You are listening to the Weight Loss for Successful Women Podcast with Shannan Christiansen, episode number 187. 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 Christiansen.

Hello love. So happy to be back with you. Oh ladies, it is warming up in AZ and I love it. There’s a lot of Arizonians that are not that down with it, but I am. I just love it ladies. Oh my gosh, it’s been like, I’ve been riding my bike out in like 85, 90-degree weather and I’m in, I love it. I love it so much. So I wish and hope all of you are getting some spring and things are starting to thaw out.

May is coming. I’m just so excited for it. You know, May is an amazing month in Transform Boss. We have our once a year Unstoppable Live. It’s in-person and virtual in Arizona. And ladies, I can’t wait to watch the transformation. Also, all of my in-person ladies, you know, I love to hug them and squeeze them and just spend time with them. And then all my virtual ladies too, we are just full of preparations for that, the whole team. It’s a pretty big event for us and I can’t wait. In Transform Boss too, we’re also doing a book club that is so amazing. We’re gonna do the Gap and the Gain, and it’s a really amazing book. If you’ve not read it if you’re in Transform Boss, we’re gonna do that book club. It’s gonna be amazing.

So today I wanna talk about feeling in control around food. And I think if you’ve ever been on the diet rollercoaster, I’m assuming you are, cuz you’re watching this on YouTube or you are listening to this in a podcast player, you’ve been on the diet rollercoaster, and when you experience diets and gaining weight and losing weight, you may have had thoughts that you can’t control yourself around food.

Before I go further, I want to just remind you, if you have not followed the show, if you’ve not, you know, subscribed on YouTube or followed in whatever podcast player, please do so. I wanna make sure every Wednesday I’m in your podcast library or on your YouTube channel so that you get these amazing episodes. And then too, it also helps other ladies find the show. So rate and review it too. I know, so good. Thank you. I appreciate that more than you know.

So being on the diet rollercoaster, being on diets, being off right, or you’re eating all the things or on this, in or out, off or on, it just keeps you thinking that you’re out of control. Maybe you have thoughts like, I can’t have certain foods in my house, go to certain restaurants, or I can’t have a dessert because if I eat one bite, you know I’m gonna be out of control. And I think, you know, even myself, for so long, I really had this, and it came from so many years of trying to follow really strict diet plans, cutting out all the carbs, and maybe you’ve been one that you have been on the no carb train. So now anytime you eat a carb, you start to feel like, oh, here I go, I’m out of control. I’m gonna gain all my way back.

Really what happens is you develop a fear, and this fear of food and this fear of being out of control. And it comes from the diet rollercoaster, diet trauma, being very restrictive, and then eating all of the things. I don’t think anyone on this planet, maybe there is someone, I don’t like absolutes, but I think most people, like we need carbs. I mean, I do think that, I think everybody needs carbs. I think everybody needs all the different food groups.

I think we need to enjoy our food. I don’t think food is good or bad. I just think food is food. And when we start to have abundance with food, when we start to allow all the foods and we tell ourselves that we can have anything, long term what happens is you heal your relationship with food, and you start to find that this thought, this belief that you can’t control yourself around food is just, it’s not the truth. It’s just something that you learned along the way, because somewhere you felt that you weren’t doing enough, that you weren’t good enough. You may have carried some shame about putting on extra weight.

So this thought, this belief that you’re out of control, it comes from lack and scarcity. When you think you can’t have it, that there’s not enough, then you want it. And for some of you, you may have grown up where food wasn’t very accessible, where you didn’t have a lot of food. All of you have come from, you know, different points of view. And it’s just important to understand and be in the awareness of where this scarcity came from. For me, I always had food growing up, and I know that’s not true for all of my listeners. And where mine came from was, as I started to carry, I was a chunky kid, my parents, society, they’re like, Hey, you need to eat less.

And so then I started to sneak eat. I started to, you know, feel like I was out of control, because it, again, it came from this thought that I can’t have it. That if I eat, if I have a candy bar, if I, I don’t know, a cookie, whatever it was that I was “out of control.” Now this other thought that kind of pairs with it is this thought that food is good or bad. You know, what I really do with my Transform Bosses is I really help them heal their relationship with food and their selves. And one of the big pieces of that is learning how to view food differently. Food is food. It is, you know, it’s objects, you know, it’s like made of sugar, flour, water, I don’t know, it’s just food. It’s, you know, it doesn’t love you back. It doesn’t have emotion, right?

It’s just food and it’s not good or bad. I don’t even like to describe food as healthy or not healthy because it’s so subjective. You might be like, well Shannan, no, no, really it is, it really is. Because all foods, for some people, like if you went through all the foods, like I always use strawberries as an example because I have a friend who’s highly allergic to strawberries. Most folks would say, oh, strawberries are so good, you know, and, but it’s not for her. Really, it’s like life threatening for her. For me, broccoli, most folks would be like, that’s so healthy. Yeah, when I eat broccoli, it is not good. It does not feel good in my stomach. I love broccoli, I like the taste of it. I just, I can’t eat it.

