OUTWEIGH: In Part 2 of our series, Leanne dives deep into the brain science behind why we crave approval—and how that craving can become a constant chase for validation. From diet culture to social media to people-pleasing, we explore how the world wires us to outsource our self-worth. But we don’t have to stay stuck in that loop. You’ll learn what it looks like to reclaim your inner authority, quiet the external noise, and anchor into a worthiness that isn’t dependent on who accepts you or applauds you.
HOST: Leanne Ellington // StresslessEating.com // @leanneellington
To learn more about re-wiring your brain to heal from the all-or-nothing diet mentality for good....but WITHOUT restricting yourself, punishing your body, (and definitely WITHOUT ever having to use words like macros, low-carb, or calorie burn) check out Leanne's FREE Stressless Eating Webinar @ www.StresslessEating.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I won't let my body out be outwait everything that
I'm made, don't won't spend my life trying to change.
I'm learning love who I am again. I'm strong, I
feel free, I know everybody of me. It's beautiful and
I will always out way if you feel it, but
(00:24):
yours here, she'll some love too. I give there, say
good day and did you and die out way Happy Saturday,
out wigh. It's leanne here. And today we're diving even
deeper into this conversation that we started last week about
recleaving your worthiness even if you don't feel like you
(00:46):
fully embrace self love or acceptance or worthiness just yet.
And so if you haven't listened to that episode, I
definitely recommend going back and giving it a listen first,
because it lays the foundation for what we're exploring here.
And in that first episode, we unpacked why your worthiness
isn't something that you have to earn or approve or
work for, and how so many of us were wired
(01:08):
to believe the exact opposite. But we also talked about, Okay,
let's meet your skeptical brain where it is, where it's like, Okay,
if I've been looking in the mirror and telling myself
I'm worthy and trying to pretend like I don't care
about my weight. Why do I still feel like this?
It's not clicking. So we address that as well, And
so today we're taking it a step further and talking
about the trap of looking for your worthiness in all
(01:28):
the wrong places, especially your body, your achievements and your
approval from others, or your assumption or desire to be
approved by others, and how to stop chasing that external
validation so that you can finally feel safe and at
home within yourself. And so, if you've ever felt like
you needed to earn your worth, or if you've ever
(01:48):
measured your value by what you accomplish or how you
look or how much you weigh or how well you
perform or fill in the blank, and if you've ever
tried to prove yourself to the world by being the
you know, the air quo it's a good girl, or
the achiever or the fixer or the helper. And that's
the big one. A lot of women that I work with,
it's a self sacrificial, self abandonment side of things, because
(02:11):
they're trying to help everyone else, right, and that becomes
a worthiness badge. Of honor. So first of all, I
just want you to know you're so not alone. We
all have our own stuff, right, we all have our
own worthiness gap, right. And so not only is this
something that I've walked through personally, it's something that every
woman I work with is also walking through. And that's
no coincidence because again, from a young age, most of
(02:33):
us were taught, whether directly or indirectly, that our worth
was conditional and that we had to work for it
and earn it and strive for it. And so maybe
you were praised when you were air quotes thinner right,
or when you got straight a's, or when you were
quiet or polite or helpful or agreeable or just didn't
make a fuss. Or maybe you were told that you
(02:53):
were too much when you were emotional or had boundaries,
or that your personality was too much, or that you
were too you know, much, taking up too much space
or too much room, right, Or maybe you were never
told anything explicitly, but your nervous system learned to associate
love and acceptance with performance or perfection or approval, and
(03:14):
so you grew up becoming really good at contorting yourself
into who you thought you needed to be and you,
just like me, you probably wore the mask and you
played the role, and you shrunk or over extended or
hustled to earn your place, and slowly but surely, you started,
whether you knew it or not, outsourcing your worth to
(03:36):
things that were never meant to define you, to the scale,
to your appearance, to other people's opinions, things that we
think are benign, but like things like productivity and being
liked and being needed and being good. Trust me, there's
no shame, there's no judgment. I've used all of those
measuring sticks, right. And here's the thing. You may have
(03:57):
gotten the applause, and you may have gotten the approval,
and you may have gotten the affirmation, but deep down
it never actually made you feel safe or whole or worthy.
Because the truth is, if you have to chase it
to feel worthy, it's not real worthiness. Right. If your
worth can be gained, it can be taken, and if
(04:20):
it's conditional, it's unstable, and if it depends on something
outside of you, it's always at risk. Right. And that's
the painful reality that so many women are waking up to.
