Learning to Love our Bodies, with Courtney Gioia

Courtney Gioia is the founder of Loyobo, a community for women who are sick of trying to be smaller.  This ISN'T about weight loss for Courtney.  This is about learning how to love your body and feel strong so you can take up space in your body AND in your life.

AMEN to that!

It was such a joy for me to chat with Courtney and throughout our conversation there were pinnacle points, where Courtney's words hit home and her lived experience shone through.  We are not here, in the non-diet space, saying once you ditch the diet, life is easy.  Far from it.  Thin privilege is real and sometimes finding food freedom and learning to accept your body as it changes, is like swimming upstream. But as Dory says....just keep swimming.

To find out more about Courtney and how she works with clients, you can reach her on Instagram OR you can find all her latest offers here: https://www.loyobofit.com/

Are you simply fed up with hating your body? Are you stuck in the 'earn and burn' cycle when it comes to exercise?
You are not alone and your body is NOT the problem

Please reach out if you would like some support. We both have limited slots for Intuitive Eating and Strength Coaching, so get in touch with Christine or with Ela.

AND if you enjoyed this episode, please share and follow the 'Find Your Strong podcast' and if you have time, write us a short review. It would honestly mean the world. Love to you all, Ela & Christine x

Chapters

• 1:32 Introduction to Courtney
• 3:09 How Courtney found the non-diet Space?
• 5:47 Healing our relationship to movement
• 6:55 Drinking the diet culture coolade
• 7:46 Discovering undieting
• 11:08 The grief associated with time lost to dieting
• 11:48 Readiness to do the work
• 13:05 Thin privilege
• 15:26 The problem with commenting on people's bodies
• 16:00 Cultivating self-respect in a bigger body
• 17:51 Genetic disposition
• 19:10 Finding your body's happy place
• 22:35 How the world would look different if we deprioritised how our bodies look
• 26:20 Finding body acceptance with self-compassion
• 28:13 How do we show our bodies some love?
• 31:24 The beauty of imperfection
• 33:26 How to deal with body image triggers

Transcript

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Christine Chessman: There we go

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Loyobo: so welcome to the Podcast Courtney. How are you? Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here chatting with you?

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Loyobo: Yeah. Well, this is, you know, take to, isn't that we tried last week, and it didn't quite happen. But we got there in the end. But you're not. Adulting is hard, it really is.

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Loyobo: And to the point that my kids are like, well, I've got one daughter who's like, I don't want to have kids. It looks really stressful.

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Loyobo: I was just having conversation like that with my roommate. Where? My, for baby got neutered on Friday. So it's been. It's been a lot. And I looked at her, and I was like, this must be like just just the very smallest preview of Mona. Herd must be like, I think it's having a dog. I can't. I don't think I could have a dog, because I just would be too emotional about all of it.

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Christine Chessman: So I've kinda like it's too much for me to have a dog like. The reason that we're chatting today is because we kind of have a lot in common in terms of our businesses. And I find you kind of going through Instagram, because, you know, we're both working in the non diet space.

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Christine Chessman: and we both my work for body image fitness with Kim and you do a class for my platform. Well, you share one of your classes, which is fantastic.

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Christine Chessman: tell me a little bit about what brought you to this work, Courtney. What brought you to the non diet space? How did your fitness career start. Give me all of it, just all of it.

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Loyobo: It's a very good story, and I feel like I feel like there's 2 different parts which I'm going to answer, which is first, what brought me to the fitness, space, and then what brought me to the kind of the anti diet unding space? Because I think it. When I first was in fitness I had totally drunk

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Loyobo: the diet culture kool-aid So I like many women, spent my like teams and er and

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Loyobo: most of my 20 s. Dabbling

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Loyobo: like I wasn't what I would consider an athlete. I did all of the bad things. I was very aware of my weight, but I wasn't. I didn't really know

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Loyobo: what to do about it.

