You are listening to the Weight Loss for Successful Women podcast with Shannan Christiansen episode number 155. 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 excited to be here. 155 episodes. It just sounds amazing. 155 weeks I’ve shown up, and many of you have too. I love it. Oh, so today is the second in our two-part series on just general questions that we get a good bit through Transform Boss Weight Loss, through our public challenges, or even the free course. Ladies email our support box. Coach Jenn is here with me. Coach Jenn is one of the coaches in Transform Boss Weight Loss. You know, we love coach Jenn, and we’re just going to get to it, we’re going to ask the questions. You ready, Jen? I’m Ready. All right. Give it to me.

Alright. Restriction. What if I am restricted and I can’t do movement or exercise, will I ever lose the weight? Ooh, this is a good one. You know ladies, we tie movement into exercise, biggest loser, right? Like I’ve got to exercise or I’m never going to lose weight. I have a lot of thoughts on it. And one of them is, even if you’re restricted in your movement, whatever parts you can move, you know, you can move, right. Maybe it’s your arms. Maybe it’s just, you know, getting up and walking around, maybe it’s just your house. Right? And, but this is more important than any of that. When ladies first come to me, my suggestion, if they don’t already have a movement practice is not to.

Because we’ve had all of these old exercise beliefs, and I have to exercise 30 minutes or an hour a day, or I won’t lose weight. I have plenty of ladies who have lost weight who do not have movement or exercise routines. And they do it through reconnecting with their body. When you start to eat food and fuel your body and you eat less than what your body requires for fuel, you start to lose weight. You know my loves, it’s just another thing I think that we just thought loop about. It’s just another reason why, okay, I’m restricted in movement so I can’t lose weight. And so then I feel bad, right? It’s just the old thought cycle my friends.

You feel bad. And then when you feel bad, you overeat. Changing that thought to, even though I’m restricted in movement, I’m going to pay attention to my body and I’m going to eat when I’m physically hungry and I’m going to make my realistic plan and I got this. And then you feel differently. And then that’s when you want to do those things. But if you feel like you need to do something and you can’t because of a physical constraint that you have, it just makes you feel bad. And then you just want to eat all the things.

So movement, I have a podcast on movement. We’ll put it in the show notes, but our bodies like to move. Like even as I’m sitting here, I like to move, my body likes to move. That could mean just moving my hands, moving my shoulders, moving my feet. That is movement. And your body likes to move, right? If you think about folks who go into the hospitals and they can’t move, or they become paralyzed and you know, their bodies atrophy, their muscles atrophy. We were made to move. It is a body basic. We are, you know, just like breath, just like water, just like sleep, our bodies are meant to move. And movement is not a bootcamp where a personal trainers beat you down. Movement is as simple as just, you know, walking from the bathroom to the kitchen.

We over-complicate this. I do like crazy things. I like carrying groceries. And then I’ll do a couple like arm lifts with my grocery bags. Right. I park a little farther away. Again, ladies, I just don’t make this complicated. And I love to walk because walking is so good, but I do that for my mind and my body. But there are days where I’ll go out for a 10-minute walk. Some days, you know, 20, I don’t even put time constraints on my walks. I don’t think, Ooh, I got to get in my 30 minutes. Because this is what happens. You think that, and then you’re like, oh, well I did my exercise so I can have an extra cupcake. Oh, you see how our brains are. It’s just so trickery. It’s such trickery, because then you’re like, oh, well I worked out so now I can eat more. I’m more hungry, Shannan. It’s all trickery ladies.

Your bodies love to move. Do not like confuse the two and put the two together, weight loss and movement. Because when you do, it just really, it can derail you. So if you have limited movement, move what you can, and then, you know, follow the basics, take my free course and I’ll teach you the basics. What do you think Jenn? I have a lot of thoughts on this too. So I’m going to try to condense it. But even just today on the drive home, I went to an assembly at my kids school today and I was blasting my music and just dancing around.

