rolled my eyes more than once at the ":whole foods" eaters in the past and the gluten-free and all of that. I did. I am on that bus because I've seen it. I've seen it for myself now, and sometimes that's what it takes. So let me tell you about this detox and then I'm gonna connect the dots for you and, and explain how I think these things are connected. I'm gonna share just what popped up for me a little bit, just one small thing of how I think these two things are connected and how I see them as so similar.

So first, let me tell you about the restriction of this 10 day detox and what it was like, when I read this I was like, uh, no way. Um, I can't do that. But here, here it is: No caffeine, no sugar. No dairy, no gluten, no processed foods. I was like, what in the sam hell am I going to eat? Like, what do you eat for the next 10 days?

But as I learned, you know, all the whole foods and leafy greens and nuts and seeds and lots of protein. it also calls to take some additional vitamins and supplements like zinc and fiber pills and magnesium, and of course my regular multivitamin that I was already taking. But here's a brief rundown of what happened in those 10 days.

And also the great thing that I loved about this, this diet, oh, I guess again, I don't wanna call it a diet because it, it is a detox, like to reset the metabolism and get the inflammation out of your body and get all those toxins out and, take a break from sugar. so with this detox, what I loved and what I felt like I needed, why I chose this one is because it told you what you're going to eat for breakfast. Like this is what you're going to eat for breakfast, this is what you're gonna eat for lunch and you've got this choice for dinner. And so it was so great. So smoothie for breakfast and you had, you know, a choice of like three or four, maybe four or five choices of which smoothie to make. So of course I tried all of them. Certainly there are some that I liked way better than others. But you had a choice. You could, you know, make whatever smoothie for breakfast and then for lunch you could either have a salad 

Or there were a few recipes for soups you can make. And then for dinner you can choose the basic core option or you can choose the adventure option. Now, I have never really liked seafood. I am not a big seafood fan. So I mostly stuck with the basic core option 'cause that was more like chicken and some things that I thought I could handle.

There were recipes in there that called for fish but the first round I didn't really venture off too much with the adventure plan. I really stuck with the core, the basic.

 But the second 10 days, I'm definitely experimenting more with some of the adventure options. But I stuck with the basic core options in the beginning. So I loved it because it told me exactly what I needed to do. This is what you're gonna do in the morning, and this is what you're gonna do in the afternoon, and this is what you're gonna do at night, and this is when to take your supplements.

So that in terms of knowing exactly what to do, that part of it made it pretty simple. So now it was just, can I actually do this? So here's what happened. The first two days-ish, I had a slight headache. Nothing that was really overwhelming. It didn't hold me back too much. It wasn't something that I couldn't handle.

I didn't have to take anything for my headache. It wasn't really slowing me down, but just that slight headache, I noticed it. I could just, you know, tell it was there, and I lost three pounds in those first two days. Because I haven't been able to exercise much I haven't been seeing that scale go in, you know, go down.

So even just that three pounds, I was like, okay, well that's a nice bonus too. It's not the reason I was doing it, but it's a nice bonus.

At day five, I had lost a little over five pounds. My headaches had stopped after those first two days. That was it. Um, so I didn't have a headache anymore, and by day five, my stomach felt flatter. I was feeling pretty good. I was amazed at even halfway through how good I felt just with five days and how easy it was to get used to the foods I was eating.

So I was really surprised that just in five days how good I was feeling. Then on day seven, I got up in the morning and I was like, what? Heck no. This cannot be. My hips aren't hurting this morning I could walk without pain. My ankle didn't feel tight anymore. I mean, it was amazing. And so the next day, on day eight, I wore heels for the first time for more than an hour in over two years, plus I was down nine pounds.

On day 10, I felt super great. It was the last day of the 10 day detox. I could not believe that I had had no caffeine, no sugar, no gluten, no dairy, no processed foods. I really didn't think I'd make it the 10 days, but I did, and I stuck to it and I saw it through and I realized that there are foods now that I actually enjoy eating that I never thought I would like.

