You are listening to the Weight Loss for Successful Women Podcast with Shannan Christensen, episode number 157. 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 Christensen.

Hello love. So happy to be back with you. Can you believe we are almost in October? We are going into my favorite time of the year, and I just cannot wait. I love the holidays. I love Fall. I like Winter in Arizona. I love all of it. Ooh, today’s show is so good. We’re gonna talk about dieting and how it’s changed the way that you think. And you might not even know how it is sabotaging your weight loss.

Oh, it’s a good one. So let’s talk about the holidays ladies. Oh my goodness, they are coming. They’re coming strong. Can you even believe it? I know 2022, it has gone so fast. And you know, as I think about ending this year, I think about how I started and the goals that I’ve had for myself and for my team and my family. And I think about, you know, years, they just go so fast. And I would say when I was on the diet roller coaster, the end of the year, I just kind of powered down. And now I am like, let’s go. Let’s finish strong. Because my love, every day we get this opportunity to show up for ourselves.

And I think we have, I know I did, these thoughts around the holidays that they were just overwhelming, so much to do. I went to parties I didn’t wanna go to. I did things I didn’t wanna do, and now I curate the holidays and the way that I love them. I do the things that myself and my family love, and I show up for myself and it is just, ooh, that’s what I wanna help you do. And we are gonna do our Finish Strong challenge. Yes ladies, finish strong. It’s gonna start on October 17th. We’re gonna have registration up shortly. So watch, you know, my social media, Instagram, you can follow me there. Or you can go to BFLY Coaching on Facebook.

 And of course if you’re on my email list, you’ll get plenty of emails about it. But ladies, we’re gonna finish strong. I am gonna do an eight-day challenge and it is gonna be amazing. It is the last challenge of the year. The last one my loves. So you for sure wanna make sure you get registered for that. And then we’re gonna open Transform Boss for the last time, and it’s the last public opening until March of 2023. I know. So you wanna get in my love. We’re gonna open that up on October 18th.

All right my love. So let’s get into this show today. So diet culture, you know, I want you to think about how long you have been on the diet rollercoaster or how long you have been dieting in some form or fashion. And dieting really is known. If you look back, I mean, I think about when I very first started dieting, it’s known for restriction cutting out food groups, right? Sometimes it’s high fat, sometimes it’s low fat, sometimes it’s high carbs, sometimes it’s low carbs. There is this element to dieting, and I would say it’s the focus is that you must eat less, move more.

You know that old saying, right? But it doesn’t work. And I know this, there’s scientific proof. And the reason why is because, you know, if you look at our country and we have a 70% who are overweight, and if I look at all the women, including myself, that I work with, that I know, diet rollercoaster is this horrible ride that we have all been on. And it started the first time that you decided that something wasn’t right with yourself, right? You, you wanted to lose a few pounds and you started telling yourself that, you know, I’m not good enough, so let me go to this outside external diet, and you know, it’ll fix me. But it doesn’t.

So I wanna talk about our brain. You know, I love the brain ladies. Our brain is wired mostly to keep you alive. It’s, its number one purpose. Also, we’re wired to stay comfortable. So we want to avoid pain and seek pleasure. It’s really important to understand how your brain is wired. I think my love for so long, I thought something was wrong with me. I kept telling myself if I could just be normal, right? But normal in this country is overweight. And so I had to learn how my brain was wired, because I wasn’t broken and neither were you. When you understand how your brain is wired, when you understand that there’s reasons for the things that you do, then you can take back your power.

You can take back the control and you can start to become the hero of your own story. Now, knowing that your brain, it’s number one job is survival, right? If you know that, then you know that diets restriction, it actually triggers scarcity. And when you think a resource is scarce, one of your fundamental needs, right? We need food, water, air, shelter, right? These are our basic needs. When you think food is scarce, then your body is gonna go into its automatic mode. It’s gonna go into your primitive brain, Lizzy, and you are gonna do everything that you can to get food, to hoard food, to get a lot of food, because you have this scarcity around food.

