How Marchelle Overcame Body Hatred

Hi there!

Weight loss isn't just 'eat less, lose weight.' There are many internal reasons you react to food the way you do. Learning what those are and how to overcome them is critical to your weight loss success.

Some of this weeks episode highlights are:
4:08 One thing... I never gave up! It's not all rainbows and roses, but what is important is to keep working toward your goal.
7:45 I never realized that my relationship with food had everything to do with how I felt about myself.
16:21 The real work of weight loss is this deep inner work. It has to do with shifting the way that you think about yourself, how you manage your emotions, catching yourself when you slip, and being kind and gentle with yourself through this process.

--- Full Raw Transcription of Podcast Below ---

Introduction (00:00):
You are listening to the, keep the weight off podcast with Dr. Angela episode number 16.

Welcome to The Keep The Weight Off podcast, where we bust all the dieting myths and discover not just how to lose weight, but more importantly, how to keep it off. We go way beyond the food and we use science and psychology to give you strategies that work. And now your host, Dr. Angela Zechmann.

Dr. Angela (00:26):
Hey everyone. And welcome to the podcast this week. I am super excited. We have a very special episode with Marchelle. It was interesting because Marchelle and I were just talking last week and she was sort of telling me about some of the mental shifts that have happened to her since she's lost all her weight. And as she was talking, I just stopped her. And I said, you know what? We need to do a podcast on this because everybody needs to hear this. And so so first of all, Marchelle, tell everybody how much weight have you lost total. And what was that like? To me, it seems like it's occurred in several different phases.

Marchelle (01:13):
Yeah, it has. Hi everybody. Do you want me to tell you how much weight I've lost? Like in pounds measured by gravity? I think that it's about 60 pounds. I don't know exactly how much fat loss I've had. We could probably add that up on my body comp - I could have probably done that before we did the podcast, but it's about 60 pounds.

Dr. Angela (01:42):
I just want people to kind of understand, like this isn't just a little bit, this is a lot of weight loss that she's experienced and it's been really remarkable for me just watching it happen because I see her every day practically. And it's been really gradual and yet noticeable. So, yeah. So, so from what I can tell, it sort of happened in three different stages, right?

Marchelle (02:09):
Yeah. I'd say that it's happened over about a three-year period of time. So I wanted to back up a little bit and tell everybody I've been working with Dr. Angela for about three and a half years now, which means I've been absorbing her knowledge and her wisdom for a while.

Marchelle (02:29):
It's been life-changing or actually, should I say lifestyle changing for me? I wanted to somehow put into words my experience that'll hopefully help somebody else that's listening today. My earliest recollection of making conscious decision to change the weight I was eating was I had a little meltdown during the pandemic and realized that I was a major sugar addict and that I needed some help. And I can say I've been kind of half-assing Dr. Angela's program. And, indeed I lost some fat, but there's no accountability or consistency at that point. And I felt desperate and I wanted to feel better and I wanted to be comfortable in my own skin.

Marchelle (03:21):
And I wanted to feel healthy. So like laid it out there for Dr. Angela. And some of you've listened to the previous podcast when I explained that my sugar detox and she's helped me and my family to take the first steps, to first detoxing off the sugar and the flour and learning how to make better choices when it came to the food. And that took a while. I mean, it was simple, but definitely not easy. I've had my ups and downs, I've tested them body and try to figure out like an easier way of doing things. You know, this, I mean, one of the things I did was, I got on the Keto ice cream, I wanted to find out if there was any kind of ice creams that I could eat. I mean, I've, I've put myself to the test and tried to get away with stuff and slipped and splurge, but the one thing was - I never gave up.

Marchelle (04:11):
And I think that that's important for anybody to hear that this isn't, it isn't all rainbows and roses. I mean, there's struggles. And when Dr. Angela asked me to co-host her Tuesday evening support zoom calls for online workshop, it's called Journey Beyond Weight Loss. A lot of you guys probably already know about this. It's taken me several times to absorb and process a lot of the information, but I came to realize that there is so much more to the lifestyle change than just eating vegetables and protein and learning how to make better food choices. So, it's an identity change and I had to dig, much deeper and change my thoughts and beliefs about my self and my relationship with food. And it was only recently that I was able to really connect the dots.

Marchelle (05:07):
And I learned at a young age, I came to believe that I wasn't good enough. I wasn't skinny enough. I compared myself to other girls. I couldn't compete is what I thought.

Dr. Angela (05:18):
And so this is when you were a teenager.

