You are listening to the Weight Loss for Successful Women podcast with Shannan Christiansen episode number 141. 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 my love. So happy to be here with you today. Today’s episode actually was inspired by a coaching session I had in Transform Boss Weight Loss with one of my Bosses. It was just such a great coaching session. And it reminded me of when I was losing weight and something that I really struggled with. And it’s holding these two different beliefs and how it can keep you stuck.

Oh my love, it is summer here in Arizona. Yeah, we’re in the hundreds. This is how we do, but I do have to say it’s so beautiful. You know, we just kind of went through our spring and all the desert plants bloom, and it is really beautiful. It’s a different kind of beauty, but ah, it is pretty darn beautiful. So it for sure has been hot.

But I have to tell you love, I’ve been ill and I had COVID, and it really kind of knocked me out for a good bit. And I am just feeling so much better. And you know, when you’re sick and all you can think about is I just can’t wait till I feel better. And I’m starting in that right now where mostly I’m back, I would say I’m about 90%, which is pretty darn good compared to where I was even three days ago. You know, when you get your health back, I mean, you just want to like run a marathon. I’m not even kidding. I went for a walk this morning and it just felt so good.

And it was hot too. I mean, I don’t even know it was, it was pretty darn hot. I didn’t even care. I was just so happy because my body felt good and my breath, you know, I wasn’t, I was a little out of breath, but nothing too crazy. My heart rate was okay. You know, and it just felt good to have a little bit of energy. I’d been so fatigued. My energy has just been so low. And so it just felt so good.

So I want to tell you ladies about this really fun thing that I’m doing right now on my BFLY Coaching Facebook page in Facebook, if you type my name or you type in BFLY Coaching, it will come up and it is these lives that I’m doing every week. And so I go on once a week, I’m doing an eight-week series on how to get off the diet roller coaster. And you know, I’m having the best time. I had one tonight and it was so great. We talked about ending habit eating. You don’t want to miss that. We’re going to put the replay here on the podcast.

So if you listen to the podcast you can catch all the replays here. But if you want to join me live and interact with me and ask me questions, for sure you want to join the lives. Now, the easiest way to be notified about them is to be on my email list. And the easiest way to get on my email list is to take my free course. So if you’ve not taken my free course, it’s a great course. You know, it teaches you the fundamentals, the basics of what I teach in a very simple, easy way so that you can start your journey to losing weight for the last time. And it also, there’s a workbook, it’s free, so you can download it and you can start to do your work.

And it’s so interesting because I just had someone, I mean, she kind of made my day. She said I made her day, but she really kind of made my day. She had just taken the free course and she had private messaged me on Facebook and just said, you know, she knew what her why was. And she was doing the work in the workbook and she started to feel hopeful. And you know, it was the best. It was so great to hear. So if you’ve not taken the free course yet you for sure want to, it’s pretty darn good. So go to freebosscourse.com. And of course we’ll put that in the show notes for you too.

Today’s episode is about learning how to believe new thoughts about yourself. Part of this process is what I want to talk about today is about holding onto two conflicting beliefs. I want to take you back to when I was losing weight. I had this period of time, I don’t know how many years ago it was, but a good while ago, and I was losing weight. I had found my few teachers who taught me the process that I teach today. So I knew most of my process. Of course, you know, I continue to research. I continue to learn. I continue to come up with new tools and techniques, but I had a good foundation of the process that I teach today. And I was losing weight and I was starting to believe new things, right. I had learned the thought cycle. I had learned how, you know, my thoughts caused feelings.

And then, you know, I did or didn’t do things based on how I was feeling. And I really started to believe like, whoa, right? You ladies know, right? When you learn something that ultimately just changes your story forever, it changes your life forever. It’s exciting. And so I was going along, I was losing some weight and then I started noticing all of these old beliefs starting to pop up. Things like, you’re never going to keep this weight off. This is just another short-term fix. You failed so many times. I just had these thoughts that just kept coming up. What did I do? I started to, you know, sabotage. I started to overeat. I started to eat a little more than what was on my plan.