Um, take for instance, arugula. It's actually one of my favorite things now. As I mentioned, I don't like seafood at all, and one of the recipes that is actually one of my favorite dishes in the whole 10 days was salmon on top of a bed of arugula. And I think my husband and I were joking because for me that was like two gross things or thing, two things that I would've thought, oh gosh, they both sound disgusting.

So I think it was, you know, maybe that they canceled each other out. 'cause they were, in my mind they were both so gross, like, but they were something about the bite. The arugula that took away the fishy taste for me of the salmon, and then something about the salmon that took away the bite of the arugula.

 It's really bizarre, but I love it. So that's just one thing. But I found a bunch of foods that I didn't really know that I liked or enjoyed eating, and it really changed the way I looked at eating in terms of looking at it as a source of fuel versus every meal has to be comfort food and every meal has to, you know, be completely delicious.

That was my thought going in, like, this is gonna be a bunch of gross food. But what I found interesting, so we had my parents and my in-laws over the day after my last day of detox.

So my last day of detox was on a Friday and Saturday evening we had them all over and. My husband's, like I said, you know, I wanna make a salad and I've been eating just this amazing salad with arugula and spinach and, collard greens and all kinds of different things in it. And, um, he was like, I think you need to make a regular salad for everyone else, because I had no dairy, so I wasn't putting cheese in it.

It's not like I was, putting ranch dressing or anything like that on top of my salad. It was a vinegarette, a Dijon mustard, olive oil vinaigrette mix that I'll never go back. I will never go back to a ranch dressing or anything like that because this new dressing to me tastes so good on that type of healthy salad.

But looking at the salad, when I made it, I made a regular one with like iceberg lettuce and you know, it still had good stuff like carrots and broccoli and cauliflower, but it had cheese in it. And just the regular lettuce, I could just tell even by the colors, I made a small, good, healthy one for me. And then I made a big batch for everyone else.

And just looking at the two bowls, I was so much more drawn to the healthy one. So. I never would've thought that I would be like that. So anyway, I found a bunch of stuff that I really like. I can't imagine going backwards on some of the foods that I found that I like. 

But what I also found was it didn't really totally turn me off to sweets, though. I was hoping that it would. I was hoping that I'd look at a chocolate cupcake and be like, Hmm, nah. Or like, oh, that doesn't even sound good. That's what I was really hoping that, you know, drive him past a dairy Queen would not seem appealing at all.

Mm, not so much. So while I. I do feel like between the detox and the continuous glucose monitor that I've been wearing, though I do look at sweets and food a bit differently. while I'm still tempted at times to eat a sugar treat, I know that it's a choice, and more importantly, it's a better choice to not eat it, you know, to not do it.

This is not to say that I won't at some point have a piece of cake from time to time, but I'm not gonna make myself feel guilty about it. nor am I gonna fall into that old, you know, pattern of that sugary web of comfort that it brings.

 I'm not gonna fall into that again. I'm not gonna do that. And that is actually what brings me to how I think this relates to jealousy or what popped up for me after I did the detox and looking at it differently. And relating it to that sugar craving 'cause it didn't go all the way away.

I was just looking at it differently.

I have said that the majority of our jealous symptoms can be resolved through choice and I am doubling down on that. The thing that was between my unhealthy feeding, my comfort food, quite literally, you know, my comfort and pains of bursitis and all of that.

 and what I ultimately wanted, the healthy body and healthy heart and brain and gut, and. back down to my natural slender figure, I knew and realized that what was between those two things was choice.

My choices. And most of what's standing between how you are feeling right now, the jealousy, the insecurity that you're feeling right now as you're driving to work, as you're working out, as you're cleaning your house, or just sitting in bed listening or going for a walk. Listening to this podcast, wherever you are now and where you wanna be six months from now, a year from now.

 the difference between those two places is choice. I wanna read you a couple messages from two women who were in one of last year's early group coaching sessions. messaged me and one said, 

"I went back today and read the letter I wrote myself last year, and I got the chills. I've come such a long way. The things I spoke to myself. Then I can see now there's still some work to do. But wow. Just wanted to tell you how powerful that activity was." Another one said.

They, they were both coming up on their year from being in the group coaching program, and the other one said, "I reread my letter and the notes in my phone from this past year. What a difference a year makes. 