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Loyobo: and it wasn't until I was in a relationship where my weight end it up

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Loyobo: taking center stage. So the man that I was with at the time blamed my wait for a lot of our intimacy problems, and that. ironically, is what got me into fitness, because I became obsessed with minimum wage and looking a certain way and and

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Loyobo: and in my mind, bettering myself as a woman and as a partner.

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Loyobo:  And the silver lining of that is is that's what I where I found Zoom, I had an amazing instructor when I was living in Ottawa, here in in Ontario, Canada, and

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Loyobo: it was the first time in my life that I experienced joyful movement, surrounded by a group of women that

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Loyobo: that felt like a safe space where I could just move my body, and I felt sexy, and I felt good, and

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Loyobo: it was through that that I got introduced to fitness. I was encouraged through. If you hear chewing by the way, the puppy that I just mentioned this beside me. But II got introduced the world of fitness, and through their encouragement

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Loyobo: got license to teach Zoom, and that was kind of my gateway into the fitness world, and it was through

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Loyobo: building my confidence with zoom back and and again that healing a big part of my relationship with movement that I started to it snowballed and I and I learned about weight. And I learned about Cardio, and I learned about stretching and and

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Loyobo: so on, and so forth, and I decided to to to become like a real, full-fledged fitness instructor.

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Loyobo: And that's what led me into the undying space. And it and it.

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Loyobo: This is very much the pulse notes version, but through losing all the weight I learned that

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Loyobo: I didn't. It didn't heal my relationship with my body. It didn't give me the confidence that I thought it would. It didn't make me feel like a better woman. It didn't make me any less obsessed with my weight. In fact, I would argue that I maintain the same level of obsession with keeping the weight off.

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Loyobo: and I still very much put myself worth on the same equivalency as as what my body looked like.

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Loyobo: The longer I worked in fitness, the more

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Loyobo: I saw how much toxicity there was, both, both as like what my members are facing and also as an instructor and as an employee of how different the standards were for women about how it didn't

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Loyobo:  It didn't support the goals and the lifestyles and the realities of the women who were coming to my classes. There was just this mismatch, and then the real

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Loyobo: cornerstone moment

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Loyobo: that led me down to the path of of discovering, not just on dieting, but just a different approach to weight, loss, or sorry. A different approach to fitness that was weight neutral instead of focusing on weight loss was actually the one time I got called in by client

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Loyobo: I had been teaching at this point for maybe

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Loyobo: 2 or 3 years.

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Loyobo: and my whole thing was like, I, you know, the whole reason I got into zoom. But was I wanted to be this joyful, this safe space for women to connect with one another, to move their bodies to

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Loyobo: and it was a woman in a larger body, one of my one of my boot pants.

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Loyobo: and she stopped coming like out of the blue stuff, coming? No.

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Loyobo: no notice, no, nothing, and I reached out to her, and I said, Is it okay? And she, thank God, was brave enough to tell me that my language

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Loyobo: made her feel unworthy in her body. and that was a big wake up call. and I started to learn about

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Loyobo: the power of language. But fat phobia of a weight stigma, because you know, it was.

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Loyobo: It was an earth-shattering moment to feel like I made some people bad when my whole

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Loyobo: mission was to make them feel good.

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Loyobo: And so I really had to take ownership

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Loyobo: what my role in that was. And as soon as I found this community, and as soon as I did. The research of learning about.

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Loyobo: you know the damage of diet culture. What fafabia actually looks like, and seeing the science behind motivation and the shame cycle and and all those negative impacts that the way that the fitness industry typically operates just

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Loyobo: hurts all of us and causes so much more harm than good, and and works in contradiction to what many of us most want.

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Loyobo: Exactly. It was like a no brainer like. Of course, of course, this is how I want to do things and and dedicate my life in my mission. So that was a very cool way. It's been as I said it's been. It's been a journey honestly, that must have been quite hard to hear from your clients or from, you know, and actually be able to take that on the chin was like immediately feeling

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Christine Chessman: defensive. Or.