Marchelle (05:22):
A young teenager, sixth grade, seventh grade, eighth, all through, when you start noticing yourself. And so we, I think we all want to be accepted and adored and popular and attractive, when we're younger. And what happened with me is every time I would look in the mirror as a young teen, I would pick myself apart. You know, my hips are too big. My chest is too small, I don't like my nose. And after a while I learned to hate myself, i hated my body. And I think when you hate yourself or you hate your body, you don't have a problem with abusing it.

Marchelle (05:58):
And so not only was I addicted to sugar and I didn't even realize it, that i had been addicted to sugar since I was really young. And we had talked about that in a previous podcast too, because that the sugar kind of gave me that feel good, quick dopamine hit, but I didn't realize that's what it was doing, but when I was depressed or critical of myself, then I would automatically turn to like milkshakes and Reese's peanut butter cups. And, but then, that took a toll on me because then I started gaining weight. So I was desperate. And I took, probably the wrong roads to get skinny because I just wanted to look a certain way and I wanted to be accepted and I wanted to be adored by other people.

Marchelle (06:50):
And so then, like I said, it led me to taking desperate measures and to get to stay skinny. Right. So I hope this is making sense. I mean, yeah. It's, it's hard to kind of put everything into words cause I'm still in a process of learning, through Journey Beyond Weight Loss. And this is where I am now. So I think three years of self self-sabotage and negative thinking and being really critical of myself and not caring, how I was treating or feeding my body. And then it also suffered from overindulgence of alcohol and other substances as a teen and into my twenties. And I just think my issues have ran like really deep within my head and in my heart. And I was unaware of how everything that I do and I am is all intertwined.

Marchelle (07:44):
So I sort of had this aha moment when I was talking with you the other day in the office. And and it's like, my thoughts become, my beliefs and which became my actions an is now my life. Right. So I just had a really toxic relationship with myself and I never realized that my relationship with food had everything to do with how I felt about myself. So yeah, I needed to do more than just eat, better, eat less or prep meals or yada yada. I mean, I know that's important, but it's only the first step. Exactly. Yeah. And I've been learning a lot on how to change my thoughts and treat myself with love and talk to myself. Like I'm my own best friend. As a matter of fact, what I had to do was I'm really good at being self-critical and that's just kind of this, this chatter that's going on in the back of my head all the time is you didn't do that right or you could have done that better, or, you don't look good in those clothes. I'm sure that everybody understands is kind of self-hatred.

Dr. Angela (08:49):
I think this is what our brain does to us all day.

Marchelle (08:52):
That's how we start. So what I did was when we were learning I can't remember what module it was, but it was learning how to change the way that we talk to ourselves. What I did is I created like this little, super woman, like my little superhero, like in my mind. And when I start like thinking with a negative thoughts, I just kind of like bring her out and she combats those negative thoughts. And then what I do is like, I just insert a positive thought. So I'm really like having to do some conscious work with my mind yes. To change the way that I think about myself.

Marchelle (09:33):
I mean, it's work. It is it's easy to fall back into, you know, the way the bad behaviors or the, you know, self-sabotaging thinking or, you know, sometimes you just feel like, ah, is this even worth it? Or I don't know if I can do this. I tell myself that sometimes, but I just have to realize it's going to be a lifelong journey for me. It's not you know you don't get cured. It's something that we work on. And and I'm just in a much better place today than I have been for most of my life probably. Yeah. And the weight loss. I mean, yeah, that's great. And I feel a lot more self-confident but more, I feel healthy and I feel more clearheaded and just, I feel like I have a lot more hope than I used to.

Dr. Angela (10:34):
Would you say that you respect your body more?

Marchelle (10:39):
Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Definitely. I mean, I can give you like one small example and this is, this is so dumb, but I had to go to the pharmacy today and right before we did the podcast and I always walk down their main aisle, which is like the candy aisle. And I went from like, I couldn't resist and I buy some of their candy cause they have like the old fashioned candy and it's really attractive to me. So I would get caught up in that aisle. And I went from giving into those temptations. Then I went from buying the regular loaded candy to buying one bag of the diabetic Stevia based candy. Cause I thought that was better for you. Yeah. So today though, I walked down the aisle and I totally, there was just no option. I just told myself I was not going to do it before I went in there and I found the strength to walk back down it and pay for my stuff and get the heck out of there. So major win for me.

Dr. Angela (11:42):
Congratulations.

Marchelle (11:43):
That's the first time time that I have gone in there and not bought candy.

Dr. Angela (11:47):
Oh, that's awesome.

Marchelle (11:48):
I know. So it's the little things, right?