I want you to really think about this. See, the first time I, I remember when I started to think of food as a scarce resource, it’s when I started to diet. It’s when I started to think I couldn’t have all the food. That there were certain foods that I couldn’t have. That I needed to eat less, that I needed to eat a thousand calories or 1200 calories. I was wiring my brain diets equal danger. And this is important because I know my love, you think, Oh, I just can’t lose weight long term, because I’m sure you’ve had success like me, I had success. I had success along the way. I would lose weight and then I would eventually gain it back.

And it’s because we can for a certain period of time, restrict, tell ourselves that we can’t have things, we can white knuckle it. But for the long term, we can’t cut full food groups. Our brain is just gonna go into that scarce mode. So this is just, I think it’s so powerful to know. I wanna give you an example. So let me take you back to the pandemic and the beginning of it. In our grocery stores, we started seeing empty shelves. We started seeing a toilet paper shortage, food shortage. And our lizard brains, for many of us were like, Whoa, when I see toilet paper, I’m gonna grab it. When I see, you know, my canned of cream and mushroom soup, I’m gonna grab it, right?

It’s important to understand that whenever we think a resource is scarce, we then get more of it. When we see it, when we find it, it’s just a natural thing. We saw this in the pandemic. Folks were hoarding toilet paper, hoarding food, again because the thought, what if it is gone? What if I can’t get it again? So anytime we’ve gone on a diet, the same thing happens. Whoa, I’m not getting the food that I want. I’m not getting the food that I need. And so then your body goes into, whoa, scarcity mode. Danger, danger. I need to hoard.

Here are some questions my love to think. If you have this scarcity mindset around food. Are your pantries full? Mm, Like full, like over full, more than probably you could eat? And do you tell yourself, Well maybe one day we’ll eat it. Do you take snacks in case there is no food where you’re going? I used to do this on airplanes, even though there was plenty of food around, I had to make sure I had my snacks. Do you over buy food where food expires before you can even make it or eat it?

See my love, this scarcity around food, it just keeps you sabotaging your success. You think I need to go on a diet? When you have those thoughts, you’re sending signals that food will be scarce. Then you might be able to do it for a bit. But eventually you overeat, you binge. My love, if you think you can’t have the cupcake, then all you want is the cupcake. So what’s the answer? The answer is starting to change your thinking around food. Abundant thinking, it’s what I teach my ladies. We’re going through a series right now, Healing You. And what I’m teaching my ladies is how to think differently about food. This is knowing that you can eat anything that you can eat at all.

And as you go through my basics of weight loss, you start to pay attention to your body. So then you start saying, I can have it, but I’m full. I can have it, but I don’t want it. This is such a mind shift. You’re sending signals to your Lizzie like, Hey, we’re good. We can have it. Food is abundant. Ah, we just don’t want it. We’re feeling full. This is such a powerful shift for the way that your mind works. Have you ever known someone who has not had a weight problem? And if you talk to them, and I have, I love researching those folks, cuz it’s so different than me, right?

I mean, I grew up with this being my number one thing, right? And so if you talk to them, they have such an abundant mindset with food, it’s just not that big of a deal. They eat all the things, and when they’re approaching full, they stop. And sometimes they’re like, No, I’m just not hungry right now. This is the deep work of healing your relationship with food. And you know my loves, this is the work that we’re doing in Transform Boss Weight Loss. I know we think it’s in a diet plan. I know if we think, Oh, if I just lose the weight, then I’ll work on all that stuff later. But it’s not what happens. To lose weight for the very last time, you have to heal your relationship with food.

We’re doing a five-month series right now in Transform Boss all about healing yourself and your relationship with food. And it is powerful, powerful work. Losing weight for the last time, it’s an inside job. It’s unlearning all the old sabotaging thoughts and beliefs that you have around food. And if you’re ready to take this work deeper, join us in the Finish Strong Challenge. It’s coming soon. Be on the lookout for registration, and my love, it is gonna be powerful. All right my love. Bye for now.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Weight Loss for Successful Women. If you love what you heard today and wanna learn more, come on over to bflycoaching.com. See you next week.