You are listening to the Weight Loss for Successful Women podcast with Shannan Christiansen episode number 109. 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 a 2.0 series and today is the last installment, and I want to dive a little deeper into holidays and how to decide on purpose now how you want to feel on January 2nd, 2022. Ooh, so good.

But first, I want to do a listener shout out, and today’s listener shout out goes to someone titled themselves Successful Woman. Love it. And she wrote: Just started listening to the podcast. Good information. Hope this helps me. Thanks for everything, and put a heart. Love it Successful Woman. You know, if you find what you learn here valuable, you can help other women find the show by leaving a review and rating of the show. Also subscribe and follow wherever you’re listening. This way, every Wednesday I’m in your library.

So my love, oh my goodness. You’re going to notice my voice today. I feel really bad for my podcast editor and producer Taylor, my son, because I’m not going to lie, he’s going to have a lot of edits today. My voice is a little tired from yesterday because we had our virtual event and I have to say, I love it. This was in Transform Boss Weight Loss. And a couple of times of year we do a virtual event. It’s totally virtual. And yesterday was a little over four and a half hours.

And I teach, brought some ladies on. We have awards, celebrations. My family comes on. The team comes on. I mean, it’s just, my grand babies making an appearance. It is super fun. And you know, yesterday was no different. We had a blast. And you know what I love about it. We do it in a kind of a meeting format, so there are ladies who put their videos on and I get to see them and watch them and talk to them and coach them. And I mean, it’s just a super fun event. And you know, I love watching ladies just do this work. You know I love teaching. I love coaching.

Ah, but I tell you, watching women do this work and have aha moments and learn that they matter and that they can love themselves and show up for themselves. You know ladies, we have just been sold a bill of goods. You know, I was thinking about this yesterday as I was teaching. You know, I did, I watched my mother and my grandmother, you know, they did all the things for all the humans. My mother worked too, you know, she, but she had dinner on the table every, you know, night.

And I think about, and again, this isn’t, you know, my dad did things. This is, you know, it has nothing, it’s not exclusive of the men. I’m just saying as women, boy, we do all the things. We just, you know, we have a lot of people pleasing and I’m going to dive into that today where we want to make everyone happy.

But we never turned that in to ourselves and really think about, well, how am I going to make me happy? You know, where’s my joy, my fun? And you know, this is why I just, I love this work ladies. I love Transform Boss Weight Loss. I love the women in it. I think about them. I am watching their growth and their, you know, we just of course closed in September, and we brought in a whole group of new ladies to Transform Boss and, oh my goodness, I just love them. I can’t even deal with it. They’re in there. They’re doing the work. They’re failing. They’re having successes. They’re, you know, all the things and they just keep showing up for themselves.

And I just, I love my ladies. So I do want to give a little shout out to our team. You know, we have the best team in Transform, and you know, we call it BFLY team and they work so hard and they do so many things for our ladies and just for the world. And I just love all of them. And I just want to give a big shout out. We have the best mentors and ambassadors, and you know, it’s just a love fest. That’s how I love it. I love it. I love all of them. Okay. And I love my ladies.

So I want to dive into the holidays. So here we are, when you listen to this, it is going to be, you know, the end of October, almost Halloween, can you even believe it? I can’t actually, I feel like, you know, time is just going so fast, but here we are, we’re going into November and December, and even January. My holidays, you know, pre-me doing this work, I mean, it was like a four-month deal. And then, you know, Valentine’s day came and then Easter came. I mean, you know, really honestly, summer was probably my only non-holiday time. And I say this because we one, put a lot of pressure on ourselves about the holidays and making them perfect. I know many of you listening do that.

We have lots of traditions and then, you know, we’re on Pinterest and we see all the other cute stuff or all the other foods we want to try and all the other things the other humans are doing. And then we get a little envious and, you know, we start comparing and then we, you know, it’s just this whole cycle, and what I want you to do, and what I want you to take away from this show today is that you get to decide what you want to do in the holidays, and what you want to make them mean and what they mean to you.

You know, I think the holidays are about really understanding your own beliefs and what you want, and how can you have joy and fun, and take care of you and show up for you even when you feel like, oh, there’s so much going on, and you know, you feel underwater sometimes. You know, how can you still show up for you? You know, I always go back to this time, you know, before I really started doing this work and, you know, the holidays were very, lots of good things. I love the holidays. It is my favorite time of the year.