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Loyobo: Oh, don't get me wrong. There was definitely the immediate feeling. So that's not true.

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Loyobo: but I've always been somebody who I've always had a very strong, innate desire to

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Loyobo: better myself and to yeah, to self, reflect and

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Loyobo: to learn and grow so

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Loyobo: over time. And I and I. I've never unfortunately been able to connect with that woman again. I did send her a long letter, obviously acknowledging the growth a few years later, and acknowledging the role that she had to play in it, and thanking her and and apologizing again.

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Loyobo:  But I think that

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Loyobo: I often say to my clients that there's there's magic when you allow yourself to be uncomfortable.

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Loyobo: And it was one of those moments that it was deeply uncomfortable. and

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Loyobo: it required so much self-reflection and and

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Loyobo: personal accountability. But I'm so thankful because

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Loyobo: it was so needed, and I'm so grateful for that for that woman, as I said, for being brave enough to actually

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Loyobo: call me out, because I think that's sometimes what we what we need.

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Christine Chessman: And you know, II have this conversation with Jamali Fraser a couple of weeks ago. About that whole, you know, when you know better, you do better.

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Christine Chessman: and it is, you know, we can beat ourselves up about, you know, drinking the Kool-aid

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Christine Chessman: back in the day and jumping on the diet culture rhetoric. But that's what was in grand enough, since, you know, since your dot, and then I think it's being kind to yourself at the same time.

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Loyobo: but just continuing to evolve. I mean, that's all we can do, isn't it? Just keep learning and keep trying. And it's a conversation I have with clients a lot, both from

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Loyobo: the grief like I've worked with, you know, clients in their 50 s. And 60 s. Who who have

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Loyobo: these moments of sadness of like, I wasted so much of my life, and and that's exactly what I tell them is is, you were doing the best you could with what you were taught, and vice versa. I'm having compassion for people who haven't had that

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Loyobo: epiphany for lack of lack of better word, if you will, that that you can have compassion because

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Loyobo: it it takes a a certain level of readiness to be able to do this work. And it's okay that

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Loyobo: you know, for some people they may never get there. It may take them more time. And we just have to be compassionate. That, as I said, like, we've all been taught

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Loyobo: and programmed.

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Loyobo: a certain set of ideas and a certain set of stories for many of us, our entire lives, if not decades and decades of our lives. And it takes time to to move the needle

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Loyobo: conversation. Yeah.

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Christine Chessman: 100%. And it's I think it's almost like, sometimes we're planting seeds, aren't we?

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Loyobo: I like to do a little like seed planting. It's in there, I'm just putting it in there. Just let it just let it, you know, sit and muster for a little bit. I love that. I just love that. And I think I used to just get on the soapbox and not understand why everybody didn't just agree with me, you know. Why don't you? Why don't you see that this is the right way?

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Christine Chessman: Whereas now I'm like, hold on a second. You know it's taken me years years to get here, and I'm still some days, not here.

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Loyobo: It's still, it's still easier to to believe the old story right.

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Loyobo: It's easier to believe the old story, because. you know, our brains love.

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Loyobo: comfort, E. Even when something feels terrible, our brains and our bodies

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Loyobo: much prefer the comfort of the no than the unknown. So it's it's easier. And there is, you know, and and this is where we can get some intuitive like. There is legitimate, thin privilege hugely, you know, staying in that diplomality, and and still pursuing those body ideals like there's there's privilege that can be very hard to let go of. So

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Loyobo: you gotta be kind and compassionate, not just with yourselves, but with the people around you, for sure.

