What Is This Episode About…

Twice a year, I have to prune my tree. I love that tree, and I hate cutting off any branches. But these branches are cutting off the oxygen, sunlight, and nutrients from other branches. The same goes for some people in your life. You must prune away those folks because they’re robbing you of what you need to thrive.

Anything that holds you back from achieving your goals or is distracting should be pruned from your life. No matter how good it was in the past. I had to break up with my best friend to accelerate to the level I wanted to reach. She was holding me back. 

Having friends that have the same goals as you make it easier to achieve them. This is especially when you are on a health journey or a weight loss journey. Remember, you are the sum of the five people you hang around with. 

You alone are in charge of your life. You have to do what you need to do to improve your situation. If it means pruning some friends off, so be it. Just don’t be a jerk while at it. You can create distance and get new friends, with the same goals as you. Being in a community of like-minded people is the biggest indicator of whether you’ll lose weight and keep it off. 

Look around the people in your life right now. What kind of energy are they bringing to you? Do you need to prune them from your life? Your gut is telling you what to do. Follow your gut and do what you need to do. Your gut is always right; listen to it when it comes to pruning. It may hurt, but is it’s for the greater good.

Key Takeaways

• A little story about my lovely tree (01:52)
• Cutting people off from your life who are holding you back (06:53)
• Having friends that have the same goals as you (11:33)
• You alone are responsible for your life (17:19)
• Being in a community of like-minded people is the biggest indicator whether you’ll lose weight and keep it off (18:54)
• Pruning your newsfeed on social media to protect your energy (22:04)
• What kind of energy is somebody bringing to you? (23:53)
• Listen to what your gut tells you about a certain person (24:18)

Learn More About The Content Discussed…

Get the Code Red On-The-Go Guide here.

Join the next 10-Pound Takedown Challenge here.

When Was It Released…

This episode was released July 8, 2020

Episode Transcript…

The Transcript Is Auto-Generated And May Contain Spelling And Grammar Errors

Cristy  0:00  

It hurts to prune, but it’s for the greater good. Some of those branches have got to go. They’re robbing the other branches of oxygen, nutrients, sunlight, they’ve got to go. If you want to save the whole tree, you’ve got to cut away the rot. And some of you guys have some rotten people in your life and rotten things in your life. They’ve got to be pruned away. And it’s not easy. I get that and it hurts and you might cry for a couple of nights. But you’re better off for it.

Intro  0:31  

I’m Cristy Code Red and you’re listening to rebel weight loss and lifestyle where we believe food holds the power to heal or poison, and we believe our society has been misled regarding proper nutrition and weight loss. You’re in the right place if you’re looking for some straight-up truth, because I’m here to shed light on the lies and brainwashing that has taken place over the past five decades. Thanks so much for listening.

Cristy  0:57  

Welcome to rebel weight loss in lifestyle Hello, I am Christie code. Read your host, author, entrepreneur, retired professional boxer and I am so thankful that you’re here

Unknown Speaker  1:07  

with me today. Yes, just me. And that’s how I used to do it. And then before I roped Cari into doing all these podcasts with me, before we get started, let me read a rating and review. Here’s one from Supergirl 70444 she gave it five stars. She says This podcast is so refreshing. I love the no-nonsense talk and motivation Cristie gives on these podcasts just discovered and started all the way at the beginning. I’ve made it to Episode 24 and I’m so inspired. Thank you so very much. Pacific Northwest rebel de Stevenson, who actually wrote her name in here, listen to every single podcast and repeat as needed. It’s a recipe for transformation and not just weight loss. Thank you so very much. My little sister Laura gave me a tree about 11 years ago, and anybody that That knows me knows that I am not much of a