And I love the holidays and so many good memories and so many good things, but I have to tell you, I also have, you know, I wanted to make them perfect. I wanted to go to all the parties and all the events and do all the things and, you know, keep creating all the traditions and, you know, and at the same time still, I had my day life, you know, my job and my family and all the things. And, you know, I wanted to make it perfect for my family and for all of the things. And it just puts an immense amount of pressure on me. And I would say there were many holidays that by the time, you know, Christmas would come around, I would be exhausted. I mean exhausted. You know, I would be, you know, wrapping presents, you know, till three in the morning, you know, the night before.

And I say this my love because I have changed the way that I show up during the holidays. And that’s what I want to talk about today. And how I did that is I really started to, you know, I grabbed a piece of paper and I really reflected on what the holidays were and what they had been. Right. I went to the past and just thought, okay, what were they? And then I got another sheet of paper and I just started thinking like what do the holidays mean for me? You know, I know all of you that are listening, all my loves, the holidays are about family and it’s about celebration, right?

That’s, that’s the most important thing. I would say. If I talked to any one of you, that’s what you would say. You’d be like, no Shannan it’s about my family and it’s about the love, but I tell you, if you reflect back on a lot of your holidays, you’ll find that it can be a really stressful time, you know, stress, depression, like so many things happen at the holidays. And then add in, I know so many of my loves have had loss. You know, for me, you know, the holidays, I have a lot of feelings because I miss my mom, my mother-in-law. We don’t get to, you know, they’re not here with us and we, you know there’s a lot of emotion. And so I think just really understanding from your point of view, what do you want this holiday season to be? What do you want to do? And I tell you why this is so important is because loves, we like to people please. We like to do things out of obligation.

I talked about this a lot in my virtual event yesterday, because we do many things out of, I have to, and that energy is resentment. That energy is, you know, just frustration. It is just when you show up and you do things because you feel like you have to, or you are, you know, obligated to do so you go to parties that you don’t really even have that great of a time, but you feel obligated to go. Your energy is different. Your energy is resentment. Your energy is, oh, I don’t really even want to be here. I have so many other things to do.

You’re not even connected. I have watched folks go to parties and go to things, and the entire time, like stay off by themselves and stay on their phones, like, because they don’t want to be there. And I say this because a few years ago we had a family party that was a pretty big family party. But I found that I just wasn’t enjoying it as much. And it was always at, you know, right before Christmas. And so it was just a really tough time of the year and really tough for me to attend with my family.

And I was always pressuring Taylor and Telyn to go. And, you know, because I wanted them there with me because I didn’t feel that comfortable there to be honest. And so I made a decision a few years ago that I just wasn’t going to attend. Now, I love the person who puts on this party, I do. And I told her, I love you, but I’m not attending. And I’m not going to attend this year either. And it has nothing to do with the love that I have for this person. It’s just, I just made a decision that I was going to show up for me and for my family, my immediate family, and do the things that I want to do.

And I tell you, the first year was a little difficult because I felt a little bit of guilt, right. That comes in. But then I just decided, you know, I’m going to show up in the way that I want to, because you know, at the end of the day loves, we really only have this one life. And we spend so much of it trying to people please, and doing things out of obligation, it makes us feel exhausted. And then when we are doing something we want to do, we want to be in, we, you know, we’re exhausted. I don’t want that. This season I have already laid out a plan of exactly what I want to do. Exactly what events I want to attend. Exactly what events I want to put on.

You know, it is my 50th birthday in November. And, you know, I’ve planned some fun things for that, with the humans that I want to be around. And I tell you this, because you know, I’m going to have the best time. It’s not too that I’m going to have. I think life is 50 50. I’m going to still have some stress I’m still, right. I still have, you know, other responsibilities. I, for sure, will go through some sadness of missing my mom for sure. And I’m gonna allow all of it and I don’t have to overeat. I don’t need to eat more than what my body needs for fuel. I say this because you know, the holidays, we have put so much into the food.

And you know, when I, before, you know, I lost my weight. And when I, before this work, food was my emotional support. So when I was feeling exhausted, when I was feeling tired, you know, I was like, Hey, give me all the foods. Right? And then, especially with holiday food, I had a lot of, kind of this scarcity mentality that, oh, this only comes once, one time a year. And so I’ve got to eat it all. And I just want to say that the holidays are about so much more. I have foods in the holiday that I love. I love turkey and Thanksgiving dinner. I love making cookies with my grandbabies and my son and daughter-in-law, my whole family.

I love that. And I’m going to keep doing that, but I don’t have to make it a four-month just complete disconnect from myself, buffer with food, you know, and feel exhausted. And I just want to offer to you that there is a different way, and this is all part of healing our relationship with food and ourselves. You know, there are what I like to call puddle foods. And these foods are things that we think we’re out of control with, right? So I used to like Texas sheet cake, cookies, mostly sweets for me. I had this belief that I, you know, I couldn’t control myself around them. And you know, it was just really, I like to call it puddle foods because it’s just being in the puddle. Right.

