You are listening to the Weight Loss for Successful Women podcast with Shannan Christiansen episode number 118. 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. Today, I’m going to teach you how dieting has affected how you fuel your body and how old diet rules that you’ve gathered throughout the years of dieting, how it also affects what you eat and what you don’t. You won’t want to miss it.

But first I want to do a listener shout out to Andrea Abeln, and her review that she did on iTunes is I joined transform in March, 2020 after watching Shannan’s public Facebook lives, listening to her weekly podcast and taking her free course. I can honestly say that joining was the best thing I ever did for myself. Shannan definitely over delivers. Not only did I lose 28 pounds, but I gained self-confidence and learned to really love myself for the first time ever. I have made lifelong friendships and have improved family relations. I’ve also learned how to show up for myself and keep commitments to myself. Thank you Shannan, Dawn and Jenn for believing in me. The support I get from you and all the ladies in Transform is more than I ever expected.

Ah, Andrea, I love Andrea. She is one of our mentors and she is just a beautiful soul, and I’m so proud of her. She has done such incredible work and she not only shows up for herself and is doing this amazing work, she helps all of the ladies in Transform. So she is a boss that is for sure. And if you find what you learn here valuable, you can help other women find this show by leaving a review and rating of the show. Also subscribe so that every Wednesday I’m in your library.

When this episode is released it will almost be 2022. I can’t believe it. I really can’t. This year has flown by. I have been preparing for Christmas. So this is about a week before Christmas and it hit me last Saturday that I only had two weeks until Christmas. And I was like, holy moly, Shannan, you have got to get moving, because this year just has flown by. I mean, time just keeps feeling like it is going faster and faster, and you know, 2022 it’s flying in.

Oh my love. I have to tell you, because today I am still feeling all the feels from last night. Last night, we had our mentor and ambassador kind of a holiday party. And then also I did a drawing, you know, I love a good drawing. And so once a year we have an in-person/virtual event and we’re having it in April. We call it Unstoppable Live. And it is for ladies who are in Transform Boss Weight Loss program. And so last night we had a drawing. And also I have a very special mentor, her name is Sharon Spohn, and she’s been with Transform since the very beginning of Transform, when it was, you know, called Jumpstart.

And she is just an amazing human. She is a volunteer mentor for all the ladies. She is just, I don’t know, she’s just an amazing human. And I wanted to give her the gift of paying for her to come to Unstoppable Live, her plane and, you know, airfare and hotel and all that fun stuff. Because you know, she just has helped so many women. She is an inspiration to all. And I have to tell you, I announced it last night in front of all the ladies, and my loves, she was crying. I felt all the emotion. I think all, I think she had all the ladies crying and because we just love her. We love her to pieces.

And we also, I drew for two other winners and it was just so fun. I’m not gonna lie. It was so fun. And I can’t wait for the event for all the women who are going to travel to Chandler, Arizona and who are going to come to the event. And then also all of our virtual participants who really are going to spend two days, two days just transforming their lives and showing up for themselves and doing like this amazing hard work. And so I get so excited.

I love Unstoppable Live. You know, we only do it once a year because it really is a big production and it is this two-day immersive experience. So we’re opening on February 9^th, so still lots of time for all of you ladies who are not a Transform Boss yet to get in, but I can’t wait. I cannot wait. I have been thinking about that event, planning for that event, and I can’t wait to see my ladies in person and virtually.

Okay, my love, let’s get into today’s show. So, in my Transform Boss Weight Loss community, one of our ladies had an epiphany. And it’s the inspiration for this episode. Because I too had this when I was losing my weight. I was on so many diets and I had this mentality of either being all in or all out, that I was good when I was eating “healthy,” and I was bad when I was eating anything “unhealthy.” I had done this for so long that I had created a lot of beliefs around “healthy food.”

And I had made a connection that eating healthy was restriction. I want you to really think about that. Because of diet culture, I had to be all in and eating in a way that was restrictive or I was mostly eating all the other things, right? I was out, I was eating, you know, all the things and you know, I needed to eat all of the things before I started another diet.

