You are listening to the Weight Loss for Successful Women podcast with Shannan Christiansen episode number 108. Welcome to Weight Loss for Successful Women, a podcast for women who are ready to break the diet cycle and end their struggle with weight for good. Here’s your host, fortune 100 executive, and certified life coach, Shannan Christiansen.

Hello love. So happy to be back with you. So, we are in this 2.0 series and we only have one more left, and I’m so excited. We have today’s and then I’m going to do one more after this. I really loved kind of diving in a little deeper to some of the tools that I’ve already taught. So today we’re going back to the basics – back to the basics of being human. Yes, basics that we underestimate.

But first I want to do a listener shout out, and today’s listener shout out is Dana Hageman-Allen. Shannan, I was so honored to be a part of your 99th podcast. Just a year ago, I was looking yet again for a new diet to help me get control of my weight. I think it was fate that I came across your page on Facebook and joined your five-day challenge. I immediately binged all of your podcasts. At that time, you only had about 30, so I was able to get through them pretty quickly. Now, here you are at almost a hundred episodes. I sit back and think of all the help that you’re giving to all the beautiful ladies out here, trying to find a way to get control of their weight. These podcasts really do motivate and inspire women to live their best lives in a body that they love. I’ve told you over and over, I’m so thankful that I took a chance and joined your group. You really do change lives. The weight loss is just the cherry on top. Here’s to the next hundred episodes. Dana.

Oh my goodness. I love me some Dana. I do, you know, I love all the ladies, you know. I’m so proud of Dana. Dana just hit her maintenance weight. She hit her natural weight, her goal weight, and I’m just so proud of all the work that she has done. She’s beautiful. She is an Ambassador for Transform Boss Weight Loss, and I just love her. She is, I don’t know. She’s inspirational, beautiful, the sweetest soul, and Dana, I love you. And thank you for leaving this beautiful review.

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Love, I am so excited. I am. I tell you, I love all the things that are happening in Transform Boss Weight Loss, and this weekend, this Saturday. So I’m recording this on a Sunday morning and this Saturday is our Transform Boss live event. This is an event that I do twice a year for all my ladies in Transform Boss, and you know, it’s, it’s such a fun event. It’s, you know, a four and a half, five-hour event. And you know, I teach, coach, we have awards. My husband comes on. My grandbabies for sure will make an appearance. My son always makes an appearance too. And I just can’t wait. I love spending this time with the ladies. It’s an immersive experience where ladies really get to do the work and they walk out of that event, one, knowing what to do next, but two, really having ahas and really, you know, just blowing their own minds. Oh, I cannot wait. And it’s this Saturday. It’s like six days away. I cannot wait.

So what I did for myself before the event, because I really like to rest and take some time and do a lot of thought work and really get my mind in a place that I can really just give 150%. And so my husband and I, we actually took a trip to San Diego and we just got back last night and, oh my love, I forget, you know, the pandemic, we have just not traveled as much. And we used to travel all the time and I forget how much I just love San Diego. We, you know, the beach and the sound of the waves and just the air and the people. I mean, I tell you, my love, we just had the best time, and we had some fun too. We saw a show too. So we just, it was just such a great time to rest, to have some fun, and to really just unwind and disconnect.

And it’s so important. I think our lives just get so busy and just full. And we have all of these things and really coming back and just disconnecting and allowing ourselves to just be. And it leads me really right into this topic today, which are the basic functions that we have as humans. You know, we have some basic things that our bodies need to survive – like water, sleep, food and air. I mean, these four things, if you don’t have them, I mean, you will die. Like they’re basic things that our bodies need to survive.

Our bodies are amazing. I mean, if you think about how our bodies have evolved, I mean, we really are these amazing beings, but in our time, the time that we live today, we’re busy. And, you know, we have just filled our lives with all of these things, right? We have to do lists that are huge, then add in social media and TV and all of these ways that we just buffer. And buffering is just a way that we disconnect and you know, sometimes fine, right? I watch a little TV, I, you know, get on social media. But what happens is when it has a negative consequence, when it has, you know, it’s taking more away from the things that you want to do so that you can move forward, so that you can become your best self, that’s when it becomes problematic.

And we overlook how important some of these basics are to our bodies. You know, we’ve heard about it for so long. My whole life, I’ve heard about, you know, drinking water, getting sleep, how important it is. But for those of us who have struggled with those simple things, we just push them to the side. We just, you know, oh, I’ll get to that later. But it is so important. I think about sleep. And you know, if you think about sleep, sleep is so important. And I’m going to talk about sleep and water just for a moment. But if you want to have a deep dive into it, go back to podcast 11, I really dive into sleep and water.

