Jenn: Can you tell us about your story of this time that you went from marathoner to getting an injury that made it so you couldn't do any sort of exercising?

Lynn:  I went from a marathoner to injured to take about three years off of running to becoming a marathoner. Then back to Marathon. It was really when I started struggling with my weight and the idea of dieting because I was always healthy. I always had this wonderfully healthy lifestyle that I loved, and I didn't have a problem eating, anything because I was always running off calories doing what I do, which is running. And then everything changed.

 

The first thing that happened was I had both of my Achilles tear. When this happens they leave you immobile, you're not supposed to walk, you're not supposed to run, you're not supposed to do anything with moving them. There's not a lot of movement that you can do.

There are stretching and stuff that I could do, but it sends you into a kind of a spiral mindset.  If you are in the state of mind that I was in, I wasn't even aware of what I was thinking at the time, so I had the fears. It's set into motion. These negative thought patterns, this self-shaming.

I can't run, I can't do anything, I'm gaining weight. And that's when I really started noticing a habit that I had already had but was able to ignore before which was emotional eating.

And then of course over the course of three years, many things happen.

My father was diagnosed with cancer, I started helping them downsize their house and sell their house, move their house. In the meantime, my husband and I also sold our house. All this stuff just happened right?

 

I was sitting at my heaviest way, incredibly unhappy looking at my life thinking. How am I going to get a handle on it? I've tried these diets, they're not working. There has to be an easier way.

 

And that was a turning point. I was just so unhappy my whole life was consumed around a diet mindset, a diet mentality, hiding and shaming myself for emotionally binge eating and drinking, and I was like Something's got to change here.

 

And that was when I decided to make the big change to starting the inside journey, which once I opened that door.  I was never able to close it again because it's like the light goes off and change begins to happen.

I was in a really bad spot I was beating myself up, I didn't realize how much my inner critic was just talking shit to me all the time, I was, I was self-medicating with wine in the evenings and paying for it. Regretfully, the next day because it just is a depressant, right?

And then I would eat the wrong things, and all this and then I would restrict myself and on Monday I'm starting to diet. I'm going start a diet again and that was my pattern, and then I fall off the wagon. Because we all know, diets don't work, they don't work, there's no reason that anyone should be on the diet.

When I really hit that bottom, which is different for everybody, I knew that I couldn't do it alone, and I'm going to be completely honest.

 

Nobody that wants to move out of that mindset can do it alone. They have to find a mentor, whether it's you, whether it's me, whether it's somebody else out there that's not even involved in dieting, it doesn't matter, you can't do it alone.

 

And so I found my first mentor, and I signed on with her for a year and so within the first two months, but I outgrew her. I was already looking for other mentors and she was great while I had her, and I continued my whole year with her,  I just was adding other mentors on top of it. Because the momentum that was behind it just brought so much joy to me.

 

And you just have to find the right fit for you.

I have plenty of mentors.

I feel like a lot of that fear comes from feeling unw