They've done all the things they've hustled for worth in
their bodies, in their jobs, in their marriages, in their parenting,
in their social circles, and no matter what they do
(04:42):
or how much they accomplish, it still doesn't feel like
enough because it was never about any of those things
in the first place. And so many of the women
I work with come to me in the middle of
this loop and they're like, if I could just lose
the weight, then I'd feel worthy, Or if I could
just stop binging, then I'd finally love myself and not
(05:03):
walk around with so much shame. Or if I could
just get more control or more discipline or more willpower,
then I'd be happy. But here's what I always tell them,
and it's lovingly, but it's direct. The real issue isn't
your body or your eating or your habits. It's what
you believe those things say about you. Okay, Now here's
(05:23):
what I really want you to get. Your brain has
made up a story that if you were thinner, or
more disciplined or more accomplished, you'd finally feel okay, and
that your value lives in your outcomes, or that how
you look or how well you perform is a reflection
of your identity. But that's the wiring of survival mode, right,
(05:44):
of what your brain is just programmed to do. It's
not the truth, And that is your nervous system running
an old code and an old message and an old program.
And it's programming and conditioning that says I'm not enough
unless right and fill in the blank. We've all done
it right, and I still catch myself doing it today,
(06:05):
only now I have the tools to dismantle it. But
it's again, it's not something to be ashamed of. It's
part of the conditioning that we grow up in. Right,
So I'm not enough and less right. And what happens
when you're wired that way, right, is that even when
you do achieve something, the relief is temporary. The anxiety
comes back, and the voice in your head finds something
(06:27):
else to criticize, because your worth is still on the line. Right,
And this is the part that gets really tender. So
I want you to hear me. You know with your heart, Okay,
you were never meant to prove your worth. You were
meant to just know it. Okay, let me say that again.
You were never meant to prove your worth. You were
meant to just stand in the knowingness of it. That's
(06:49):
what I truly believe. And you were never meant to
earn your place. You were meant to just belong and
be just as you are. But your brain has been
operating like it's in a courtroom, right, like it is
in court on defense, every choice, every emotion, every flaw.
It feels like it's being put on trial, right, And
(07:12):
you're the prosecutor and the defendant and the judge and
the jury all rolled into one. And all of that
is rooted in one thing. And that one thing is
a belief that your worth is up for debate, that
your worth is on trial. But what if it's not right?
What if your worth was never meant to be on
(07:33):
trial in the first place? Right? What if there was
nothing to prove? And the real gain, for lack of
a way of saying it, was just to remember and
to know, because here's the truth that your brain might
not believe just yet, is that again, your worth is
not up for negotiation. It's not based on what you
do or what you weigh or how others see you.
(07:55):
And it's not earned and it can't be revoked. It
just is is right. And this was the hardest thing
for me to get I'm like, wait a minute, you're
saying that, Like I have a hundred extra pounds on
my body and I'm worthy of love and belonging, and
like I don't have to prove my worth by losing
weight or when I was in the throes of career change,
I'm like, I feel like a loser. I feel like
(08:16):
a failure. I feel like fill in the blank because
I don't feel successful yet and I don't have to.
I'm still enough, Like I'm still acceptable and lovable right
now in my low. And that's the thing about self
love and self acceptance, like the true kind, right It's
not about convincing yourself that you're amazing one hundred percent
of the time. It's not about lying to yourself. It's
about anchoring into your worth even when you don't feel
(08:40):
like you deserve it and when you don't feel amazing,
And it's about returning home to yourself, or having the
ability to return home to yourself, especially when your inner
credit critic is the loudest, and having the ability to
talk back or supersede it or override it. But not
in this like fake positivity kind of way, in a
again anchoring into your worth kind of way, and it
(09:02):
really is about choosing to be on your own side
in a world that, let's be honest, it profits off
you believing that you're broken. And when you stop chasing
your worth through your body, your behavior, or your achievements,
something wild happens. Okay, and I wouldn't have known it
happened until it happened, right, But here's what happens. Your
(09:25):
brain gets quiet, your nervous system softens, and for the
first time in a long time, you can just be
and you can eat without shame, and you can move
your body without trying to punishment or earn calories, and
you can speak your mind without overthinking it, and you
can rest without guilt, and you can look in the
(09:48):
mirror without spiraling because you're no longer trying to earn
your place. You've already just claimed it. And ironically, it's
from that place that real change becomes possible, when your
worth isn't on the line, and you're no longer trapped
in all or nothing patterns, and you're not swinging from
(10:08):
restriction to rebellion, restriction to rebellion and trying to soothe
your stress with food or overcompensate with control, and you're
not trying to fix yourself. You're trying to know yourself.
