Download the mp3 of this episode:
It’s Coach Tulin, and welcome to Fit Has No Size. Today, it’s all about the weight between your ears, and what does that mean? Well, let me take it back a step for a second. I am sure, if you are listening to this episode of Fit Has No Size, at some point in your life, you were on a quest to lose weight. Probably on a diet. Probably on several. Probably made some choices that is difficult for you to talk about.
For myself, I was anorexic. I took so many pills prescribed. I did a lot of things to live up to society’s ideal of what is beautiful and what a body should look like, and I took some very, very, very unhealthy steps in order to achieve that. Even as I was losing the weight, I was feeling more deprived. I was feeling more unhappy. It was difficult to stick to. It would drive me into incredible binges, and I couldn’t understand why my body was fighting against me, why I couldn’t look like everyone else, and why these things that I was doing wasn’t working. Like why couldn’t I get to where I want to go? Like I just needed to weigh X amount of pounds.
Well, that was the problem is that I thought life began at a number, that happiness was directly proportional or relational to your weight, how much you weighed, and that I could not be happy or enjoy life, and these are legitimately things that I said to myself, “Unless I weighed X amount of weight.” No matter where I was on the weight loss journey or where I was in the scale, no matter what, I was always incredibly unhappy, so unhappy. So unhappy in fact, I would stay really diligent for a while. Usually, because of self-abuse. It really was a way of trying to control myself and abusing myself, and then it would just get to the point where I would feel that I lost all my motivation and will power, and I would binge.
Here’s the reality. I was hungry. I was emotionally hungry. I was nutritionally hungry. I was physically hungry. I was hungry for relationships. I was hungry in so many different ways, and food was my resource to not feel better, but to not feel because I just didn’t like the way things felt, and happiness was so fleeting that even though I was happy for the moment, I knew the other shoe would drop, and shortly thereafter, I would be unhappy. I was just fighting for the wrong things.
Now, if you can identify with any of this, I would love to know in the comments of this podcast. I really want to connect with you and be able to dive deeper into these subjects, but let me explain to you about this idea of the weight between the ears and why I talk about this so much in my Fit Has No Size membership community, on my social media pages, why I say those words so often.
Here’s a dirty little secret. Not really, but let’s just look at this for a second. If you look up the CDC will say that 70%-plus of the population is considered overweight, and that number can fluctuate, right, from year to year, but basically, at any given time, it’s about 70% or over 70% of the population is overweight, but here’s what I’ve discovered. Hold on. Let me go back to the dirty little secret.
Dirty little secret, that’s the exact same data that is used from those who are manufacturers to say, “Look, over 70% of the population needs our clothing, and we need to have more specialized clothing.” Honestly, thank God for that because I am plus size and I’m very much in a journey, and I’m so grateful for those two words, “plus size,” because they gave me a voice, and they gave me something to search for, and they gave me something to connect with, and it gave me options in fashion and a lot of things, so I don’t have a negative bone in my body about the term “plus size.”
If you do, you’ve probably never had the battles of plus size women, so I’m going to encourage you to understand that they’re not two dirty little words. They really are words that gave women like myself a voice. It’s how people find me often about plus size exercise modifications, and plus size in PCOS, and plus size fitness fashion. Et cetera, et cetera. They often land on my YouTube channel at Coach Tulin. That’s just one example, and that was born out of this deep desire and quest to find someone like myself. As I used particular search terms that I very much identified with, I could find no one, so when I couldn’t find her, I became her.
I’m very grateful for a group of people that continued to put these solutions online that as we look for particular things we struggle with that we can find them, and we can use a [Alysa’s 00:04:55] words, but the reality is it’s the same data, so the data is saying that we’re more susceptible to heart disease and things like that. When you’re plus size, for example, there’s a good possibility you’d be plus size for a good portion of your journey, portion of your journey. Okay?
It’s not like all of a sudden, you hit a size, and everything is magically better. Okay? It’s not about a size. It’s about your health, so the health and fitness industry or the medical community will say, “Oh my gosh, over 70% of the population is overweight and they have all these health risks, et cetera.” Okay? Nodding. True. The plus size clothing industry will utilize that statistic to say, “Look at all these people who need our clothing. We should offer better clothing options. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Treat her more respectfully. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” 100% true. I totally agree with that.
Then, the health and fitness industry will use that and say, “Look at all these people who could really utilize these products.” Right? “Utilize this service, utilize this workout, utilize this diet.” Okay. I’m not the diet girl either, but let’s just be real. Okay? Often times, in the health and fitness industry, the people in the companies who put these things together are really heart-centered. They’re lead to do this for a reason. Okay? Something in their own personal life. Somebody connected to them. They had a passion and drive to put something together that they really want to make a difference in people’s lives. Okay? That’s pretty freaking cool.
Are there exceptions to the rule? There’s exceptions in all these industries, but the reality is the same 70% of the population we’re talking about, and if you’re listening to this podcast, you’re probably in that statistic, and/or you know someone, or someone you love, or a friend, or something. Okay? It’s basically 7 out of 10 people, right? Chances are we know someone or we are that someone, so how do we take the guilt and the shame, et cetera, et cetera out of it? First of all, you are not a mistake. Your body is amazing, and nearly every plus size women that I have personally coached on this journey are pretty much badass. They have gotten through some stuff and gotten to the other side of it, so where does the weight between the ears lie in all of this, and what does that mean?
Well, 70% of the population is overweight, right? However it’s being defined by any of those industries. I truly believe that 99.9% of the population has weight to lose between the ears, that we’re fighting and working towards the wrong thing, the thing that makes us unhappy and deprived, and is difficult to maintain long-term, and that does not come with a size. Much like Fit Has No Size, in this podcast, the things that you connect to Fit Has No Size, the weight between the ears is not size, or struggle, or sex, or gender. It’s not exclusive. Many of us struggle with these thoughts that hold us back from our goals, and that, ladies and gentlemen, is the weight between the ears. That is what’s holding us back from where we want to go.
In my Fit Has No Size community, we have recently talked about this idea that … Well, here’s the truth. Here’s how it goes. We all have a certain way we want to feel. That’s really important to us. Okay? Like super important to us, so like for me, it’s joy. Now, that is not a word I ever use on the regular. It was actually something that came up recently for me maybe during the holidays if I’m saying like a song, but really, it wasn’t a word that I said easily. It recently started coming up.