So you think about sleep and how important it is. And I know for, you know, some of you ladies who are listening, it is one of those things you struggle with, but it is so important to our body. Our body in the middle of the night, or whenever you sleep. I know some of, some of my ladies, they work at night and they sleep during the day. But whenever you sleep, that is when your body is rejuvenating. It’s when your body is repairing and doing all of these higher level functions so that your body can be its best. And when you don’t have enough sleep, you can, I mean, ladies, like you feel tired.

And what happens is that is a trigger to overeat. When you feel tired, you go into your automatic brain because your body is trying to, you know, reserve its energy because you don’t have a lot. Because you haven’t gotten enough sleep, your body goes into automatic. This is so important my love, goes into automatic and it wants to conserve energy. And so then you go back to all those old beliefs when you are tired.

It’s why being tired is a trigger to overeat, a trigger to not show up for yourself, a trigger to just want to disconnect and spend hours on social or watching TV. And again, none of that’s bad unless it’s having a negative consequence. And so, understanding how important sleep and rest is, allowing your brain to rest, right, from all the thoughts.

Think about how much information we take in in a day. I mean, I think about my poor brain and just think about when we’re watching TV or we’re scrolling social media, or we’re just outside in the world, or we’re at work, think about how much information is coming at us. How many decisions, how many things that we have to do. And sleep is a time for your body to repair, a time for your brain to, you know, dream and go into all of the things that it needs to do so that again, you can be your best self.

So now water ladies, I know, I mean, we are, I mean, I was, you know, a diet Coke all the time drinker. Before diet Coke, it was regular Coke or milk. I was a big milk drinker in my early twenties. And I say this loves, because I didn’t, I didn’t like water. I didn’t want to drink it. And I thought, okay, I got enough from my food and from my other things, and you can, right. Our bodies are amazing. Our body will filter out the water from, you know, food and from, you know, all of the other things that we do, but water is essential to our body, to our survival.

You can, you know, go without food for a few weeks, but you cannot, I mean three days without water and your body starts shutting down. It needs water to survive. And just understanding that when you’re dehydrated, your body goes into survival mode and it just starts hanging on to everything, it starts fearing that you’re not going to get water, and needless to say, even food, right? I mean, it just goes into like, Hey, we got to lock everything down. We’ve got to store everything as fat. So going into this whole survival mode, it’s not what we want my love. And it starts when our body is dehydrated.

And it’s also sends up because it’s sending think about this. So your body is going into survival mode. And so it’s sending all these signals to you, drink water, drink, drink, I need water. But what happens is because we’re not connected to our bodies. We’re like, oh, I need to eat. Right? Because your body is like, Hey, we’re going to shut down. We’re dehydrated.

So your body is like, eat, do whatever. I need some water. I’ll filter it out. That’s what your body’s doing. And so just understanding how important water is to your body. Now, if you don’t like water, there’s lots of ways to get it in these days. Right. They make little, you know, drink packets and different things that you can put in your water, lemon or lime or even fruit, right, where you can put it in. So it gives a little bit of flavor. But you know, I think that I’ll give you a tip that I, when I first, cause I wasn’t a big water drinker, but what I started to do was room temperature water. And I would just kind of guzzle it.

I would just take, even if I started with four ounces of water, because I could drink it really fast if it was room temperature. It’s a little more difficult if it’s, you know, cold water to drink it fast. So, you know, if you’re really wanting like, okay, Shannan, I’m going to try to get in some water, you know, just try it with four ounces. Okay, I’m going to start with four ounces and I’m going to just drink it room temperature, and I’m gonna drink it really fast and then move. It’s so interesting. I love room temperature water. I actually like colder water. I like will wait for it to kind of get to room temperature or I’ll even put like some warmer water in. We just, we have one of those, you know, things that you put the big water jugs in and it, the water comes out, but it’s cold. And so it also has where the water is hot.

I’m not kidding. Like when I’m filling my water bottle, I put like, you know, three fourths of it is the cold, but a fourth of it is the hot water so that it brings it to kind of room temperature. That’s just what I’ve gotten used to. And it, again, I can drink it and now I enjoy it. So I don’t need to guzzle it. But sometimes I do, especially if I’m behind in my water.