Unknown Speaker  2:05  

gardener or

Cristy  2:06  

horticulturist or anybody like that. I do not do well with plants. I usually kill plants. In fact, my mom I got her a plant for Mother’s Day. She came to my house. I gave it to her at my house, but she forgot to take it with her while the plant died. I mean, I tried to take care of it. I watered it, maybe I overwatered it. I tried to read the directions. It said it like sun so I stuck it in the summer and next day I knew the whole plant was sunburned. So everybody knows I don’t do well with plants. probably why I never had a kid. I mean, you kill a plant like come on. They’re very much hope for a child. But my sister gave me this tree and it’s a full on tree. A lot of you guys who watch me on Instagram, you have seen my tree. Well I’ve had that tree for 11 years and it started off with like two branches. You know when I first got it, it was brutal to go up and then it go boop boop and it just go to here to here and it was just too branches. Well, now it’s huge. And a couple of times at my little sister Laura, you don’t hear a lot about Laura, because she actually does work for Code Red, but she’s a little more in the background doesn’t really like the attention that, you know, Cari and I like, and Laura is a lot different than us. And she’s quiet and she’s reserved and she’s a she’s different. So she comes over, she’s come over my house couple times. And when she comes over, she checks out my tree and see how it’s doing. She’s very good. She’s just like my grandma. She’s very, very good with plants. She can grow anything. And she said, Sis, you got to prune this tree. And I said, oh, whoa, hey, now listen, let me just tell you guys I have a lot of pride in this tree. This is the only tree I’ve ever been able to keep alive. And the only tree that has thrived under my care. I figured out the exact amount of water that it needs. I have figured out exactly the kind of light that it needs and I’ve been able to move from house to house without killing it and making it happy in my new house and I have in this tree has been through a lot with me. So when my little sister says you need to prune this tree, and I was just like, Oh, hey, whoa, don’t touch that tree. What Whoa. And she was like this. You trust me right? Oh, of course I trust you. You’re really good at this. Okay, then why aren’t you listening to me because I don’t want you to cut the branches off my tree. I’ve worked really hard to get it like this. And she said, look at what’s happening. These branches are pressing on these branches. These branches are suffocating. These branches. These branches are stealing the light from these branches. by trimming back a few you’re going to save the whole tree and the whole tree is going to flourish. So I let her trim and prune my tree and of course just like a lot of you guys know and just like what she said was gonna happen did happen. The tree thrived. It blossomed even more it was able to spread out even more. It was able to get, you know, the trees that the leaves that were left in the branches that were left they were able to get greener and get more sunlight and get more. You know, it’s just, yeah, they were being suffocated by the other branches. They were the other branches were robbing them of their nutrients. And she had to do the hard thing. So since then I have learned how to prune my tree. And there’s really, I don’t really know if there’s a rhyme or reason to it. I just, I take a pair of scissors. I probably do it twice a year, and I walk around the tree. It’s pretty big now you guys I mean if any of you guys have been to my house, it is pretty big. And it’s my pride and joy. And I walk around the tree and I look for discolored leaves. I look for branches that are pressing on other branches I look for other branches that I can see are getting suffocated and they are dying from other branches and I Look for things that need to go. And I always say to myself, I’m only going to prune,

