You are listening to the Weight Loss for Successful Women podcast with Shannan Christiansen episode number 131. 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. Ooh, I love today’s episode. I want to talk about how busy action shows up and how it’s sabotaging your weight loss journey. But first I want to give a listener shout out to Wandahey. Hi Shannan. I love listening to this podcast. I learn so much from you each and every time, whether it’s listening, participating in a coaching call, BFLY on Facebook, the workbook, realistic plan, et cetera. This is the second time this year listening about the impossible goal. My very first reaction was how does Shannan expect me to do this? It’s not about Shannan, but myself. It’s not about achieving the impossible, but who I’m becoming working towards it. Thank you Shannan, for all your guidance and support, Wanda.

Oh, Wanda. I know, I love it. My Transform Bosses, Wanda is a Transform Boss, and she’s so amazing. I love you Wanda, and so proud of all the work you do. And if you like this podcast and you want to help other ladies find us, then be like Wanda, write a review, and it really does help others find the show. So I would really appreciate if you would rate and review the show. Also subscribe so every Wednesday morning I’m in your podcast library.

Love, Oh, I have to tell you, I had the best day yesterday. I had my grandbabies over and we just went to the park and watched a movie and just had fun. We went to, we walked actually from my house and there’s two different parks that are pretty close, and we went to the parks. They climbed on all the things and played on the swings. And we threw Frisbees. We did some running races, and I have to tell you ladies, my two oldest grandkids, they beat me in the race. They for sure did. But we had so much fun. This time in Arizona the weather is so beautiful. It is March and it’s just gorgeous. And so it was like 85 degrees maybe. And it was just gorgeous and sunshiny and we had the best day. So I hope that you get out today and I hope you find some sunshine. I hope you do. I know this time of year is kind of iffy for lots of places, but I wish you all the sunshine.

Let’s talk about the difference between productive action and busy action. Before I get into it, I want to remind you, or if you’re new to me on how your thinking, your beliefs turn into action. You have a thought, it’s just a sentence in your brain. And then that thought produces a feeling in your body. A feeling like sad, happy, joy, frustration, disappointment, love. Those are feelings. And they’re produced by a thought that you have. Then you have a feeling in your body. And the next thing from that feeling, you do or you don’t do something. You take action or you don’t. This is what I like to call the thought cycle. Now you can learn more about that on episode 105, but wanted to really kind of walk you through it again, because it’s important in what I’m going to teach today.

I want to dive into the action part. We have productive and busy action, and there is a difference. I’ve been thinking about this concept lately. You’re here because you want to lose weight. You’ve been thinking about it, maybe taking some action, but if you’re not getting the outcomes that you want, you’re not getting the results that you want, then the actions that you’re taking are not producing your outcomes, your results. And it’s important to understand that your outcomes are from your actions, which are because of what you’re thinking and feeling.

If you’ve been listening to this podcast or you are a Boss in Transform Boss, then maybe you’re doing some of the actions that I teach. You’re starting to practice new boss thoughts. You’re making a realistic plan. Again, maybe you’re a part of the community and you’re posting, or you’re checking in with your physical hunger. These are the basics to the process.

Now, if you’re new to me, you can check out my free course at freebosscourse.com. This is where you’ll find and start to learn some of the basics that I teach. Now, every one of these basics, they play a part in long-term weight loss. Now this is where the rubber meets the road. If you’re doing some of these actions and you’re not seeing the outcomes, you’re not losing weight, you’re not seeing the results from what you’re doing, then one of the reasons could be that you’re doing “busy action.” You’re doing things that aren’t producing the results that you want. And what I want for you is to do productive action, to do the things that are going to produce the results that you want. Now, this is important because if you’re not getting the outcomes that you want, it’s because of the actions that you’re taking, that are caused by your thinking or your automatic thinking that’s in play.

