You are listening to the Weight Loss for Successful Women Podcast with Shannan Christiansen episode number 188. 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. I’m so happy to be back with you. May is here, I am sure right now you’re like, holy moly, the year is flying by. You know, there’s some science behind that too. As you age. It really is true. I know that the year can go faster as you age, and so this year’s flying by for me. I’m sure for you.

On today’s show, if you have been on the diet rollercoaster, so the diet rollercoaster is losing and gaining weight, being on diets, all the frustration that comes with this, you may have lost the ability to know when you’re full or until it’s too late. I wanna ask you this question. Have you ever felt sluggish, tired, or a belly ache after you eat? I know, if so, this is the episode for you.

So I want to ask you to follow or subscribe wherever you’re listening or watching this. This really does help other ladies. If you leave a review, this helps ladies find this work, and this is life changing work. I teach women how to get off the diet rollercoaster and how to do it in a way that feels amazing and also in a way that they can do for the rest of their lives. I teach women to get off the horrible rollercoaster that many of us have been on.

Now let’s get into this show. You ready? I’m ready. I know, I can’t wait. I’m excited about this one, cause I love this because I love this work of reconnecting to your body, and I’m gonna share some tips and tricks on how to start to know when you’ve had enough. So there are a lot of reasons why you may not have felt full until you’ve eaten too much. You may have leptin resistance. They’re doing some science about it. You know, I think with any of this, I always think, does this serve me knowing this or does this not?

And so there is some science around leptin resistance that when you have too much leptin, which is caused by having too many fat cells on your body, then it can create an incorrect signal. And so you feel urges to eat because it actually like crosses the wires. I’m putting this in Shannan speak. It thinks you’re starving, your body thinks you’re starving, so then you want to eat more. But I’m gonna give you some tips because even if that’s happening to you, I think there are still ways to tell if you’re getting and approaching full and satisfied.

Now also, highly processed foods, sugar, you know they create really powerful dopamine hits in your body, and so your body’s like, give me more. I need more to feel better, right? So if you’re eating lots of highly processed foods and sugar, you’ll have these urges to want to eat more. Also, the third reason I think that this happens is because you’re in automatic mode. You’re just in old habits, old records playing, and you’re just walking around like a robot and you are just, you know, eating and you’re getting an urge to eat and you’re not even aware of it. And then you’re, you know, halfway through the chip bag and you’re like, oh my gosh, I don’t even remember eating these.

And so automatic mode could be also another way because you’re just not paying attention. You’re just not in that moment with yourself and whatever you’re eating. You’re, you know, scrolling social media, watching tv, eating in the car, you know, all the things that all of us have done. And so I think it’s good to just know like, okay, here are some of the reasons, now okay, what do I wanna do? Like what can I do to start to feel when I’ve had enough, when my body is like, Hey, you know, this is good, right? I think back to so much of my life, I would overeat, I would eat enormous amounts of processed sugar foods.

And still to this day, I still eat cupcakes and a cookie. I just now know when my body has had enough. I lived for so many years with stomach aches. Oh, I would get the worst leg aches at night, like the worst. It’s so interesting because, you know, back then I was like, oh, you must have restless leg syndrome. And again, some of you may, but for me it was the sugar because I don’t have it at all. I don’t have it at all now because I know how to still eat, you know, some sugar and know when my body’s had enough. This is part of this journey of getting off the diet rollercoaster, is to come back into your body.

See, when you’re on a food plan, when you’re following points, when you’re, you know, oh, I’ve gotta use this many points today, or, oh, I’m still hungry and I don’t have any points left, right? Whatever it is, you disconnect from the signals and from your, the feelings in your body, from even paying attention because you’re relying on something outside of you. What I teach in Transform Boss Weight Loss is how to start going inward. See, when you were little, like a toddler, your body you knew, you knew you did. Right? Even as a baby, babies know, like when they start to have too much, they will stop. They will, you know, when they get hungry, they cry, right?

