You are listening to the Weight Loss for Successful Women podcast with Shannan Christiansen episode number 152. 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. Today, I’m going to roll out the first of a two-part series where I am going to teach you what the COST of losing weight is, and it’s not going to be what you think it is. Ladies, I am so excited. I just finished the Transform Boss live event this past Saturday as I’m recording this, and it’s a members only event for all my bosses. And I love spending time with my ladies, teaching them, watching their transformations. We have awards. Paul came on. I know it was so fun.

And I just love watching ladies show up for themselves, being active. We did breakout rooms, and it just was so amazing. I love the Transform Boss community and just think absolutely we have just the best women, and I love them. And it was just so fun spending this time. We do those events twice a year. It goes so fast and I love it so much. We have been so innovative, my team and I lately and creative thinking of ways that, you know, we can help our bosses have more success. It really is everything to me.

I think about all of you ladies, I too am just a human, a woman who struggled with her weight, struggled with her self-worth and loving herself. And now I just want to help women live this life, their best life in a body that they love, and disrupt diet culture. Yes, disrupt it. I want to break the diet industry. I think that losing weight is all about healing ourselves, our relationship with food, and it has nothing to do with the food or dieting. It’s just so important to me. So I hope you’ll come and join me in my mission. I know I love it. Right?

So we think of the cost of weight loss as money. Maybe time invested. You know, my love, we have spent hundreds of hours, thousands of dollars on the diet roller coaster. It has cost us a lot. But today I want to go a little deeper and talk about what I think the cost of losing weight, self-love, and living your best life in a body that you love. I created this acronym called COST, C O S T. It has the four parts to what it really costs you to lose weight for the long-term, for the last time, to get off the diet roller coaster for good.

I’m going to teach you today about the C and the O and then part two next week, I will go into the S and the T. But before we begin, I want to anchor you into something before I go into the C and O. Hard work. My love, we think losing weight is hard work, that it’s out of our reach. But those are just thoughts. Living in a body that you don’t love, carrying extra weight on your body, not being able to do the things you love, not having energy, obsessing about food and your next meal, well that is hard. I want to teach you that you have to invest in yourself. It’s the best investment you will ever make. And there is a cost.

The C is for Care. To get off the diet roller coaster you must learn how to care for yourself and your body. Taking care of yourself, your mental, emotional, and physical health. My love, when you don’t like something, you have frustration with it. You loathe it, you start avoiding it. This is what happens when you don’t love the body you live in.

You disconnect from it. Care is about taking care of your body, your mental and emotional health. It’s being aware of old thoughts and beliefs that are guiding your behaviors. It’s changing them with a one-better thought, learning how to feel your feelings, and starting to reconnect with that beautiful, amazing miraculous body of yours. I was so disconnected to my body and feelings. I was a robot walking around, checking things off the to-do list, just surviving, but I wanted more. I wanted more than just surviving. I wanted to live, live my best human life.

The O is for ownership. This is so important as you lose weight for the last time, taking full ownership and agency over where you are right now. No beat downs, no victim, poor me, just full transparency. And then from there, you can decide what your next best decision is. I used to lie to myself all the time about what I was thinking, what I was doing, my results, you know. I’d blame it on my mother, my genetics, my circumstances.   Shoot, if my husband brought home ice cream, I’d be like, well, it’s Paul’s fault, he brought home the ice cream. But really, I always have the decision. I was always in control.

Love, in this world, I only control what I think, feel and do. I want you to really think about that. We want to control all the things. But the only thing that you really control is how you think about something, what you feel about it, and then what you do. When I take accountability, full ownership, I can heal, forgive, and make decisions from a place of love and commitment for myself. Instead of fear and doubt.

I want you to really hear me. This is not about beating yourself up or making yourself wrong. It’s just saying I chose to do the thing. So what? Now, what is my next best action? What is the next thing that I’m going to do for myself? And then you just do that over and over again. Learning how to invest in yourself, learning the cost of losing weight for the last time, it is work. It’s the best work of your life.

To summarize, one, caring for your mental, emotional, and physical health means becoming aware of your thinking. Learning how to feel emotion and reconnecting to your body. Two, ownership is taking full accountability and agency over what you’re deciding to do and not do. It’s not beating yourself up or making yourself wrong. It’s just full ownership over you and your human life. It’s just getting real honest about where you are and where you want to go.

Next week, I am going to teach the S and the T, and then I’m going to put it all together. You do not want to miss it. Don’t forget to rate and review the show for our 150th episode giveaway. You must submit by August 31st and then email support@bficoaching.com to enter. And if you want to take this work deeper, take my free course at freebosscourse.com. 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.