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Christine Chessman: I mean one thing, I think I'm banging on a lot about recently, which I think we need to be very careful about commenting on people's bodies, and that's something which

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Christine Chessman: you know. So at this time of year, especially, cause we're saying people. Maybe we haven't seen for quite a long time, and it's, you know, family gatherings, I know, and it's you know this is when the the anxiety can hit, especially if your body has changed and you have to go to events and all of that kind of thing. But talking about send privilege. I have never had more compliments in my life than when I was in the throws of anorexia. I have never been told. Oh, you look amazing! What's your secret.

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Christine Chessman: you know. And that just shows you that actually, we cannot know what's going on for somebody. And just because a body looks a certain way does not mean that person is healthy in under any circumstances we cannot see inside

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Loyobo: or inside their brand, so we have no idea, especially as as 2 women who are on like who have a presence on social media in the Internet like, I don't know what your comment section is like, but

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Loyobo: you know, when I was thinner in a smaller body.

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Loyobo: I never had people question my credentials online like never. And it's funny cause I look back. And that was when I by far was the most inexperience, and had the least amount of training, and definitely like, didn't really know what I was doing.

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Loyobo: And now, you know, fast forward. I think I'm almost.

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Loyobo: I think this next year is gonna be 9 or 10 years that I've been an instruct. Yeah, 10 years that I've been an instructor, and now is when, because I'm in a bigger body, people question my credentials. People question my whether or not I'm qualified to to be, you know, doing fitness or teaching these things.

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Loyobo: and

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Loyobo: so similar to you is when I was at my smallest, assumed that was very much when I'm at when I was at my healthiest, and the and the, as you said, the opposite, when I came, when it comes to like my self esteem, my body confidence.

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Loyobo: how I was treating my body, what my sources of motivation were! It was incredibly disorder at the time.

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and while I have, like

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Loyobo: different mental health issues. Now that I still like II always like to make sure I get the disclaimer like I'm not the the perfect opinion. I'm not upon a pedestal. I have my own stuff that I'm still working through. However.

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Loyobo: the self love and the self worth and the self-respect

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Loyobo: now, in a bigger body is like like. It's not even comparable like. It's not even like a day like like there's just so much more

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Loyobo: respect for my body than I ever had before.

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Christine Chessman: No, it's that's just amazing to me. I did. A post about my body is not my business card, you know, and it's that choose your personal trainer best, based on their experience on the rapport that you have with them. Based, you know, because, yeah, you're not the same genetic makeup as that person. So you're not. Gonna you know, there's no point choosing a personal trainer because you wanna look that way because that's not your body.

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Loyobo: So it's not. Do you know what I mean? That's something that I say quite

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Loyobo:  you know, when you look at athletes like professional athletes, and I'll kind of put like personal trainers and and those like fitness influencers up on that

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Loyobo: that you know, pedestal as well as like. There's this belief that that they're they're that way. They look that way because of the hard work and the determination and the willpower and the and the lifestyle of what they either what they don't need and what they, how they work out, or how they don't work out.

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Loyobo: And it's it's this self-perpetuating cycle. Because.

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Loyobo: like, let's let's unpack the term like a swimmers body, for example, certain image to mind. Right is it this? Most of us assume that the swimmers body is because of what they're doing again, the workouts, the nutrition choices, the the what have you?

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Loyobo: And yet I feel like there's this like confirmation, bias loop. And again, the self pertaining cycle of

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Loyobo: of people with a genetic predisposition of a certain body type

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Loyobo: will, we're like stepped up

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Loyobo: exactly, are more likely to end up being in that sport or that line of work, because they're getting that feedback all the time. People are giving them compliments. They're they're achieving certain things that feel more natural to them when it does come down so much more to to genetics and family history, and and all of those kind of

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Loyobo: those things that are not within self control or choice, or you know, what have you? And then yet they hold it up as like. We'll look at what I've done. Of course you can do this to you, and it's like, no matter what I do, I would never be able to have a that's just like not.

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Loyobo: That's not my genetic background. There are other things that I would be

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Loyobo: like. I joke, you know I'm from like I'm from like Irish families and British families. So I meant for like hunkering down and like working in the field, or something like like, maybe having some extra stuff on me would be beneficial. So

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Loyobo: yeah, it's you can't look at those people and say.

