You are listening to the Weight Loss for Successful Women Podcast with Shannan Christensen, episode number 169. 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. We are in the holidays. We are in the thick of it. We are, you know, Christmas is this Sunday and I’m pretty ready for it. I kind of breezed right in this year. I did all of my shopping online. The last few years I’ve just kind of been paring down all the things that we do. And so it’s been pretty simple. It’s just been fun. I’ve been able to celebrate. Usually we go and look at lights. We’ve done a van and we all get in.

Last year we went through like a maze of lights. And this year I was like, oh, all these grandbabies they wanna get out. So we went to this, Hallmark channel put on this thing called Enchanted here in Phoenix, and we went with the grandbabies and my dad, it was super fun. We got to walk through the maze and look for reindeer and it was pretty cool. And they had someone singing and they had a, a ballerina on the ice skating rink. It was a pretty cool experience, you know, we’re just enjoying it. And here we go, right?

We’re coming down to the last couple weeks of the year, and then we’re gonna get ready for 2023. So as I’ve been thinking about, you know, what do I wanna talk about on the podcast? I’ve been thinking about this emotion of regret. You know, I’ve done a previous episode, 128 on regret, and really when we regret things in our past, but these two episodes are gonna be a little bit different. I’m gonna zone in on a couple parts, and this first part is gonna be on loss. And then part two is going to be on weight loss. You know, as a human, we have regret.

We think about things in our lives and think if we would’ve done things differently, then we would be happier, right? Or better humans, have a better life. And the more I do this work, I just think of regret as a useless emotion. It’s just almost an indulgent emotion as my coach calls them. It’s just, it keeps me, when I’m in this kind of regret, from feeling the powerful emotions. The one that I want to feel, the one that I want to process.

I think regret is a buffering emotion, allows me to play in the puddle of should, S H O U L D. It’s how I should S H O U L D, all over myself. I should have done this. I should have been this, I should have done all of this, right? It just keeps us almost beating ourselves up, punishing ourselves. Today I wanna talk about regret and loss. This episode is for all of you ladies who’ve had a loss, any type. It could be someone who’s no longer with us, or maybe you’ve lost relationships.

It’s the holidays. And you know, I love the holidays. I love October, November, and December. It’s my favorite time of the year. They are amazing, and they are full of negative emotion too. I’ve lost my mom, and she was my bff, my biggest cheerleader. I miss her all year. But around the holidays, it feels a little harder. There are more memories, more traditions that she created that she was a part of, that, you know, she celebrated with us.

And my mother, she was ill the last seven to 10 years of her life. Really ill the last five and almost unrecognizable her last year. There are so many times that my brain goes to, if you would have done this, you should have done that. If only you would’ve done this, then maybe she would’ve gotten better or things would’ve been different. But it really boils down to if only you were a better daughter for her.

When I think these thoughts, I immediately feel regret and it feels heavy. I start puddling and buffering because I don’t wanna feel regret. I buffer with regret. It’s a beat down in my own mind that I don’t share. It can just be puddle thoughts going around in my brain while I’m watching TV or driving or scrolling social media. It’s a way to make myself wrong instead of allowing myself to feel the sadness and grief of the loss. To feel the intense emotion of missing her, the intense emotion of sadness. Regret is a way that I buffer, probably like you, to not feel the real emotion that is lying underneath at all.

See, it’s easy to beat ourselves up, make ourselves wrong. When I was on the diet rollercoaster, I would overeat when I felt regret. I would eat all the things. I would do everything. I think about that first year after she was gone. I would do everything to not feel the sadness of her being gone. See, regret, it’s a tricky emotion. We tell ourselves that it makes sense. If we would have done something different, then it would be better now.

But it is a lie that we tell ourselves. See, it all worked out the way it was going to, and we know that because that is the way that it happened. We can’t do anything to change the past. Over the holidays, I will experience joy, laughter, and intense sadness that my mom is not here. Her favorite song, Chestnuts Roasting Over an Open Fire. I mean, I don’t know if that’s the name, but most of you know what song I’m talking about. We’ll listen to that song and we’ll all be in tears. This actually just happened. We were at Enchanted and they had this girl and she was there and she started singing. It was awesome. She had the most beautiful voice.

And of course, the first song she sang was this one. And I looked at my dad and you know, he had tears in his eyes and it just woo, you know, still right? And it just happened. And this is the things, my love. I don’t regret a thing about my mom. I did everything I could. I did my best and most importantly, I loved her so much. My mom was beautiful, kind, funny, brilliant. She could talk you into anything and loved with all of her heart. And she was also frustrating, irritating. She’d call you 10 times a day. And she was the best. So if you have loss, allow yourself to feel it over and over again. Allow the emotion to wash over you and then release it over and over again.

And then feel love and appreciation for the time that you had with them, even if they’re still here on this earth. I wish all of you my loves the best holidays, and I have so much love for you. 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.