It’s just nonsense that I used to tell myself, because I always stopped eating. I didn’t just, you know, it wasn’t just like continuing, continuing, continuing, right? At some point you always stop. And so telling ourselves that we’re out of control, it just keeps us stuck. It keeps us in this very scarce, very, you know, difficult mindset where we believe that we’re just, you know, everything’s out of our control. But I want to tell you, you’re in control. Every time that you eat something, you decide if you want to eat it. And if you’re like, but Shannan, I eat more than I want, my love, I just want to, you know, ask yourself why? Is it because you think I’m not going to have this again?

Is it because you’re telling yourself you’re going to go on some diet and you’re going to be “good,” and restrict. This whole process that I teach in Transform Boss with all of my ladies is about healing the relationship with food and ourselves, and allowing, allowing ourselves to eat. I don’t have puddle foods anymore because I allow everything. I’m not out of control.

I always decide, I always am in control. I always decide what I want to eat, when I want to eat it, always. And it’s just this false thought, this really false belief that we have. Food does not control us. It doesn’t, it is like an innate. It doesn’t love us. It doesn’t control us. It’s just, it’s just an item.

And it’s just like an innate, it’s just an object. And my love, you are in control. And this holiday season, I want you to really think about how do I want to move through it? What foods do I want to eat? What foods do I want to include in my realistic plan? I think about this. There are certain holiday foods that I do love. And when I eat them, I stop. I really savor them. I enjoy them. No guilt and no feeling out of control. No feeling like I’m never going to eat it again. I just stop. I eat it, and I enjoy it, and I really taste it. And I really decide, do I even really like it?

And so just stop telling yourself that you’re out of control, that you can’t lose weight, and just make a plan. Sit down with a piece of paper and decide over the holiday seasons a few things. One, do you want to lose weight this holiday season? Or do you just want to maintain your weight? How many actual holiday meals are there going to be? Like how many? Right. I think sometimes we’re just like, oh, it’s a four-month, I’m going to eat all the things. But it’s really not. Most of us have about four or five actual holiday meals.

And then what traditions do you want to include? So what traditions, even traditions outside of food, right. We love to go look at Christmas lights and holiday lights. We love to, you know, spend time with family. I mean, there’s lots of things that we love to do. We love to do service. What things do you want to do outside of food? And again, what things do you want? I love baking cookies with my grandkids and my daughter-in-law and my son. Like, I love it. I love it. Even my extended family too, my niece and my sister-in-law like, I absolutely love it. And so again, what traditions do you want to continue?

And then what do you want to do over the holidays? You decide. And when we decide things on purpose ahead of time, we’re using our thinking brain, you know, the brain that, you know, makes decisions for our future self. Now I want to talk about our future self. So you can listen to this episode. I can’t remember right now, which one it is, but we’ll put it in the show notes. I have an episode all on future self. It’s such a great concept. And you know what happens is our future self is coming. So January 2nd, 2022 is coming.

And I want you to think about how you want to feel on that day, because everything you do today, everything is either a gift, right? Or something that you’re doing for your future self, or something that you know, you’re not doing for your future self. Something that is keeping you stuck, something that’s keeping you kind of where you’re at right now, right? If during the holiday season you, you know, gain 10, 15, 20 pounds, I did this many holiday seasons, well that was not a gift to my future self. It wasn’t. Because my future self then had to deal with it. My future self then had to figure out all the things and she did, but right. So what can you do for your future self now?

How do you want to feel on January 2nd? And again, making these decisions ahead of time and deciding on purpose what you want to do, oh, it’s everything. And so just take a piece of paper again, just do the exercise that I’d given, right? I want you to look at how your holidays have been, and then how your holidays are going to be this holiday season. And my love, you got this, and it just starts with making a decision ahead of time and deciding how you want to feel, and what gifts and what things that you’re going to do for your future self right now.

So the transformational questions and actions are, create a holiday list of all of the fuel and non-fuel foods that you want to eat. I think this is a really important part of this process is deciding on purpose what you want to fuel your body with, and all of the foods that you want to have too that may not fuel it, but you want it to be a part of your plan. And how do you want to feel on January 2nd, 2022? Number three, what gifts can you give to your future self right now? And number four, decide on purpose to have a plan for your holidays.

Ooh, so good my love. If you love this work and you want to take it deeper, then take my free course. Go to bflycoaching.com.ready. Bye for now.

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 bflycoaching.com. See you next week.