I started to realize this on very difficult times, and especially when I had my shingles, and I was … I had my vision affected by it. I was finding the joy in a terrible situation. Now, my anxiety, my depression was on fire. I wasn’t able to work for a few months because of it, and I ran my own business together with my husband, so that greatly affected us, but it was really weird. I kept finding the joy, which is a true testament to the work I’ve done to the weight between the ears because somewhere along the lines, I realized that I can find joy in the most difficult moments.
While maybe I wasn’t able to find happiness and I was always searching for happiness that it would come and go so fast, and I want it to stay with me at all times, I found that joy was one of those things that even in a deep, dark time that I can find the joy. Even in something difficult that I could find the joy, and I kept telling my husband where we moved into this home, right? Like after having been broke and homeless, and rebuilding our lives, and living in this apartment, this little, tiny apartment with the three of us … sorry, the four of us. I don’t know. I have two kids. I don’t know which one I just forgot about.
As we were living in this small apartment rebuilding our lives, and we made the move into this home, I lost my mind. I really became very afraid. All the weight that I lost between my ears started rushing back. I also call it the gremlin. Do you guys remember the movie Gremlin? It was something like you couldn’t feed the gremlin water after midnight. There’s like the cute little gizmo, and there’s also the big ugly gremlin. Well, I call it the gremlin, so I clearly was feeding this gremlin when I wasn’t supposed to. Now, I haven’t watched the movie in a long time, but you get the gist, right?
The reality was, all of a sudden, it started flooding back to me, but because I’ve done so much work between my ears, I had an amazing sense of self-awareness, followed by self-forgiveness. I was able to pick myself back up and get back on track. Did I keep falling off track? Yes, I did, but what didn’t happen is I didn’t spiral out of control, and I had this incredible sense of self. This is what I teach in fitness. It’s the weight between the ears, so I hope that you’re hearing is that once you lose the weight between the ears, it doesn’t go away forever. You just quiet the voice.
The gremlin becomes the gizmo, and from a loud monster, it goes in this cute little whisper. It’s like there, but if you feed it with these negative thoughts and all of a sudden, not connect to what’s important to you like how you want to feel, these activities that you in your life, or these people that you have connected, or your job, or whatever, it grows very, very quickly.
Now, I spent most of my life being a master at spiraling out of control. Now, I become a master of having a setback, realizing a setback is a setup for a comeback, right? I love that saying, and then being able to take those simple steps like I told you. Self-awareness followed by self-forgiveness, and then pick myself up and get back on track. That’s been huge for me. Huge, but the weight between our ears is what’s holding us back, not our bodies.
As a matter of fact, I teach people how to lose the weight between their ears, and then I say, “But I can’t be responsible if there’s a change in your scale like you might notice something,” and it happens all the time. This is not a guarantee. They have to do the work, but all of them come in with massive stories, struggles. I mean, like your heart breaks, and I really feel the struggle. Like I really do like my heart breaks, but to see them be able to make that transition is really something spectacular because it is not about perfection. It’s about the progression, and it’s about the progress in making and losing the weight between the ears, and when you have setback, to have the realization and to get back on track.
It’s very, very simple, but when we start losing the weight between our ears, also, what happens is the weight begins to … We begin to lose weight off our body. It just naturally begins to happen. Now, you can test me on it, and you should. You should totally put this into practice. You should go give this a shot for a period of time. Go ahead. Try to prove me wrong, but I promise you, if you practice it, something is going to change.
Instead of chasing the scale and the number on the scale, one of the things that I did is I began to focus on health gains. When I focused on health gains instead of weight loss and non-scale victories instead of scale victories, things really began to change. The scale no longer ruled me. Now, I went from being a scale junky to the scale is absolutely the devil, and then my scale couldn’t weigh me anymore, so it only went up to 350 pounds. We knew that I was somewhere between 350 and 400 pounds because I would gain weight so quickly, especially as a woman with PCOS or Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. We figured I was about 375 pounds.
Now, the exact amount of weight doesn’t matter, but I remember, I remember getting close. I remember hitting 250 and going, “Oh my gosh, I’m sliding into three.” I’m getting so close to 300, 380, 390 … or I’m sorry, 200. I’m using the wrong numbers, but you get the gist, right? Like as I’m sliding into it like 250, then 260, 270. Oh my gosh, 300 is right there, and it was like … I was almost like … Because I was so focused on that, I was driving myself into 300, and then I hit the 300 mark, and then I’m like, “Oh my gosh, I need to get away from 300,” but instead, I stepped over the other way.
I was too focused on the numbers and because I didn’t have the strong mindset that I have now and put it into practice … Where I focused, my energy flowed, right? It’s another saying. These are all things that I hold near and dear to my heart. I wish I could quote exactly who says these things, but I’m sure the things that you’ve heard, and so where I focused, my energy flowed. Sure enough, exactly what I didn’t want to have happened began to happen, and it was happening really rapidly.
When I focused on health gains versus weight loss, non-scale victories versus scale victories, I went, like I said, from being on the scale all the time to the scale is the devil to realizing the scale actually had a valuable piece of data for me, so did my past, so did all my past failures, and I’ll talk about that in an upcoming podcast, but believe me when I tell you that everything you’ve been through in your past, every failure, I want you to start thinking as a dataset. We’ll talk about that here. Coming up soon in a future podcast.
My weight, my body wasn’t the problem. It was how I thought about it. It was where I was focused. The weight between the ears kept me from where I wanted to go, so here’s another way the weight between the ears began to manifest. I had things in my life that I really, really wanted. I want to feel safe and secure. I remember I said that to a therapist that I love. I said that to her. I said, “I want to feel safe and secure.”
Now, my therapist has got an amazing freaking story of survival like it is almost difficult to share your struggles because you look at her knowing her struggles, and you’re like, “I’m not sure if what I’m going through is anything compared to what you’re going through.” You’re almost embarrassed, right, but you have to remind yourself like, “Everybody’s pain is their pain. Everybody’s struggle is their struggle.” She said to me, “What do you want?” I said, “I want to feel safe and secure,” and she said to me, “The world has never been safe and secure,” and I went, “Oh, snap.”
