Lessons Learned Losing 100 Pounds with Kerry Dougherty
In this episode, I introduce you to one of my first ever clients, Kerry Dougherty. Kerry is a Pennsylvania native who, over the last year, has lost over 100 pounds while learning to love herself all the way down. I am so proud to have walked alongside her on her journey and on this episode we dig deep into the lessons we’ve both learned along the way.
In this episode, we’ll chat about:
Lessons learned from losing 100 pounds
Common myths about weight loss
Encouragement for getting started
In this episode, I introduce you to one of my first ever clients, Kerry Dougherty. Kerry is a Pennsylvania native who, over the last year, has lost over 100 pounds while learning to love herself all the way down. I am so proud to have walked alongside her on her journey and on this episode we dig deep into the lessons we’ve both learned along the way.
Kerry was one of my first ever one-on-one coaching clients. After hearing my story on Good Morning America, she started following me on Instagram. Resonating with my story, she decided to book a consultation call and we instantly hit it off. After some contemplating, she realized she couldn’t afford NOT to invest in herself and her health. So, in June of 2020, we officially started working together.
Working with Kerry felt like I was coaching myself just a couple years earlier. Our stories had so many parallels, from our early childhood struggles with weight and body image to using foods to numb away our emotions.
Kerry knew she was ready to approach health in a new way, a loving way, a way that didn’t include self-loathing, fad dieting, or counting any points.
In one year and three days, Kerry lost 100 pounds. But, most importantly, she learned how to love herself along the way to create a healthy life she loves from the inside out.
It has been such an honor to walk alongside her in her journey, and while she is kind enough to thank me for my influence, I can say with certainty that it was all her that made this happen. And perhaps the most incredible thing for me to witness along the way, was how her changing mindset overflowed into every single aspect in her life.
Not only was Kerry able to lose the weight…
She paid off built-up student loan debt.
She became a runner and completed more than six 5ks!
She started pursuing her career goals again, switching her major and going back to school full-time after taking five years off.
She strengthened her relationships with herself, her friends, and her family.
Changing your mindset applies to so much more than our physical health journeys. Kerry shared that she didn’t have the confidence at first to pursue the big dreams on her heart, but by embracing the idea of “failing her way forward” in her health journey, she began using the same mindset tools in her education and career journeys as well.
I continue to be inspired by Kerry and I wanted to bring her on the show to share some of the experiences and lessons we’ve learned from losing 100 pounds and bust a few common myths we both encounter.
LESSONS LEARNED FROM LOSING 100 POUNDS
You have to learn how to process through your emotions in a healthy way.
Kerry and I both have used food to numb and buffer away from our unpleasant emotions. Part of our journeys was being compassionately curious about those emotions so we could work through them rather than abusing food to avoid them.
Here are some some strategies we discussed that helped us both:
JOURNALING: Putting pen to paper allows us to separate ourselves from our thoughts, write down whatever is on our head or heart, and notice which thoughts are and aren’t serving us. Gratitude journaling, simply writing down five things we’re grateful for each day, helps us root ourselves in abundance and positivity. When we notice feelings of guilt and shame pop up from our old diet culture mentalities, journaling is a space we can get out of our own heads.
MOVEMENT: Finding forms of joyful movement, like running or kickboxing, is a great tool to help us clear our minds and feel better on the inside, not just the outside. Learning how to approach exercise and movement as self-care rather than punishment, even if it’s just a 30 minute walk, has been especially healing for both of us, giving us the space to reconnect with our bodies instead of tuning out.
This journey isn’t a straight line and it’s not going to be perfect, give yourself grace.
It’s easy to look at the “after” picture and assume it was quick and easy. But the truth is that all journeys have valleys and peaks, highs and lows, moments of victory and moments of failure. This journey is no different.
Kerry and I have both had our fair share of “downs” in this journey alongside the “ups.” The way we’ve shown up for our health, physical and mental, has ebbed and flowed in different seasons and that’s okay. What’s most important is that we honor the season that we’re in and just keep failing forward.
At the end of the day, it’s helpful to remind ourselves that mistakes are perhaps the most valuable part of the process and our greatest teachers along the way. When we stumble and fall, it’s an opportunity to get compassionately curious, forgive ourselves, and grow a little bit stronger.
Remember to simply stand up, dust yourself off, and take the next baby step forward to be just 1% better each day. That’s how we climb a mountain, with slow, steady, baby steps.
Challenging old identities and embodying new ones is a part of the process.
We both realized at the start of our health journeys that we had some limiting beliefs that were holding us back from getting to where we wanted to go. Part of the process was uncovering what some of those identities and labels we place on ourselves were, questioning if we wanted to embrace them any longer, and deciding what identity or type of person we wanted to be moving forward.
An identity that both of us worked through was the idea that, “I’m not athletic.” This thought kept us from trying new things, such as running. But after learning how to rethink how we thought about ourselves, both of us challenged that label and became runners, crossing countless finish lines along the way.
Showing up for and loving yourself will have ripple effects that will influence more people than you realize.
As we started taking the baby steps of loving ourselves and taking better care of our health, both Kerry and I opened up and shared our journeys on social media. The energy that someone evokes when they do this work form the inside out is magnetic and in our experience, people notice. Whether you have five followers of just close family and friends or a platform of thousands, sharing your story matters.
It has been so rewarding to see how sharing our hearts and journeys with others has inspired close friends, family members, acquaintances, and strangers alike to start taking better care of themselves too. When you begin to show up for yourself, it gives other people around you permission to do the same, and that my friends is powerful.