So water my love, get it in. Because if you don’t, you’re dehydrated and it just sends off all sorts of alarm bells in your body. You’ll want to overeat. You’ll feel tired. You’ll feel lethargic. Water will give you energy. If you’re feeling really tired, before you go to caffeine, try some water first. Just some tips for you my love.

Now, the third thing that I want to talk about today is breath. You and your breathing. Breathing’s automatic. We don’t have to think about it. You know, it’s just something that our bodies do, right? It’s like core. We need air to live and our bodies just do it. And we don’t have to think about it. But I want to dive a little deeper into the importance of breath. See my love, when we breathe, and when we take a deep breath and we exhale, our body has a reaction, it actually calms our nervous system.

And this is really important because I find that as I continue my own work, and as I continue doing this work, you know, I used to, of course, we’ve all heard about meditating and you know, all the things or even in yoga, right? We practice, you know, when you take a yoga class, a lot of times there’ll be some deep breathing. But for me, you know, meditating was something that was really hard, I’ll say. And I just, you know, had a hard time kind of calming my mind and you know, deep breathing and what I started to do when I was first learning this was just stopping and taking a deep breath and exhaling. And it took about, you know, 15 seconds, not even, right.

And I started noticing that when I did that, that it did really, this sense of calm came over me and it was just a deep breath. And sometimes I would do it for two or three. And I just want to offer this to you my love, because we make things so complicated. Well, I’ve got to go meditate. I’ve got to go take a yoga class. I’ve got to practice deep breathing. My love, it just starts with a simple, deep breath and exhale. And you’ll notice that your body will have a reaction. It calms our nervous system. It brings you into awareness. You’ll have this sense of calm. It brings down your stress response. Also known as cortisol. And it does some other really interesting things, like relieve pain or lower your blood pressure.

I want to share this story about when I had my son. So when I had my son, Taylor, many, many moons ago, I had decided that I wanted a midwife. I don’t know, I was young. I don’t know. It’s interesting to me now. Cause I’m like, I don’t know what I was thinking, but I did not. I don’t know. I had heard about epidurals and they just kind of freaked me out. And this was way back before the internet or before you could research or anything. I’m not, I mean, I think if I had a baby today, maybe I would do an epidural, but back then, I just, I didn’t like it. I think someone might’ve told me a story about it and it freaked me out.

And so I went to a midwife and you know, so when I had Taylor, I didn’t have any drugs. I didn’t have any epidural or anything. I was in labor with him for about 16 hours or so. And the thing that really, I learned this back then, but you know, through time I had forgot for a bit. That was the breathing was, you know, when I was, you know, having a contraction when I was, you know, in this immense amount of pain, I would just start focusing on my breath and, you know, taking deep breaths and exhaling, taking short breath, right. Just kind of really focusing on my breath and my exhale of my breath. And it really did relieve the pain.

And I say this to you my love, because even to this day, like let’s say I, you know, sometimes I get a headache and when I get a headache now, before I reach for, you know, the ibuprofen or whatever, I will take a moment and you know, I will drink some water and then I’ll just take a few breaths, like some really good breaths and some really good exhales. And I tell you, it is amazing to me how often I don’t need, you know, anything else. Like just doing this, getting my water and just taking some breaths and really kind of focusing and allowing my shoulders to relax and allowing, you know, myself to just kind of come into this calm state, and my headache will go away.

And I just say this my love, because you know, we, we forget, we really do underestimate the power of these simple tools – sleep, water, and breath. They take about, I mean not the sleep part, but the water and the breath, they take about a minute or two. Your body, your body needs things love. We just can’t be these heads walking around. Our bodies need us to pay attention. Our bodies need certain things, like primal, like basic things. And we live in this world that’s so fast paced, sometimes that we just forget about the simple things.

So I just want to remind you today – sleep, water, and a breath, and an exhale. I tell you my love, those three simple things will help you in your weight loss journey. It will help you come into awareness. It will help you, you know, get out of survival mode and all the triggers that that brings. It’ll help calm your nervous system. I know my love, simple things.

So the transformational questions and actions today are one, how can you remind yourself to take a moment and breathe. And number two, why do you want to do it? Why is it important? And number three, go back and listen to episode 11. This is where I really dive into water and sleep.

And if you love this work and you want to take it deeper, take my free course, go to bflycoaching.com/ready, R E A D Y. So good.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Weight Loss for Successful Women. If you love what you heard today and want to learn more, come on over to bfly.coaching.com. See you next week.