First of all, I’m really paying attention to her telling me this because her world was not safe and secure, and I was working towards the wrong thing. I was trying to get to the point to where that I would hit this like … this level like almost like a video game like gamification of like your mindset, right? Like I would hit this level of my journey that once I hit there, I would never have to go back like I would never look back. Like I figured this out, and life would just change. I would hit my like happy point, my safe and secure point, and I would never go back to any of my old feelings again or any of my old struggles. That’s not the way the world works, and she was right. I was working towards being safe and secure.
As I started focusing on how I want to feel, how do I want to feel in relationships? How do I want to feel with people around me, or the work that I do, or where my passions lie? When I focused on how I want to feel and the importance of that, guess what happens? It’s the equivalent of motivation. Like how many of you guys are waiting for motivation to happen? It doesn’t come. It doesn’t exist, and nobody really has it, but if you focus on how you want to feel during your activities, during your conversations in life, you begin to put an importance on yourself, and what that does it begins to turn into self-love. Why? Because how you feel is important and your worth is important, and this freaking matters, and you matter, and how you feel matters. Why do we continue to play in the field that’s like we don’t like being here? It doesn’t feel good. This feels badly for me. I don’t like the way this feels.
So many people do that with their fitness or their nutrition. We go over this in great detail in my Fit Has No Size community, and you’re probably wondering like, “How do I get involved with Fit Has No Size community?” Don’t worry about it. I will be letting you know how to do that, but I want to tell you how important it is. We spend quite a bit of time on feeling, and here’s what I found over and over again in the years that I’ve been coaching people on their journey.
How we feel is really important, so it’s like in one bucket like you can almost see me like having like … I’m very handsy when I speak, and I’m surprised I haven’t punched my microphone yet, but you know, this one bucket like how you want to feel. This is really important to you, and somehow we put fitness, and we use fitness as an example in another whole bucket, and the bucket is never touched. When we’re working out, as an example, on our fitness journey, we are looking at somebody else in their journey go, “I have to do what she’s doing because she’s lost the weight,” right, or, “She’s doing the things that I want, so I have to do this thing,” and I flipping hate it.
It does not align with how I want to feel. I don’t like the way it feels. I don’t like the way I feel. I am unhappy, and absolutely nothing about that fitness journey has anything to do with how you want to feel because we don’t understand that fitness comes in layers, and that modifications are key, and you grow in your ability, and how to work your ability and challenge it. Don’t worry. I’ll go into all those topics really, really deeply in this podcast, in Fit Has No Size in future episodes, but this gives you a basic idea what is it I’m talking about.
What if you did this? What if you looked at whatever movement pattern you want to do? What if you connect to it with something that you’ve always want to do and took away anything that was about your size, or your ability, or how you used to do things, but like something that aligned with how you want to feel like fun, or happy, or sassy, or whatever? Whatever your words are. What if you found something that was fitness related that aligned with that?
What if you always wanted to dance? “Oh, but I have two left feet,” or, “I used to be a dancer and now I’m not,” or, “Oh, I’m really shy about moving my body,” but what if you just learned to move your body freely to music? What if you just did it without any expectations, without any self-judgment, and just did it from a place that you throw your head back, and when you have two left feet, you laugh about it, you’re not worried about perfection, you understand you’re just starting out, that it takes time to learn these steps, or you crank up the music to your favorite radio station, or Spotify, or whatever it is, playlist, and you just move your body? “But I can’t do that. I have kids. I don’t want my family to see.”
You know what I found over and over again? Especially with moms, I’ve taught this too, and I tell this to a lot of women. I found it’s not uncommon for the spouse to join them, and it’s definitely not uncommon for their kids to join them. Their kids begin to learn, and we begin to break the cycle that we can move our bodies the way we want to, and they find pure joy. When your kids are around you finding pure joy or if you have fur babies and the puppy is jumping all around, he’s super happy, and you’re up and dancing even if it’s just for a minute, if you compare to maybe what you used to do maybe a week before, did you take that minute and danced with your puppy or your kids? You probably didn’t.
That is freaking progress, and I bet you it made you feel good, and you didn’t have to think about it because your brain was naturally beginning to release all these chemicals like dopamine, and serotonin, and endorphins. I’m not a scientist, but you can do the research. The bottom line is when you move your body, things begin to happen. They begin to align with how we want to feel and they feel freaking good.
What if you just started right there? What happens over and over again, we connect fitness in its own bucket, and it’s got to be some form of punishment, and feeling deprived, and doesn’t feel good, or we’ll say things like, “I get bored easily,” or, “I can’t stay committed to it for a long period of time. I fall off track at three weeks.” That’s why the gym, like gym memberships are like on point like it is crazy leading into January 1st. Right?
You couldn’t find a parking space like it is a gym workout just to get to the gym because you have to park so far out, unless you’re one of those people like myself that would just lapse the parking lot until I find a closer parking space, but it was like a workout just to get into the gym, and if you haven’t had your fitness in a while, that was for sure workout. Then, by week three, you could like literally like pull your car into the front door. Like it’s that simple. Like it’s that open.
Well, that’s because statistically, most people fall off track on their fitness journey by week three. How do those people keep moving forward after week three? It’s not motivation. They don’t have something you don’t possess. As a matter of fact, there’s something in your life, there’s something that you’ve done that regardless of what was going on, because it feel good, or it was something important, or it involves somebody’s life that come hell or high water, you sought through. It was important enough to you.
Can you think of it, that thing, that thing that you fought for or that you love doing? Same exact mechanism. It’s no different. You’ve done it at least once in your life, at least once in your life, so how do you go back to losing the weight between your ears, and getting your body moving, and staying consistent and motivated? Right? Forget the motivation. Get rid of the word. Find another word. Find another word for motivation. Something else. Something that feels good. Something that aligns with how you want to feel.
Figure out. How do you want to feel? How do you want this to feel for you? Then, be willing to go and try something, anything, whatever it is that looks like fun, whatever it is you think will be fun, and if it’s not, you just date … You’re not even dating it. You’re like courting it. You’re like thinking about it like you don’t have to stay committed to it. If it’s not for you, it’s not for you, but warning, that thing that you’ve always hated doing in fitness or you swore you would never do, once your fitness finesse begins to evolve over time, don’t be surprised if you go back to it and end up loving it. True story. Myself and a bunch of other people that I know. It happens all the time. It’s so weird because we evolve in our fitness. We want to become more challenged in it, and I’m just using fitness as an example right now.