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Loyobo: I can recreate that just by doing what they're doing.

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Loyobo: And you've got to sort of. Ask when your body is happy. You know when your body is a is happy place, and you know our bodies will change throughout our lives. But it's, you know, and by taking the pressure off. So I stopped weighing myself, and, you know, finds intuitive eating and taking that pressure off and letting your body kind of

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Christine Chessman: be where it wants to be

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Christine Chessman: when you're feeding it well, nourishing it, taking care of it, given it what it needs, you know, moving it in a way that feels good.

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Christine Chessman: you know. That's understand letting it do it. Thing that there's a real freedom in that. Yeah, there's there's a massive freedom, and you will kind of find that

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Christine Chessman: that space where you feel more.

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Christine Chessman: your body is happy, and you will feel more comfortable in your own skin. But that takes time. And I wanna circle back with you to that. You know, you mentioned a relationship where you your weight was central became central in that relationship, and I cannot imagine how hard that was for you, Courtney, especially if your self Esteem was kind of low, and

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Christine Chessman: you know often we can attach our worth to our physical appearance. And and then a relationship is really, that's II can't imagine anything worse. Actually.

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Loyobo: a. There's so much

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Loyobo: pressure and expectations on women.

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Loyobo: the value that you bring. not just to your relationships, but

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Loyobo: to the world. To just like you, you earning the right to exist basically

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is so tied to our physical appearance.

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Loyobo: And so

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Loyobo: being told that

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Loyobo: my weight was the reason, for example, that he wasn't sexually attracted to me anymore. It wasn't just about that relationship, either. It was like I had failed as a woman, and what I was supposed to be doing, and and that

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Loyobo: in hindsight. that

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Loyobo: failure that perceived failure trumped everything else that was going on in my life. So in that same time period I graduated from Master's Degree, I earned my master's degree. I landed like coveted internships in the government. Here I won awards, and none of that mattered.

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Christine Chessman: I mean my mind compared to

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Loyobo: that failure, and I feel like so often we

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Loyobo: Christmas decorations. But so often I feel like that. That's the way that we prioritize our own self worth as women is is, you know, the accomplishments that we have in other areas, the

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Loyobo: and, as you said, even our own joy, our own happiness, our own. Well being all comes second and doesn't matter nearly as much.

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Loyobo: That's what we look like and and what we weigh, and how other people perceive our bodies. And it's just.

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Loyobo: It's such.

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Loyobo: It's a heartache for me. Okay.

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Loyobo: you know, I fell into that trap.

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Loyobo: and I feel like I also watched have watched my mother her entire life fall into that track of missing out on her life because she was. She's been so focused on what her body looks like.

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Loyobo: and

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Loyobo: I think like, what would the world look like if women all took that power back and all spent time and energy worrying about the things that actually matter to us.

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Loyobo: Yeah, rather than

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Loyobo: what our bodies look like, and how different the world would be in that.

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Christine Chessman: That's what really pushes me forward. Now, it's like that. I mean, that's you got a Master's degree, I mean, that's that's amazing and not accomplishment. And you got coveted positions. And you so

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Christine Chessman: and you're still so focused on. But I'm not quite good enough. I'm still not quite good enough, you know.

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Loyobo: like it wasn't even that I wasn't quite good enough. It was that, like I was terrible like it. There was no.

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Loyobo: those things didn't even come close to kind of balancing each other out. If that makes sense like the the wait and the

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Loyobo: the body. Appearance mattered so much more.

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Christine Chessman: Hmm.

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Loyobo: that that all of those things were just

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Loyobo: useless, like they didn't. They didn't count on this. You know the on the scales that I was looking at of how to feel better about myself. All that mattered. I mean looking a certain way.