Ladies, I’m telling you, like, I used to have these thoughts, but right. Bootcamp style, if I didn’t sweat, it didn’t count. And I had to just basically suffer through my movement, my exercise to make it mean anything. And through this work, I really, actually when I started this work I stopped exercising. I was doing it every day, at least five days a week. And I stopped because I had to change my mindset around it. And then I’ve slowly added it back in. You know, whether you have full range of movement or you don’t, I think it goes back to our thoughts around it, because when we have that perfection come in and when we’re not doing it right or enough, and we’re not seeing that scale go down, it means, you know, we need to work harder and that’s not just, that’s just not the truth.

As you begin to add movement in and you find different ways to do movement, even if that is just walking, like Shannan said, from your kitchen to your bathroom or whatever it is, you’ll be able to feel good in your body and find joy through your movement and not look at it as a punishment. Yeah. Or think, you know, I have to like move to lose weight. It’s just, it’s really a falsehood actually. It’s not the truth. To really lose weight just through exercise, not, you know, through what you fuel yourself with, you would have to do it like Biggest Loser style where you’d like have to work out for eight hours a day.

I don’t know who can do that, but I don’t think anyone can. And so it’s just this false belief. Food and how you fuel your body and how you feel hunger and fullness has more relation to how you carry weight than movement. And movement is just good for your body. Your body needs it. Your body needs to move. Your body, all the parts of it. And if you don’t, your body just doesn’t feel as good. It doesn’t move as well. And so again, simple things like, you know, walking around your house, loading in the groceries, right? Just little things, dancing around. Ooh, I love to dance. Oh my gosh Jenn, when you said that, I was like, yes. Right. Dancing is so fun. Like have fun with it ladies. Grab your partner and just dance around the house. You know, grab your grandbaby or you’re a little kid and just jump. If you can’t jump, maybe you’re sitting on the couch dancing, right. Maybe you’re sitting in your chair, moving your shoulders and moving your hands. So good. I love it.

All right. What is a minimum baseline and how do you use it? Oh, I love minimum baselines. This is a tool that we teach in Transform Boss Weight Loss. And it really goes with perfectionism, because we think we need to be perfect. We think I have to be perfect. I have to do all the things. So when I think about, you know, all the diets I’ve been on, I would, you know, get the plan, do the thing. And then I’d be like, okay, now this is all the things I needed to do. And I have to do it perfectly. I have to do it seven out of seven days. And so what would happen is if I did it six out of seven days or five out of seven days, I would feel like a failure. And when you start feeling like you’re failing, then you know, you start feeling overwhelmed. You start feeling disappointed. Then you have all these other thoughts. I can’t do this. I’m going to fail. And then you slowly start quitting.

Minimum baselines is so that you can start to see success. Because your brain’s not wired to see your success, only your failures mostly, right. Lizzy loves to tell you what you should be doing and what’s wrong. And so when you put in a minimum baseline, you can start to see success. Now how you do it is simply, let’s just say you use the realistic plan, which is one of our basics. You just say, I’m going to make my realistic plan three out of seven days, and when I do that, I will feel success.

Then you make your realistic plan three out of seven days. I tell you it’s so important to release this idea that you have to be perfect. Losing weight for the last time, it takes time. One, two, there are lots of challenges, lots of failures, lots of learning, lots of healing along the way. So you just have to give yourself a good amount of grace and love. What do you think, Jenn? I love minimum baselines. You know, I don’t know if you hear the trend, but I have some perfectionists in me and slowly twiddling away at her, but this is just such a great tool to help you feel success without having to do it all the time and avoiding setting yourself up for failure, right?

The failure of the beat downs and things like that. So I love minimum baselines. These can be used for anything ladies. They don’t have to just be used around weight loss. I use this for things around my house, for how many times I’m going to walk the dogs. Right? All of the things. Just setting, you know, amount of days of the week that you want to do it and then sticking to it. And when you do it, say three out of the seven days you celebrate that, right? You don’t say, oh, I guess I only did it three of the seven. That’s fine. No celebrate that. Let it be there for a while, a couple of weeks a month. And then that’s when you can Uplevel to four days a week. Right?