You're trying to get to know yourself, and that changes
everything everything, Okay, And I know that's not what people
(10:30):
are trying to tell you on Instagram, right, it's about
like lose twenty pounds and twenty minutes, or here's the
best smoothie for autoimmune or whatever it is, right, But
it's like, what's causing the autoimmune, what's causing the nervous
nervous system, what's causing you to be able to know
what you can do, know what to do, but can't
get yourself to do it right? And so it's not
about trying to fix yourself with tactics. It's about knowing
(10:52):
yourself so that you can stand in it. Right. It's
an authority in who you are rather than outsourcing it,
and that changes everything. And so if this message resonated
with you, I want to just leave you with a
gentle practice to try. Okay. And so every time you
catch yourself thinking I need to do X to be enough,
or I should be more X, or I don't deserve
(11:15):
X until I why right, say this to yourself. Remind
yourself my worth is not on trial. That is the lie.
I don't have to earn my value today. My worth
is not on trial. This is not up for debate.
That's the fact that my worth is something I need
to earn or hustle or work for today. That is
the lie. And I don't have to earn it. I
(11:36):
just have to see it and know it, and then
I can go about my goals. This is not saying
don't have goals. This is not saying don't try to
better yourself. It's like, what if you grounded and rooted
yourself in worthiness while you tried to go reach that goal.
And I have to say, because I wouldn't be who
I am if I didn't say it. Go use a
strategy that's going to actually set you up for true
health three dimensionally, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, all of that, okay,
(11:59):
But again, my worth isn't on trial. That is the lie.
And even if you don't fully believe it yet, say
it until your nervous system starts to settle right. Say
it as many times as you need to interrupt the
old pattern. And you know this is how the rewiring begins,
not through perfection, but through practice and through repetition and
(12:19):
through reminders, and you're not building self worth from scratch,
you are returning to it, and you're reclaiming what was
always yours. You just didn't know that you accidentally abandoned it, right,
And I promise you it is not only possible, it
is a certainty if you get in the reps. Okay, now,
it's obviously there's more beyond the scope of this conversation,
(12:41):
but this is where it starts. Is that acknowledging of like, nope,
that whole thing that my worth is on trial, that
is the lie. So that is it for today. Outweigh
And if you want to learn more about how I
teach my clients to turn off the part of their
brain that's obsessed with their weight and food and go
rewire their own brain and self image for pease and freedom,
then head on over to stresslesseding dot com, where I've
(13:04):
literally peeled back the curtain and walked you through the
exact strategy. I teach my own clients to heal themselves
from the all or nothing diet mentality and heal it
for good without restricting themselves or punishing their bodies. So
it's over there for you to access over on stresslesseding
dot com and I will talk next week for Part three. Bye.
I won't let my body out be outwait everything that
I'm made, don't won't spend my life trying to change.
I'm learning love who I am again. I'm strong, I
feel free, I know everybody of me. It's beautiful and
I will always out way if you feel it, but
(00:24):
yours here, she'll some love too. I give there, say
good day and did you and die out way Happy Saturday,
out wigh. It's leanne here. And today we're diving even
deeper into this conversation that we started last week about
recleaving your worthiness even if you don't feel like you
(00:46):
fully embrace self love or acceptance or worthiness just yet.
And so if you haven't listened to that episode, I
definitely recommend going back and giving it a listen first,
because it lays the foundation for what we're exploring here.
And in that first episode, we unpacked why your worthiness
isn't something that you have to earn or approve or
work for, and how so many of us were wired
(01:08):
to believe the exact opposite. But we also talked about, Okay,
let's meet your skeptical brain where it is, where it's like, Okay,
if I've been looking in the mirror and telling myself
I'm worthy and trying to pretend like I don't care
about my weight. Why do I still feel like this?
