Advice Column

The Curiosity Diet

June 01, 2022 Lisa Liguori Season 2 Episode 6
Advice Column
The Curiosity Diet
Show Notes Transcript

Are you self-destructing but don't know how to stop? A shame spiral can be hard to get out of. Hear how Coach Jon cured himself of food addiction, lost 120 lbs., and healed emotionally, after a trauma that left him hospitalized. Learn the tools you can use to escape the pain and shame spiral that comes from self-soothing in unproductive ways. In this conversation you'll learn how to do that through having "curious conversations" with yourself. 

About Our Guest: Jonathan McLernon
Coach Jon survived an attempted murder and lost his life savings. He gained over 120 pounds in six months and was suffering from anxiety attacks. His remarkable story takes us through his journey to rebuild himself from the ground up. 

Today he uses his learning from that journey to help people change their habits through understanding "brain-driven" weight loss and the principles of permanent behavior change and the compassion of human connection.

Connect with Coach Jonathan McLernon 

Connect with Lisa Liguori (Host)

Let's Stay Connected!

Jonathan McLernon
I fell into binge eating food addiction and gained about 120 pounds in a six month span. I didn't want to hate myself, but I didn't really know a way out of it either.

Lisa Liguori
Hello friend, welcome to advice column where we come together to share our stories. So we can learn from each other's life experiences and remind each other that we're not alone in what we're going through. If you're hurting inside and have been a nest of tightening that pain with habits that leave you feeling disappointed with yourself.

And if you feel embarrassed by your behavior, And just don't know how to get yourself outof the hole you're digging, then you and I are in the same boat. And I am so helpful that this conversation will be the soothing balm for your soul. That it was for mine. In this episode, we're talking with my new friend, coach John, we're continuing a thread as conversations about how to practice self-love from a practical point of view, because it's such an abstract term, but seems so important to living a healthy life emotionally.

You're going to hear coach John's story of how he suffered a terrible trauma, gained 120 pounds in just six months and went on a journey to figure out how to process and heal his pain in order to regain his physical health. And then the profound discoveries he made in the process. So that you can use those learnings to serve you as you navigate the uncomfortable waters that inevitably come in some moments of life. Let's dive right into the conversation.

Jonathan McLernon
My name is Jonathan McLernon and I run a company called freedom nutrition coaching. That was actually born of my own personal stuff. Uh, a little over 11 years ago, I went through a traumatic experience when I was living in South Africa. And I wasn't really that well-equipped to go through traumas from an emotional standpoint.

I didn't know how to process what I was doing, what I was feeling. So I fell into a binge eating sort of food addiction and gained about 120 pounds in a six month span. And I went from being athletic to being morbidly obese. So that's quite a dramatic physical shiftto go through, especially after going through the emotional and mental struggles that I went through as well, that really laid the groundwork for the number of years of struggle and trying to find my way out of it.

I have a scientific research background. So I was looking a lot to nutrition science and supplement science and very cerebral approach to trying to solve the struggles that I was facing. And it wasn't getting me to where I wanted to go. And there was when I found a coach about five years ago in 2017. He really worked with me to, to heal my relationship with myself and really show me what it can look like from a masculine perspective.

And it made a dramatic difference for me. Uh, my relationship moving forward and really even how I coach and work with people has by extension of that,

Lisa Liguori
I struggle so much with food and I didn't have a traumatic event, but my whole life I've cycled between just disciplining myself, but never really healing the underlying issue and then rebelling and not doing that. So in the last year and a half probably gained 75 poundsand it's hard on so many levels. So I'm fascinated by your experience. And one thing as I've just begun researching is I keep hearing people say that there is a connection between self-love and addictive behaviors.

Really came out of left field to me. I was like, what do these things have to do together? So tell me more, how did you feel after the traumatic event? What's the emotional state that, that leave you in?

Jonathan McLernonI would say probably an emotional wreck would be an accurate description because after trauma and PTSD, which is post-traumatic stress disorder, There's a lot of reprocessing that takes place reliving of the experience, trying to make sense of what happened in an event that you can't really make sense of.

There was nothing I had done to bring that about. I didn't ask to be born with the skin color was or things like that. It was a racial related violent attack. And to try to reconcile that in itself was really difficult, but there's a lot of other major emotions that I would get flooded with rage in particular, just the sense of injustice unfairness that I would have to go through an experience like that.

And our brains are really interesting because, you know, I say that all behavior makes sense and I don't mean that all behavior is ideal, but if we understand the emotional backstory and how the brain works, the behaviors that show up, they start to have almost a logical reason behind it, even if it seems illogical on the surface.

