Is SDF Right For You If You're Taking a Weight Loss Drug?

Hey, Lux Cypher. Welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. I am on cloud 12, not cloud 10, cloud 12. I am just like buzzing with love and my love tank is full. My friendship tank is full. We just got back from Vegas. Uh, we were celebrating our 50th year. So it was 10 of us, 10 of me and 9 of my girlfriends. We all went to Vegas. We're all turning 50. We're all like 1973/1974 babies, and we had the best time. The best time. We laughed. Oh my goodness. We cried. I cried in the airport on the way out in Philadelphia on the way to Vegas because I'm just so overwhelmed. We've been talking about this trip for months. It was a gift from one of my friends. She told us last year that this is what she wanted to do. She wanted to treat a bunch of us to a girls' trip in Vegas. And it finally happened. It was a healing for many of us. Like we said that just being around each other and having no kids, no work, just being able to relax and have fun and have some drinks. And some CBD gummies, and we danced like we went to the club. We saw the Michael Jackson ONE show at the Mandalay Bay, which was stupendous. If you're planning a trip to Vegas and you like Michael Jackson, definitely go see that show. I heard it was running. It's been running there for 5 years, and it's a Cirque du Soleil performance. So, you know, if you're familiar with Cirque du Soleil, it's breathtaking and inspiring and like, whoa, Ooh. And the music was fantastic. And it just reminds me of how much good music Michael Jackson put out. But we just— it was a healing for us. It really, really was. We spent, ooh, a good amount of time in the Louis Vuitton store, so much so that we were chilling in the back. They were bringing us fancy water. And we were buying up the store. And it was just so much fun. And we did a photo shoot. So literally right before I hit record on this podcast, we got the pictures back from the photo shoot. So I started looking at them. I was like, no, no, no, no, let me wait. I want to like stay focused, record the podcast, and then I'm going to go in and look at the, at the pictures. But if you're following me on social media, if you're following me on Instagram, I've been on stories talking about the trip. Um, I have posted some photos. So if you haven't, if you're not following me and you want to see some photos, go follow me at Jennifer Dent Brown on Instagram. Instagram. But y'all, my— I have been so inspired. Once I came back and like recovered from the travel, the dehydration, the sun— I got a little bit of a sunburn on my forehead because I didn't have a hat on. We had an entire pool day on Saturday. The weather was great. We had a cabana, we had frosé delivered to our cabana, we had all the nibbles and bibbles and bites and It was just so much fun. It was just so much fun. I'm like, can we go back, please? But now that I've recovered, took some time off of the business, some time off, right? I can't stay away from y'all too long, but I took some time, some downtime, really just allow myself to sleep, to rest. Also, I'm still nursing this injury with my hip, leg, back thing. Finally was able to go see a physical therapist yesterday. And so I am actually healing. It's getting better. It's going to take a little bit more time. So I've got exercises, I've got— I got work to do. I've got to go to the sauna, get a massage. She said try the whirlpool. Actually, I tried the whirlpool in Vegas and that irritated it, so I won't do that again. But I'm down for the massage. I'm down for the acupuncture. I'm down for all the holistic treatment, the MFR treatment. For some of you who are familiar with MFR, I know I have some MFR therapists who are my clients inside of the program and who are listening to the podcast. Shout out to my MFR therapists. My physical therapist was like, MFR, yes, because it's some type of like tissue injury, muscle tissue injury that needs to be— what did she say? It needs to have more blood flow going to it. So I rested, rested my leg, and now I am so inspired, y'all. I just want to teach you everything. I want to teach you everything. I want to tell you that it is possible to lose weight without a whole bunch of drama. Like, it can be so easy when you understand how to do it. I really wanted to talk today— originally I was going to talk to you all today about being consistent and making damn good decisions that support your weight loss goal, um, but I have been inspired to talk a little bit differently to answer another question. So if listening to this in real time right now, Stop Dieting Forever is open. We're doing a, a spring launch, and you can join right now for $9.99 for 6 months. And I've been doing these 20-minute, like, ask me anything about SDF calls. And so I recently had one, and I had another woman send me an email with a very similar question, and it was around weight loss drugs. And I know that this is like the thing, right? So you can— I think you can probably get weight loss drugs on Amazon now at this point because Amazon has a pharmacy. You can get— it's pretty easy to get weight loss drugs. And I'm talking about the injections. And the woman that I spoke with, she asked a really good question. She said she was— she's a— I think she said she was 50, 50-ish, and she's going through the change, right? Perimenopause to menopause. Right. I am also there as well. And she's working with a functional medicine doctor. And I was like, fantastic. I am also working with a functional medicine practitioner, Julie Pitts. I need to have her on the