So I learned over time that healthy food was restriction. It’s not that I never ate things that fueled my body, but I had developed all of these food rules and tons of beliefs about it. It’s important to understand and become aware of what you think about food and when you eat it, how you think and feel about it. You can even do this as you watch others eat, and what comes up for you. I used to see some of my “skinny” friends and think all they eat is salmon and veggies. And I had these thoughts that they must exercise all the time. And I would tell myself that I could never live like that and that I didn’t only want to eat veggies, but it really was just nonsense that I was telling myself.

I had no idea really what those ladies ate. I just had this idea that had developed over years of restriction and bingeing that to lose weight and live in a smaller body that I had to eat, “Healthy.” So it led to 38 years of the diet roller coaster, to being all in or all out. If I was eating pizza and all the things,

then I could not eat a salad. Now you might be thinking, I don’t do this, but I want you to think of all of your diet rules, what you believe about fuel and non-fuel food, and how you actually eat it. If you plan for chicken and veggies and protein, but you ended up eating pizza, do you just say, well, I ate something bad, so forget it, I might as well eat all the things. Or if you eat the pizza, can you put some veggies on it or eat a salad too? And then continue on, not making eating the pizza mean that you were good or bad. No binge eating necessary.

When ladies join Transform Boss Weight Loss, the first tool is the realistic plan, because I want my ladies to start eating all of it. Fuel and non-fuel, so they can begin to heal their relationship with food. And the first step is just awareness around how you feel about healthy or what I like to call fuel food. Food that nourishes and feels good in your body. Also, how you think about non-fuel food. Food that may not feel necessarily great in your body, but you enjoy eating them.

What are all the foods that you label as bad? And if you eat them, are you believing or thinking that you’re being bad? Watch what you think and believe as you’re eating or planning to eat something. And I want to talk about this thought because I think this thought as you start to become aware of what you’re thinking can come up a lot. This thought that you can’t control yourself around certain foods, that you must eat all of it if it’s there, and that you can’t stop yourself. See, when you’re on the diet roller coaster and dieting, you believe that you can’t control yourself because you’re restricting and not allowing yourself to eat all of it.

Diets don’t challenge your beliefs or mindset. They don’t teach you how to start to believe new things. No matter what the new language the diet industry is trying to lure you in with, they basically give you a food and exercise plan with some new marketing language. Losing weight is an inside job. And it starts with how you think and what you believe, not only about yourself, but also what you think and believe about food. Awareness is important because until you can identify all of your food rules and beliefs, you will not be able to change them.

The epiphany that one of my bosses had is that she likes salads and she liked them with salad dressing, and that it was okay. She had tied salads to restriction to little or no salad dressing. And she decided to eat her salad with the dressing that she loved and that it was fuel for her, and she loved it. Myself, I love salads with all the things, including dressing. I love the greens and the cucumbers and the tomatoes and the olives and the cheese and the beans, protein. I love an amazing spinach salad or Greek salad. I love the way it nourishes me and how delicious they are. I don’t eat diet food. I eat food. All of it.

As I was losing my weight, I had to start to believe new things about food. That food was not good or bad, that it was just food. And some of it felt better in my body. I love fuel food. I love veggies and proteins. And I also love non-fuel food, right? Some food that doesn’t feel the, you know, the greatest in my body. And I eat all of it. I like how my body feels when I nourish it, and when I take care of it. I also like to eat a cookie and enjoy that too.

So the transformational questions and actions today are one, what are your beliefs around food, around food being either good or bad? And number two, how have your diet beliefs affected how you eat today? Number three, make your realistic plan. And if you’re new to me, listen to episodes number 6 and 106 to learn more.

And if you want to take this work deeper than for sure take my free course. You can go to bflycoaching.com/ready, R E A D Y. 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 bfly.coaching.com. See you next week.