So for me, food is a way to immediately change the channel in my head. Sort of like, I call it an emotional anesthetic, a way to escape the discomfort I was presently experiencing. And the moment we start doing that, the brain learns something. I feel stressed. I eat food. I feel better. Bingo. We've learned something because our brains are.

Fascinating computers in a sense, and they're very good at learning. And one of the ways that we learn is through the neurotransmitter dopamine and pleasure. So when we eat, say a high bliss food, maybe it's like cookies or chips or something like that, a highly processed, hyper palatable food that creates a dopamine response in the brain.

And just from a very basic neuroscience perspective, we've learned a behavior and, and one of the more primal parts of our brain. Its desire is to escape the feeling of discomfort. And so you put these pieces together and you go, okay, this behavior actually makes sense. Even though from maybe a logical outside perspective, you go, it makes no sense to be eating in a self destructive fashion, but once we sort of connect the dots we go, aha.

I know why this behavior is occurring.

Lisa Liguori
That makes so much sense to me that if it seems illogical it's because we don't see the whole picture.

Jonathan McLernon
And I think that's a really good way to frame it. Even the perpetrators who did what they did to me, their behavior in a sense makes sense. It doesn't excuse the behavior. It doesn't mean that I'm absolving them of responsibility for what they did, but why they did it make sense.

And that was maybe even one of the things that helped me to start moving past. The struggle of that experience was really actually to try to cultivate a sense of forgiveness forthem. And again, forgiveness, wasn't about absolving them for what they did. I never saw them again, but it was really about setting myself free.

So being able to relive the experience and not be triggered, not feel rage or wanting vengeance or things like that, but just letting go of it and even not making it about me. Because it wasn't, they didn't know me. I didn't know them. It was not about me, the individual human being. I say that I was a representation of something they felt had historically oppressed them.

Lisa Liguori
I love that you have translated such a painful thing in your life into helping others. So how did you go from using food to change the channel in your brain? To healing yourself, changing that dynamic and then helping others. Cause that seems like an extraordinary distance from one to the other.

Jonathan McLernon
And that's quite an astute observation.

It is quite a gap between being a binge, eating food addict and healing that, and it certainly wasn't a straight line. And I think sometimes there's a temptation when we hear maybe stories like something like I've been through where like other people have been through in difficult experiences. We kind of want to know, is there a template there?

Can I learn from you what you did and follow the steps you followed and maybe use that to solve my problem. And it never really quite works like that. So it was a really, really bumpy road. So, you know, maybe the first step was forgiving the individuals for what theyhad done. But then because of physical state, I had found myself in and I'd never been in a state like this before.

It almost felt like I was trapped in my own body. I had feelings like my body had betrayed me. And so I started to develop a real, self-loathing really a deep hatred for my body connected to the deep shame I felt. And even the guilt I felt for getting into that physical condition when I had. The knowledge to not be in that condition and to actually be in a very healthy state.

So there was this gap between what I know and what I do, and that in itself was a really difficult one to try to bridge.

And so I tried to solve this problem through logic. Let me try and remove the emotion fromthis and try and solve it through purely logic. From a cerebral perspective, that was kind oflike an attempt to escape, the uncomfortable reality escape, feeling, the uncomfortable emotion. And ultimately what it boiled down to is there isn't really a way out of feeling difficult emotions.

At some point they have to be a tablet that we have to move through them. We have to be willing to be uncomfortable. And so I had to start to cultivate this sense of resilience in theface of difficult emotions, if ever I wasn't going to impulsively turn to food, to use it as an emotional anesthetic to try to numb what I was feeling.

And that in itself was a really difficult process.

Lisa Liguori
How did you embark on that process?

Jonathan McLernon
It started with like, obviously I say obviously, um, maybe it isn't obvious, but I, I knew for one that I needed to lose weight just from a physical health standpoint, I knew that, okay, I've gotten myself into this physical state.

That's extremely unhealthy and I need to lose weight. And maybe I had this idea that if I could just lose the weight and change my physical condition, that I would stop hating myself. But along the way, I kind of started to realize while the two are connected, it's not exactly connected in a linear or a parallel fashion.

I could lose the weight, but I still had the self-loathing highly self-critical behaviors. And, well, it was really when I started working with a coach who I said, he modeled for me what compassion looks like, actually. So because I could starve myself into losing weight. I could go through an extremely restrictive process and lose the weight, but I can never keep it off.

And that really compounded the frustration because again, I didn't realize the problem wasn't me. The problem was the approaches I was trying to take. And there was no way possible that they were sustainable in the longterm as a way of living.

Lisa Liguori
What did that coach model that you saw that changed your thinking?