podcast. She did a workshop inside our group program, which was really, really fantastic. So if you join the group program, you get access to that workshop. And we talked about hormones and weight loss and what's happening at this stage in our lives and how— what to know, how to know what to test. What hormones should— which should be— which should be— should we be looking at? And all the things troubleshooting for weight loss issues and stress. That was the other thing. Stress, stress, stress is a big thing. So anyway, she's working with a functional medicine doctor and she's been listening to my podcast. And so she really liked the fact that I talk about changing your identity in order to change your weight permanently. And if you're new to the podcast, welcome. I've got plenty of episodes on identity. You can just search for it inside— actually, you can go to my website and search identity, or you can search for it inside of your platform, whatever podcast platform you're using. But essentially, one of the reasons why you all struggle with your weight— so whether you can lose the weight but you can't keep it off, is one of the big things is your identity. So when you are struggling with your weight, you have a lot of what I call struggle bus thoughts. You have a lot of thoughts that subconsciously are running in your mind. And so when you're a dieter, you are no longer paying attention to the subconscious thoughts. You're now 100% focused on following this diet. Following this plan. And this includes a weight loss drug too, because there is, you know, a protocol when you're doing a weight loss drug. And you're so focused on that, you're not dealing with the struggle bus thoughts. And you can do that very, very consistently when you're losing weight. You're doing that very, very consistently. You're following the plan consistently. You're doing exactly what your doctor is telling you to do. You're taking your shots. You're eating the little bit of food. And you're losing weight. What's not happening is— actually, there's two things that aren't happening. You're not addressing the struggle bus thoughts because you don't know that they're there, right? They're subconsciously playing in the back of your head, in the back of your mind. And when you're so busy following the plan, you're good until you can't follow the plan anymore, right? Until life gets lifey, something pops up, you go on vacation, or you get sick, or you get injured, Or you can't get access to whatever foods that you were eating, right? So I don't know, maybe there's a supply issue and you can't get what you need sent to you in the mail. You can't follow your plan, or you're super stressed at work, or you have to travel for work. Your kid is sick. Like, there's so many opportunities where life gets lifey, and all of a sudden you cannot follow your plan anymore. So what happens? What happens is those old struggle bus thoughts, they're still there, so they just They bubble back up to the surface and you end up eating even though you don't want to. You end up eating a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more until you notice that you're gaining the weight back. Because when your identity is someone who struggles with their weight, guess what's going to happen? You can lose the weight, but you're always going to find some more weight to, to lose so you can keep this identity of someone who struggles with their weight. Do you see how this happens. And this will keep happening to you until you learn how to change your identity, until you learn how to change those struggle bus thoughts. Well, I, first of all, identify the struggle bus thoughts and change them. So that is one of the things that you actually do inside the program. In like the very first week, we talk about struggle bus thoughts, how to identify them. Super easy. It's— I give you a really, really easy way. You're looking at your bad habits and then you're attacking, attaching a thought to it. And then you're like, Oh, that's it. Right? So very simple of how you identify the struggle bus thoughts. And when you identify them, then you get an opportunity to change them. And the other tool or strategy that I use, I teach you all inside the program, is creating your identity statement. So you create your 90-day identity and you're working towards that 90-day identity every single day while you're using the daily planner, while you're following the program. And when you get to that 90-day mark, you kind of like take stock to see where you are. And then you either keep some of the same thoughts because you haven't yet achieved them, or you achieve some things and you're like, oh, nope, I'm going to add this onto my identity. I want to become this person. I want to become a person who does this. And you're going to add that on, and next 90 days, you keep working towards it. So this is why Stop Dieting Forever, this process that I created, is so unique. And it's not temporary. It is lasting. When you learn this process, it is something that you can continue to do when you're losing weight, when you reach your forever weight, when you're in maintenance. And it's something you can do as you're upleveling every area of your life. Like, if you want to be a better leader, you can add that into your identity statement. If you want better relationships, you want to be a better mom or a better spouse, you can decide what— who you want to become. Add that into your identity statement and work towards becoming that person every single day for 90 days. It really, really is fun to see my clients transform, and