Dr. Angela (11:52):
Like they call this in the weight loss world, they call these the non-scale victories. These are the victories that matter. So yeah. Cool. Yeah. So I think that this is one of the huge keys and, and actually in Journey Beyond Weight Loss, we start in module, with a module called "Done with Dieting." And the idea is that we break ourselves free from that whole quick fix. I'm gonna, you know, just go on a diet for a little while and break ourselves free from that craziness, because that's what we did when we were younger. You know, that's kind of like, that's the solution to our, you know, we stand there in front of the mirror and we look at ourselves and we're like, Oh, I can't stand this. And I don't care who you are or what your body looks like. It happens to every woman where she stands in the mirror and she just looks at herself and says, that's got to go, you know, that's got to go. And it doesn't matter. She could be really thin, but there's always, we're just always picking ourselves apart. And so that's the first piece of it is really ending this sort of body hatred. And I do have an exercise where I have people go through and write down 10 things that they actually love about their bodies.

Marchelle (13:12):
The first time that we did this and you asked it to do that exercise, I couldn't come up with 10 things. I know it's hard. I just skipped past it because I was like, Oh, I'm not doing this. I can't, I just couldn't. I was stumped. I couldn't think of 10 things. And today I could think of 10 things. I could probably think of more than 10 things. I know that if anybody out there that's listening to this, I mean, it's really vulnerable for me to come on this podcast because I see a lot of patients face to face who listen to these podcasts and I'm kind of putting myself out here and telling everybody the raw messy side of myself you don't want anybody to know, and this isn't east for me - i'm not like a professional podcaster - I'm just Dr. Angela's medical assistant, who is part of also her patient, part of doing his part of the program.

Dr. Angela (14:06):
Right. Who is amazing, absolutely amazing!

Marchelle (14:11):
I mean, I know if I can do it and I know this works because I, you know, when I came in to the clinic, my thought was eat less weigh less. And I would starve myself. I would skip meals. That's, that's where i was at, you know, that's and like I said, I mean, I'd gone to deeper depths to try to stay skinny and look this certain part, you know, while I was so messed up on the inside, if I just looked good on the outside, everything would be okay. And so if there was something that didn't work about this program, I would have probably exposed it because I used to go, I mean, I'd even go in and watch you, like, I'd see what you were eating for lunch every day. And I would say, Oh, there's no way.

Marchelle (14:59):
There's no way that she could eat healthy every single day. Like, there's gotta be a cheat. I was just watching, I was waiting for that and watching, cause that's like where my mind was. And it just, you were just so consistent. And I just started absorbing everything in the clinic that I could, and it just became a part of me. And then finally, when I got serious about it, I mean, and really started doing like the inner work is when things really started changed because I think, yeah, you can white knuckle it for a long time and and eat right. Focus on eating the protein and doing the vegetables. Like I get that. And I did that for a long time, but there was just something inside of me that was still missing.

Marchelle (15:40):
And I didn't know what it was, it was missing the ones till I started listening to Journey Beyond Weight Loss, and then just kind of absorbing that material that you were talking to us about. And then it started things started to kind of click and I really wasn't even going to do it. I wasn't going to participate in journey beyond weight loss. I was just going in to be, you know, the co-host of your support calls. And for some reason, like it just started making so much sense that I couldn't help, but to want to know more. Right. Yeah. Because I started feeling better and I started working through some stuff, but like I said, I mean, there, there are some deep work to do and but it's necessary.

Dr. Angela (16:21):
Well, that's just it - the real work of weight loss is this deep inner work. And it has to do with shifting the way that you think about yourself and shifting the way that you manage your emotions and sort of catching yourself like being aware and catching yourself when you're like you talked about this, Marchelle, where like I just realized how much I was beating myself up all day. So, I mean, that's, that's what makes weight loss hard is when you're in this diet mentality and you have to be just perfect on your diet. And then, you know, you, you have an inevitable slip that's what I call it when you don't plan it, it's a slip and you have your inevitable slip, which is going to happen. And then you just start beating yourself up. And after a while, like how much, how much can you beat yourself up and not just say, screw it, I give up, you know?