Again, I still had all of my old thoughts. Because of this work I thought that I was going to be changed. I really thought that I was going to boom, be enlightened. Right? I had this fantasy of that one-year mindset change and suddenly everything was going to be different. And I wasn’t going to have these old thoughts. But loves, I was on the diet rollercoaster for almost 38 years. I mean, I really, for all of you just right now, how long have you been on the diet roller coaster? 10, 20, 30, 40 years. I had been gaining and losing and failing over and over and over again. I had built up just tons of evidence that I could not lose weight.

That weight loss was always going to be my struggle. And so because of this, and you know, I, of course I had these old thoughts. Of course they were still there. Even though I had new tools, even though I had these amazing things I was learning, I still had all of these old beliefs and they were just still like records in the back of my head, just playing over and over again. And so, I did what I had always done. I started to overeat, and I started to backslide. But I did have this work, and I did have a few teachers, and I had a coach. So one of my teachers, Brooke, she teaches this concept and she calls it the river of misery. And the river of misery is where you’re holding two conflicting beliefs.

So I had this new belief that I could lose weight for the last time, that I could lose weight and never gain it back. I was starting to believe that. But I still had this old thought of weight loss is your struggle. You failed so many times. Now, I love the term river of misery because when you’re holding two beliefs and they’re both circling around in your head, it feels a little like misery. It feels a little like struggle, right? Your brain can feel a little like tired, a little like, oh man, this is a lot. And there’s a technical term actually for this, it’s called cognitive dissonance.

And I want to read the definition. The definition of it, of cognitive dissonance is the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, especially as relating to behavioral decisions and attitude change. Why this is so important is because when you have been on the diet rollercoaster and you have lost and gained weight, you have all of these beliefs and thoughts around that you’ll never keep it off. You’ll always gain it back. Weight loss is hard. You have to cut out food groups.

You can’t be “normal.” I mean, I could go on and on for days ladies, I had all of this. I had built up a library of evidence, right? I was like the prosecutor and the defendant. No kidding. I had just built up all of this evidence. And so when I started this work and I started to practice my new thoughts, I started to want to believe something different, I started challenging these beliefs, because I had seen in examples of others where they had lost weight for the last time, I knew that it was possible. I knew that there were many areas of my life where I did believe new things, where I had changed my thoughts.

I think about, you know, when I was 22 years old and single, and I didn’t have education. I mean, at that moment, I didn’t believe that I could finish college. I didn’t believe that I could become an executive. I mean, I didn’t believe any of that. I didn’t believe that I could be a leader. Right. But again, over time I slowly changed those beliefs and thoughts.

And so you too have had things where if you look back 10, 20, 30 years, that you didn’t believe about yourself, but over time and experience and practice, you started to believe something different. And so this river of misery, cognitive dissonance, it’s holding two beliefs. Like if you can picture right now in my hands, I have both my hands out, in one hand, my right hand I have this belief that I can lose weight for the very last time, that I can live in a body that feels like freedom. That I can feel healthy, that I can move my body with ease. That’s my right hand. My left hand is holding, it is heavy. You are always going to be fat. You’re always going to gain your weight back.

You have failed so many times. You’re just the girl with the pretty face. You can’t lose weight for good. You’re always going to struggle. Weight is your struggle. And so I’m holding in my hands now two sets of beliefs and I’ve really built a lot of evidence for my left hand. I’ve really built up so much evidence. I have a library of evidence that that is true.

And so what I had to start to do was start to pay attention more to my right hand, I had to start to practice these new thoughts and beliefs because until I started to practice them, until I started to have that record playing in my brain, the old ones were just the ones that were playing. And this is really important because practice is part of changing your mindset. If you want to believe something different, you can’t just say one time oh, you know, I can lose weight for the last time. Cause then all those old thoughts and beliefs are there. And so you have to start to practice.