If you watch a toddler who has, you know, not been disconnected from their body, some have, so it just depends. But if they haven’t, you’ll watch this. I watch this with a few of my grandchildren where they were toddlers and they just, you know, I remember like, here, here’s some cookies. And then, you know, my granddaughter being like, oh, I really wanna, you know, a banana or something else. Or you know, them eating a few bites and then, okay, you know, I’m done because I’m full. They know because those signals are so strong in them. And then over time, after we’ve, you know, gone through all the things that are in this world, we’ve just disconnected.

And what I teach you is how to slowly start to reconnect to your body and how to quickly use some of these tips I’m gonna share with you today so that you can start to understand when your body has had enough. Because that’s the key to all of it. I mean, the key to all of it is your thinking, but the key to stopping when you’ve had enough or stopping right before you’ve had enough, it’s so important because then you don’t have to diet, you don’t have to cut carbs. Like I eat all the carbs, I eat all the things. And so you don’t have to do that. You can actually eat food that feels good in your body.

I mean, it is an amazing thing. And that’s what I wanna offer to you, is that you don’t have to get rid of all your foods and all your favorite foods, when you start to pay attention to when you start having enough. Now, I wanna share this with you because this is important. When your body’s had enough and you start paying attention, to maintain weight you wanna eat until that kind of satisfied point. But if you wanna lose weight, you wanna stop about 90%, you wanna just stop, right? You know, a little bit before. You wanna leave a couple bites before you hit that I’ve had enough point.

This will allow your body to, you know, release some of your weight. And again, you wanna do this. I know for some of you’re like, Shannan, I need to get this weight off today, but this thought I need to get this weight off today will keep you from doing and losing the weight that you want. It will. You just remain on the diet rollercoaster. So if you do this in a way where you meet yourself where you’re at, and you slowly up level and you do this by, oh, I’m just gonna leave a bite or two on my plate, and then I’m gonna up level over time, I’m gonna start paying attention to how my body feels, ladies, you’ll release the weight for the very last time and then you’ll do it in a way that you can always do it so you don’t regain it back.

I know this to be true because ladies, I was on the diet rollercoaster for almost 38 years. Really. Oh, when I think back to it, just all the drama and just the trying this and being excited and then failing and you know, all the things. This is just the way. It is. I know, I love it so much. So your body sends signals, and I wanna talk about some of those signals that your body will send. So no matter where you’re at, I listed three reasons why you might not be feeling these signals, even though there’s some thoughts and some other things that you might start to notice.

So one of them is when you’re eating, when you take a big sigh, right? And if you’re watching me, you could see I just took a big sigh. If you’re listening, you might have heard it. But when your body takes a big sigh, that’s when you know you’re starting to approach full or maybe you’re at full. You might also start to get thoughts around, Ugh, I need the perfect bite. This is because your body, this is the scarcity from old beliefs and thoughts like, oh my gosh, this is not enough. I need more, I need more. Because your body wants the dopamine hit of whatever food, it wants the comfort of whatever food.

So when you start to feel this urge to get the perfect bite, or you start like, oh my gosh, I need to get more, is there seconds, right? You start having a little panic in your mind, then you know, it’s actually you’re approaching satisfied. It’s like your Lizzy brain and your, and the leptin and the other part of your brain, they’re kind of like in a little like, Hey, hey, hey, we’re getting full. No, no, no, we need to eat more. I know. It’s like, you know, this is just how it works. And so really knowing that when you start to have those thoughts, okay, I’m starting to approach where I’ve had enough.

Now, you also might feel your belly extend. You might start feeling a little tired. And another kind of tip is when you start looking, like, let’s say you’re sitting at the table and you know you are eating, you’re feeling good, and then the next thing you know, you have this urge to either get up or you have this urge to look at your phone. You have this urge to disconnect from the food in some way. That is also just another sign that you’re starting to approach that you’ve had enough. I think this is for me, was one of my biggest triggers, is this whole perfect bite. I’d be eating, and then suddenly it’s like, ugh. You know, because it, what happens is your body is amazing.