Jonathan McLernon
When I would come to him, you know, say we're going to do a check-in. And maybe I hadn't seen any physical progress, so I hadn't seen any weight loss, maybe even move backwards, gained a little bit of weight. And I was just in the thick of struggling with this behavior because there's always this gap between, I know what I should do.

I know I shouldn't do what I'm presently doing. And I don't know how to bridge that gap. And it's like, you have to go through it in a messy fashion. You will go two steps forward and one step back and three steps forward and two steps back. And so on. It's kind of part of the process because in a sense, what we're trying to do, neurologically speaking isunwire a behavior pattern.

We can't just make it a discipline. So what I was in the thick of struggling and feeling like I'm such a failure, uh, you, you know, almost like wanting them to push me away and maybe re echo what I was expressing. Tell me what a failure am. Tell me that I'm a loser. Tell me that this is hopeless. Tell me that I'm not going to succeed because that's what I feel right now.

And I actually want you to reinforce that. So I have an excuse to stop going through this really uncomfortable process of trying to create growth and transformation. And he wouldn't do that.

Yeah. So. He, he just got curious about my behavior without judgment and said, well, let's try to understand this. Let's remove this lens that you are a bad person. And let's say, howabout we look at this behavior and say, let's understand why this behavior is occurring. And when we remove the lens of you are a bad person.

Now we can actually see it more objectively. This behavior is an attempt to solve. So I would go back to that behavior made sense. It didn't mean it was helpful. It didn't mean it was a good long-term solution, but in a sense it was a solution to. Then we had to say, well, what is, what need is that behavior meeting?

So we kind of dive into that process, but ultimately it kind of boiled down to, he wasn't judging me the way that I was judging myself. He wasn't seeing me the way I saw myself. He wasn't treating me the way I treated myself. He showed me a degree of kindness and compassion for my human struggle. And I didn't know how to show it to myself, especially maybe it's not really a culturally taught thing for men to show themselves self-compassion and self-love we're kind of taught to beat ourselves up.

Anger is a very sort of safe masculine emotion. If I can put it. Even like beating myself up and the self-loathing that behavior existed for a reason. And in a sense, it was like an opportunity for me to, could we say, pay the price for the crime I've committed. Let's say maybe I ate an entire pizza. So I would go to this pizza shop and buy an entire pizza and eat it in my car, the whole thing.

And then I would just feel horrible and gross and disgusting and all kinds of language that I won't repeat. But it was like, I needed to pay the price for that behavior. And that was thebest way that I knew. Punish myself for the crime. So I wouldn't feel so much guilt. So it was actually a way of relieving the guilt.

So beating ourselves up, even that makes sense, because in one perspective, it's a way ofalleviating the guilt that we experienced, knowing we've just done a very, like maybe a harmful behavior. Yeah. So the opposite of that, so beating ourselves up, doesn't help us move forward. It's strange because we think if I punish myself that will help me to move forward, but that's not the case.

Instead compassion also relieved the guilt. So it said, okay, this is not because you're a horrible human being. It's not because you're, you know, a despicable waste of skin that shouldn't belong in this planet. It's because you're a normal, struggling human being. And so let's try to understand the behavior through that lens.

And then we can resolve that behavior and you can move forward.

So how do we start practicing self-love because boy, that was a, that was a tricky one, because again, it was something that really wasn't a part of my vocabulary. I thought self-love candles and bubble baths and eating chocolate or sipping wine or things like that. And nothing against those sorts of behaviors.

I was like, that's not self-love and certainly not anything I'm going to do, you know, but some of those behaviors aren't even really, self-love, they're self soothing and it's not the same thing.

Lisa Liguori
Tell me more about that.

Jonathan McLernon
Well, let's just say if a behavior makes you feel better in the moment, but it doesn't actually help you.

So eating half a pint of ice cream will feel good in the moment. And we can convince ourselves because it feels good in the moment that this is self-love as a self-love becauseI'm doing something that feels good for me in this. That's not self-love that's self-soothing because if we want to take a bit of an extreme leap here, but just to illustratethe point in a big way, consuming an illegal narcotic, like heroin or cocaine, two opposites, but both of those generate intense feelings of pleasure.

That's a very destructive behavior, but according to our brain, it feels really good in the moment, which is why the behavior gets repeat.

Lisa Liguori
So when you say, for example, a bubble bath, I know that a bubble bath isn't destructive, but sure. But you still would say that soothing versus self-love because it's a way to manage the feeling of.

At the feeling from its root. Yeah.

Jonathan McLernon
Well , I suppose I shouldn't make it sound as though I was picking on bubble bath. Cause Ithink there look, there's something about, it's almost like a pressure relief valve in one sense. So there is an element of soothing, but it's not a self soothing is inherently a bad thing in and of itself.