you know, just two branches today, I’m

only going to cut back, I don’t want to cut back the whole tree like I don’t want to do major because I love how full it is right. And sometimes it gets a little lopsided like it’s heavier on one side, I want to make sure it’s even as growing on all sides. And just the other day I pruned my tree again. And like I said, it’s only about twice a year. So what does all of this this whole first six minutes? What does all this have to do with code red? Why am I doing an entire podcast on this? Well, this can apply to so many areas of your life. And when they talk about it in the Bible, talk about pruning the areas of your life that need to be cut away, so the rest of you can thrive. We talked about on code red on our 10 pound takedown challenge. I do an entire teaching called clean out your newsfeed It talks about cutting people out of your life that are robbing you, of your oxygen and your nutrients. I used to have a best friend. A lot of you guys know her, so I won’t say her name. She was my best friend for years, up until four years ago. And things just started getting weird between us. I mean, I I kind of know what the turning point was. And I kind of I thought about it countless times because I miss her so much. I missed that friendship so much. But now looking back, I know anyway, we kind of broke up where we didn’t kind of we’ve absolutely broke up. And I know now looking back that I couldn’t have gotten to the level where I am if I still would have been friends with her. And it’s hard to say that and I hope I’m right. I think I’m right. You know, and maybe I’m just justifying. I don’t know, because it hurts so bad. You know, my heart hurts so bad, but I needed to cut that relationship out of my life in order to because the My relationship with her I’m not gonna say she was I don’t like that that don’t want to place blame like that but my relationship with her was holding me back from reaching the level that I needed to reach. Somehow some way it sounds a little bit weird but a lot of you guys can relate to what I’m saying. And that needed to happen because I accelerated and she did not she went backwards. And I don’t believe I would have accelerated to my level. Had I still been friends with her because I spent a lot of time with her. And where she was not advancing perhaps that would have kept me from advancing. Because you are the sum of the five people you hang around the most. Do you believe that same thing with your kids? Guys, protect you from your kids friends. Don’t let your kids hang out with little Johnny. If you know his parents are selling pot, okay if you know that a little Johnny is on his devices all the time. And he’s on on monitored, non monitored however you say that apps that do not have parental controls on them and there could be sexual predators getting in there. Like, that’s going to seep over into your friends, your kids, your kids are going to start taking on the traits of their friends. You are the sum of the five people you hang around the most, you will start talking like them, you will start acting like them, you will start laughing like them, you will start thinking like them. And same thing with your kids, your kids, you’re like you’re looking at your kids, you’re like, Yo, I didn’t teach you that. We don’t allow you to speak like that. Well, they picks it up from Little Johnny. So you’ve got to clean out your newsfeed, you’ve got to prune away the branches of your news feeds you got to prune away some people in your life that aren’t serving your health. No good. You’re not they’re not doing your health any good. And I’m not talking about making a big deal about it. Like, let me tell you something. You know, I think when I broke up with my friend, I knew I needed to do it. I know knew that my relationship was not going anywhere it was going backwards. It wasn’t. It wasn’t causing me to aspire higher. I didn’t make a big deal about it. I just, although I’m a person that wants to be very direct with the reason I’m doing something, I am doing this because of this. I just don’t believe I don’t believe in being passive aggressive or being wishy washy or just not saying anything, I believe you should say to somebody. Look, this is the reason why I’m doing this. You know, I believe in that, but in some cases, you shouldn’t. I mean, I don’t, I don’t know how to say this. Like, I’m not saying there’s some case you shouldn’t tell the truth, but look like here’s another example. 20 years ago, I had a friend who had a daughter, who was really, really really bratty. She was a little kid and she was super bratty. Well, the friend invited me to the little bratty girl’s birthday party, and I said, I don’t want to go because your kid is really bratty.

I said that to him.

I did. Let me tell you that I destroyed him. And that ended our relationship and we had a strong relationship. And we had a good relationship. We are good buddies and bam, everything changed from them. So when it comes to people’s kids, don’t tell them the truth. Don’t tell it Don’t ever say, yeah, your kid is ugly, like that. Don’t say that. Don’t say that to people. But,

