You are listening to the Weight Loss for Successful Women Podcast with Shannan Christensen, episode number 171. 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. I hope that a wonderful holiday and new year. It’s 2023 and I am excited. I love the new year because it’s a point in time, a time where I reflect on the amazingness of the past year and get excited about what is to come in 2023. This year I challenge you to find your successes, your boss moves. You may find it hard at first, but every week this year, write a couple boss moves you have done, AKA successes.

This year I am turning 52 years old and I am excited about it. I love getting older actually. Every year I have more wisdom, more experience, and I go deeper into my purpose. I know that our bodies change and they creak a little more for sure, but I would not trade what my mind experiences for a younger body. To celebrate 2023 and me turning 52, I’m gonna start a 52-week long journey called TBoss Take. It’s where I’ll bring you 52 weeks of tips and things that I’ve learned that have helped me get off the diet rollercoaster and have amazing relationships and live my best life in a body that I love.

I’ll do this in email, our social channels, you can follow me on Facebook at BFLYCoaching and on Instagram at Shannan Christensen. I also have a YouTube channel, which if you’re watching this, you’re already there, and we’ll put all of that in the show notes for you. And of course, TBoss Takes will be right here on this podcast every Wednesday. Make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss any of the weeks.

Is this gonna be the best year of your life? If it is, then tune in and decide that this is the year that you show up, become a boss, and live your very best life in a body you love. I had been on the diet rollercoaster for so long that I had no idea what real physical hunger even felt like. I just knew I was longing for something. I was trying to fill this deep hole with food. I kept eating and eating until I weighed 315 pounds. And then I lost some weight, but my mom passed and I gained 55 pounds in nine months. I was eating because I didn’t wanna feel the emotion of what was happening. I didn’t wanna feel the grief.

I had always used food to comfort myself, and I didn’t know any other way to cope. I also did not know the difference between physical hunger and emotional hunger. I just knew that I didn’t wanna feel bad. I didn’t wanna feel this negative emotion, and I thought that eating would make me feel better, and eating did make me feel better for a few moments.

Physical hunger is when your body needs nourishment. You need food to live. Now, emotional hunger is when you want food to fill an emotional need. You want the food to make you feel better, and mostly it can for a moment. It’s a way that you use food to cope with emotions. You might be sad or stressed, anxious, bored, happy or lonely, and turn to food to comfort yourself, or as a distraction from your emotions. Emotional eating tends to involve overeating and eating more non-fuel food. I didn’t wanna feel negative emotions because of so many thoughts that I was having. Thoughts like, you don’t have the time to feel this way. If you feel the grief, you’ll never recover. I need to be happy or positive all the time.

See, these thoughts led me to distract myself by overeating or just disconnecting. I wanted to feel numb. Not that I ever consciously said that to myself. It was just the subconscious thoughts that would then lead me to overeating and then feeling numb and disconnected. See my love, a cupcake can never feel the need of a broken heart, loss, not having joy or fun in your life,  the longing for something more or not fulfilling your purpose, no matter how many you eat.

Here’s my take on what to do. The first step is to become aware of when you are emotionally eating by asking yourself this question: what would a bowl of salad do right now? If only a cupcake will do, then you might be emotionally eating. Two, the second step is to disrupt the pattern or the thought. Once you become aware that you are wanting to eat emotionally, just take a piece of paper and start writing just all the thoughts. This act of writing will disrupt the thoughts that are causing you to emotionally eat. You can also just get up and move rooms. Go to the bathroom for a few minutes.

The third step is to allow yourself to feel the negative emotion. Just breathe and allow it. Feelings last about 90 seconds if you allow them. The quick tip is really just ask yourself this simple question: would a salad do? Just that question can disrupt and bring you into awareness enough that you can decide on what to do next. Sometimes you’ll emotionally eat. Don’t beat yourself up. Just keep doing this three-step process and you’ll be amazed at what a difference it can make.

Next week, I’m gonna dive into dopamine hunger, what it is and how to get a handle on it. You will not wanna miss next week’s TBoss Take. You’ll find it here on the podcast and all of our social channels. And if you wanna take this work deeper, keep an eye out for the opening of Transform Boss. You can learn more about Transform Boss at jointransformboss.com.

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.