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Christine Chessman: I mean, obviously, what I think in that situation is, my instinct goes to that person did not see you. They didn't see you, but equally. I guess we have to, as women get to the point where we've got that inner

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Christine Chessman: self where you know we build it from the inside, I and it's not about the validation from other people, even though that's really freaking hard. But but it's I think it comes back to that compassion as well as like in an end.

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Loyobo: you know. Bless him! Is that like I, I've done many podcasts and talked about this many times and I'll, and I'll be so truthful. It's like, I don't actually blame him.

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Loyobo: Yeah, I don't actually have any ill feelings towards him, because

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Loyobo: he was operating under the same paradigm. Right he was

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Loyobo: he. He had the same pressures of himself on weight, and the same pressures of himself. On, on! You know how he judged other people, and and we both just weren't ready to do that work. So there's only there's only.

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Loyobo: as I said, like compassion and empathy there of just when someone judges you like that. It's such a mirror to how they judge themselves and the way 100%. So

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Loyobo: you know, 100 so gracious of you as well, but I do, you know, I often think.

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Christine Chessman: but you know I think it is that I've lost my train of thought. My, but yeah, it's been great. It's thinking sort of other people who maybe make comments about you online, who are trolling you. What does that say about them and their self esteem, you know, and they're only concerned about you because they see that in themselves they're not.

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Christine Chessman: They're not happy with their own bodies, and maybe they wish they could be comfortable with their own bodies, as you're sort of showing them that you are. But on that note, Courtney, do you theme

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Christine Chessman: comfortable every day, or is it a question of you? Wake up.

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Loyobo: and you have to kind of win it over. You have to go. No. Are the thoughts coming back? Can you push them away more easily? Are they mainly not there? Where? Where are you? Generally? Great question. And I think it's it's so important to have these

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Loyobo: real conversations as well, because I think diet culture it presents, then this is like the answer to everything.

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Loyobo: and it creates this

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Loyobo: fake end goal that lets many of us down. And I wanna always make sure that I present

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Loyobo: that like undiating in the and the work we do is it isn't a like magical key to happiness, dieting, and let go of the weight, loss, desire like you'll you'll have it all figured out.

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Loyobo: What I do say is this is that I remember

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Loyobo: days where.

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Loyobo: if I woke up and didn't you know? Ha! Was triggered by how I looked in the mirror? Or

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Loyobo: have somebody commented. Those small moments could take me out for weeks or months

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Loyobo: right like that, that those things felt so life or death, and had so much weight to them

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Loyobo: that something so small could II remember small comments from like decades ago, because at the time they were so formative and and painful.

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Loyobo: That doesn't happen anymore.

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Loyobo: No, even when I have bad moments, or or that negative self talk comes in which it absolutely does.

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Loyobo: I have the skills and tools to work through it and unpack it.

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Loyobo: and to to be kind to myself and show my body love so often. Those moments

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Loyobo: feel so much more fleeting like we're talking about minutes.

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Loyobo: sometimes hours, maybe on the rare occasion a day.

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Loyobo: But it doesn't last. And I it's so much easier to come back to the

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Loyobo: I'm gonna use the word freedom, like you use the freedom to just exist in my body and to recognize that

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Loyobo: it's

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Loyobo: it's not the focus how my body looks. It's not the focus. It's how I feel. It's how I'm treating myself. It's the choices I'm making on a day-to-day basis, and

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Loyobo: the the the micro actions don't really, or the micro moments don't really matter in that sense.

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Loyobo: So there's absolutely days where it's harder.

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Loyobo: But I would say most days the vast majority of days.

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Loyobo: My body isn't even my focus at all. I mean, on days like this, where I'm sick, it's my focus, but more so. But like, how do I love and take care and be kind to my body? What does my body need? Those are the sorts of questions I'm asking now which

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Loyobo: before it was, it was always like, how does it look?

