Hey everyone, welcome to QA Thursday. I hope you're all doing well and that the information I'm sharing on these podcasts is useful for you. If anything resonates with you, you should consider taking my 30-day weight loss mindset reset course. It's a game changer. Some people have already made it through the course and the wins are excellent. For example, a graduate of the course, Christine, shared this with me. This course left me feeling empowered and with the mindset that I can achieve whatever I set out to achieve. The positive affirmations and the encouragement from both Rick and the community helped to reaffirm my new mindset. That's nice, right? And this from Sherry. This course has quieted that constant chatter to not lose track of me and who I am always becoming. And another from Raja. I stayed on course and didn't give up. I did the work and I learned to pay attention to my body's signals. I am the only one who can either stop me or keep me going. You can also achieve these results. Sign up as part of your new year's resolution to finally make a real change in your life. I've gone through the emails from Monday's episode on discipline versus identity, and the questions are pretty good. There's a lot of fear around letting go of the discipline safety blanket. Okay, here we go. Question one: The evening crash. I get the battery concept, but I feel like I have no battery at all. I can be good until I walk in the door after work and then I inhale the pantry before I even take off my coat. How do I fix the evening crash? You probably think you're just lazy in the evenings. You look at the empty wrappers on the counter and tell yourself that you let your guard down, and that you need to stay vigilant 24-7. But that vigilance is exactly what is causing the crash. The binge you experience at 6 p.m. is not a failure of will, it's a biological rebound. If you spend eight hours holding your breath, restricting calories, suppressing annoyance at your boss, performing perfection, your body must gasp for air eventually. The pantry inhale is that gasp. The fix isn't more discipline in the evening, it's less restriction during the day. You need to stop white knuckling the morning and afternoon so you actually have some battery left for the night. Question number two. Fake it till you make it. You talked about acting versus being. Isn't trying to be a healthy person when I'm currently overweight just faking it until I make it? It feels like I'm lying to myself. This is a really common fear. We are terrified of being frauds. You think if I say I'm an athlete but I'm 50 pounds overweight, I'm delusional. But there is a distinct difference between faking it and practicing. Faking it is about tricking others into thinking you are something that you aren't, usually out of insecurity. Practicing, on the other hand, is about teaching yourself a new way of being. Think about a medical student. They aren't a doctor yet, but they put on the white coat, they walk the rounds, they speak the language. Are they lying? No, they're practicing the identity until it becomes reality. You aren't lying to yourself, you are rehearsing the future you are building. Question number three. The grief of the fat friend. I realized while listening that I actually identify as the funny fat friend. It's who I've been my whole life. The idea of losing that identity feels like dying. Is that normal? This is such a profound insight, and I want to validate how scary this is. We often keep the weight because it serves a function. Being the funny fat friend might be how you keep people comfortable, or how you avoid intimacy, or how you bond with your group. If you lose the weight, you aren't just losing pounds. You're losing a role that you know how to play perfectly. And that creates a void. Transformation is largely a grieving process. You have to mourn the safety of that old identity before you can step into the new one. It's okay to feel sad about changing, even if the change is positive. Question number four evidence gathering. I tried to ask myself, what would a healthy person do? And I still ate the cookies. Now I just feel like I failed at identity work too. You might interpret this as proof that the method doesn't work for you. You tried the tool, the tool failed. And now you want to throw it in the trash and go back to diving. But identity shifts are not magic spells. Asking the question doesn't guarantee you won't eat the cookie today. It simply interrupts the autopilot. The fact that you ask the question at all is the win. In the past, you would have eaten the cookies mindlessly. This time you ate them with awareness. That is step one. Forgive yourself for the cookie and celebrate the pause. Okay, question number five: where to start? This feels huge. If I have a hundred pounds to lose, how do I even start identifying as a thin or healthy person? It feels too far away. When the gap is that wide, your brain will reject the new identity as a lie. If you try to tell yourself, I am a fitness model today, your brain will say, No, you aren't. So don't aim for the finish line identity yet. Aim for the next step identity. Instead of identifying as the skinny person, identify as the person who doesn't give up or the person who walks after dinner. Start with an identity that feels true, but slightly stretched. Prove that one to yourself, then stretch again. You don't jump to the top of the staircase. You move up one step at a time.