Right. And maybe in a bubble bath, if you were to, in that moment where you feel a little bit more relaxed, kind of start processing what you were feeling experiencing, you could actually turn it into, into a positive as well. And so. But I think it's, it's just taking an honest look at the behavior and saying, is this helping.

Or is this ultimately hurting me? So maybe we could actually create a contrast and say like, you know, eating a big piece of chocolate cake, the stereotypical, like eating our feelings versus something like that. Where if we'd use that as an opportunity to maybe decompress, maybe process what we're feeling, not necessarily try to escape the emotions and hide from them, but process them in a safe and a compassionate space.

Then we're much more moving forward. Maybe it's helpful to say, okay, well, what might self-love look like? And I'll say, okay, well, if we take one step back and go self-love is guided by a belief in self-loathing is guided by a belief. So I believe we could say as a thought that we hold to be true. And so it becomes a filter with which we explain our behaviors in one sense.

And so if I didn't believe that I was worthy of self-love. Then I wouldn't carry out that behavior. I would do something destructive instead because I believed that I was worthy of self-loathing a self destructive behavior, self harm, that kind of thing, because of who I saw myself to be. And so to try to change a belief in a very significant way will trigger a lot of, I call it the emotional brick wall.

It will trigger significant resistance in our brain, and it will do that because it feels like it's too much of a departure or too much of a gap between who we presently are and who we're trying to be. So if I was in the midst of struggling my self-loathing and self-hatred and self destructive behaviors, and my coach would have said to me, like, just get over it and just do this thing over here.

That would be entirely an unhelpful thing to say, because he's asking me to create a giant leap from the place I'm presently at. Like, stop doing that right now and go over here and start doing this thing over here.

So we kind of need to use small behaviors that almost slide in under the radar, so to speak. So something really simple, like brushing my teeth. Now you think, well, that's just a habit. Everybody does that. But brushing your teeth is an investment in yourself. It's an act of self-care. So if every morning I woke up, when I brushed my teeth, that was a small act of self care that was demonstrating or acting in alignment with this belief that I am worthy of self care, and then maybe added in drinking a couple glasses of water in the morning.

So start my morning with hydration. Start by by nourishing your hydrating, my body, another act of self. So, what actually became for me was really kind of these almost practical steps, but they were an indication that I felt like I was worthy of care because if I didn't care, I wouldn't brush my teeth and I wouldn't hydrate in the morning.

Maybe I would just start with a couple of coffees and, and, you know, carry on about my day. It might actually be helpful to use an analogy here to make this, make the picture a little bit more clear. So if you were to go to a circus, let's say a hundred years, And you seethis beautiful, magnificent elephant, like a five, 10 and 10,000 pound creature, big and powerful and strong.

It can pull down trees and you see it. Its leg is just tied to a little stake in the ground and you think, well, why doesn't he just pull it out of the ground and walk away? This big, powerful and magnificent beast. So strong yet being held in place by this little thing here, what we don't see is when the elephant was firstborn, maybe it was only 250 pounds, which were an orphan is very small and they would have tied it to a stake and maybe set the stake in concrete.

And so it would try and try and try to pull and break free. And it couldn't. And so because of that, it started to develop this belief. I am not strong enough to pull that stake out of theground. And eventually it just stopped trying. And so this belief starts at a very young age for that elephant. And to the point that even though it's transformed into this big powerful,strong, magnificent animal, it doesn't have the power or it believes sorry that it doesn't have the power to pull that stake out of the ground and walk away.

And so I use that illustration to highlight the power of the beliefs that we hold. And sometimes we don't even recognize that we are holding these beliefs or that these beliefs are influencing our behavior. So for example, if we don't believe that we're worthy of self-love like, I didn't believe I was worthy of that.

If we extend maybe my elephant story here to a human analogy, maybe it's the equivalent of having her leg tied to, uh, you know, like a survey stake, like one of those little one by twos in the orange ribbon on the top. And you're tied to something like that. And someonewould walk along and go, like, why don't you just pull that out of the ground, walk away, but in your mind, you're not strong enough to do that.

And so you just keep kind of keep walking circles around it, which as a metaphor for maybe a behavior pattern that plays out on. So the first step away that pulls out of the ground is a small action. That's contrary to that current belief that you hold. So the small action, in my case, might've been brushing my teeth.

That was the first little act of I'm shifting a belief that I hold. So I'm showing myself that I'm worthy of self-care and then every time that behavior gets repeated. Is another step away from the whole belief.