Cristy  11:22  

you know, I do believe in, you know, trying to be as direct as possible. But man, you got to be careful not to hurt people’s feelings. So if you’ve got to step out, I mean, certainly if you’re on a weight loss journey, or some sort of a health journey, and you know that your friend does Margarita Mondays and taco Tuesdays and girls nights every Friday and wine Wednesdays and, and, you know, sangria Saturdays and they’re drinking all week long, and they’re eating takeout all week long, and they’re just sitting around binge watching Game of Thrones all week long and they’re not that Definitely not serving your health for the better. And you’re definitely not getting healthier being around that friend. Then you probably need to cut ties with that friend get a little distance between you guys. My friend jen ludington. You guys know her. I’ve had her on the podcast. I’ve had her speak at code read live 2019 She is such a great friend in so many ways. But the nice thing about her is she has the same health goals that I have neither of us drink. Neither of us eat junk food, neither of us need to go out for Margarita Mondays, we just don’t need that. When we want to get together, we will hike together. And we pick a hike where we can actually stand, you know, hike next to each other. There’s a certain hike we like to do and it’s a road you know, that way we can walk next to each other. It’s not terribly steep. It’s about four or five miles round trip. So it’s fairly easy. It’s not steep story like yeah, the other day. I was walking in and you’re trying to tell a story and you’re gasping for air. You don’t sound like a CEO PD patient, right? No, that’s just that we have like a little routine but we do active friend things right? And I love that. I love that. I’ve got another friend, Marley, Marley Jax, and she is up for anything. She doesn’t have to go and eat together. Although sometimes we meet at ellmers when we split a breakfast, see that’s a friend that’s really great because I can split the breakfast with her and I can have half the calories that I normally would have had. That’s a great friend because she has the same she’s code red and she has the same she drinks her water, and she has the same goal she wants to eat. Not a whole lot, you know, keep her volume down. She wants to drink her water. It’s just that you want to get friends around you that are like minded, that have the same goals as you and I know like people are like what what a boring world it would live in if we were all the same. Yeah, I get that.

Cristy  13:48  

But I also know it’s really hard to stay on track. When you’re like a Christ believer, you believe in Christ and you’re trying to emulate the ways of Christ and you’re trying to be Christ like and you’ve got a friend that curses, like a sailor, you know, and that tells dirty jokes all the time. And who’s constantly making sexual jokes and sexual innuendos and sending you dirty pictures and like, I don’t want that.

Cristy  14:14  

I don’t want that kind of, I really am trying as hard enough to be like Christ as it is. Let alone having friends constantly selling, telling you dirty jokes and getting that stuff in your mind. I don’t want to be around people like that. I don’t want to be around people who constantly honk and scream at drivers on the road. I mean, I get it that the world truly would be a boring place if we were all the same. But that doesn’t mean I need to spend my time with people who believe opposite as me and who live a life opposite of me. I don’t want that that doesn’t bring me up. You know, I want to be in a room with entrepreneurs who all earn more than me, and who all have a longer farther reach than I do. I want to be around women who are strong CEOs and strong leaders and have strong have employees and have you know, like a really, really strong, strong, strong women, I want to be in a room full of them, I want to emulate that. I want to be a good boss to my employees. So I want to be around a woman who has employees who has a good track record with her employees, and she can teach me how to be a better boss. I want to be around fit chicks. So that makes me want to work out harder. I don’t want to work out with somebody who doesn’t work out as hard as me or harder. I want to be around people who pull me up. And that’s what you’ve got to want for yourself. You gotta want this for you. It is hard to take a good hard long look at your friends. You guys been friends for 25 years. And you’ve been overweight and you’re trying to make some health changes. You’re trying to make a lifestyle change. I really hate saying that because it’s so cliche lifestyle change, lifestyle change. Oh, just off. It’s not a diet. It’s a lot lifestyle change. I mean, unfortunately, that’s really the only way to say that and I have to say it like that. But if your friend that you’ve been with for 25 years, you guys had babies together you guys, you know you guys have been neighbors for a long time both of your husband’s go fishing together like, I get it. But you might be accelerating in this direction and saying, I’m sick of asking for the seatbelt extender. I’m tired of being on 1200 dollars a month in medications. I’m tired of only having intimacy with my spouse twice a year. I’m going to go on code read, I’m going to get healthy and your friend is not doing that. You might have a skinny friend that just because she’s skinny, she eats whatever she wants. She eats cinna bonds in the airport and she’s having Margarita Mondays and she’s like polishing off a bottle of wine at night. And she’s skinny so nobody ever really talks about it but that’s not healthy. You might even have that friend that’s a frustrating friend to have you know you’re like cuz skinny but don’t let that deceive you believe me skinny does not mean health. You have no idea metabolically what that person’s going through on the inside. You don’t know if they’re insulin resistant, you know, but you might have that skinny friend. And that person could eat anything you want. And you just look at a doughnut and you gain weight, right?