The bottom line is this. Focusing on how you want to feel. Focusing on losing the weight between the ears. Forget about what’s going on in your body because here’s the deal. When we feel good, when we feel good, we love how we feel, and if we love how we feel, we love who we are, and if we love who we are, we take care of the things that we love.
How many thing in your life that when you love it like if you’re moving like you like … If you’re going to move, you’re going to pack it up. It’s like wrapped up in bubble wrap, and then if it’s something that has maybe like … it’s like a vase or something. You’ve shoved it full. You don’t shove it. You like gently put in all those bubble wrap, make sure that it’s like very taken care of. Like this one tiny vase may actually take like a big chair’s box worth, right? Like you’ve got bubble wrap. You’ve got … What other things? Little peanut things in there. You name it. Like this thing is way cushioned for this one single vase. Why? Because you love it. Because it matters. Because it’s important. Because it makes you feel good. It makes you feel those things.
Now, what if we did that for ourselves? When we love ourselves, we take care of ourselves, and what that is for you is unique to you, is undefined, and you might find some philosophies out there you identify with. You don’t have to take everything in. Pick and choose the parts that matter to you. Create your own individual you. What’s important to you? What does that self-love look like to you? What does that feel like to you? What do you call it? What are the aspects involved with it?
It’s about self-love, and a lot of times, people say, “Oh, I don’t know how to love myself or speak kindly to myself,” and those … Again, that is all a process, but if I can simply teach you to gently move your body in something that’s fun that aligns with the way that you want to feel, you will be amazed at how that one simple thing, even if you could only do it for a minute or two, how that one simple thing and the changes that happen on like a … What is it? Like a biomechanical level? I hate to even use words like that because I’m probably using it wrong, but basically like deep down on a cellular level like the endorphin, and the serotonin, and the dopamine. Like all those things begin to do the things they’re supposed to, which begins to make us feel good.
How likely are you to continue doing it or to come back to it because today may be one or two minutes, but tomorrow could be three to five minutes? A year from now, you could be doing a full hour or even teaching it, but here’s the thing. When you begin to align how you want to feel with activities through something as simple as fitness, be warned. It will begin to seep into every part of your life. You become uber aware of it, and you become uber important to yourself, and your self-love begins to grow.
Once you know and you can identify how that feels, now, when you start doing things that don’t feel good or don’t align with the way you want to feel, you begin to take notice instead of going through life in this haze, and numb, and not putting yourself and how you feel as the most important thing. It raises your awareness, so self-forgiveness followed by self-awareness followed by getting back on track. You will put yourself back on track because you can go back to this thing as simple as moving your body in fitness that aligns with how you want to feel and apply that to so many other areas of your life.
It is hugely impactful, life-changing, transformational. It’s not easy, but it’s simple, and if you enjoy the little non-scale victories and celebrate the little things as they happen, all those little things add up to the very big things that you want to have in your life. It may not be that exact number, but it’s not going to matter to you anymore. It may not be that exact size. It’s not going to matter to you anymore because you are more than a size, a weight, or even a date. What I mean by date? When we connect it to an event.
What if we focus on health gains, and self-love, and aligning how we want to feel with activities? What if that was a long-term thing? What if that was a life-long thing? Well, it can be, and it takes practice and a lot of failures because here’s the deal. When you make a commitment to your commitment, the universe is going to test your commitment to your commitment. Period. It’s just going to. There’s going to be all these times. There’s going to be these setbacks. There’s going to be these things that come back that are going to throw you off course, but if you continue with this idea of self-awareness followed by self-forgiveness and getting back on track, those setbacks really truly turn into a comeback, and you begin to have more and more examples of this as you progress in your life.
We did one thing. We focused on one aspect, the weight between the ears and not the weight on your body, but when you focus on the weight between your ears and focus on health gains, chances are things will to start to change in your body, but you’re no longer defined by them, and they’re not the thing that you’re chasing. They happened to be a byproduct of you taking better care of yourself from a place of self-love.
Our bodies are unique. Our journeys are unique. What not unique is that we’re all human beings, and we all have struggles, and that’s not size-exclusive. The problem isn’t the weight on our body. It’s the weight between our ears, and our lack of self-love for ourselves, and feeling that in order to make difference in our lives that it has to come with a level of self-punishment, self-hatred, feeling deprived, or what are those things are for you?
Here’s the deal. We’re all totally capable of breaking the cycle. Why? Because exactly how you go through life right now is a learned behavior. You learned how to emotionally eat, or numb yourself with food, or look at fitness as a negative. I mean, these are just examples. We learned how to do that. We practiced that philosophy and that mindset, and we kept doing the exact same things, expecting a different result, right? Like there’s another saying, “Keep doing the exact same things, expecting different results is the definition of insanity.” I think that was Benjamin Franklin. I think I actually know that.
The bottom line is this. You can break the cycle because the mechanism that you used to practice and learn how to live your life that way is the exact mechanism and practice for you to change the way you live your life right now, the way that you focus on your journey. How do I know this? Because I’ve worked with a lot of people. I’ve worked with people who are younger, and I’ve worked with people who are in their 60’s and their 70’s. Those who are like in their 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s like late 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s really want to prove me wrong, and they never do.
In fact, they always come back and say, “I thought this wasn’t going to be possible for me that who I am is who I am. I never thought in a million years that I’ll be able to make this transition of my way of thinking and to live the rest of my life the best of my life.” They were able to do that without resentment or regret for how they live their life before, but with looking forward because they learned a lot in their journey, and everything happens for a reason. It does.
You guys, the process is really, really simple. Now, I don’t want to leave you hanging on this podcast and like, “How do I do this? How do I get to the next level? How do I change what it is that I’m doing?” I want you to continue listening to the Fit Has No Size podcast, and I encourage you to connect with me on social media. Connect with me at Coach Tulin on Facebook, YouTube, and there’s one other place that you can connect me on. It will come back to me, and then for sure on Instagram, @iamtulin.
Also, comment down below. Let me know what stood out to you. Let me know what you’re going to apply. Let me know your aha, and let me know what you’re still struggling with because I want us to continue this conversation because it’s a very deep conversation. For those of you who want to be able to work with on a deeper level, you have that option too, but until the next time, I will see you on Fit Has No Size.