Lisa Liguori
There's a lot of wisdom in that. And I think it's interesting that you mentioned toothbrushing because yesterday I had to get three fillings and it wasn't just about the fillings. I felt really. Bad about it. And I realize it's tied to our whole deterioration and self care, including flossing over the last couple of years.

And I had a lot of shame around that. So I rescheduled getting my fillings three or four times, and I knew there was more to it than just a busy schedule. I had kind of intense emotion. So it's just amazing that you use the example of teeth, but it's a. Small micro habit during the day, but so representative, I think a valuing self care.

How did you arrive at this insight that you need to slip in some changes under the radar, that signal to yourself, your worth?

Jonathan McLernon
Well, it was a question from my coach at first, you know, I say the question that really changed my life. And it sounds like a bold thing to say, but a question was, he said, if you make a list of all the things you love and value, how far down the list do I go before I see your name?

So for me, my name wasn't on the list. So it wasn't that I was somewhere near the bottom.It was, I wasn't on the list. So really he was shining a light on the fact that the way that I presently saw myself, the belief I held was I'm not worthy in any sense of self-love. So there was no self love being. And I didn't brush my teeth regularly.

And so, you know, he asked the question, something along the lines of, well, what is one small thing you could do? So he, it wasn't prescriptive. It. Wasn't telling me what he thought I should do, but he just put the question forward to me. What is one way that you could practice an act of self care? That's really kind of small.

And so I brushing my teeth was what I came up with. If I could just do this one thing, it would feel like I started my day caring for myself.

Lisa Liguori
And how did that step lead to other steps with reprogramming months of soothing? How do you go from, okay, I'm going to start brushing my teeth to self-compassion self-love ona broader, more rooted level.

Jonathan McLernon
Yeah. And I think it's the case of, as we repeat an action, so our brain creates narratives orstories to explain our actions. And then over time, those stories morph into a belief and then a belief becomes a filter that we can see the world through. And so we could really say that every time I brushed my teeth, I was reinforcing this story that I'm worthy of self-care. And then, you know, then there was kind of the nudge. Okay, well, how do we build on that? Well, I could drink a glass of water every morning to start hydrating myself. And then how do we build on that? Is there a small little bit of activity you could do? Because we really, we understand it's not really, I think it's not really a secret what steps move us towards being healthy fit. For example, that was obviously one of my goals was to get healthier physically, but it was kind of framing it in a different way because in the past I had tried to do these behaviors because while I was supposed to, or I should, what we were doing though, is we were creating a deeper connection to these behaviors.

I call it an emotionally compelling reason because I didn't want to hate myself, but I didn't really know a way out of it either. Yeah. And maybe that's a struggle that a lot of people face is, is I don't know how to find my way out of this. It's all I know. And sometimes it would be as simple as I would catch myself falling into a pattern of thinking negatively andstarting to beat myself up.

And then it's ironic because then I'm like, well, I want to beat myself up over falling into the pattern of beating myself up, you know, so it almost from a, from a brain based perspective, it goes back to, we want. We can one type of neural connection and strength than another. So even if it wasn't somewhere near the end of my tirade against myself, if I could somehow interrupt it and just be aware that I was doing it because sometimes we even fall into these patterns of behavior unconsciously, without even realizing we're doing it.

So to create change, because I think in a sense that's part of what we're discussing here is how do we create change or transforming. And the first step really is we have to bring into our conscious awareness, the things that we're doing, because the way that our brainworks is when we repeat a behavior, the more times we repeat that behavior, the less conscious we are that we do it.

So the easier it becomes automatic, and we call it a habit. Well like self-loathing and beating yourself up in one sense is almost like a type of habit. It's a familiar pattern and it serves a purpose, but I would fall into it without even really thinking about it without even recognizing it. It's really like an element of mindfulness, right?

Becoming aware that this is something that I'm doing now, that's an uncomfortable thing in and of itself because I'm now becoming consciously aware of a problematic behavior that I have. So I'm becoming consciously aware that I'm doing this thing that is unhelpful or unhealthy for me. And now I have to try to see that without judging myself for it.

And that was hard. And then the inverse of it is kind of true as well. So when we want to establish a healthy way of living well, first it requires conscious efforts to carry out a healthy action. We need some kind of cue or some kind of reminder to do that.

So it takes at least 70 days to form a habit. If anybody's wondering the 21 days to form a habit is only sad because it feels a little more doable for people. But the truth is from a 70 to 250 days to form a habit

Lisa Liguori
I heard that recently, that that was based on one person's test. And it was under question that 21 day thing.