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Loyobo: What is the number on the scale? Say? And that's

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Loyobo: long gone. So it is possible. That's what I hope the takeaway is is

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Loyobo: I've worked with a lot of women who, you know, when they first come to me they they almost don't believe it. They almost don't believe that that that's possible

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Loyobo: to just not think about it all the time, to not base all of their life decisions on what their body looks like. And and I and I want that to be possible for everyone, for even to just for you to know that it's possible

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Loyobo: that there is another way to live where it's just not so center stage. It's not so stressful at the time. It doesn't feel so

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Loyobo: like beating you down

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Loyobo: at all these, you know small moments of small opportunities that there is much more free way to live.

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Christine Chessman: And you know, at a certain point in our lives when we're, you know, on our deathbeds, etc. You're not gonna you're gonna wish

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Loyobo: you haven't spent your whole life worrying about that cause. You realize Hi on important days. And that's not to trivialize anything. Favorite moments with friends. Right? You're not like, oh, I loved having this podcast with Christine because, you know.

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Loyobo: she was 10 pounds less like that was that was that made that podcast great time for me. You know what I mean. Like, I love. I've seen technology like, how much did Rosa Parks weigh like? No one knows. She's fantastic.

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Loyobo: Yeah, and that. So I think, like all, all of your most cherished favorite moments.

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Loyobo: your your most cherished and favorite and loved people like

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Loyobo: it's it doesn't even come close to the top of the list.

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Christine Chessman: And I, you know I have such feelings of empathy. And and for women that kind of look at photographs. What I used to always do was look at photographs, even of my kids, and when they were little.

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Christine Chessman: and judge each photo by how I looked in that photograph, what my wit was, how thin I was like, you know. And that makes me quite yeah. Yeah. And it makes me quite sad. And it's similarly to you when you got your masters and everything else I did the Berlin Marathon, and there's a picture of me running through the Brandenburg get which you know I did. History. This is historic. It's incredible.

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Christine Chessman: And I got the photograph back, and all I could do was focus in on my cellulite

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Christine Chessman: and just go. Oh, my goodness, I can't believe that I was like in shorts looking like, and when I look back at that, that is so far removed from where I am now, that it makes me sad, but equally really

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Christine Chessman: happy, because I can see the the journey that I have been on, and and exactly as you said, I think, for women to know that this is possible. We're not saying we're at. We're at the stage where we're happy all the time. There's no way, and some days are bad days.

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Christine Chessman: But it is just. It feels different.

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Loyobo: I'm not missing out on my life anymore. That's

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Loyobo: that's what's most key is, even on those bad days. It never stops me from showing up now

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Loyobo: and doing the thing like. I remember spending years of my life like not doing the thing, not not wearing the thing, not not signing up for the thing, not saying yes, not allowing myself to be in focus. And like that just doesn't happen.

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Loyobo: And that's what I want for other women, too, is like like, as you just said, like, like, as soon as you said you ran the Boston Marathon, and that image of of you

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Loyobo: running through that gate is like that that

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Loyobo: like I want to see your body move. In those moments I want. Of course, your eyes are going to be jiggling, and your face is going to be probably contorted because you're working hard and like now I feel like I see the beauty of that I want that

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Loyobo: that messy, imperfect

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Christine Chessman: physical experience that we get in our bodies, and I see the magic in that now rather than the and the beauty in it. Exactly exactly that exactly. I before kind of. We wrap up somebody rubbish it! Wrapping up.

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Christine Chessman: I'd love to know. What would you? Is there any sort of tools that you have for in the moment. So if people are really struggling, and there's certain triggers which are kind of across the board

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Christine Chessman: like the scale, like I'm changing rooms like trying on clothes is still for me. Han Hans, sign a really big trigger. What can you in the moment. Is there anything that you could?

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Christine Chessman: What what would you advise, or what would you?

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Loyobo: Great question?

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Loyobo: And this is something I mean, we could do a whole half hour, so many tools, the biggest one that was. Stop and take a breath.