It’s Coach Tulin, and welcome to Fit Has No Size. Today, it’s all about the weight between your ears, and what does that mean? Well, let me take it back a step for a second. I am sure, if you are listening to this episode of Fit Has No Size, at some point in your life, you were on a quest to lose weight. Probably on a diet. Probably on several. Probably made some choices that is difficult for you to talk about.
For myself, I was anorexic. I took so many pills prescribed. I did a lot of things to live up to society’s ideal of what is beautiful and what a body should look like, and I took some very, very, very unhealthy steps in order to achieve that. Even as I was losing the weight, I was feeling more deprived. I was feeling more unhappy. It was difficult to stick to. It would drive me into incredible binges, and I couldn’t understand why my body was fighting against me, why I couldn’t look like everyone else, and why these things that I was doing wasn’t working. Like why couldn’t I get to where I want to go? Like I just needed to weigh X amount of pounds.
Well, that was the problem is that I thought life began at a number, that happiness was directly proportional or relational to your weight, how much you weighed, and that I could not be happy or enjoy life, and these are legitimately things that I said to myself, “Unless I weighed X amount of weight.” No matter where I was on the weight loss journey or where I was in the scale, no matter what, I was always incredibly unhappy, so unhappy. So unhappy in fact, I would stay really diligent for a while. Usually, because of self-abuse. It really was a way of trying to control myself and abusing myself, and then it would just get to the point where I would feel that I lost all my motivation and will power, and I would binge.
Here’s the reality. I was hungry. I was emotionally hungry. I was nutritionally hungry. I was physically hungry. I was hungry for relationships. I was hungry in so many different ways, and food was my resource to not feel better, but to not feel because I just didn’t like the way things felt, and happiness was so fleeting that even though I was happy for the moment, I knew the other shoe would drop, and shortly thereafter, I would be unhappy. I was just fighting for the wrong things.
Now, if you can identify with any of this, I would love to know in the comments of this podcast. I really want to connect with you and be able to dive deeper into these subjects, but let me explain to you about this idea of the weight between the ears and why I talk about this so much in my Fit Has No Size membership community, on my social media pages, why I say those words so often.
Here’s a dirty little secret. Not really, but let’s just look at this for a second. If you look up the CDC will say that 70%-plus of the population is considered overweight, and that number can fluctuate, right, from year to year, but basically, at any given time, it’s about 70% or over 70% of the population is overweight, but here’s what I’ve discovered. Hold on. Let me go back to the dirty little secret.
Dirty little secret, that’s the exact same data that is used from those who are manufacturers to say, “Look, over 70% of the population needs our clothing, and we need to have more specialized clothing.” Honestly, thank God for that because I am plus size and I’m very much in a journey, and I’m so grateful for those two words, “plus size,” because they gave me a voice, and they gave me something to search for, and they gave me something to connect with, and it gave me options in fashion and a lot of things, so I don’t have a negative bone in my body about the term “plus size.”
If you do, you’ve probably never had the battles of plus size women, so I’m going to encourage you to understand that they’re not two dirty little words. They really are words that gave women like myself a voice. It’s how people find me often about plus size exercise modifications, and plus size in PCOS, and plus size fitness fashion. Et cetera, et cetera. They often land on my YouTube channel at Coach Tulin. That’s just one example, and that was born out of this deep desire and quest to find someone like myself. As I used particular search terms that I very much identified with, I could find no one, so when I couldn’t find her, I became her.
I’m very grateful for a group of people that continued to put these solutions online that as we look for particular things we struggle with that we can find them, and we can use a [Alysa’s 00:04:55] words, but the reality is it’s the same data, so the data is saying that we’re more susceptible to heart disease and things like that. When you’re plus size, for example, there’s a good possibility you’d be plus size for a good portion of your journey, portion of your journey. Okay?
It’s not like all of a sudden, you hit a size, and everything is magically better. Okay? It’s not about a size. It’s about your health, so the health and fitness industry or the medical community will say, “Oh my gosh, over 70% of the population is overweight and they have all these health risks, et cetera.” Okay? Nodding. True. The plus size clothing industry will utilize that statistic to say, “Look at all these people who need our clothing. We should offer better clothing options. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Treat her more respectfully. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” 100% true. I totally agree with that.
Then, the health and fitness industry will use that and say, “Look at all these people who could really utilize these products.” Right? “Utilize this service, utilize this workout, utilize this diet.” Okay. I’m not the diet girl either, but let’s just be real. Okay? Often times, in the health and fitness industry, the people in the companies who put these things together are really heart-centered. They’re lead to do this for a reason. Okay? Something in their own personal life. Somebody connected to them. They had a passion and drive to put something together that they really want to make a difference in people’s lives. Okay? That’s pretty freaking cool.
Are there exceptions to the rule? There’s exceptions in all these industries, but the reality is the same 70% of the population we’re talking about, and if you’re listening to this podcast, you’re probably in that statistic, and/or you know someone, or someone you love, or a friend, or something. Okay? It’s basically 7 out of 10 people, right? Chances are we know someone or we are that someone, so how do we take the guilt and the shame, et cetera, et cetera out of it? First of all, you are not a mistake. Your body is amazing, and nearly every plus size women that I have personally coached on this journey are pretty much badass. They have gotten through some stuff and gotten to the other side of it, so where does the weight between the ears lie in all of this, and what does that mean?
Well, 70% of the population is overweight, right? However it’s being defined by any of those industries. I truly believe that 99.9% of the population has weight to lose between the ears, that we’re fighting and working towards the wrong thing, the thing that makes us unhappy and deprived, and is difficult to maintain long-term, and that does not come with a size. Much like Fit Has No Size, in this podcast, the things that you connect to Fit Has No Size, the weight between the ears is not size, or struggle, or sex, or gender. It’s not exclusive. Many of us struggle with these thoughts that hold us back from our goals, and that, ladies and gentlemen, is the weight between the ears. That is what’s holding us back from where we want to go.
In my Fit Has No Size community, we have recently talked about this idea that … Well, here’s the truth. Here’s how it goes. We all have a certain way we want to feel. That’s really important to us. Okay? Like super important to us, so like for me, it’s joy. Now, that is not a word I ever use on the regular. It was actually something that came up recently for me maybe during the holidays if I’m saying like a song, but really, it wasn’t a word that I said easily. It recently started coming up.