It's not clicking. So we address that as well, And
so today we're taking it a step further and talking
about the trap of looking for your worthiness in all
(01:28):
the wrong places, especially your body, your achievements and your
approval from others, or your assumption or desire to be
approved by others, and how to stop chasing that external
validation so that you can finally feel safe and at
home within yourself. And so, if you've ever felt like
you needed to earn your worth, or if you've ever
(01:48):
measured your value by what you accomplish or how you
look or how much you weigh or how well you
perform or fill in the blank, and if you've ever
tried to prove yourself to the world by being the
you know, the air quo it's a good girl, or
the achiever or the fixer or the helper. And that's
the big one. A lot of women that I work with,
it's a self sacrificial, self abandonment side of things, because
(02:11):
they're trying to help everyone else, right, and that becomes
a worthiness badge. Of honor. So first of all, I
just want you to know you're so not alone. We
all have our own stuff, right, we all have our
own worthiness gap, right. And so not only is this
something that I've walked through personally, it's something that every
woman I work with is also walking through. And that's
no coincidence because again, from a young age, most of
(02:33):
us were taught, whether directly or indirectly, that our worth
was conditional and that we had to work for it
and earn it and strive for it. And so maybe
you were praised when you were air quotes thinner right,
or when you got straight a's, or when you were
quiet or polite or helpful or agreeable or just didn't
make a fuss. Or maybe you were told that you
(02:53):
were too much when you were emotional or had boundaries,
or that your personality was too much, or that you
were too you know, much, taking up too much space
or too much room, right, Or maybe you were never
told anything explicitly, but your nervous system learned to associate
love and acceptance with performance or perfection or approval, and
(03:14):
so you grew up becoming really good at contorting yourself
into who you thought you needed to be and you,
just like me, you probably wore the mask and you
played the role, and you shrunk or over extended or
hustled to earn your place, and slowly but surely, you started,
whether you knew it or not, outsourcing your worth to
(03:36):
things that were never meant to define you, to the scale,
to your appearance, to other people's opinions, things that we
think are benign, but like things like productivity and being
liked and being needed and being good. Trust me, there's
no shame, there's no judgment. I've used all of those
measuring sticks, right. And here's the thing. You may have
(03:57):
gotten the applause, and you may have gotten the approval,
and you may have gotten the affirmation, but deep down
it never actually made you feel safe or whole or worthy.
Because the truth is, if you have to chase it
to feel worthy, it's not real worthiness. Right. If your
worth can be gained, it can be taken, and if
(04:20):
it's conditional, it's unstable, and if it depends on something
outside of you, it's always at risk. Right. And that's
the painful reality that so many women are waking up to.
They've done all the things they've hustled for worth in
their bodies, in their jobs, in their marriages, in their parenting,
in their social circles, and no matter what they do
(04:42):
or how much they accomplish, it still doesn't feel like
enough because it was never about any of those things
in the first place. And so many of the women
I work with come to me in the middle of
this loop and they're like, if I could just lose
the weight, then I'd feel worthy, Or if I could
just stop binging, then I'd finally love myself and not
(05:03):
walk around with so much shame. Or if I could
just get more control or more discipline or more willpower,
then I'd be happy. But here's what I always tell them,
and it's lovingly, but it's direct. The real issue isn't
your body or your eating or your habits. It's what
you believe those things say about you. Okay, Now here's
(05:23):
what I really want you to get. Your brain has
made up a story that if you were thinner, or
more disciplined or more accomplished, you'd finally feel okay, and
that your value lives in your outcomes, or that how
you look or how well you perform is a reflection
of your identity. But that's the wiring of survival mode, right,
(05:44):
of what your brain is just programmed to do. It's
not the truth, And that is your nervous system running
an old code and an old message and an old program.
And it's programming and conditioning that says I'm not enough
unless right and fill in the blank. We've all done
it right, and I still catch myself doing it today,
(06:05):
only now I have the tools to dismantle it. But
it's again, it's not something to be ashamed of. It's
part of the conditioning that we grow up in. Right,
So I'm not enough and less right. And what happens
when you're wired that way, right, is that even when
you do achieve something, the relief is temporary. The anxiety
comes back, and the voice in your head finds something
(06:27):
else to criticize, because your worth is still on the line. Right,
And this is the part that gets really tender. So
I want you to hear me. You know with your heart, Okay,
you were never meant to prove your worth. You were
meant to just know it. Okay, let me say that again.
You were never meant to prove your worth. You were
meant to just stand in the knowingness of it. That's
(06:49):
what I truly believe. And you were never meant to
earn your place. You were meant to just belong and
be just as you are. But your brain has been
operating like it's in a courtroom, right, like it is
in court on defense, every choice, every emotion, every flaw.
It feels like it's being put on trial, right, And
(07:12):
you're the prosecutor and the defendant and the judge and
the jury all rolled into one. And all of that
is rooted in one thing. And that one thing is
a belief that your worth is up for debate, that
your worth is on trial. But what if it's not right?
What if your worth was never meant to be on
(07:33):
trial in the first place? Right? What if there was
nothing to prove? And the real gain, for lack of
a way of saying it, was just to remember and
to know, because here's the truth that your brain might
not believe just yet, is that again, your worth is
not up for negotiation. It's not based on what you
do or what you weigh or how others see you.