Jonathan McLernon
Yeah. But it's kind of like a heuristic that people are aware of. And so it, Hey, if it's the thing that gets them started on doing something helpful for themselves. Okay. I'm okay with that. But ultimately what they're going to learn is that 21 days isn't really long enough. It depends on the complexity of the habit of behavior we're trying to establish, but your minimum is, is around 70 days.

So a little over two months, and it can go, it can take as much as eight to 10 months to do this. And I don't think anybody should be discouraged by hearing that it's like, well, if this is a habit you're trying to develop it. Isn't something you just developed for a couple of months. This is, is this something you want to repeat for the rest of your life?

So who cares if it takes 10 months to solidly establish it? So kind of like reframe that perspective. So we have to consciously carry out the action first, but then over time it becomes a little bit more unconscious. And so it was almost a matter of identifying what behaviors could I do. And so kind of working with my coach to figure this out, and it's almost like we would go through this process of let's start with a principle.

Let's see how it works. You let me know if it triggers anything and we give feedback back and forth, and then we get adjusted and it's like the mark of someone who's going to be successful in trying to do this is not someone who throws away the first thing that doesn't work. But rather we look at it and go, okay, well, this isn't working in the way that we're presently doing it.

How could we potentially adjust this until we get to a place where it works for me?

Lisa Liguori
Yeah,

I give you so much credit for the courage that I imagine it took to do that investigative introspection that's sometimes uncomfortable. Yeah.

Jonathan McLernon
You know, I will say it's a lot more helpful doing it with a coach who, and it sounds such a cliche term, but held space really sat with me in the experience and said, I can't take the emotion away.

I can't fix this for you, but I'm going to sit with you in this and not leave you alone in your struggle.

Lisa Liguori
That's beautiful. And I have recently heard a lot of people using that expression hold space, and I wasn't quite sure what it meant. That's a beautiful image of what it actually looks like operation.

Jonathan McLernon
Yeah, cause we have so many east Sotera curve, slightly fluffy sounding terms that we're not quite sure. Well, what does this actually mean to hold space? Because we're not physically holding a handful of air here, but what we're actually doing is we're just in the presence of another human being free from judgment.

And one of the challenges we encounter, let's say if someone wants to work with me, one of the challenges I encounter and something that I try to reframe for people is. I'm not going to be the one to solve your problems. And that's a really, really good. 'cause I start from this place that I believe you have within you already the tools to solve your problems.

You just don't know it yet. And we're going to help you uncover what those are, what that looks like, because nobody knows you better than you. And so I sometimes use the phrase that I'm a tour guide. I'm not a Sherpa.

Lisa Liguori
I like that. That's great picture. Where are you at now on your own journey as you're helping other people as well?

Jonathan McLernon
Yeah.

Well, I have a 13 month old and going into parenthood, a boy as any parent will tell you, especially the first time around, it just flips your entire world upside down, you know, in the best possible way. Like I adore this little human more than I ever knew possible. It's really flipped life upside down.

And so I have a couple of coaching colleagues that I connect with and we share in these conversations, our struggles as human beings, because sometimes there's this sense of pressure that we feel in the space that we're in, that somehow we're supposed to look likewe've achieved the peak of physical perfection.

And I was like, why I haven't, I have loose skin. You know, I got little flappies. I don't look like a fitness. And so occasionally we still grapple with some of these things where it's like, well, we've come a long, long way. You know, I've maintained more than 80% of my massive weight loss for multiple years, which is really, really pretty tremendous when we have a biology that fights against that.

And anybody who has. Overweight will tell you, but I make sure that I stay connected to coaches who share very similar values to what I do. And if ever I find myself struggling, I'mlike, Hey, can I run this through your filter? So it looks like a different process now, but we all still struggle with feelings and emotions and imposter syndrome and feeling imperfect or flawed.

And so. I had a situation recently where something just kind of felt off and I couldn't really put my finger on it. And I wasn't sure if I was in the wrong, in the situation. And so I went to in two separate occasions to two of my colleagues and said, can I run this by you? And here's been my experience.

And can you give me some feedback on it? And both of them came back with really different, but intriguing questions and helped me to explore it and unpack it. And we managed to reframe it in a positive way that ultimately this is going to turn into a very positive learning experience and growth experience.

Even though it's something that's outside of my comfort zone,

I still remain connected to support people. I know this stuff almost inside out because I teach on a daily basis, but it doesn't mean. Perfectly. I'm still a human being with a human brain with a human struggle.

Yeah. That makes so much sense. And what does your coaching look like? Really,

I meet people where they're at.

And usually one of the first problems that they want to solve is they would like to lose some weight and they would like to get healthier. And they know that nutrition is a big piece of that puzzle. And so in a nutshell, I try to say, I marry the science of metabolism with the psychology of behavior change and the compassion of human connection.