I started to realize this on very difficult times, and especially when I had my shingles, and I was … I had my vision affected by it. I was finding the joy in a terrible situation. Now, my anxiety, my depression was on fire. I wasn’t able to work for a few months because of it, and I ran my own business together with my husband, so that greatly affected us, but it was really weird. I kept finding the joy, which is a true testament to the work I’ve done to the weight between the ears because somewhere along the lines, I realized that I can find joy in the most difficult moments.
While maybe I wasn’t able to find happiness and I was always searching for happiness that it would come and go so fast, and I want it to stay with me at all times, I found that joy was one of those things that even in a deep, dark time that I can find the joy. Even in something difficult that I could find the joy, and I kept telling my husband where we moved into this home, right? Like after having been broke and homeless, and rebuilding our lives, and living in this apartment, this little, tiny apartment with the three of us … sorry, the four of us. I don’t know. I have two kids. I don’t know which one I just forgot about.
As we were living in this small apartment rebuilding our lives, and we made the move into this home, I lost my mind. I really became very afraid. All the weight that I lost between my ears started rushing back. I also call it the gremlin. Do you guys remember the movie Gremlin? It was something like you couldn’t feed the gremlin water after midnight. There’s like the cute little gizmo, and there’s also the big ugly gremlin. Well, I call it the gremlin, so I clearly was feeding this gremlin when I wasn’t supposed to. Now, I haven’t watched the movie in a long time, but you get the gist, right?
The reality was, all of a sudden, it started flooding back to me, but because I’ve done so much work between my ears, I had an amazing sense of self-awareness, followed by self-forgiveness. I was able to pick myself back up and get back on track. Did I keep falling off track? Yes, I did, but what didn’t happen is I didn’t spiral out of control, and I had this incredible sense of self. This is what I teach in fitness. It’s the weight between the ears, so I hope that you’re hearing is that once you lose the weight between the ears, it doesn’t go away forever. You just quiet the voice.
The gremlin becomes the gizmo, and from a loud monster, it goes in this cute little whisper. It’s like there, but if you feed it with these negative thoughts and all of a sudden, not connect to what’s important to you like how you want to feel, these activities that you in your life, or these people that you have connected, or your job, or whatever, it grows very, very quickly.
Now, I spent most of my life being a master at spiraling out of control. Now, I become a master of having a setback, realizing a setback is a setup for a comeback, right? I love that saying, and then being able to take those simple steps like I told you. Self-awareness followed by self-forgiveness, and then pick myself up and get back on track. That’s been huge for me. Huge, but the weight between our ears is what’s holding us back, not our bodies.
As a matter of fact, I teach people how to lose the weight between their ears, and then I say, “But I can’t be responsible if there’s a change in your scale like you might notice something,” and it happens all the time. This is not a guarantee. They have to do the work, but all of them come in with massive stories, struggles. I mean, like your heart breaks, and I really feel the struggle. Like I really do like my heart breaks, but to see them be able to make that transition is really something spectacular because it is not about perfection. It’s about the progression, and it’s about the progress in making and losing the weight between the ears, and when you have setback, to have the realization and to get back on track.
It’s very, very simple, but when we start losing the weight between our ears, also, what happens is the weight begins to … We begin to lose weight off our body. It just naturally begins to happen. Now, you can test me on it, and you should. You should totally put this into practice. You should go give this a shot for a period of time. Go ahead. Try to prove me wrong, but I promise you, if you practice it, something is going to change.
Instead of chasing the scale and the number on the scale, one of the things that I did is I began to focus on health gains. When I focused on health gains instead of weight loss and non-scale victories instead of scale victories, things really began to change. The scale no longer ruled me. Now, I went from being a scale junky to the scale is absolutely the devil, and then my scale couldn’t weigh me anymore, so it only went up to 350 pounds. We knew that I was somewhere between 350 and 400 pounds because I would gain weight so quickly, especially as a woman with PCOS or Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. We figured I was about 375 pounds.
Now, the exact amount of weight doesn’t matter, but I remember, I remember getting close. I remember hitting 250 and going, “Oh my gosh, I’m sliding into three.” I’m getting so close to 300, 380, 390 … or I’m sorry, 200. I’m using the wrong numbers, but you get the gist, right? Like as I’m sliding into it like 250, then 260, 270. Oh my gosh, 300 is right there, and it was like … I was almost like … Because I was so focused on that, I was driving myself into 300, and then I hit the 300 mark, and then I’m like, “Oh my gosh, I need to get away from 300,” but instead, I stepped over the other way.
I was too focused on the numbers and because I didn’t have the strong mindset that I have now and put it into practice … Where I focused, my energy flowed, right? It’s another saying. These are all things that I hold near and dear to my heart. I wish I could quote exactly who says these things, but I’m sure the things that you’ve heard, and so where I focused, my energy flowed. Sure enough, exactly what I didn’t want to have happened began to happen, and it was happening really rapidly.
When I focused on health gains versus weight loss, non-scale victories versus scale victories, I went, like I said, from being on the scale all the time to the scale is the devil to realizing the scale actually had a valuable piece of data for me, so did my past, so did all my past failures, and I’ll talk about that in an upcoming podcast, but believe me when I tell you that everything you’ve been through in your past, every failure, I want you to start thinking as a dataset. We’ll talk about that here. Coming up soon in a future podcast.
My weight, my body wasn’t the problem. It was how I thought about it. It was where I was focused. The weight between the ears kept me from where I wanted to go, so here’s another way the weight between the ears began to manifest. I had things in my life that I really, really wanted. I want to feel safe and secure. I remember I said that to a therapist that I love. I said that to her. I said, “I want to feel safe and secure.”
Now, my therapist has got an amazing freaking story of survival like it is almost difficult to share your struggles because you look at her knowing her struggles, and you’re like, “I’m not sure if what I’m going through is anything compared to what you’re going through.” You’re almost embarrassed, right, but you have to remind yourself like, “Everybody’s pain is their pain. Everybody’s struggle is their struggle.” She said to me, “What do you want?” I said, “I want to feel safe and secure,” and she said to me, “The world has never been safe and secure,” and I went, “Oh, snap.”
First of all, I’m really paying attention to her telling me this because her world was not safe and secure, and I was working towards the wrong thing. I was trying to get to the point to where that I would hit this like … this level like almost like a video game like gamification of like your mindset, right? Like I would hit this level of my journey that once I hit there, I would never have to go back like I would never look back. Like I figured this out, and life would just change. I would hit my like happy point, my safe and secure point, and I would never go back to any of my old feelings again or any of my old struggles. That’s not the way the world works, and she was right. I was working towards being safe and secure.