I do the same work myself. So while we're talking about the Stop Dieting Forever program right now, I want— I want to pop this quick announcement in so you know that today is the last day to enroll in Stop Dieting Forever inside of this launch. Colette, let's play the commercial. Okay, so let's talk about weight loss drugs and the Stop Dieting Forever process. So the question that came up on the Ask Me Anything call, she was working with— I started down this path a while ago, right? At the beginning of the episode and I didn't get finished with the question. So here we go. She's working with a functional medicine practitioner or a doctor, and she's considering— she hasn't started, but she's considering taking a weight loss drug. She's been listening to the podcast, and so she was wondering, she's like, I really like your, um, concept of changing your identity, no longer becoming someone who no longer struggles with their weight, someone who is just a healthy person and creating that identity. And she was like, do I take the weight loss drug, lose the weight, and then begin your process, like enroll in the program then? Or should I enroll in the program now and then decide about the weight loss drug? So the answer that I gave her was, you can— I wanted her to And say that again. So here's my answer to that question, because a lot of you may be considering weight loss drugs, some of you may be on weight loss drugs right now, and that's all well and good and fine. You do what you need to do for you. Here's one thing that a weight loss drug is not going to help you with, and it's not going to help you with Creating a new relationship with food. So if you are an emotional eater and this is how you have gained your weight because you eat your emotions, you're feeling happy, yay, let's go out to eat to celebrate. You're feeling stressed out, oh my God, I'm feeling stressed out, let me go get some chips. You're feeling sad, oh my God, I need some comfort food, somebody please give me some macaroni and cheese, right? If you're eating your emotions A weight loss drug is not going to teach you how to separate your feelings from the food. Very simply, a weight loss drug is not going to teach you how to separate your feelings from the food. So a weight loss drug will kill your appetite. It will decrease your appetite so you will eat less, but you will still have those emotions. You will still be feeling stressed out. You will still be feeling sad. You will still be feeling happy. You still will be feeling all the things. And if your go-to to cope with those feelings is eating, you've got to figure out another way to deal with those emotions. You will learn how to do that inside Stop Dieting Forever, whether you're taking a weight loss drug or not. That's what I teach. This is what I do. This is what I help countless number of clients do, is understand their emotional triggers of eating. And then it's like, okay, let's identify what the emotion is and how are we going to process this emotion? How are we going to deal with this emotion? Without going to food. So one of the things— because I've done weight loss drugs before, y'all. I have done Fen-Phen in the past. And it killed my appetite so much so that I didn't want to eat. I do remember feeling very, like, disconcerted because you're at the restaurant. I remember I was out to— my mom and I were— this was— OK, so going back now. Story time. I was, I just graduated from college and I had an internship. So I was accepted to Indiana University. I had a fellowship. I was going to study my master's degree at Indiana University, get my master's. And I had an internship at a company that was sponsoring me with my fellowship. So I worked at NCR, National Cash Register, in Dayton, Ohio. And I had my first internship the summer after I graduated from college. And that's when I started taking Fen-Phen after I graduated. And I remember I was so lethargic and I was so tired. Um, and I remember my mom and I drove from Philadelphia. We drove my car from Philadelphia to Ohio, to Dayton, to get settled in. And I remember we stopped to get something to eat and normally I'm like, oh, give me the burger, give me the fries, like whatever. Like we're out to eat. It's a celebration. It's fun. Give me the fun foods. And I remember I ordered, you know, probably a burger and fries. And I remember just like looking at the food, like I really wanted to eat it, but I just couldn't. It was very disconcerting. Like, this is the food that I normally would chow down on. This is the food that I normally would— gives me pleasure and makes me happy. And I ate a bite and I was just like, ugh. It just didn't do it for me. And I remember feeling very like almost sad, like, because you experience like this— I don't say, is it like a high? You experience this like, you know, I could— maybe it is a high, right? And eating high from eating a food that you love, French fries, and it's no longer giving you that high. And so it's sad. And so I remember like looking at the food and because we were driving, I couldn't take it with me, so I had to throw it away and let it go. And so that was a whole nother set of thoughts. Now, this is before I became a coach. This is where I was still struggling with my weight because I was on a weight loss drug. And I was just like, there has to be a better way. There has to be a better way. And so I very shortly after that, I stopped taking the weight loss drugs. My mom was like, you got to stop taking this because you're not yourself. And I was moving to a new city. I had new roommates. I was