You are listening to the Weight Loss for Successful Women podcast with Shannan Christiansen episode number 120. 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. I love today’s show. We are going to explore the grind of weight loss and how to think about it. But first, I want to do a listener shout out, and today’s listener shout out is from Sharon, and the title of her review is Diet Effect on iTunes. Shannan, I have to say joining first Jumpstart back in 2019 and now Transform Boss Weight Loss was the best decision I’ve ever made for myself. I was all in or all out of the diet world. Shannan and her tools and exceptional coaching have taught me that I don’t need a diet to lose weight. Just a belief in myself and a change in mindset. No food plan, restriction, or any of those diet culture things. By following the four fundamentals and using the tools that Shannan teaches I have changed my way of thinking about myself. I have lost 126 pounds and have kept it off for over a year. I’m so grateful and thankful to Shannan, Jenn and Dawn for their coaching. Also being part of an amazing sisterhood of women. I love all of them with all of my heart.

Sharon, we love you too. I love Sharon. She’s such an inspiration. She really is a total rock star, a total boss. She was on the diet roller coaster for 40 years and she’s lost over a hundred pounds and she’s just amazing. And she is the sweetest soul. She’s a senior mentor in Transform Boss Weight Loss, and you know, I’m watching her continue to grow and push herself. I can’t wait to see all of the things that Sharon does. Sharon, thank you so much for leaving the review. You know I love you to pieces. 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 anywhere that you listen to the podcast. Also subscribe so every Wednesday morning I’m in your podcast library.

Ah, so fun my love it is 2022. I mean it is 50/50. We still have a pandemic going on. I’m wishing all of my lady’s health and safety, you know, during this time. So my love, I just unveiled my secret project to my Transform Bosses. In Transform Boss Weight Loss I am doing a 60 Days to Future Me series. And in this series, I’m taking them behind the scenes of me and who I am becoming to hit my impossible goal. I video for a couple minutes most days of the week, and then my team puts them together into a weekly video. There are daily challenges, prizes. I can’t wait to watch my bosses over the next 60 days.

Don’t worry my love. If you’re not in Transform Boss, the whole series will be in the bonus vault so when you join in February, it’ll be waiting for you. We open on February 9^th, and I can’t wait. It was so fun to see the first week of 60 Days to Future Me and seeing it all put together. I had started filming in the middle of December. I shared things like what I eat, how I move my body, the thoughts I’m believing and struggling with. It really is an amazing benefit for my bosses. I want them to have the best year. I want them to achieve all their dreams and goals. I want this to be the last year they have weight loss on their goal list.

I’m always watching my clients, listening to what they say, what they write, how they show up, what is challenging for them. I really study them because I love them. And I want them to have success. I’ve been thinking about when ladies come into Transform Boss, and mostly they are super excited. They feel hopeful, a little scared, but they feel excited. They start implementing the fundamentals of Transform Boss, and then some ladies start disconnecting, start not showing up. I was thinking about this when I was losing my weight. I remember thinking I have a lot to lose, and it was going to take me a couple of years. I wanted to do it slowly and change my mindset. But I remember it starting to feel repetitive, feeling like a grind.

I would make my plan, do my thought work. Sometimes I would work on the same thought cycles over and over again. See, we want the dopamine hit of a reward and excitement. Our brain Lizzie, we want it. We want this. When we find love, start a new career, watch our children grow. We also want this when we binge, when we overeat, overspend, over watch TV. I used to think the “grind” was boring, not exciting. And mostly when I was on the diet rollercoaster, whenever weight loss turned into a grind, I quit. But here is the difference. When you understand that the grind is coming, then it means you’re on the right path, you can allow it and you don’t have to make it mean anything has gone wrong.

Think about the last time that you did a binge, like, you know, ate all the things from all the restaurants. It’s mostly when you were getting ready to start a new diet, you ate so much that you were like, I just don’t want this anymore. This happened when I was bingeing on sugar cookies. There just came a time where I just didn’t want them because I had had so much of them. But then I would restrict, not have them for a while. So they became kind of “bright and shiny” again. So when things are bright and shiny we want them. Do you remember when you met your partner, spouse, maybe an ex if you’re not partnered up right now, I mean the first six months, you are pinging off the ceiling with excitement.

Then after time, it starts to feel regular, routine, boring. Not that you don’t have some excitement, but it is different. It’s not bright and shiny. We make the regular routine grind mean that, wait for it, that something has gone wrong and that we have to change something. Yes, we want that dopamine hit. We want that excitement. But the grind, the routine, the regular, it is the path to success. My Transform Bosses who have lost their weight, who are in maintenance, they make their realistic plans, they come to coaching calls. They pay attention to their hunger. They eat mostly the same foods. They don’t need the excitement, because living in a body that feels like freedom far outweighs the temporary excitement of a sugar cookie.

We, also known as Lizzie, are so impulsive. We give into wanting the exciting, wanting the new that we sabotage our long-term success. The grind is your path to freedom, your path to wearing what you want, to have good health, to living in a body that you love. There is excitement along the way, but you have to be aware that our brains want dopamine hits.

We want to feel excitement. And in the moment we will sabotage everything to get a two minute hit of it. Our brain is wired to want instant gratification over the long-term grind. And we just have to start to become aware of what the grind looks like. We have to allow it, expect it, and be intentional about having fun with it.

We do keep it fun in Transform Boss Weight Loss. It’s why we do challenges, book clubs, have accountability groups, events, so that you can find the fun and excitement in the grind. Paying attention to when you are sabotaging your success because your primitive brain wants the temporary fix of a dopamine hit. My love, the grind is everything. It is the path to freedom from the diet roller coaster and how you lose weight for the very last time.

So the transformational questions and actions today are one, be aware of the grind. Know when you’re starting to go into that phase. Two, practice thoughts around loving the grind, allowing it, expecting it and being intentional about having fun when you’re in that phase. And three, come and join us in Transform Boss Weight Loss.

Now while you are waiting for us to open, take my free course at bflycoaching.com/ready.  In this training, I will help you get started on your journey to lose weight for the last time. 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.