As I started focusing on how I want to feel, how do I want to feel in relationships? How do I want to feel with people around me, or the work that I do, or where my passions lie? When I focused on how I want to feel and the importance of that, guess what happens? It’s the equivalent of motivation. Like how many of you guys are waiting for motivation to happen? It doesn’t come. It doesn’t exist, and nobody really has it, but if you focus on how you want to feel during your activities, during your conversations in life, you begin to put an importance on yourself, and what that does it begins to turn into self-love. Why? Because how you feel is important and your worth is important, and this freaking matters, and you matter, and how you feel matters. Why do we continue to play in the field that’s like we don’t like being here? It doesn’t feel good. This feels badly for me. I don’t like the way this feels.
So many people do that with their fitness or their nutrition. We go over this in great detail in my Fit Has No Size community, and you’re probably wondering like, “How do I get involved with Fit Has No Size community?” Don’t worry about it. I will be letting you know how to do that, but I want to tell you how important it is. We spend quite a bit of time on feeling, and here’s what I found over and over again in the years that I’ve been coaching people on their journey.
How we feel is really important, so it’s like in one bucket like you can almost see me like having like … I’m very handsy when I speak, and I’m surprised I haven’t punched my microphone yet, but you know, this one bucket like how you want to feel. This is really important to you, and somehow we put fitness, and we use fitness as an example in another whole bucket, and the bucket is never touched. When we’re working out, as an example, on our fitness journey, we are looking at somebody else in their journey go, “I have to do what she’s doing because she’s lost the weight,” right, or, “She’s doing the things that I want, so I have to do this thing,” and I flipping hate it.
It does not align with how I want to feel. I don’t like the way it feels. I don’t like the way I feel. I am unhappy, and absolutely nothing about that fitness journey has anything to do with how you want to feel because we don’t understand that fitness comes in layers, and that modifications are key, and you grow in your ability, and how to work your ability and challenge it. Don’t worry. I’ll go into all those topics really, really deeply in this podcast, in Fit Has No Size in future episodes, but this gives you a basic idea what is it I’m talking about.
What if you did this? What if you looked at whatever movement pattern you want to do? What if you connect to it with something that you’ve always want to do and took away anything that was about your size, or your ability, or how you used to do things, but like something that aligned with how you want to feel like fun, or happy, or sassy, or whatever? Whatever your words are. What if you found something that was fitness related that aligned with that?
What if you always wanted to dance? “Oh, but I have two left feet,” or, “I used to be a dancer and now I’m not,” or, “Oh, I’m really shy about moving my body,” but what if you just learned to move your body freely to music? What if you just did it without any expectations, without any self-judgment, and just did it from a place that you throw your head back, and when you have two left feet, you laugh about it, you’re not worried about perfection, you understand you’re just starting out, that it takes time to learn these steps, or you crank up the music to your favorite radio station, or Spotify, or whatever it is, playlist, and you just move your body? “But I can’t do that. I have kids. I don’t want my family to see.”
You know what I found over and over again? Especially with moms, I’ve taught this too, and I tell this to a lot of women. I found it’s not uncommon for the spouse to join them, and it’s definitely not uncommon for their kids to join them. Their kids begin to learn, and we begin to break the cycle that we can move our bodies the way we want to, and they find pure joy. When your kids are around you finding pure joy or if you have fur babies and the puppy is jumping all around, he’s super happy, and you’re up and dancing even if it’s just for a minute, if you compare to maybe what you used to do maybe a week before, did you take that minute and danced with your puppy or your kids? You probably didn’t.
That is freaking progress, and I bet you it made you feel good, and you didn’t have to think about it because your brain was naturally beginning to release all these chemicals like dopamine, and serotonin, and endorphins. I’m not a scientist, but you can do the research. The bottom line is when you move your body, things begin to happen. They begin to align with how we want to feel and they feel freaking good.
What if you just started right there? What happens over and over again, we connect fitness in its own bucket, and it’s got to be some form of punishment, and feeling deprived, and doesn’t feel good, or we’ll say things like, “I get bored easily,” or, “I can’t stay committed to it for a long period of time. I fall off track at three weeks.” That’s why the gym, like gym memberships are like on point like it is crazy leading into January 1st. Right?
You couldn’t find a parking space like it is a gym workout just to get to the gym because you have to park so far out, unless you’re one of those people like myself that would just lapse the parking lot until I find a closer parking space, but it was like a workout just to get into the gym, and if you haven’t had your fitness in a while, that was for sure workout. Then, by week three, you could like literally like pull your car into the front door. Like it’s that simple. Like it’s that open.
Well, that’s because statistically, most people fall off track on their fitness journey by week three. How do those people keep moving forward after week three? It’s not motivation. They don’t have something you don’t possess. As a matter of fact, there’s something in your life, there’s something that you’ve done that regardless of what was going on, because it feel good, or it was something important, or it involves somebody’s life that come hell or high water, you sought through. It was important enough to you.
Can you think of it, that thing, that thing that you fought for or that you love doing? Same exact mechanism. It’s no different. You’ve done it at least once in your life, at least once in your life, so how do you go back to losing the weight between your ears, and getting your body moving, and staying consistent and motivated? Right? Forget the motivation. Get rid of the word. Find another word. Find another word for motivation. Something else. Something that feels good. Something that aligns with how you want to feel.
Figure out. How do you want to feel? How do you want this to feel for you? Then, be willing to go and try something, anything, whatever it is that looks like fun, whatever it is you think will be fun, and if it’s not, you just date … You’re not even dating it. You’re like courting it. You’re like thinking about it like you don’t have to stay committed to it. If it’s not for you, it’s not for you, but warning, that thing that you’ve always hated doing in fitness or you swore you would never do, once your fitness finesse begins to evolve over time, don’t be surprised if you go back to it and end up loving it. True story. Myself and a bunch of other people that I know. It happens all the time. It’s so weird because we evolve in our fitness. We want to become more challenged in it, and I’m just using fitness as an example right now.
The bottom line is this. Focusing on how you want to feel. Focusing on losing the weight between the ears. Forget about what’s going on in your body because here’s the deal. When we feel good, when we feel good, we love how we feel, and if we love how we feel, we love who we are, and if we love who we are, we take care of the things that we love.