starting an internship at a new company. I had new people. I needed to be myself. So I stopped taking the drug. Um, but I said all that to say, like, the weight loss drug will decrease your appetite, but you still need to learn how to deal with your emotions. So I told her, I said, you can, you know, lose the weight, you can take the drug, you'll lose the weight, but you're still going to still need to do this emotional work. If I were you, I would do— learn how to do the emotional work now. I would learn how to create a new relationship relationship with food as I'm taking this weight loss drug. So I know how to manage my mind when those moments come up, when I'm feeling the emotion and I want to go eat, but I don't have the appetite to eat. And I like— if I eat too much, then I get sick. Like, dealing with all of that drama, like, do that now with— inside, inside of a community where you can get the support that you need. She will not be the only person on a weight loss drug. We have other people who are taking semiglutide inside the program. We've had people who have done, um, surgery, weight loss surgery, who are inside the program. So they all understand that it's the mindset piece, the identity piece, that needs to change in addition to eating less food. Taking a drug, doing the surgery is a way of, of— it's a manual way of eating less food, but you still need to do the work on yourself of understanding why are you going to eat the food to deal with your emotions. So, so, so important. Otherwise, you're going to be a small person and you're still going to have all the emotional drama, and you're not going to know what to do with those emotions. So you're potentially, right, if you're— let's just say for an example, I'm not saying this has happened to anyone, but I can imagine you do the weight loss drug and say you're before you would deal with stress by eating Doritos or tortilla chips, like your crunchy foods, your crunchy snacks. That's how you dealt with stress. And now you've done the weight loss drug. You don't have an appetite. You don't want to eat the chips anymore, but you still need some way to deal with the stress. And you may go to something else. You may be, you know, chewing the CBD gummies. You may be vaping. You may be Ooh, online shopping as a way to cope, right? And, and, and numb yourself from this emotion. Uh, you could be yelling at your kids or yelling at your teammates or your team because you're so stressed out and you don't know how to manage that stress. So I say if you're considering a weight loss drug, and you know that you definitely want to make that identity change and become a healthy person, not just a smaller person, but you really want to, like, be the person that loves to have a green smoothie, who, like, prefers to eat a big kale salad and gets joy out of eating a kale salad. If you want to become that person, then I highly suggest you do this program, Stop Dieting Forever, in conjunction with taking the drug. There's so much that we don't know about the weight loss drug, but what, what's marketed to us, what we see is like, "Ooh, we can take this drug, get these shots." We can go almost anywhere to get them now and we can lose weight. We're not going to want to eat and we can lose weight and we'll be happy and wonderful and everything will be great. Here's another thing you're going to learn inside Stop Dieting Forever. Which is very important. Many of you are wanting to lose weight because you think your life is going to be better in a smaller size. I'm here to tell you it's not going to change if your life isn't good. If you can't find a way to believe that your life is good right now as it is, losing weight is not going to change anything. The only thing that's going to change, you'll be excited for a hot second because you're like, yeah, I'm in a smaller size. But the kids are still going to be banging on the bathroom door like, Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, Mommy. Your boss is still going to be like, I need this project ASAP. I need to get this thing done. Your clients are still going to be like, but you're not getting me the results that you said you were going to get me. You're still going to have the daily stresses. They don't care that you lost weight. They want what they need. So one of the things that you will learn inside Stop Dieting Forever is how to love and accept yourself the way you are right now as you're losing weight. Because when you learn how to love yourself now— and you know, for some people, it is very difficult to say you love your body because you've been in such a hate relationship with it for so long. And that's OK. Like, I understand. We talk about— the societal stories and cultural norms that have influenced our beliefs that our bodies are bad the way that they are. We talk about that inside the program. And I want you to— if you can't get to love, I want you to get— just get to acceptance, that you can accept your body for what it is right now, and you can find things to appreciate in the size that it is right now. Yeah, I have gained about 7 pounds in this, like, since I've been— since I turned 50, which was what, months ago or 4 months, 5 months ago. Um, and you know, 7 pounds may not be like a big deal to y'all, but I'm 5'2", so 7 pounds is like, you know, my clothes are fitting a little bit tighter. And most recently, since I've had this injury, I haven't been able to work out. I haven't been able to walk. I haven't been able to do any strength training. So I feel like any muscle tone that I had is like gone to mush. I'm