And so really understanding that food is not good or bad, healthy or not, I don’t even like to put those terms. I just think food, it either feels good in my body and it’s fuel or it’s not. And I eat the variety of both. I eat foods that fuel me and foods that don’t. I remember a very long time ago, I know I’ve shared this on the podcast, but I remember when I was first learning this work and one of my teachers, Brooke Castillo, she said this thing about how, you know, she had Oreos on her counter and she didn’t even want them, and I remember at the time being like, what? Like no way. Like if I had Oreos in the house, I couldn’t control myself.

Even in Transform Boss, when ladies first come, you know, we like to make it simple.  We’re like, you know, maybe if you choose, you can remove some of the trigger foods, but this is real important. I want them to eventually do the healing work of having all the foods in their house. Because when you can have all the foods and you start to learn how to pay attention to your physical hunger, when you’re getting full and you realize that you can eat all of it, you start to lose the lack and scarcity for so many of us food is attached with it. You start to realize, I’ve always been in control, always. I’ve always decided what I was going to eat or what I wasn’t. The food does not make me out of control. Eating a food does not make me out of control.

And I think about today, you know, I have all the foods, I have grandkids, I have all the foods here. I have lots of different types of foods in my pantry. Sugar. Sugar was always kind of the thing that I lean towards. I have cookies and all kinds of things, ice cream, all kinds of things in my pantry. And I eat them if I want them. And I put them on my plan if I want them. And you know, I never tell myself I’m out of control. And even if I have an overeat or eat more than I wanted to, I don’t tell myself I’m out of control. Because it’s just not the truth. Because I want to really challenge you for a second and your thought, your thinking on this.

Right now, I want you to think about how much you weigh, whatever that number is. If you don’t know, maybe you have a guess. Whatever that number is, you could weigh more. I know, you could. You could weigh more. You know, there are people who live on this planet who weigh 600 pounds, 1200 pounds. There is no judgment my loves. I love all the humans. But you could weigh more than what you do. But at some point you stop eating, you tell yourself you’ve had enough. I want you to realize that, because when you can start to build evidence that I am in control around food. I eat what I want to eat, I decide what I want to eat, you start to take back your own power.

See, when you tell yourself you’re outta control, it just gives you an excuse to get into your automatic brain and not live your best life. It gives you a reason why see, you’re not good enough. I mean, it’s just not even the truth. None of it is. You’re in control. You always have been. You decide what you want to eat. It’s just a false belief. And again, you’ve always been the one making the decisions. Sometimes you’re going to eat more than you want. It doesn’t mean that you’re out of control.

So here’s my take. Find the thoughts and beliefs that you have about being out of control. And then what I want you to do is ask yourself, this is number two, are they coming from lack, scarcity, the belief that I can’t have it? And then when you have those thoughts, then I want you to see what the results of those thoughts. So when you start thinking I’m out of control, I can’t, then I want you to see what happens next. I just want you to be a watcher. Just pay attention. You probably will find that when you start saying to yourself that you’re out of control and whatever form words that you use, some form of that, then you might find that you actually eat more, eat more than you even wanted because of a thought, because of this thought, I’m out of control. Number three, I want you to bring a trigger food into your house and practice with it.

This is so powerful. When you can plan when you’re going to eat something, how much you’re going to eat of it, and then you leave some of it. There’s so much power when you can just say, I ate the Oreo and it was so good and I ate one or two and it was so delicious. And then I put the rest of the package up and I didn’t even think about them again. And I tell you ladies, it happens with practice. So if you just keep fearing the food and you keep all that stuff away, you keep cutting the carbs, you keep, you know, and you don’t learn how to lose weight in a way that you can always do, then you’ll always gain weight back.

If you wanna lose weight for the long term, this is an exercise how you can practice bringing in a food that you think, again, I’m doing air quotes, if you’re listening to this, you think you’re “out of control” with, just practice with it and really taste it. Do you even really like it? How good does it taste after 10 or 12 or 15 bites of it? And then number four, practice abundance and allowance thoughts. So, thoughts like, I can have it, I’m just not hungry for it. Like I can eat anything that I want. I’m not out of control. Practice those thoughts. Those are just beliefs that you want to reprogram. You wanna redirect your brain to.

So one, find the thoughts and beliefs that you have around being out of control. Two, ask yourself, are they coming from lack, scarcity, the belief that you can’t have it? And then see what your results are when you’re having those kinds of thoughts. Number three, bring a trigger food into your home and practice with it. Plan when you’re gonna eat it. How much? And leave some of it. And four, practice abundance and allowance thoughts. Like I can have it, I’m just not hungry for it. Mm, I know it’s so good. My love, you are in control. You make the decisions to not eat or to eat and just take your power back. Food does not control you, it just can’t. It’s just an object. You got this my love.

And if you wanna take this work deeper, check out Transform Boss. It’s my monthly membership program where you’re gonna learn how to lose weight for the last time and get off the diet rollercoaster. And you know, I think about Transform Boss, I tell you ladies, it is such an amazing program because it’s so focused on changing what you think and what you believe so that you can have different results. It’s all about doing something different.

And next week I’m going to share some tips on how to stop eating when you’re starting to feel satisfied and what, what does that look like? I really wanna kind of dive a little deep into it and share those tips with you so you won’t wanna miss next week. 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. That’s B F L Y coaching.com. See you next week.