You are listening to the Weight Loss for Successful Women Podcast with Shannan Christensen, episode number 174. 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. As I’m recording this, it is rainy here in Phoenix. We’ve had a really rainy winter. It’s been a colder winter, but I’m never gonna complain about it. I know some of you have had really snowy and cold winters.

So today’s Take is about control. When I was losing my weight, I had to change what I thought about control. See, I’d always thought that I was out of control when it came to food. I thought if it was there, I was going to eat it. I remember telling myself that I could not have certain foods in my house because I could not control myself around them. This came from years of dieting, restricting, and then overeating and binging. Being on the diet rollercoaster kept me thinking that I was bad, that I could not control myself, and that one day in the future I would suddenly be good and be one of those ladies who only ate chicken and salad, and exercised all the time.

This story that I did not have control was just that – a story. See, I was always in control. I was the one who was eating and making the decision. The thought, I am out of control, kept me eating all the things. I remember when one of my coaches, Brooke Castillo, she said, I have Oreos in my kitchen, and I don’t even want them. It was an aha moment for me because it was always my choice whether I could eat it or not. I wasn’t out of control. I was making decisions from a place of I can’t have them rather than a place of I don’t want them.

We think that it’s about food, but one thing I know for sure is that when you start to change your mindset, when you start to talk to yourself differently, that is when you start to lose weight for good. I wanted to release the thought that I could not control myself around food, because see, I had built a lot of evidence that it was true, because I did not eat myself to a higher weight.

I did stop eating. So whatever weight you are now, you could weigh more. You could weigh more than what you do today. That is the truth. No matter what that number is, you could weigh more. But at some point you stop eating. At some point, you have control. You have done things that you have decided to no longer do.

For me, I used to drink all the sugary drinks, like chocolate milk, Coke. I’ve not had one of them in like 30 years. One day I decided with this thought, I don’t wanna drink my calories. That thought has kept me from drinking sugary drinks. It was, I don’t want to, not I can’t. Some of you have stopped smoking, drinking over shopping, or even stopped eating certain foods because you’ve decided to. You are in control, and when you start saying that, when you start to see what you’re doing right, you will have more success.

One of the earliest decisions as I was getting off the diet roller coaster that I made for myself was that I was not going to binge. I was not going to overeat in large portions. Binging made me think that I was out of control. I would tell myself, look, you can’t control yourself. You just ate a pizza and four cookies. So I decided that I was not going to do it any longer because I could always eat what I wanted. There were no off limit foods.

I was not dieting, so I no longer needed to do that. I was not going to last supper it and eat all the things. That if I overate, I would just take the next best action. I didn’t make it mean that I had to go on a week-long binge fest because at some point I was gonna be good again. If you think I can’t have that in my house or I’ll eat it all, maybe that is true today. But what if you brought it in your house and you started to really pay attention when you ate it, and then you practiced a different thought about it? We all have “trigger foods” as they’re called, and when my T-BOSSES first join Transform Boss, I tell them that if it’s easier at first, sure, you can not have them in the house. But as you do this work, it’s important to lose the fear of food, to know that you decide what you eat and the food does not have any control over you.

So my take on control is one, decide that you are in control. Two, bring a trigger food into your house, and then make a plan for when and how much you will eat of it. Three, as you’re eating, take breaths in between each bite. Really savor it. Really pay attention to it. If you’re a T-BOSS, you can do, do the Do I Really Like It? Worksheet in the course workbook. And number four, find the evidence that you have decided to have less of something or stopped something altogether. You have that. You have done that. You do it all the time. Now, just pay attention and acknowledge it. Over our lifetime, we lose our desire for things that no longer serve us, and we decide what that is because we are always in control. You are always in control. You have lots of evidence of it. When you tell yourself, I can’t control myself, it’s just a way that you’re sabotaging your success.

If you’re ready to learn how to think differently and how to stop sabotaging your success, then you have to check out Transform Boss Weight Loss. It’s my monthly membership where we take losing weight for the last time to a whole new level so you can get off the diet rollercoaster for good. Go to jointransformboss.com.

Next week. I’m gonna give you my T-BOSS Take on what I’ve learned about exercise and how it affects weight loss. You for sure, don’t wanna miss it. 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.