Unknown Speaker  17:15  

Look, it can be hard.

Cristy  17:19  

But you got to do what you got to do. Ultimately, you take care of you. Ultimately, you’re the one that has to answer for you. Ultimately, you get up out of that bed in the morning and your body either aches everywhere, and you’ve got a foggy brain, or you spring out of bed with no pain in your plantar fasciitis, no foggy brain or headache. From the booze the night before you make that choice. It is all on you. You control the last eight inches from here to here. So it might mean that you prune that friend or at least you know, Don’t be a jerk about it, but at least create some distance. Maybe create some distance, maybe get some new friends. Maybe when you guys are all going to go out to eat after CrossFit. I’m using this for example, again, I want to remind you that exercise has nothing to do with weight loss. I’m just using this for an example. I used to do this when I was in a CrossFit community, we would go out to eat afterwards, but everybody would eat clean, we would all eat real food. Nobody would have the biscuits in the you know, and all the fake crap the pancakes, nobody had that stuff. Those are the kind of friends you might want to be around until you really get the hang of this lifestyle, especially when in the beginning if you’re a baby rebel. Yeah, you’re gonna need some support. I mean, studies have proven that community is the number one biggest dictator of whether you dictator dictators, that’s the word I’m looking for. indicator not sorry about that. indicator. dictator, where did that come from? Well, it kind of sounded the same community is the number one biggest indicator. Whether you lose weight and keep it off or not. You got to get around like minded people. So maybe create some distance from your friend, maybe get some new friends that help enforce this lifestyle. That’s why we have Code Red events. That’s why we have our code red groups. That’s what we have our meetups and start working on you. Let’s talk about social media. It’s in our lives to stay in and go nowhere. I love social media personally. You guys follow me on Instagram. I love Instagram so much. I’m an Instagram nerd. I love it. I put out tons and tons and tons of content. I mean, I think at the time of this recording, I’ve put out almost 6000 posts. You’re on social media more than you do anything else. So you’ve got to clean out that newsfeed you’ve got to prune that news feed if you’re trying to quit sugar. The last thing you need is Betty Crocker recipes. baking a cake with that chocolate frosting. The last thing you need is to be binge watching Great British baking show. Right. If you struggle with that, if you’re a baker and you struggle with eating D than sugar, you’ve got to start taking a good long hard look at what you have into your newsfeed. unfollow, unfollow, unfollow, unfollow, unfollow, hide add there’s a little button hide add three little dots upper right hand corner. It says hide add and then you can ask you it’s gonna ask you why do you want to hide this ad? You don’t have to answer but you can just say, like I see it too often or or it’s inappropriate or click one of those boxes. Get surrounded by like minded people in your newsfeed. You look in my newsfeed it’s all CrossFit chicks in dog rescues. The Dodo you guys watch the dodo? I love the dodo. I do not just dogs, but like elephants and chimps and all cats. I mean, it’s this animal rescue. You guys know, I’m an animal lover. I make sure that the only things that I see are going to be things that motivate me things that make me Aspire higher things that make me Work harder things that make me want to go to that next level, I don’t want to stay the same. I don’t want to stay where I am. I am not content right here. I’m thankful. I’m happy. I’m not content where I am. And so I want people who are at that next level. I want that motivation. I don’t have to have it. But I like to have it. If I want to be on social media, I might as well see the crap that I like. I might as well see the stuff that makes me want to be a better person, a better boss, a better sister, a better wife, a better dog, mom. I might as well see the things that make me want to be healthier. That gives me ideas for my community.