(07:55):
And it's not earned and it can't be revoked. It
just is is right. And this was the hardest thing
for me to get I'm like, wait a minute, you're
saying that, Like I have a hundred extra pounds on
my body and I'm worthy of love and belonging, and
like I don't have to prove my worth by losing
weight or when I was in the throes of career change,
I'm like, I feel like a loser. I feel like
(08:16):
a failure. I feel like fill in the blank because
I don't feel successful yet and I don't have to.
I'm still enough, Like I'm still acceptable and lovable right
now in my low. And that's the thing about self
love and self acceptance, like the true kind, right It's
not about convincing yourself that you're amazing one hundred percent
of the time. It's not about lying to yourself. It's
about anchoring into your worth even when you don't feel
(08:40):
like you deserve it and when you don't feel amazing,
And it's about returning home to yourself, or having the
ability to return home to yourself, especially when your inner
credit critic is the loudest, and having the ability to
talk back or supersede it or override it. But not
in this like fake positivity kind of way, in a
again anchoring into your worth kind of way, and it
(09:02):
really is about choosing to be on your own side
in a world that, let's be honest, it profits off
you believing that you're broken. And when you stop chasing
your worth through your body, your behavior, or your achievements,
something wild happens. Okay, and I wouldn't have known it
happened until it happened, right, But here's what happens. Your
(09:25):
brain gets quiet, your nervous system softens, and for the
first time in a long time, you can just be
and you can eat without shame, and you can move
your body without trying to punishment or earn calories, and
you can speak your mind without overthinking it, and you
can rest without guilt, and you can look in the
(09:48):
mirror without spiraling because you're no longer trying to earn
your place. You've already just claimed it. And ironically, it's
from that place that real change becomes possible, when your
worth isn't on the line, and you're no longer trapped
in all or nothing patterns, and you're not swinging from
(10:08):
restriction to rebellion, restriction to rebellion and trying to soothe
your stress with food or overcompensate with control, and you're
not trying to fix yourself. You're trying to know yourself.
You're trying to get to know yourself, and that changes
everything everything, Okay, And I know that's not what people
(10:30):
are trying to tell you on Instagram, right, it's about
like lose twenty pounds and twenty minutes, or here's the
best smoothie for autoimmune or whatever it is, right, But
it's like, what's causing the autoimmune, what's causing the nervous
nervous system, what's causing you to be able to know
what you can do, know what to do, but can't
get yourself to do it right? And so it's not
about trying to fix yourself with tactics. It's about knowing
(10:52):
yourself so that you can stand in it. Right. It's
an authority in who you are rather than outsourcing it,
and that changes everything. And so if this message resonated
with you, I want to just leave you with a
gentle practice to try. Okay. And so every time you
catch yourself thinking I need to do X to be enough,
or I should be more X, or I don't deserve
(11:15):
X until I why right, say this to yourself. Remind
yourself my worth is not on trial. That is the lie.
I don't have to earn my value today. My worth
is not on trial. This is not up for debate.
That's the fact that my worth is something I need
to earn or hustle or work for today. That is
the lie. And I don't have to earn it. I
(11:36):
just have to see it and know it, and then
I can go about my goals. This is not saying
don't have goals. This is not saying don't try to
better yourself. It's like, what if you grounded and rooted
yourself in worthiness while you tried to go reach that goal.
And I have to say, because I wouldn't be who
I am if I didn't say it. Go use a
strategy that's going to actually set you up for true
health three dimensionally, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, all of that, okay,
(11:59):
But again, my worth isn't on trial. That is the lie.
And even if you don't fully believe it yet, say
it until your nervous system starts to settle right. Say
it as many times as you need to interrupt the
old pattern. And you know this is how the rewiring begins,
not through perfection, but through practice and through repetition and
(12:19):
through reminders, and you're not building self worth from scratch,
you are returning to it, and you're reclaiming what was
always yours. You just didn't know that you accidentally abandoned it, right,
And I promise you it is not only possible, it
is a certainty if you get in the reps. Okay, now,
it's obviously there's more beyond the scope of this conversation,
(12:41):
but this is where it starts. Is that acknowledging of like, nope,
that whole thing that my worth is on trial, that
is the lie. So that is it for today. Outweigh
And if you want to learn more about how I
teach my clients to turn off the part of their
brain that's obsessed with their weight and food and go
rewire their own brain and self image for pease and freedom,
then head on over to stresslesseding dot com, where I've
(13:04):
literally peeled back the curtain and walked you through the
exact strategy. I teach my own clients to heal themselves
from the all or nothing diet mentality and heal it
for good without restricting themselves or punishing their bodies. So
it's over there for you to access over on stresslesseding
dot com and I will talk next week for Part three. Bye.
Hosts And Creators
Amy Brown
Leanne Ellington
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