 I still don't like that. My husband works with so many women, but I'm not obsessed about it anymore, and very slowly, he's learning to trust my reactions when he is honest with me."

 I wanted to share those two messages with you because that is the power of choice.

 That is the power of the Trust Building Bootcamp, the group coaching program. It's the power of choice and the difference six months or a year can make. 

So all of this made me think about jealousy's reassurance loop. Just like sugar cravings. You really want it. It feels like such a strong pull. You really want to eat that chocolate or you really wanna look at their phone or make this snarky comment and you try to hold out as long as you can.

I remember laying in bed and going. I'm not gonna go get that treat. I'm not gonna do it. I'm not gonna go get anything sugary. I'm not going to do it. I also remember trying to hold out and saying, I'm not gonna look at the phone. I'm not gonna look up where he is. I'm not gonna do it. You hold out as long as you can and you're already feeling bad for just wanting the chocolate or just wanting the reassurance in the first place.

And eventually that poll seems so strong and you give in, you eventually eat the chocolate or you look up the new coworker on LinkedIn or you break down and you ask them that question that's been driving you crazy and been on your mind. Do you find her attractive? And just for a few minutes, just for a while, while you're eating the cupcake or you're hearing their obvious response of, no, I don't find them attractive.

Or in that comfort time when you've looked at their phone and you don't see anything suspicious. You've checked their text messages, you don't see anything there, and just. For a little bit, you feel good, you feel comforted, you feel warm, you feel satisfied, but it doesn't take long 

before that next craving hits that next sugar craving, that next reassurance craving. The more sugar you eat, the more sugar you want, The more reassurance you seek, the more you require. And the way to break that cycle is choice.

 It is the number one thing between where you are right now today and change.

Are you going to keep choosing to go with that story that you're making up in your head or are you gonna seek and find a process to put in place to disrupt that story? Our brains are storytellers. Our brains love to take information and images and create a story around it, so it's perfectly natural to create a story, but the health of the story is your choice.

You can change it. The path that that story's going down can be different. So instead of creating this narrative in your head that your husband's leaving five minutes early so he can get a peek at the neighbor. Or the story that I've told myself that if he looks at somebody else, that means he wants them, means that he's gonna cheat.

Whatever that story is, you have a choice to change it, to make it different, to choose differently. Are you gonna choose to get over the argument quickly or are you gonna choose to keep letting that fear Keep you crying under the covers? 

 You can choose to stop the thoughts when you start saying to yourself, see now he's really over me. Now I have upset him, and now he's saying he's done with me and he's gonna leave and he's definitely gonna pick someone else now. He can't stand me.

He's definitely gonna leave. Now you can make the choice to stop that narrative. It's all about choice, and if you do make the choice to just drop it and apologize or just walk up and give your partner a hug, after you accuse them for 30 minutes

and then an hour later that feeling comes back, that's okay. Make the choice to feel it, to recognize what you're feeling and choose to keep moving on and not to eat the chocolate again. Stop beating yourself up for eating the chocolate. Stop beating yourself up because you felt jealous.

Keep going. Do something different. Make a choice to do something different. If that story comes back that you keep saying and you tried to change the narrative of the story and it comes back again, that's okay. It'll lessen each time.

Just keep running it through the same decision process and make the choice that you're gonna choose you. You're gonna choose your relationship. You're gonna choose what you ultimately want versus giving in to the reassurance temptation. 

 It may take trial and error. And it takes making different choices than you did last time. Don't think of the jealousy thing as so overwhelming. It's something so huge you have to get over. We wanna take small chunks and so if you go into it just thinking, I'm gonna make a different choice this time, then I did last time when I felt this way.

I'm gonna make a different choice this time than the last time I was in this situation. Even just a little different choice. It'll change the outcome. It may not be perfect. It may still go south a couple times, but keep making different choices.

And if you want further support, then join the Trust Building Bootcamp and understand how to make different choices, what to do when you fail, and get the support that you need to help push you past that dessert, counter past the temptation of reassurance.

Seeking the link to join is in the show notes. Until next time, take care. And remember, you're not alone.