How many thing in your life that when you love it like if you’re moving like you like … If you’re going to move, you’re going to pack it up. It’s like wrapped up in bubble wrap, and then if it’s something that has maybe like … it’s like a vase or something. You’ve shoved it full. You don’t shove it. You like gently put in all those bubble wrap, make sure that it’s like very taken care of. Like this one tiny vase may actually take like a big chair’s box worth, right? Like you’ve got bubble wrap. You’ve got … What other things? Little peanut things in there. You name it. Like this thing is way cushioned for this one single vase. Why? Because you love it. Because it matters. Because it’s important. Because it makes you feel good. It makes you feel those things.
Now, what if we did that for ourselves? When we love ourselves, we take care of ourselves, and what that is for you is unique to you, is undefined, and you might find some philosophies out there you identify with. You don’t have to take everything in. Pick and choose the parts that matter to you. Create your own individual you. What’s important to you? What does that self-love look like to you? What does that feel like to you? What do you call it? What are the aspects involved with it?
It’s about self-love, and a lot of times, people say, “Oh, I don’t know how to love myself or speak kindly to myself,” and those … Again, that is all a process, but if I can simply teach you to gently move your body in something that’s fun that aligns with the way that you want to feel, you will be amazed at how that one simple thing, even if you could only do it for a minute or two, how that one simple thing and the changes that happen on like a … What is it? Like a biomechanical level? I hate to even use words like that because I’m probably using it wrong, but basically like deep down on a cellular level like the endorphin, and the serotonin, and the dopamine. Like all those things begin to do the things they’re supposed to, which begins to make us feel good.
How likely are you to continue doing it or to come back to it because today may be one or two minutes, but tomorrow could be three to five minutes? A year from now, you could be doing a full hour or even teaching it, but here’s the thing. When you begin to align how you want to feel with activities through something as simple as fitness, be warned. It will begin to seep into every part of your life. You become uber aware of it, and you become uber important to yourself, and your self-love begins to grow.
Once you know and you can identify how that feels, now, when you start doing things that don’t feel good or don’t align with the way you want to feel, you begin to take notice instead of going through life in this haze, and numb, and not putting yourself and how you feel as the most important thing. It raises your awareness, so self-forgiveness followed by self-awareness followed by getting back on track. You will put yourself back on track because you can go back to this thing as simple as moving your body in fitness that aligns with how you want to feel and apply that to so many other areas of your life.
It is hugely impactful, life-changing, transformational. It’s not easy, but it’s simple, and if you enjoy the little non-scale victories and celebrate the little things as they happen, all those little things add up to the very big things that you want to have in your life. It may not be that exact number, but it’s not going to matter to you anymore. It may not be that exact size. It’s not going to matter to you anymore because you are more than a size, a weight, or even a date. What I mean by date? When we connect it to an event.
What if we focus on health gains, and self-love, and aligning how we want to feel with activities? What if that was a long-term thing? What if that was a life-long thing? Well, it can be, and it takes practice and a lot of failures because here’s the deal. When you make a commitment to your commitment, the universe is going to test your commitment to your commitment. Period. It’s just going to. There’s going to be all these times. There’s going to be these setbacks. There’s going to be these things that come back that are going to throw you off course, but if you continue with this idea of self-awareness followed by self-forgiveness and getting back on track, those setbacks really truly turn into a comeback, and you begin to have more and more examples of this as you progress in your life.
We did one thing. We focused on one aspect, the weight between the ears and not the weight on your body, but when you focus on the weight between your ears and focus on health gains, chances are things will to start to change in your body, but you’re no longer defined by them, and they’re not the thing that you’re chasing. They happened to be a byproduct of you taking better care of yourself from a place of self-love.
Our bodies are unique. Our journeys are unique. What not unique is that we’re all human beings, and we all have struggles, and that’s not size-exclusive. The problem isn’t the weight on our body. It’s the weight between our ears, and our lack of self-love for ourselves, and feeling that in order to make difference in our lives that it has to come with a level of self-punishment, self-hatred, feeling deprived, or what are those things are for you?
Here’s the deal. We’re all totally capable of breaking the cycle. Why? Because exactly how you go through life right now is a learned behavior. You learned how to emotionally eat, or numb yourself with food, or look at fitness as a negative. I mean, these are just examples. We learned how to do that. We practiced that philosophy and that mindset, and we kept doing the exact same things, expecting a different result, right? Like there’s another saying, “Keep doing the exact same things, expecting different results is the definition of insanity.” I think that was Benjamin Franklin. I think I actually know that.
The bottom line is this. You can break the cycle because the mechanism that you used to practice and learn how to live your life that way is the exact mechanism and practice for you to change the way you live your life right now, the way that you focus on your journey. How do I know this? Because I’ve worked with a lot of people. I’ve worked with people who are younger, and I’ve worked with people who are in their 60’s and their 70’s. Those who are like in their 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s like late 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s really want to prove me wrong, and they never do.
In fact, they always come back and say, “I thought this wasn’t going to be possible for me that who I am is who I am. I never thought in a million years that I’ll be able to make this transition of my way of thinking and to live the rest of my life the best of my life.” They were able to do that without resentment or regret for how they live their life before, but with looking forward because they learned a lot in their journey, and everything happens for a reason. It does.
You guys, the process is really, really simple. Now, I don’t want to leave you hanging on this podcast and like, “How do I do this? How do I get to the next level? How do I change what it is that I’m doing?” I want you to continue listening to the Fit Has No Size podcast, and I encourage you to connect with me on social media. Connect with me at Coach Tulin on Facebook, YouTube, and there’s one other place that you can connect me on. It will come back to me, and then for sure on Instagram, @iamtulin.
Also, comment down below. Let me know what stood out to you. Let me know what you’re going to apply. Let me know your aha, and let me know what you’re still struggling with because I want us to continue this conversation because it’s a very deep conversation. For those of you who want to be able to work with on a deeper level, you have that option too, but until the next time, I will see you on Fit Has No Size.
The content in this podcast is such an eye opener. Coach Tulin shows us how the wieght between our ears really can stop us from moving forward in a journey to becoming fit. Holding on to old baggage and a negative way of thinking can be changed. Very up lifting and life changing. Simply inspiring.