I want to tell you about an interview I saw once with Michael Jordan. So he’s a pretty famous basketball player. Some say he’s the greatest of all time. You know, I’m not a big sports basketball fan, so needless to say, but I saw an interview with him once and he was talking about how, when he is in practice, right? So if you’re a basketball player, you have practice a lot, right? So probably you practice way more than when you’re in the game, right. You practice all the time. And he said, what made him so good was that when he was in the practice, he thought of it like it was the game. And he had practiced so many times that all of the beliefs, all of the motions, every way that his body moved, it just had become automatic.

And so when he was in the game because of the millions of hours of practice and the millions of times he had thrown that ball to hit the three point shot, it just became muscle memory. And of course, I’m sure when he first started playing, he was in the river of misery. I’m sure there were times because he had failed way more than he had succeeded, but he continued to practice the new beliefs that he was, you know, one of the greatest. And so I use this as an example because he practiced by throwing a ball by believing new things about himself.

And in weight loss, it’s about practicing the tools, the basics that I teach, and practicing new beliefs too. It’s believing one better than what you believe today. If you believe that you can’t lose weight, that it’s hard, that it’s your struggle, a one-better thought could be, I’m learning to lose weight. I’m learning to believe new things about myself. I’m learning to show up for myself. I’m learning to make my realistic plan. I’m learning how to drink more water.

And again, pick one, just one. And then throughout your day, as all of the old thoughts, remember that left hand, all of that bunch of thoughts they come in, you just simply take a breath and practice your new thought, but I’m learning how to lose weight for the last time. And you just do it over and over again. You can write it on a post-it note. You can, even what I find that really helps me when I’m, cause I’m always practicing new beliefs and new thoughts that I want to think, I put a reminder on my phone. There’s a lot of different thought apps where you can have reminders come up on your phone. You can even just use your alarm and make it a silent alarm, even a buzzy alarm so that it comes up certain times of the day. So again, you can see that new thought and it’s just a one better thought.

It’s not a rosy posy, I can’t believe it. Somewhere, you have to believe it a little. You don’t have to fully believe it, but you have to believe that it’s possible. And this practice is just the key. And building new evidence. See my love, when you’re in the river misery and you’re holding, you know, both your hands are full of all of these beliefs and you’re, you know, feeling uncomfortable and you’re feeling just, oh, like this is difficult, right? You have to start building evidence for the beliefs that your you’re holding in your right hand, the new thoughts. You have to build evidence for those, because you have a library of evidence for all of those old nonsense BS thoughts.

So start creating new evidence. So when you have a success, when you do something, when you show up for yourself, when you eat on a plan, when you pay attention, when you leave a couple bites on your plate, that is a success. And when you have a success stop and acknowledge it and tell yourself what you’ve been doing right. Because you want to build that evidence to. See my loves, you’re always going to have thoughts in your right hand and thoughts in your left hand, you’re always going to have these old thoughts pop up. But when you practice the new beliefs, when you start to believe them, over time your old beliefs, your old limiting thoughts, they will start to quiet. It’s not that they go away. I think they’re just always there. They just get quieter. And then it becomes easier for you to believe the new things.

So one, know that this work is not just, I’m going to flip on a light switch and be changed. This work is just a lifetime of deciding to believe new things about yourself and collecting evidence to prove yourself true on your new beliefs. And two, it’s all about practicing. Practicing your new beliefs and practicing your new thoughts over and over again. And three, the river of misery. It’s just the river of misery. It’s a little uncomfortableness. You got this my love. To have like amazing results in your life, I think of myself, I have many amazing results in my life. When I think of so many successes that I’ve had and how I keep growing and failing and learning, and my love, I’m still in the river of misery. I still can hold two beliefs in my head that are conflicting. I just don’t make it mean that anything has gone wrong. Because my love, nothing has gone wrong.

And the transformational questions for today are one, what two conflicting beliefs do you have? What are the old belief that you want to change? And what is the new belief that you want to practice. And two, why does this work matter to you? Why is changing your mindset key?

And if you want to take this work deeper then take my free course. I teach all about the thought cycle, and there’s a free workbook too, so that you can do the work and practice your new beliefs. Go to freebosscourse.com to get the free course. All right my love, I’ll see you next week. 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.