Thinking back on our childhood, we recognize the influence the generations before us had on our relationship with our bodies. It’s not their fault, they were merely doing the best they could with what they knew. That being said, we’re committed to knowing better so we can do better and change the legacy for future generations to come.
Being proud aunts, our young nieces continue to be both of our biggest whys behind our journeys. Kerry shared that when she thinks about the future generations, her hope for her young niece Macy is that she knows how beautiful and capable she is of loving herself, no matter what size and shape she is. She hopes that she will have the tools to be healthy without restriction, so that one day she won’t need a “Kiah” to help her when she’s her age.
COMMON MYTHS ABOUT WEIGHT LOSS
Both of us have lost over 100 pounds, and naturally we get questions all the time. From our experience, these are some of the common myths we encounter that we’ve learned for ourselves along the way.
MYTH: Losing weight makes you happy and confident.
Does losing weight make you happier and more confident?
The short answer: No.
So many of us believe the lie of once. You know, it sounds something like, “I’ll finally be happy ONCE I lose the weight. I’ll finally feel confident ONCE I can fit back into those jeans...”
The truth? This journey is a never-ending one. You don’t arrive at happy and confident, they are emotions that come and go regardless of your size.
We used to approach weight loss from a place of self-loathing and restriction, thinking that ONCE we lost the weight we’d finally be able to give ourselves permission to love ourselves. But, so much of what we want - happiness, love, confidence, joy - are feelings which have nothing to do with what we weighed and everything to do with how we thought about ourselves. The beautiful thing about that is that it meant we could start feeling those things at the beginning of the journey instead of waiting for ONCE we reached a certain size.
This is a lifelong journey, not a destination. You can hate yourself heavy and you can hate yourself thin. We all have good days and bad days, regardless of what our bodies look like. Happiness and confidence don’t come from weight loss, they are feelings that build with every step we take to honor ourselves and our bodies along the way.
MYTH: Health equals weight loss.
We’ll both admit, we used to believe the lie of weight loss equaling health for a long time. Sure, losing weight can better your health, but approaching health through the lens of solely weight loss kept us trapped in the yo-yo dieting cycle. We’d lose the weight and then go back to our “normal” lifestyle only to gain it all back and repeat the cycle.
In reality, health is about so much more. Health isn’t just physical health, it’s mental, emotional, and spiritual too. Sacrificing your mental health to change your body isn’t healthy at all, and that’s exactly what we had been doing.
We knew getting healthy needed to be more than going on a diet that felt like jail and more about creating a healthy life we loved that we didn’t feel the need to escape from. For us, that meant establishing healthy habits that honored all parts of our health - physical, mental, emotional, spiritual - and learning how to love and enjoy the process along the way so that healthy became our new normal.
MYTH: Losing weight fixes your body image.
Of course, losing 100 pounds is a drastic physical change, one that many might assume fixes body image issues. So I asked Kerry, “How has your relationship with your body changed and evolved?”
Her answer? It’s never perfect but it’s a hell of a lot better than it was.
Amen, sister.
We’re all human which means we will continue to have good and bad body image days, no matter how our body changes. Instead of allowing ourselves to get stuck in that place, we try to take opportunities to love ourselves and find appreciation for our bodies, even if it’s looking in the mirror and saying one good thing about ourselves.
It’s been interesting to hear from people that one of the reasons they are afraid to lose weight is the loose skin. And yes, we both have experienced that! But the truth is that weight loss or not, our bodies will continue to change and evolve as we age. We’re not meant to look the same forever, which means we have to learn how to love and appreciate ourselves with every changing season along the way.
Our relationships with our bodies are like any other. You might love yourself deeply, but not like yourself every day. Having a strong relationship doesn’t mean it’s going to be perfect all the time, but it takes effort and commitment to strengthen and build trust over time.
Losing weight doesn’t make you love yourself and your body, so let’s learn how to appreciate and love it right now so that we can continue to love it through all the changes yet to come.
WHAT NEXT?
We’ve both learned so much on our journeys to losing 100 pounds and we continue to learn still every day. While we are proud of the changes we’ve made, we both know that taking care of our health and choosing to love ourselves will be a lifelong journey.
Coaching with Kerry has felt like the greatest honor and now having her on the team to help support hundreds of other women around the world who are walking this journey with us as the Community Support Specialist in our Climb community feels full circle.
When I asked Kerry what she would tell someone who is on the fence of investing in their health journey, just like she was at the beginning of hers, this is what she shared…
“It is 100% worth it and you can’t afford NOT to do it. If you know the answer for you isn’t another diet, but a community of women lifting each other up and learning how to love themselves from the inside out, the Climb is for you. The tools you learn that will help you along the way will be the best investment you’ve ever made. Remember to give yourself grace and forgiveness and take the baby steps along the way.”
It is so powerful to surround yourself with people you get it, who have been in your shoes, who have walked the path and can reach a hand out to help you take the next step forward. What we want you to know about our health journeys is that we aren’t special. We are simply examples of what’s possible when you approach health from a place of love instead of judgment and focus on the baby steps of health and healing from the inside.
No matter where you live, what you weigh, what culture you come from, or how old you are… it’s never too late to take the next baby step forward to loving yourself a little bit better.
The doors will be opening at the end of September to join the Climb community, a membership community of women creating healthy lives they love from the inside out, and we’d love to have you join us. Click here to join the waitlist and be the first to know when the doors are open.
Let’s show up and love ourselves today, friends. You deserve it.