You are listening to the Weight Loss for Successful Women Podcast with Shannan Christensen, episode number 177. 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 excited to be back with you. So today we have Coach Jenn with us. Ah, I’m so excited. And we are gonna talk all about the power of the pause, and I’m really excited. You know, this year I’m sharing my take on weight loss, movement, thinking, mindset, intuitive eating, all the things this year. You know, I’ve learned a lot in my journey and you know, this year I’m gonna be 52, and I was on the diet rollercoaster 38 years, and for so long I just lived in this automatic brain. And you know, coming out of that and becoming more aware, being really in tune with my body has changed everything, and also changing my thinking.

So today we’re gonna talk about the power of the pause. We’re gonna talk about it in a few different ways, but it is powerful. You know, we have this beautiful brain of ours, and we have a thinking brain, which is awesome, but we only use that part of our brain, you know, probably less than 5% of the time. Most of our days are just automatic. We’re just in our automatic habit brain, or we’re in Lizzie, you know, fight, flight, or freeze brain. It’s just, again, when we can come into that thinking brain, it’s so powerful.

Today Jenn, we might have some new listeners out there, so do you wanna introduce yourself? Yes. Hello ladies. My name is Jenn Taylor. I am a Transform Boss Weight Loss coach. I’ve been coaching for, I believe, two years now. It’s amazing. I love that I get to do this as my job. I have to pinch myself. But yes, I live in Utah. I am married with two boys and just doing all the things. Hmm. Yeah, that’s so fun. Yeah, Jenn has been a coach now for two years. She’s been in Transform Boss, I don’t know, has it been three years? A little over? It’ll in February will be three years. Oh, three years, okay. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, I love Jenn’s journey and I love how she helps our clients and all of our ladies, and I think she’s a really special human. You know, we’re lucky. I’m lucky to know her for sure.

So today, let’s get into the show. Let’s talk about the power of the pause. I think there’s a book out there on the power of the pause, maybe. I don’t think I’ve read it, but I just love the term, the power of the pause, POP, because you know, I think we get in our automatic brain so much that, you know, we just are mindlessly eating. We are storm eating, which I’m gonna introduce in a future episode, where we’re just binging and we’re just eating all the things and we are so disconnected. And we do this in many areas of our lives where we’re just kind of mindless. We’re just watching tv, we’re scrolling, watching reels, or I think TikTok, I’m not on TikTok ladies. I know, maybe one day. I mean, I think I have a thing there, but I’ve never, because I went on TikTok one day and I was just like watching the videos and two hours later I was like, oh, I can’t do this. I can’t, I don’t have time to be on TikTok. Like, oh my gosh. Like you can just get like swooped up in it.

You know, we live in this kind of automatic brain. And so the power of the pause is about coming into awareness. And I think the easiest way to come into awareness is to either take a breath or ask yourself a question. And when you are aware of your breath, right, you’re breathing all the time. But when you’re intentional and you take a deep breath, it can just again, bring you into that awareness. And then when you’re in awareness, you can then just, you know, pause for a second. You know, I think about this when it comes to reacting and you know, so often we’re just reacting, right?

Whatever’s happening because so much, again, we’re in that like automatic brain, and so our spouse does something, or our kids or work employer, you know, whatever, and we just react to it because we don’t take that moment to just kind of pause. And we live in a very fast, you know, I think if I know anything, even as I get older, I’m watching the younger generations, attention spans are three seconds. People are just reacting. And I think this, especially in the time that we live right now, just taking a breath and just coming into that awareness and taking that time to pause helps get you into the thinking brain. So then you can make the decision. You know, ladies, we’re always in control. We’re always making decisions. It’s just, are we doing it from our thinking brain, or are we doing it from our habit brain.

Our habit brain are just our old habits, and a lot of those habits were created, you know, and maybe they were just transferred from society, or you know, how you were raised, things that happened to you when you were younger. So anytime you can get into that thinking brain, it just brings you a little closer, I think, to your, the current version of yourself today. So I wanna pause there Jenn, and just get your take on when you hear power of the pause, how have you seen it in your own life, or even with your clients, how has it helped them?

I love the power of the pause. Actually, I just used it last night. Both my boys are in baseball, and so between all the practices and that, it gets quite busy. And so we ate before, we ate earlier last night dinner than I normally would. I came home and I just had this craving for like this urge for like something sweet or something else. And then I just, it’s probably because Shannan and I talked about this a little bit, the power of pause, and I was like, you know what, am I actually hungry? Like, why do I want this? And going into that place of asking myself questions and checking in, one of my favorite questions to ask also, when it comes to me wanting to take an action and I know I’m being more reactive, is, is this going to move me closer to my goals or further from my goals? I just love that question because it takes the emotion out of it for me and really streamlines, what will this action do for me or against me?