Lisa Liguori
Wow.

Jonathan McLernon
It works very well. I'm fascinated by the brain. Like if I'm going to work with someone, a weight loss. Cause I think that's a good thing to work towards. Weight loss is really a difficult topic sometimes to approach, but the truth is a lot of us still benefit from lowering your body fat percentage, just biologically speaking, a number of health risks go down, but it's like, how do we frame that conversation effectively?

And so if I'm going to work with somebody, I don't approach this. Like I'm the guru and you're the. I say we are two experts and we're going to collaborate on this. So this is goingto be a collaborative and an empowering process where I help and guide you and provide a perspective that you didn't really see.

I heard the other day, like you can't read the label when you're inside the bottle. Yeah.

Lisa Liguori
I love that expression.

Jonathan McLernon
Yeah, and I was like, that's amazing, but you're the expert of your experience. You're the expert of your lived experience and your past. And so we use that and then I bring my expertise and say nutrition, science and behavioral psychology to really create a path forward that works for you, the individual.

Lisa Liguori
Neat. And so do those conversations, mostly pivot around things like what is a way you could practice self.

Jonathan McLernon
That'd be one of them. Sometimes we have uncomfortable conversations too. And that's where this idea of holding space becomes really important. Sometimes, I think when people go into, let's say a coaching program, like mine is called LightSail 180 and it's a 180 day program.

And sometimes when people come into that, I think the hope is that this will be a smooth ride. And I try to explain to people before they sign up. I say, let me tell you what this might actually look like in real life. We hope it would be that we're going to ride the unicornup the rainbow to the clouds and coast above reality.

We're trying to create this transfer. But it doesn't work like that. And it's a very good reason. It doesn't, because at some point you're going to have to come back to real life and be able to navigate real life if you want these changes to stick. So it actually looks a lot more like we're going to go kayaking through a tunnel of sewage.

It's going to be smelly and dark and icky and uncomfortable and so on, but you're not alone in this. And there is light at the end of the tunnel. And if you're willing to go through the difficult stuff, to have the uncomfortable conversations to cultivate emotional results, There's so much freedom on the other side of that.

When someone's in the place where they're willing to be uncomfortable, that's where really the magic can happen because it's, again, cliche, but growth happens outside our comfort zone when we're willing to be uncomfortable. When our primal brain is strongest urge is to avoid. So most of the time, it takes a connection to another human being.

Don't try to do this by yourself. I think the biggest fallacy we've ever encountered is this idea of a self-made person. It doesn't exist. This is really hard stuff. We live in a world, even that is in a sense wired to drive us to be obese. And because that's the case, we need as much support as we can get, recruit everybody you can to your team to help.

Lisa Liguori
And I think the fact that there's so much a wall for me, shame around it is a barrier to that. So I think it's especially important. Even having this conversation with you, I feel kind of embarrassed too. And at the same time, I'm like sunlight is the best antiseptic or whateverthat expression is instead of hiding from it, it is a reality.

So let me. Yeah,

Jonathan McLernon
well, isn't this interesting because we could even, we can even get curious. So I think I callit compassionate curiosity where I go, well, we explore this a little bit. We go, okay. So you feel a sense of shame around this? Well, what is the story you're telling yourself about your present physical condition, how you got here?

Lisa Liguori
Yeah, so I would say my story is that I know better instead of self care, which would have meant eating in balance. Movement things like that, that I was going to escape my difficultemotions with junk food. And that I know that that wasn't a good long-term decision and I didn't feel strong enough not to make that decision.

Jonathan McLernon
Right. And I'm willing to bet there's a number of factors that actually contributed to why that was your sort of behavior pattern of choice. And the first one would simply be it's the easiest. We almost think what, like you have three batteries, so you have an emotional battery, a mental battery and a physical battery.

And if we were to look at your life circumstances and go, what does draining these different batteries? There probably are some significant stressors, maybe even ones you're not aware of, but what that leads to is when it come time to make decisions about yourself, those batteries are drained. And so you need to revert to the simplest or the easiest behavior because there's very little left for maybe something a little bit more.

And so I would dive into trying to understand a little bit more of the backstory, your personal backstory and how you got to this place, but I'm willing to bet it's not because you have a character weakness or a moral failing.

Lisa Liguori
Yes. And I think that that's where I hear you saying. And it's hard to believe it.

Jonathan McLernon
Yeah,

Lisa Liguori
If that makes sense.

Jonathan McLernon
Absolutely. It does. So I mean, what I just expressed there was a statement that was counter to the present belief you hold about yourself. And so from a self-preservation perspective, when something threatens our sense of identity, Our brain puts up resistance. So I expressed a thought that was counter or contrary to the belief that you hold about yourself.

