You are listening to the Weight Loss for Successful Women podcast with Shannan Christiansen episode number 147. 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. So excited, I have had the most fun week. So as I’m recording this, we just wrapped up the challenge, our launch we opened, and it was so fun. I love all the challenge groups, but we just had so many amazing women. We have had so many women join Transform Boss Weight Loss, and you know, my team and I we’ve been so excited and we of course always think about our women and want the very best for them.

And it’s just exciting to watch women learn that there is a different way. I think for so long, I just was wrapped up in diet culture. It was almost my little blanket and I was wrapped up in it and it was just, Ooh, it was hot in there. It was causing me a lot of grief. I have to tell you, right? I mean, this diet rollercoaster of being on a diet, being off a diet, wondering what I should eat, what I shouldn’t eat. And when I see so many women and I hear their stories, I just want to send all of you ladies love today because that’s where it starts.

Honestly, it’s where it all begins. And it’s just this love for yourself, acceptance for yourself. And it’s this process of healing your relationship with food, with yourself, and it is the absolute best work. So I have to say to all my challenge ladies, all my new bosses, I love you ladies. And I’m really excited to watch your journey.

So I have to tell you, ladies, I am getting excited though. Paul and I, we are headed to New York City next week. I’m going out east for a work trip, and so we’re going to take the train up to New York and I’m just excited about it. We haven’t been to New York City, you know, since pre-pandemic it’s been, I dunno, maybe even four years, I think. And I’m just excited to get up there, feel a little buzz of the city. We’re going to go see a play and just walk around Central Park and just hang out and have fun, eat some good food. New York always delivers on that, for sure. So getting excited. You know ladies, rest, recovery, it’s so important and I am for sure going to spend those days resting and recovering and having fun.

And I know we need more fun in our lives ladies, but it’s the everyday fun, it’s, you know, I think about this, especially with Transform Bosses, you know, just creating this life that has a lot of pleasure, that has a lot of fun. We always try to make things fun in Transform Boss, because weight loss has been so hard and heavy, and it is deep, but fun.

It just has to be a part of all the things we do. How can we make it fun? How can we make it simple? So today’s episode, I think it’s going to be a fun one for sure. We did a book club back in, I want to say it was in June I think, I know time goes so fast. I barely can remember, but I’m pretty sure it was in June in Transform Boss Weight Loss. So we do book clubs a few times a year and we did this book, it’s called Soundtracks and the author is Jon Acuff. He’s written several books, and in Transform Boss Weight Loss, we love him. We do a couple of his books and this was the first time we ever did Soundtracks.

And it was really, you know, I really enjoyed the book. It was really, when I think about this book, it really reinforced so much of what I taught. You know, I told my ladies, I’m like, oh my goodness, I feel like he’s in my brain because, you know, as I was reading the book for the first time, just earlier, not even a couple months ago, I was like, whoa, like I just felt like we were on the same wavelength, but I love the way that he teaches. I love the examples that he gives. And he’s super funny. I highly recommend his book.

But I want to share with you five concepts that he talks about in the book. But also I just want to kind of relate them to weight loss and to the things that I teach. Number one, the whole book, it’s called Soundtracks and what he means by that is your thoughts. I know it all comes back to your thoughts ladies. Part of my brain is always like, oh, I wish it was something different, but yeah, it’s our thoughts. So Jon describes our thoughts as soundtracks. And I like to think of this and how I teach it is it’s like a jukebox, right? But it had all these records, right? All of these soundtracks. And that’s kind of how your brain is. You have all of these different soundtracks. These records that have just been playing in the background.

I love what he said. He said, they’re secretly shaping your life. This is important because I, for some so long myself, I was thinking about, you know, when I was on the diet rollercoaster, I really looked at all the things outside of me. I blamed my genetics, my mother. I always told myself, I didn’t have enough time. I was always looking for an external way to lose weight, you know, through a diet plan or an exercise plan. And it really was never any of that. It was always the way that I was thinking about it. It was these soundtracks that were playing in the back of my brain, and they are playing in the background.

You know, part of our brain is our automatic brain. It is our habit brain, and it stores so many of our memories, our beliefs. And a belief is just a thought on repeat. So whenever you have a thought and you think it over and over, and you build evidence for it, it becomes a belief. And so you have all of these beliefs that are just playing in the back. And what happens is, as I teach, you have a thought, and then it causes a feeling in your body, and then you do, or you don’t do something. And really understanding that this is what’s shaping your life. We think it’s out of our control, but the one thing I’ve learned, I don’t control anyone else. I know, I wish I did, but I don’t.

But the one thing that I do control is the way that I think about something. And your awareness as you’re losing weight for the last time is so important. You starting to become aware of these thoughts that are just playing in the back of your brain. Thoughts like you’ll never lose weight, you’re always going to fail. Look at your mother, look at your genetics. Look at your health problems. These thoughts are causing feelings in your body, like frustration, disappointment. And when you feel that way, you end up in the pantry, you end up overeating. You make a plan for the day and then suddenly you’re eating something you didn’t want to eat.

