You are listening to the Weight Loss for Successful Women Podcast with Shannan Christensen, episode number 170. Welcome to Weight Loss for Successful Women, a podcast for women who are ready to break the diet cycle and end their struggle with wait 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 a two-part series on regret. You know, I think for many of us, we’ve felt this emotion before. There are things that we have thoughts about that we should have done something different, or if things would’ve happened differently. Some of y’all might think like if I had different parents, right? We have all these thoughts, right?

We’ve had them probably our whole lives. I did an episode way back, episode number 128, about your past and regret, and then last week in episode 169, I talked about loss. Today, I wanna just talk about weight loss and how regret shows up in your weight loss journey. This time of year, you know, here we go. I know 2023 is gonna be here. I can’t even believe it, right? You might be listening, and it’s 2023. One of the things that I do throughout the year, but especially at the end of the year, is I start to plan for 2023. And part of that process is looking at my successes.

For so many of us, we focus on our challenges, what we should have done instead of what we did right. And I bet if I asked most of my ladies who are listening, you would very easily be able to tell me the things that you should have done, the things that you wish you would’ve done different. But really looking back and seeing what we’re doing right, looking at our successes, it’s so important. See, we have this regret about our past and what we should have done, but it doesn’t move you forward. It actually keeps you in inaction. It keeps you not doing anything.

See, in weight loss, we have failed for so many times. I think about, I don’t know, I failed so many times in weight loss until I didn’t. So every time I would go to start something new, I would look back at my past and think, oh, if I would’ve just done something different, my life would be different. I would be different. And what happens is we have these thoughts and they’re circling. So when we start something, because we have failed in the past, we start with too many things.

So since I’ve failed before to be successful, I need to do it all perfectly. And I need to change so many things. I see this when new ladies come into Transform Boss, they have a lot of diet mentality, as did I. They’re trying to do all the things. They wanna do the course, they wanna come to all the calls, you know? And then their brain starts to get confused. And I don’t know what to do, and I don’t know where to start. Because we want to be perfect. Because we believe, we really believe if we can just be perfect and lose all the weight, then everything will be better.

And the real path to losing weight for the last time is starting to slowly show up for yourself and choose one to two things that you can have success with. Start to build upon that. You know my loves, I see this so much in weight loss. We think if I would’ve been thin or never gained the weight, that our life would be better. But life is 50 50. Whatever life you think you might have had, or if you think things would’ve been different if you were thinner, I just wanna offer you a different thought that you still would’ve had problems. You still would’ve had challenges. You still would’ve had loss and grief, and all the things, because that is life. That is our human experience.

We say things like, if I would’ve just lost the 10 pounds this last month then I’d feel better today. But last month is exactly as it should be. It turned out just the way you wanted it to. And you know why that’s true? Because that is how it happened. I understand that not everything is in our control, but we always get to control how we think, feel, and act. I love this quote from Byron Katie. I’ve said it on the podcast before. When you argue with reality you lose, but only 100% of the time.

See, we set these weight loss goals and then we don’t hit them because we’re so focused on that singular point of data, the number on the scale. We’re not focused on who we’re becoming, our successes, how we’re changing our habits. So what happens is we just keep failing harder. We double down on our failures instead of doubling down on our successes.

We keep telling ourselves that we should have done this, we should have done that. And then we feel regret. When we feel regret, we’re just puddling. We’re just playing in the puddle. It’s one of those very indulgent emotions, and we’re just playing in the puddle. We’re not doing the things that we want to do. We’re just telling ourselves what we should have done. We’re making ourselves wrong. And when you do this in weight loss over and over again, eventually you just tell yourself, I don’t wanna do this anymore. I’m fine. And then you live in this indifference. Indifference to yourself.

It’s not that you’ve accepted and have love for yourself, it’s that you’re indifferent to yourself. It’s not that you can look at yourself in the mirror and love yourself and love that body you’re in. You’re just indifferent to who you are. Regret is just a trigger. When you’re feeling regret, when you’re having thoughts that you should have done things different, that things would’ve been better if you would’ve lost that 10 pounds. Or I should have done this, I should have done that. I didn’t come to the call, I didn’t do this, you know, all the things we tell ourselves. My love, all that you need to do is one to two things. That’s it. You start today. You can do nothing about yesterday. You cannot change yesterday. All you can do today is decide what is the one or two things I can do for myself today.

Regret is puddling. It’s buffering. It’s a way that you secretly beat yourself up. See, regret sends you into a tailspin of should, what you should be doing, which in turn leads to perfectionistic thinking and no action. Yes, no action. And then your last suppering. And you’re eating all the things because you tell yourself you’re gonna be perfect on Monday. So today, decide you don’t have to change everything on January 1st, 2023. All you need to do is today. What are the one or two things I can do for myself? And when those old, I should have done this, come up, just replace it with, but I am doing this today. Here’s my one to two things. I like to teach this concept called the next to best action. What is the next best action that you can do for yourself? When you start focusing on the actions instead of the one data point, the number on the scale, you start focusing on the habits that you’re creating. Then what happens is you have a different feeling in your body. You have a feeling of commitment. Maybe you have a feeling of confidence. Maybe you have a feeling of excitement that is very different than the feeling of regret. So today, decide one to two things that you can do for yourself. What’s your next best action?

You got this, my love. And if you want to take this work deeper, then take my free course. Go to freebosscourse.com and take my free course. 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.