Another tip that I would give with this is I believe it was Jon Acuff, Shannan correct me if I’m wrong, but whatever you want to set it at, maybe cut it in half, because we want to start with those seven days. So, you know, a lot of your brains are going to want to go, okay, I’ll do five or six, but it’s still not realistic for you. So cut it down to the two or three days and start there. And then you can, after a week or two, evaluate it and see if you need to increase it or decrease it, but just don’t expect too much from yourself from the get go, right. Start small. That’s how you’re going to have that success.

Yeah. I love that. I love that idea. I think it was Jon Acuff with the cut it in half, take your goal and kind of halve too Jenn. And it’s so important because our brains just want us to be perfect. I don’t know what perfect is. Honestly. I mean, I don’t know what you know, is it seven out of seven? I’m not sure because it’s unrealistic. So then you’re just going to quit. My idea of perfection and yours is probably different. So I don’t think there’s a perfection meter out there that I know about. So I’d say just set your minimum baseline.

And I love too doing it for other things. Even myself, you know, I struggle with this. I think many women do, and I’m always like wanting to go above, right? I’m like, Ooh, if I could just get all of this done, I would feel better. If I could just be perfect, I would feel better. But it’s not the truth because you can feel better right now. You just have to think a thought that gives you a feeling that is positive.

So if you think I am learning how to lose weight for the last time, I am learning how to break my perfectionistic habits, I am learning how to show up for myself, then you feel better. And you can feel better today. We always want to delay it. I need to be perfect first and then I’ll feel better. But I just like to feel good today because perfect Shannan doesn’t exist, that I know for sure.

Next question is, how can I eat what I’m eating now and still lose weight? I mean, you have to meet yourself where you’re at. You have to start this process by eating what you’re eating now. I find that most ladies really, they like to fight me on this a little. They want to make diet plans instead of realistic plans. They want to make it idealistic. But you have to start where you’re at. Then slowly as you’re starting to reconnect with your body, you just up-level. You just, you know, leave a bite on your plate. I love saying that because it’s so simple, right? You just leave a bite. Okay, I’ll leave a bite. And then the next week, maybe it’s a bite and a half. Then you know, a couple of weeks later, maybe you start to notice that you’re feeling full and you actually stop a little earlier than that. It’s the slow process of combining the basics that I teach. And it happens over time.

I promise you this, you cannot go from eating all the things or, you know, diet brain to, okay, I’m going to be perfect. Again, it goes back to that old perfectionistic brain. One, there is no perfect. And two, you just slowly up-level and you meet yourself where you’re at. Ladies don’t want to. I know, it’s diet culture. Ladies don’t believe me. They’re like, no Shannan, I’ve got to like eat less right now. It’s like, you know, you will over time, but you have to change some thoughts and beliefs. If you keep coming from a place of scarcity where you think you can’t have things, you will restrict and then you will binge, you will restrict and then you will binge restrict, and then you will overeat instead of allowing and going through the process that I teach.

I mean, I feel telling you ladies, I mean this, like keep on doing the restriction. It doesn’t work. If you restrict, the opposite reaction to that is overeating and binging. You have to meet yourself where you’re at, and you have to slowly up-level. Hmm, Jenn, can you tell I’m a little passionate, I’ve had to like keep it at bay because you know, diet culture, I don’t blame you ladies. All my listeners, this is diet culture. We have been, it has been ingrained in our brains that the only way to lose weight is through over-exercising and restriction. I just want to teach you a different way. It’s through allowance and love. That is the only way.