And I went to bed last night just fine, woke up just fine. Nobody died without a little treat at night. And I love Shannan that you said too, in relationships, right? We can be reactive in our relationships. And I think just it really, whether it’s with food or relationships, taking this moment to pause before we make a decision, or before we react, really allows us to take our power back and just decide intentionally how we wanna show up, how we want to respond, and allows us to really manage our thoughts and see like, is this a Lizzy thought or is this the truth? Right?

Yeah, I love that you said that. I mean, I loved all of that, but I loved that question that you asked yourself because I think that’s, it’s such a powerful question, right? Like, is this for me, or is this against me? You know, so many times our brain wants to go with, you know, the world and people against us and all this. But let me just tell you from my experience, our own worst critic, the person who’s going against us the most usually is us. And I know, like, it’s so hard for us to think that because we want to love ourselves, we want to care for ourselves, but I find that even myself, this power of the pause, coming into this awareness is so that I can decide what is the best decision for myself right now.

Just, it’s a really powerful question Jenn, and I love it, because again, I just think we do so many things that are against our own selves. We eat behind our own backs. We, you know, make decisions in the moment versus what our future goals and dreams are. And ladies, I just wanna tell you, this isn’t so that you can beat yourself up or judge yourself. This is so important. It’s just telling yourself the truth.

So I’m gonna come right to this because for many years I didn’t wanna tell myself the truth. I didn’t wanna tell myself what was happening. I didn’t wanna see it. I just wanted to live again in this, this automatic brain. And so I either would go from beating myself up, you’re worthless, you can’t do anything, you’re never gonna lose the weight, or just back in my habit brain on automatic eating all the things. And I wanna tell you, there’s a, there’s like this other way, and it’s about just being honest with yourself and being love and kind. So I can tell myself the truth, Shannan, I know you wanna eat this right now.

Here’s the truth. You’re not physically hungry. So do you want to eat the thing? You can, but here’s the truth, you’re not physically hungry right now. Again, I can be honest with myself without beating myself up. Then just like, here’s the truth. The truth is I’m always in control. The truth is, I make the decisions. No one’s force feeding me. I mean, I’m pretty sure as adult women, no one’s like, I mean, when we were kids, right? I used to have to sit at the table for a long time till I finished that dinner. But as adult women, most of us, we are choosing to eat or to not. And so this is just important because when we can tell ourselves the truth without judgment, without all the nonsense, all the BS, all the beat downs, and we can just say, look, here’s, here’s the decision, here’s the truth. Then we can make it.

And when we add in just that breath, that pause, it’s so powerful because then you’re in that thinking brain and you can make the best decisions for yourself. You know Jenn, when I talk about like telling yourself the truth, what do you think? Like what comes up for you? I swear you just know my mind so well, because as you were saying that, Shannan once said, I think it was at one of our Unstoppable events when it comes to relationships and we get reactive with people when they say something.

 Taking that moment, right, this moment of pause to ask ourselves, like, is there some truth to that? Hmm. And that has always stuck with me. And I think it goes right along with this power of pause, right? So when somebody says something and you find yourself becoming reactive or even maybe reactive to your own thought or own action, just taking a moment and pausing and shining a light on the truth, like Shannan said, without judgment, it just gives you back that accountability. It allows you to be back in the driver’s seat as you always were. But just remind yourself and then just make that next best decision as to what you want to do.

Yeah. Ooh, I love that. So here’s our take ladies. Use the power of the pause, just, you know, pop P O P in your brain and be like, okay, I’m gonna take a breath. So do that. That’s number one. And number two, tell yourself the truth. Tell yourself the truth. This is my decision. I am in control. I’m just not hungry right now for it, and I’m gonna be okay if I don’t eat it. You know, when we whine to ourselves that we’re never, we’re not gonna be okay, but as Jenn said in her example of last night, she’s okay. She’s okay without the extra snack. She wasn’t hungry for it.

So one, power of the pause, take the pause, take a breath. Two, just tell yourself the truth. And three, do it with love and kindness. And four, take and make your next best decision. Just decide what is the best thing for me right now. You don’t have to go into the past, you don’t have to make it mean anything. Just what’s my next best action? What can I do for myself today?

Mm, it’s good. And ladies, if you wanna take this work deeper, I just invite you to come and join Jenn and I in Transform Boss Weight Loss. It is the best membership program out there. If you want to change your life and your weight, and you wanna go deeper in this work based on coaching, course and the most amazing community, then come join us. It’s jointransformboss.com. I can’t wait to see you on the inside. All right, bye for now. Thank you Jenn.

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.