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Christine Chessman: the biggest one. I stop and take a breath because

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Loyobo: the the knee jerk. The thoughts are going to start to spiral, and often

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Loyobo: we try to think our way out of it, and that's our that's our. That's the the biggest mistake that you can make is trying to think your way out of it. This is where your body is going to be your best friend, as part of this journey of

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Loyobo: try to get out of your thoughts and into your body.

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Loyobo: so play breath, take a pause, take a breath.

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Loyobo: or even better, do something to move. One of my favorite tools is like just doing a shake. 10 s. Just shake like a muffin, and you'll be you'll be amazed at how much that

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Loyobo: can shift

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Loyobo: the power of thought. So just be in your body into your body, and then my also number one my clients will laugh if they're listening to this. Podcast because I feel like this is my like on repeat all the time.

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Loyobo: Like, I'm like a toddler who, just like keeps repeating it, saying it again and again. This is what I wanted is, be curious, and ask, why

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Loyobo: be curious, and ask, why be be

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Loyobo: on a mission to discover? So when those thoughts happen.

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Loyobo: be curious and and and ask where those thoughts come from? Yeah, what's at the root of those thoughts? What values are leading those thoughts?

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Loyobo: What has taught me in the past that this is true? And are there other possibilities of what might be true in that moment.

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Loyobo: and that's gonna help you build that skill of just not ex. This is this is the most crucial, is not accepting the first thought as truth. Yes.

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Loyobo: right? Just because it's

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Loyobo: what you've been taught, just because it's been what other people have said to you, just because these are the rules that you've been presented for what it means to be a woman to be attracted, to be desirable, to be worthy.

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Loyobo: to be healthy doesn't mean that it's true, and that you have the power and the opportunity at every moment to rewrite the rules for yourself.

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Loyobo: and to choose a different path forward. but it all starts with just being curious. kind of and not accepting it as truth.

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Christine Chessman: This is Bute. I love everything that you said, and I think it's that your brain says a lot of stuff.

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Loyobo: so much it just. And you know all of these thoughts that have been in here. They just come out. They just come out, and, as you say, they're not facts.

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Loyobo: They're just your brand just giving you stuff, and it's just trying to to take that step back is quite hard in the moment, isn't it? But I love that shaking, using that movement, taking that breath allows you your goal is to just have that little bit of space that's that moment to just

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Loyobo: break

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Loyobo: the immediate cycle, the immediate knee-jerk reaction so that you can get curious. And you can start to ask questions.

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Christine Chessman: I love that, Courtney. That is just that's beautiful. And with that I think that's the perfect way to end. That's the perfect way to end. But before I let you go, is this going to quickly? It's ridiculous. Tell me where we can. Where do you find out what if you got coming up? And how can we work with you?

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Loyobo: I am an Instagram girl, as you know. That's where we met. So covid me on Instagram. It's fit LOYO, BOFI, T. And

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Loyobo: you know we there's as far as what's coming up. I am one of those girls that there's always there's always many, many things coming down the pipe. At this. I mean, January is coming. So we have a lot of new offers coming for 2,024. But the best way that you can also, if you're looking to get

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Loyobo: some support and actually implementing some of these tools and strategies. If we've got a free Facebook group call, we've got a free Facebook group called Discovering Body Acceptance, where? I share a lot of these tools and strategies and movements and women can connect with one another and get that support in the moment as well.

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Christine Chessman: That's fantastic, I will definitely check that out. Are you on tik tok?

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Loyobo: I am. I exist on tick, tock. I'm not as active on Tiktok as I may like to be. But yeah, yeah, I always say this, that my kids don't let me on tik tok.

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Christine Chessman: They think I'm and they're like, you can go on there. But you're not like to post, which is for. So I'm just Instagram, only that's as much as I can handle. But lovely to talk to you today, Courtney. Thank you for taking the time, and I will put all of those details in the show notes.