Yeah. Don’t ever kill your passion Shannan, it gets me fired up when you do that. Yeah. As you were talking Shannan, I started  thinking when I had started this and, and where my mindset was at, and I did, I was probably one of the ones that fought you on this. First of all, I didn’t, I didn’t want to write a realistic plan because I didn’t want to plan ahead what I was going to have to eat. And then on my plan, I was making sure I was having good foods versus bad foods, right? Because that is the only way to lose weight. What was happening was I would eat off plan and then I would overeat and I would beat myself up. And it was just this cycle.

And ladies, the best thing is, first of all, to know there aren’t good foods and bad foods. There are just foods. And when we can just meet ourselves where we’re at, that is where we do these slow up levels, right? Like Shannan said, leave one bite and then a bite and half, and we start to feel that success. And we start to get back in tune with our bodies and we start to just, you know, you’ll start to see those successes. Your clothes will feel a little bit different. You’ll feel a little bit more energy. You’ll have less bloat, all of these little things. Right? The best thing that I can say is trust the process. I know that is out there, but it is. You just have to know that this is a way that you can lose weight without restriction.

And without those old thoughts of move more and eat less, because that is just false. I know, but that is what is in our brains. Like, you know, that is it. And your brain is going to play tricks with you of, oh, you probably shouldn’t have that hamburger and fries. But what happens is you might not eat your hamburger and fries right then, but then later that night, you’re going to want something else. So just meet yourself where you’re at, give yourself the grace. And you will learn through this work that you really truly can. That is the only way to lose weight, is to eat what you’re eating now and then slowly up level. Yeah. Ooh. So good.

Right. I mean, we could like preach this all day because, but I do think that ladies kind of have to go through that process sometimes of just like, you know, restricting. And then they start to see that, oh, when I allow, when I start to have abundant thoughts instead of scarce thoughts that I actually lose weight. When I restrict I might lose it, but then I gained right back and a little more because I’m going through this, like not eating and then eating all the things and you know, so I think it’s just part of this process.

My loves, everything that I’m teaching you, even the journey that I’ve been on, I continue even myself to evolve the healing. And I think we have just been through so much trauma with diets and it just takes this really good amount of time to heal from it. We have been told that our bodies are not good enough, that we’re not good enough, that we need to restrict, that we need to be a certain size. We need to look a certain way. And we need to cut food groups, and there’s good food or bad food, or healthy food or not healthy food. And it’s just left us feeling traumatized, not knowing what to do.

I think this work is just a constant evolving into the next version of yourself and learning and growing without judgment and beat downs, and just becoming that next version of yourself. And ladies it’s possible. I know your brain is going to be like, I don’t want to do this work, but this is the thing my love. If you want to really lose these chains, the prison of dieting and not loving your body and all of that, then you have to go through the healing process and it takes time and kindness and support. It needs a community of women and coaching and all of the different things that Transform Boss is made up.

There’s a reason why I have created this because I am a woman just like you, who has failed a thousand times who keeps learning about herself, who keeps healing, who keeps failing, all of the things. And what it does at the end of the day, this process, it just helps you and me, and Jenn, and all my ladies become unstoppable. And then we realize like, oh right, there’s no perfect. I just keep showing up. I keep failing. I keep moving forward. I just continue this journey to healing and self-love. It is the best, right? So the best.

So Jenn, any other thoughts before we end this Q and A? Just to allow time. This is not a race, and give yourself, I’m not trying to rhyme. I just realized I am, as I’m saying this, I love it. I, you know, I love a good rhyme. Give yourself grace along the way and just remind yourself that you really do have all the answers within you. You’re actually the only one that has your answers. Shannan or myself or anyone else, we cannot tell you all of the answers of what you need. You have it internally. So trust that within yourself.

I love that. Ladies, we think it’s in a food plan, but it’s been in you all along. You are the hero of your story. And if you want to take this work deeper my love, go to freebosscourse.com and take my free course. And Jenn, I, you know, I love doing the podcast with you. Thank you so much. And my loves, I will talk to you next week. Bye.

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.