Like Joyce Meyer ministry. I always get ideas from Joyce Meyer, I listen to all her podcasts. I get all kinds of ideas and I I take her thoughts and her ideas and I kind of swish them around and I regurgitate them to you. Because and I love that and I donate 300 bucks a month to Joyce Meyer ministries I have for two years. Now, because I use her ideas so much, and I believe in what she’s doing. You see what I’m saying? You got to prune your newsfeed, you got to start hiding some ads and unfollowing some people who are not lining up with your healthy way of thinking. They’re not lining up with what you believe. Because you are going to absorb that energy, you are going to absorb that from them. You really do social media, you do absorb that more than in person energy. Protect your energy, protect you protect your family, protect your kids, protect your household, protect your car, protect your cubicle at work. You know, I had a friend that had a medical procedure. Now it was kind of a, like a counseling. Okay, we’ll just call a counseling. I’m gonna be careful. I just don’t want to say too much. And I was picking her up after the procedure. And I came into the room and the therapists. I said, Hi, I’m Cristy. And she said Hi, Christine. She told me her name. And I said, Hey, am I bringing in good energy? Because I don’t want to because this is this counseling session was very in depth and exposed a lot. And I didn’t want to bring in any bad energy. I know I don’t have that bad energy. But I could have picked up on some I didn’t want any on me. You know, I just said, am I bringing in good energy? Do I need to like cleanse or something before I come in? I don’t even know how to do that. Like Phoebe friends, right? She’s doing this to Joey. And he’s like, stop picking the aura, you know, or whatever. And she said, Yeah, yeah, you feel really good. But I knew that that was a very sensitive environment. And I wanted to bring in good energy. I didn’t want to ruin the moment and ruin the counseling session. with anything I might have brought him with me. I don’t know, a bad attitude, a bad thought, any kind of negativity. I don’t I didn’t feel like I had any on me. But I just wanted to be cognizant of that. And I didn’t want to ruin the moment and ruin the progress that was made during that session. What kind of energy is somebody bringing to you? Who do you need to prune from your life? It is not easy doing this. But you know, in your gut, when you think about somebody, a friend and acquaintance or co worker, somebody around you, a neighbor or somebody, when you think about them, think about them right now you have them in your mind, I know you have someone in your mind that is on your heart right now. Think about them. Your heart is telling you what to do and how to handle it. Listen to your gut. your gut is telling you what to do about that person. your gut is telling you how to handle that situation. Listen to your gut when it comes to pruning. And there are certain people that have got to go, because it’s for the greater good of the tree. You see what I’m saying? I know you see what I’m saying. It hurts to prune, but it’s for the greater good. Some of those branches have got to go. They’re robbing the other branches of oxygen, nutrients, sunlight, they’ve got to go. If you want to save the whole tree, you’ve got to cut away the rot. And some of you guys have some rotten people in your life and rotten things in your life. Got to be pruned away. And it is not easy. I get that and it hurts and you might cry for a couple of nights. But you’re better off for it. 10 pound take down. That’s where you need to go to join our monthly challenge. We have them every month. So if you missed this month, there is one starting next month. Go to 10 pound takedown.com to join us. We love you. We appreciate you. I hope you have a good one. I hope this podcast helped. I know it did I know it spoke to some of you on a deep, deep level. This was on my heart. Anytime I have something on my heart. I want to bring it to you. It’s important to me. You guys. Have a good one. I will see you on the next episode of a rebel weight loss and lifestyle.

Intro  25:45  

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of rebel weight loss and lifestyle. Do you have a question that you’d like me to answer raw and uncut on the podcast? Then all you have to do is head over to Apple podcast on your phone Oracle Peter, and do three simple things. leave a rating and review telling me what you think of the podcast. And in that review, ask anything you want related to help, weight loss or mindset. And if you want a shout out, leave your Instagram handle or name that’s all been listening to hear your question answered live raw and uncut on the next q&a episode, so, I’ll see you on the next episode of rebel weight loss and lifestyle.