The first bite is always the best bite. And then as you continue, we do this exercise in Transform Boss, we have a worksheet on this, and it’s, oh, it’s amazing, because after you eat things, the taste of it starts to change as you keep eating it. And the first bite really is the first one or two, maybe even three bites are the best. And then it just keeps going down. It’s a way that your body’s saying like, okay, like, hey, hey, hey, we’re, we’re having enough. But what happens is, if you’ve been on the diet rollercoaster, we interpret that of like, oh, I need to heat it up again. I need to have the perfect bite. I need to get more of this. More of this will be better. Hashtag more does not equal better. I need more so that it can taste better.

Because you’re, you’re just never gonna get that same hit from your first or second bite. So it’s just important to know that, because that is your body signaling to you. But we’ve just ignored that. We’ve just been like, I don’t know. So I just want you again, really watch your thinking. This is why those three things, especially leptin resistance, fine, if you have it, great, no worries. You can use these tips that I’m giving to you so that you can pay attention to your thinking. I know it’s so good, right?

And then of course, I think part of this, and again this goes with your thinking, is that, you know, we have these beliefs, I used to have this belief that food provided comfort to me. Food was, you know, my best friend, food never let me down, right? It always let me down when I ate it too much, right? It caused so much pain and suffering. And so really realizing, right, that, you know, I think about there are certain meals that my mom made that are, you know, I would have these thoughts that they’re so special and everything. What was so special was that my mom made them, it wasn’t the food. The food is just an, an innate object. It’s just this thing. The specialness of it was my mom.

And so when you can start to a little bit disconnect from that, and this is the work that we do in Transform Boss ladies, this work, for many of you, you’re however many years old, you’ve been thinking this way for a long time. And so starting to like unpack those thoughts and redirect your brain to think something different, paying attention to your body, you need support and help in that. And so I always invite you to come and join us in Transform Boss so that you can do this work with ladies who are also doing this work so that they can support you, I can support you. And so that you can start to learn a different way that ultimately becomes the easiest thing that you’ve ever done. I know, at first it feels a little hard. And then as you do it more and more, you’re like, holy moly, this is amazing. I eat and enjoy. I pay attention. It’s amazing.

So my T-Boss Take is many reasons why there are, there are reasons why you don’t stop eating when you’ve had enough. None of it matters why? I mean, you can ask yourself why, just for the awareness, but ultimately you just wanna get to these tips. So one, ask yourself, am I physically hungry? I love that question. You can ask that throughout the meal. And then two, check in with yourself while you’re eating. How am I feeling? Just again, check in with yourself. Three, I know, everyone, our parents told us this, eat a little bit slower. Create a space that you’re not distracted, you don’t have your phone, where you can eat a little slower and just pay attention, especially when you’re eating non-fuel food, highly processed sugar foods. Because again, remember those dopamine hits.

And then the fourth thing is, notice the thoughts. So these thoughts like, I need the perfect bite. I need to get a second plate. Just notice those thoughts. And lastly, I love this one. The fifth one, when I was learning this work, I still do this today sometimes too. Especially like if I feel like I’m just loving the food, I’m like, oh, it’s so good. I’m like, Ooh, okay. I just get up halfway through. So when I get up from the table or from the couch or wherever I’m eating and I just get up, maybe I just go to the restroom, right? I then ask myself like, how am I feeling? Have I had enough? And it’s amazing, when you do that, you’re just disconnecting and you’re, there’s some brain science behind this. It’s so powerful. So my fifth tip is just get up. I know, get up, get away. And you can tell yourself like, Hey, hey, if we want this and we’re still physically hungry, we’re going to eat it. But let’s just get up for a minute. Let’s just, you know, take a some space between me and the food. Mm, it’s good.

Next week we are gonna talk about feeling good in weight loss. I know so many of us, you know, we have all of these just really negative thoughts about weight loss, really. I mean, it’s been traumatizing. I mean, it created lots of trauma for me. And so next week we’re gonna talk about feeling good. And if you wanna take this work deeper, then check out Transform Boss. It’s my monthly membership program where you will learn how to lose weight for the last time. You can go to jointransformboss.com. All the information is there. You even get a little sneak peek inside the membership. I know, it’s amazing. All right, bye my love. Have a beautiful week. 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.