I’ll give you an example. When I started to lose weight for the last time, I started making my realistic plan. So I was deciding ahead of time what I would eat, then I would not eat on plan. I was doing the busy action of making the plan, but then not doing the productive part of eating on plan or asking myself why I ate off plan. Then I would tell myself, oh, this isn’t working. I told you Shannan, you can’t do this. You can’t lose weight. Why are you making a plan? This is dumb. These are all the thoughts that would be up in my brain. I would go into a pity party about how weight loss was my struggle.

I tell you ladies, getting honest with yourself, becoming aware is everything in losing weight for the last time, I was not doing the entire cycle of action so that it would become productive action. Productive action leads to achieving the outcomes you want. Busy action leads to a lot of playing in the puddle. We do a lot of busy action when we research a new diet. We might go to the store and buy all the foods and then we don’t cook it. We let it go to waste, right? Or we half do it. We don’t check in with our body to see if we’re actually full or if we’re even physically hunger. We do not do the productive action of the whole part, right? Of checking in with your body, of asking yourself, if you’re hungry, checking in to see when you’re full.

Busy action keeps us thinking that we’re doing something, and it’s just so important because we can be so tricky with ourselves. We do this all the time. We do busy action. I can think about this in so many areas of my life. You know, maybe I have a project at work that has a deadline and I need to get it done. I’ll do all the busy action because there are parts of it I don’t want to do. And so I just keep procrastinating. I keep putting it off. And I find with this work, remember, Lizzie wants us to stay the same. She wants us to, you know, not change. And so, busy work seems like we’re doing something.

If you’re one of my Transform Bosses, I went a little deeper on this, I did a Quick HIIT, Rest versus Inactivity. So you can go and go into our community and find this or on Transform, our membership site. If you’re not a Transform Boss, what I want you to do is get a piece of paper and write down how busy   action is showing up for you. How are you telling yourself all of the stories, all of the things about how you’re doing something, but this is how you know if it’s working. Ladies, this is it. Are you getting the results, the outcomes that you want? If you’re not, you’ve just got to look at your process. You’ve got to look at, you know, the basics that I teach. How are you doing? Where are the parts that you’re just doing busy action? Where is this showing up for you?

And this is important, this is not to judge yourself. This is not to beat yourself up. This is just so that you can tell yourself the truth so you can hold yourself accountable. See, there’s a difference in holding yourself accountable and beating yourself up. Beating yourself up, to me, is, you know, telling yourself you’re, something’s wrong with you, you’re broken, all of those really negative thoughts about yourself. There is nothing wrong with you. There isn’t. There’s not one thing, you’re not broken. You are lovable and worthy, and all the things. Being accountable is just telling yourself the truth.

Here’s how I’m doing the process. Here’s where I’m doing the productive work. Here’s where I’m doing the busy work. Here’s where I’m making my realistic plan, but I’m not eating on it, or I’m not even making my realistic plan. I’m just listening to the podcast, but I’m not doing any of the action that it’s going to take to lose weight for the last time. This is what I want for you my love. I want you to achieve all your dreams, all your goals. If you’re one of my Transform Bosses, I want you to become the person who achieves her impossible goal. If you’re listening to this podcast, I want that for you too.

To lose weight for the last time you got to do the hard work, the productive action that will produce the outcomes that you want. And to do this, it’s one small step at a time. It’s looking at your data, looking at what you’re doing, and then deciding on purpose your next step. And then if you’re not getting the outcomes, you’re not losing weight, then just asking yourself, am I doing productive action or am I doing busy action? And you can really start to get honest with yourself.

So the transformational questions and actions today are one, how is busy action showing up in your weight loss journey? Two, how is productive action showing up in your weight loss journey? And three, where do you need to hold yourself accountable so that you can lose weight for the very last time?

And if you’re just starting this work and you need community, you need the tools to lose weight for the last time, then start my free course at freebosscourse.com. Ooh, so good. And next week, Oh, I cannot even wait. I know ladies, I love this work. Next week, I’m going to talk about your body. Yeah, you won’t want to miss it. All right my loves, 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.