Dr. Angela (17:18):
And so, and so that's the real work of weight. Loss is really learning to be kind and gentle with yourself while you're in this process. And this is what we teach this is, and, and we have lots of tools and techniques to really help you through that. And it's effective and it works, but it does take time. I mean, this didn't happen overnight. This happened over, I mean, we started Journey Beyond Weight Loss a couple of years ago when you really started getting way more involved in Journey Beyond Weight Loss about a year, I would say, right. So it's been about a year for you of just hearing me say these things over and over, and each time you hear it, it sounds different, you know, that's how it works. So, yeah,

Marchelle (18:03):
I know. So, like I said, though, when I was just kicking back and kind of listening to the information, watching other people work through the modules, I, like I said, I just started picking up certain things. It started to click with me, but then when I started actually doing the work in writing this stuff down and practicing talking nicer to myself, just combating the negative self-talk because that's where the identity change comes into place is just simply the way we think about ourselves, you know? And so, but that's huge. I mean, it sounds simple, but it's huge. And then I don't know. I mean, when I started doing the actual work, I think things started to change and I don't think I can ever really go back from that. I mean, I'm sure that, I mean, I've gone through my ups and downs, like I said, I mean, I haven't been perfect.

Marchelle (19:02):
It's not like I don't splurge or slip unintentionally that does happen to me. And also even with the critical thinking, it's very easy for me to have a stressful day and feel like I failed or that you are being tired or hungry. There's a lot of different emotions that, and that's where the scale of emotions comes in. I mean, there's just so many light bulbs that go off when I'm talking about my story and just how your program is like implemented these changes in my life. So, I mean, I could go on and on if we really wanted to break it down, but honestly I just wanted to get, just got excited about telling people where I was at. And I know it is vulnerable for me to share this information because it's personal. But I think that if my story can help anybody else that may be going through what I'm going through, then, then it would be worth it for me.

Dr. Angela (20:06):
Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it is, everybody goes through what you are going through. I mean, it's just, it's such a, it's such a personal journey. It really is. And it's a journey of vulnerability and I really appreciate your sharing it with everyone so that they kind of know that. I think it helps also to know that you're not alone. Like these feelings are not, not something that is unique to you that these, these feelings that we've been dealing with for all of these decades of dieting are just so very common. And they're just, they're difficult to deal with, but easier if you're not the only one. So I appreciate your letting everybody know. And standing as an example of what's possible, that's, that's the cool thing is that your standing is an example of what it's like to actually have this experience of decades of dieting and all of this craziness. And you know, all of the Jenny Craig meals.

Marchelle (21:09):
Right ... I've done it, all that Angela, I've done it all. And I have wasted thousands of dollars on dieting. I have just abused myself and starved myself and, you know, try to find the easier way. And I don't even know like really, what was it all for? Like when you think about it, I think like when we're young and impressionable and you become, so self-critical because I don't know, I compared myself to all the other girls and I grew up in California. So there's a really high standard of looking perfect. I don't know. I mean, I think it's everywhere, but I think the closer to Hollywood that you are ...

Dr. Angela (21:53):
Yeah.

Marchelle (21:54):
The, the bar is heightened, I guess. I don't know. So yeah. So yeah, I mean, it was, it was rough. It was rough inside my head when I was a kid.

Dr. Angela (22:03):
Yeah. Oh gosh. Well, I'm glad that you're like shifting all of this and, and it does, it takes time and, you know, you just, you become so much more aware and then you're catching yourself and then it's just a, it's just an amazing process. And I love the weight loss process because so much else in your life changes as you're going through this process, because you're learning to think about yourself differently. Think about your relationships differently, so much in your life changes. It's awesome. Right. Awesome.

Marchelle (22:35):
I just think of like, my weight loss journey is like, it's like a butterfly. Yeah. Because butterflies are proof that you can go through a great deal of darkness still become something beautiful.

Dr. Angela (22:53):
Absolutely.Yeah. So, cool. Well, thank you, Marchelle. Thank you so much for sharing this aspect of your journey and for all of those of you who are listening if you want to learn more you can go to the website JourneyBeyondWeightLoss.com and there's a free course there where you can download the free course and get started on your weight loss journey. And we open up Journey Beyond Weight Loss three times a year. It is now closed. So we'll open up again in September, but that's something to consider is joining us as well in Journey Beyond Weight Loss. If you want, if you're ready to start thinking about doing this deeper work, that's really, really important. So awesome. So thanks for listening everybody. If you have any comments make to leave them in the comments section of the site and we'll see you all next week. Thank you. Thanks Marchelle. Bye everybody.

Closing (23:56):
Hey, if you really want to lose weight and keep it off for good, your next step is to sign up for Dr. Angela's free weight loss course, where you're going to learn everything you need to get started on your weight loss journey, the right way, just head over to JourneyBeyondWeightLoss.com/freecourse to sign up. Also, it would be awesome if you could take a few moments and write a review on iTunes. Thanks. And we'll see you in Journey Beyond Weight Loss.

- Dr. Angela

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