So immediately your brain resistance. No, that's not true. This is how I see myself.

Um, interesting. Even if it's a kind of critical, detrimental thought.

Absolutely. You know, when somebody says, like, I feel fat in this and another person goes. We mean to be helpful in saying that, but actually all we're doing is we're driving further emotional attachment to the belief that I look fat in this.

Lisa Liguori
Oh. So tell me more about that. 

Jonathan McLernon
So if you say you don't look fat well, just in the same way that I expressed to you, something that was contrary to the belief that you held about yourself. There was an immediate resistance on someone immediately. So let's say you say, I feel fat in this outfit and somebody else feels uncomfortable because you made that statement and they don't know what to do in that situation.

So now they have an uncomfortable emotion and for them they think the easiest way to make that uncomfortable emotion go away is to invalidate what you said. No, you're not. No, you don't look like that. Don't think that. Right. So it's escaping the discomfort of that situation, but really what you said was in one sense of valid and yes, maybe in a physical sense, it's not true, but if it's how you see yourself and how you feel about yourself in the moment, in your mind, it's true and valid.

And so we have to start from that place, not say, Hey, I'm over here across this big gap. Jump over here.

Lisa Liguori
That makes sense, because I think it's so frustrating when I say. I am scared about something and the person says don't be scared. Like, oh, okay, wait, my magic wand.

Jonathan McLernon
Uh, it's like nobody in the history of being told to calm down, actually calmed down.

Lisa Liguori
Yeah. That's very true.

Jonathan McLernon
Right. So we say, okay, I feel scared this one. Okay. What are you feeling right now? What's the story that your brain is telling you. What's making you feel scared right now. 'cause that that feeling is very real and valid. Let's say you were afraid that, uh, I dunno, a cargo plane was going to drop a shipping container on your house. I'm just trying to think about a ridiculous thing.

That's extremely unlikely to ever happen, but that, that was your fear. And so you decided to basically live in the downstairs of your house cause you felt like that was safer if I come along and just tell you, well, that's not true. It's never going to happen. I'm not meeting you where you're at. I'm trying to force you to come over to where I am to have the conversation.

And if I'm going to help you, I have to meet you where you're at and walk with you to the new place.

Lisa Liguori
So how would you do that? In the case of, I feel fat.

Jonathan McLernon
Tell me more.

Lisa Liguori
Okay, so curiosity

Jonathan McLernon
Yeah. Let's explore that. Tell me, tell me about when you say I feel fat. There are people who you would look at on the outside and you go, well, you know, you're, you're not in a clinical sense obese. So like, tell me more about this. What are you feeling? Where do you feel it in your body?

Let's just get curious about what's taking place. Because instead of me saying, well, that'snot true and shutting you down and invalidating what you feel, which only further entrenches the belief that you hold. Uh, so, okay. Let's start from the place that this belief that you hold is true and valid for you.

So now let's understand why you hold that belief. And then in exploring that we're going to figure out, is there any cracks? Is there a little bit of daylight here is to just shift it slightly. Can we shift the narrative a little bit. Can we adjust the story just a little bit?

So this trauma that you went through really yielded the gift of returning to your emotional self.

Yeah. Coming back to who I actually am. And so I'm very grateful for the experience. I wouldn't ask for it again. I'd rather not do that, but I wouldn't remove it from my past. I wouldn't remove the eight or nine years of struggles with my mental health.

Um, I'm in a very mentally healthy place now, which is also incredible. And so, yeah, I would not remove that from my past because I wouldn't be doing what I am. Well, except that I had that experience

Lisa Liguori
Friend, this conversation really moved me. My prayer is that you found it helpful to you andthat it might lead you to curiosity about how you could practice more gentle kindness withyourself, especially when you're navigating painful experiences. And I hope it might encourage you if you don't have them already to find people in your life who can quote on quote hold space for you.

One of my biggest takeaways is that it's possible to subconsciously believe that we're unworthy of self care and then have that play out in our actions and that we might be able to chip away at that belief through tiny little actions that work to counteract it, like brushing our teeth. A heartfelt, thank you to coach John.

I'm going to link up details in the show notes so you can find him. He's got a wonderful podcast called between the before and after that stories of people's lives that take place in between the before and after photos of. And also to his lifestyle, 180 program. And by the way, as a nonprofit foundation, we only feature people's stories on this podcast so that their stories can support you with both comfort and learning.

But we never have any financial ties with any of our guests. And I want you to know that when you hear from someone on Advice column, it's because we love this story. They're willing to vulnerably share to support. Thank you for being on this learning journey with me. And until next time, lots of love