having some thoughts. But what I told my clients was that I can still look in the mirror and look at my little belly right now and like, love it so much because I understand what my body is trying to do to get back into balance, right? I can appreciate my body so much and all of the symptoms that I'm having with all of the hormonal fluctuations. And it's okay because my body is doing what God designed it to do. And I can't be mad at it. I cannot be mad at it. All I can do is support it and love it and just be like, okay, like, and hug myself. Literally, if you're watching me on YouTube right now, like, I literally hug myself like this. When my nervous system gets so activated, I just hug myself really, really tightly. And it makes a difference. So when my brain wants to be like, oh my God, Jennifer, like, no, don't take any pictures, don't do any lives, like, your face looks so fat, it looks so puffy, puffy. I'm just like, girl, no, like, you look beautiful. You look beautiful. Your face is puffy because you need to drink some more water. It's okay, go drink some more water. It's gonna be all right. And when I was not always feeling like this about my body, when I was overweight, I hated my body. Hated it with a passion. I didn't want to look in the mirror. I didn't want to put on certain clothes. There were so many times I remember if felt fat, I would not go out with my friends. Like, I would cancel engagements. I'd be like, oh, I can't, you know, I would make up a lie. I can't go out with you guys tonight. I would cancel dates because I felt like, oh, I don't feel good in my clothes. I just feel so fat. I don't do that anymore. Like, y'all, we just went to Vegas and I'm 7 pounds, like, bigger. I put on my bathing suit. We did a photo shoot, like it was amazing. It was so much fun. Ain't nobody worried about my size. I wasn't worried about my size because my body is doing what it needs to do to heal, and I am all for it. That's it. So this is what I want you to learn as you're wanting to lose weight, as you're like, oh my God, I gotta lose weight, I gotta lose weight, I gotta lose weight, and I gotta lose it quickly so I can feel better about myself. Here, here, before we go, yeah, I'm just going completely off the cuff today, just complete utter intuition, intuitiveness as I'm recording this podcast. I met with a woman, we had dinner, and she recently lost a bunch of weight, like almost a full person, and she was tiny. Like, I'd never— I've known her for decades, I've never seen her— I almost didn't recognize her, she was so small. And she was just like, I don't feel like myself. She's like, people keep saying how great I look and how small I look. She's like, I just don't feel like myself. She's like, I just bought clothes that actually fit me in this body. Y'all, when you don't love and accept yourself while— as you're losing the weight, you're going to lose the weight and feel like an alien in your body, and you don't want that. So why not, as you're learning to lose weight, learn to love your body too at the same time? And we have a whole module inside Stop Dieting Forever where I talk about learning, teaching you, giving you practical daily strategies that you can do to create that connection of love with yourself. And when you're able to do that, you can love yourself through those tough times where you feel a little bloated or the scale's not going down as fast as you want it to. You can you can still show yourself some love and know that it's okay. You're doing exactly what you need to do to create the identity that you're working towards. Okay, so Stop Dieting Forever is open right now for this particular launch. I'm so excited about the new members that have already come in. They've come in hot, and I'm so excited to help them reach their forever weight. All right, y'all. So thanks for tuning in this week. Be sure to check out the show notes so you can get all the information that you need to find out how to work with me, private clients, one-on-one client, join the group, get your freebies, um, join the Forever Well email club, all the things, all the links are in the show notes. And I really encourage you to share this episode with your friends. So if you have a click, and your clique is like focused on weight loss, I bet you at least one person is either on a weight loss drug or like considering doing a weight loss drug. Share this episode with them because I want you to— I want them to understand it's not just the drug that is going to save your life, right, as you lose the weight. It's really a holistic approach that's going to change your life, change your identity. And I want to ask you, if this episode was helpful, or any episode that you have listened to in all 205 episodes so far, please leave me a review. Please leave me a 5-star review, um, on Apple, which would be amazing, or Podbean. You can leave a review because that treats the algorithm, that encourages the algorithm to put my face, my podcast, in more people's feeds of like something that they need to be listening to. Because y'all Everybody needs to know how to stop dieting forever. Everybody. I'm talking men, women, all y'all, everybody. Everybody needs to know how to stop dieting forever because it's not just about the weight loss, it's about changing your life. The weight loss is just a byproduct. So if you want a better life, you're going to learn how to stop dieting forever. And oh, by the way, you lost some weight. So good. All right, y'all, Live Luxe Follow me on Instagram, check me out on YouTube, and I will see you in the next episode.