So just understanding that you have these well, as Jon says soundtracks, and they are secretly shaping your life. Number two, broken soundtracks, I call them thought errors. But these are just these thoughts that we have, and we believe them. We think they’re true, but I just want to offer this to you. This is something that my teacher, Brooke, she said when I very first was learning from her and it has stuck with me ever since. Just because you have a thought does not make it true. I know, right? So you have these thoughts, these beliefs that have just been percolating in your brain. And so many of them are just broken soundtracks. They’re just thought errors. They’re not the truth. They don’t serve you. And so understanding and challenging those thoughts. I love this.

You know, I teach ladies talk to yourself more than you listen, because you’re going to have these thoughts. They’re not going to go away. You know, I’ll tell you, they’re just not, you’re always going to have some whisper of some old broken soundtrack, of some old thought error, but when it comes, you just replace it with, okay love, we got this, or you’re one-better thought, your new thought that you want to practice and you just do it over and over again. I talk to myself all the time in my brain and sometimes out loud. And I replace these old broken soundtracks with new beliefs, new thoughts.

Number three, this is my favorite actually. So I do reflection work every morning where I just dump out my brain and I just, you know, go through my thoughts and I pick a thought and I pick a broken soundtrack and then I do a thought cycle. And then I replace the thought. But I love the way that Jon has these three simple questions. So if you don’t know what reflection work is, first go back to episode 19 at bflycoaching.com/19. Or you can just search wherever you listen to podcasts and find episode 19, so you know what reflection work is. I teach it in that episode.

But there are three simple questions to ask and to challenge your broken soundtrack. Here are the three questions and I love it. Is it true? Is it helpful? Is it kind? So you dump out your thoughts you’ve done about your brain on a piece of paper, and there is the thought that you’re having is I’m just going to fail again at weight loss. Then you just ask, is it true? Well, I don’t know. You might not know yet. Right? So, okay. We’ll leave that. Is it helpful to think I can’t lose weight? I don’t think it’s helpful. How’s that helpful? It’s not helpful. It just keeps you feeling discouraged and disappointment. But this last question is everything. Is it kind? It’s not kind to think that. It’s not kind to, you know, look at your journey and judge it.

And you know, I failed so many times in weight loss until I didn’t. And all of those times, all of the diets I tried, everything led me to search out the process that I have today. I wouldn’t change any of it. And so really challenging these broken soundtracks, these thought errors that you have, and you can do it with these three simple questions. I love it. It’s my favorite part of the book by Jon. Is it true? Is it helpful? Is it kind?

Number four, borrow from the best. I love this too. You want to start to practice new thoughts, new beliefs, and it’s okay to borrow from others. I love this thought, everything is for me. I heard it many, many years ago and I have practiced it probably five years now. I just love this thought. One of the thoughts that Jon has is pivot don’t panic. And I love that thought. So anytime you feel like, oh, I just made a mistake or had a failure or overate, pivot don’t panic. I like to call it the next best action. That’s how I teach it. But I do like this thought about pivoting and not panicking, because sometimes you’re going to overeat. Sometimes you’re going to have challenges. Sometimes you’re going to find that you want to give up on yourself. And all you need to do is take the next best action, pivot, don’t panic.

Here are some other thoughts that you can borrow as you’re starting your journey or continuing your journey to lose weight for the last time. I’m learning how to heal my relationship with food. My journey, my time. That’s from our favorite Nancy Castelli. Light and easy. This is from Jon, but I love this one because my brain loves to go to the hard. So just asking or replacing with, oh, this is fun, this is simple. I got this. So good.

And number five, absolutes are not true. I love this too, because you know, we talk in absolutes a lot. Like everything is going wrong. Nothing is going my way. I always fail. Nothing ever works out. And absolutes are just not true. Really. Nothing is 100% always going to be that way. It’s just not. And so when you talk in absolutes, it’s just a trigger to realize that that could be a broken soundtrack, and it’s a great way to catch yourself and then practice that new one better thought. Ladies, I highly recommend the book Soundtracks from Jon Acuff. I think it really does help in this journey to losing weight for the last time.

Because it starts with identifying and becoming aware of all of those broken soundtracks and replacing them with new one-better thoughts. See love, when you believe something different, you feel something different, and then you do something different. If you keep thinking the same things, you’re going to keep feeling the same way, and keep doing the same thing. We all know the definition of insanity is just doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

This is what I loved about the challenge ladies, and the ladies who are newer to this work. It’s understanding that there is a different way. There’s a different way than being on the diet rollercoaster. If you want to go deeper in this work my love take my free course. I talk about my basics. Go to freebosscourse.com. And subscribe to this podcast every week in your library. So when you subscribe or you hit the plus button, I’ll be right there, right there for you on Wednesday morning.

All right, my love. 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.