You are listening to the Weight Loss for Successful Women Podcast with a Shannan Christiansen, episode number 189. 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. It’s getting hot in here. You know that old song? Oh boy. You know, Arizona is heating up ladies. I do love the heat. I was actually getting my eyebrows tweezed. It was funny because the lady who was doing it, I was talking about how we had a really cold winter, but she loved it. She hates the heat. So, you know, I’m like, there’s a lot of Arizonians that are not looking forward to the next few months in Arizona. I’m okay with it. You know, our weather is beautiful and I don’t wanna complain about that, but I’m sure all over the nation you are finally getting some spring and some really beautiful days. So, yay.

We are gonna talk about feeling good in weight loss. I know ladies, I think weight loss feels so heavy. To so many of you who are listening to me right now or watching it feels like this thing that you can’t overcome, like it’s your struggle. And I do understand that, I felt the same way. I just wanna offer that there’s, I’m gonna give you a couple tips today on how to just start to slowly think differently about it.

I just wanna do one quick reminder before we get into the show. Follow, subscribe, click the little plus sign in Apple, YouTube follow me and subscribe to the channel so that other ladies can find it. When you do that, you’re actually doing a service because other ladies then can find the show, because it makes it go up in the rankings and they get to hear this work and get off the diet rollercoaster. And it’s good for you too, because every week I’m there for you. I know, every Wednesday I drop a new episode.

So right now in Transform Boss Weight Loss, that’s my membership community, my paid membership community, we’re doing a book club and we’re doing it on this book called The Gap and The Gain. And I love this. I did a previous show on this book, I did like a review of it, so we’ll put it in the show notes. You can find the link at the bottom of this episode. You can just go to bflycoaching.com/189. But ah, I love this book because we live in the gap. We do. We look at what we’re failing, what we should be doing.

And I did an episode, a couple episodes about this, and what happens is it has really programmed our brain to think that we’re just never doing enough. I know you feel me on this. But when we start to be intentional about finding our successes and measuring our progress backwards. So what that means is looking how far you have come instead of how far you have to go. I know. I’m gonna say it again cuz it’s so important, measuring progress backwards.

So how far in the progress you have made, instead of how far you have to go. You know ladies, I more and more am not, you know, looking so much. I mean, I have my future self. I love that still. I love to talk to her and ask her, but I don’t have this time thing around when I’m gonna reach my goals, the goals that I have and certain things. And what’s happening when I start to focus on my progress is I’m having more success. And ultimately I’m just feeling better. I’m feeling more joy and happiness in what I’m doing versus the whole puddle of should, I’m not doing enough, you know, comparison, all that nonsense.

So, you know, let’s talk a little bit about the diet rollercoaster before I talk about like how I, and how I teach my clients to start to, you know, again, feel good as they’re, you know, in this process of, you know, losing weight for the last time. Diet rollercoaster, diet culture, diet industry, you know, all the things out there, they, they have just kept us feeling bad about our bodies, about progress that we’re making. If you look outside to all the things, it’s always, you know, cut out this food group, do more.

You know, I think I was just watching someone was doing the 75 hard, and again ladies, I mean if like it’s 75 days and maybe people do it, but it doesn’t set you up, you know, I don’t know if anyone can do that, you know, for the rest of their lives. So then it just sets them up for failure in the future. And so the diet rollercoaster is full of that. It’s just full of these quick fixes that don’t set you up for the long term.

And when you do that, it just leaves you frustrated and then you turn it against yourself. You tell yourself, I’m not good enough, I’m the failure. No. The diet industry really is the failure. It really is. It’s changed its mind on what you should do so many times, and I’m just saying come back to yourself. I always say #trusttheprocess. The process that I teach. Because when you do it over time, you will start to release the weight. But more importantly, you’re gonna start to think differently, feel differently, and then you’re gonna do things differently.

So the scale, I’m only gonna talk about it, but it’s part of this, you know, we look at the scale and if the number goes down, we feel excited, oh my God, it’s working. And then when it stays the same or maybe we gain, we think, oh, it’s not working. But that is not the truth in releasing weight. The scale will go up and down through the journey. It’s like, I know if you’re watching me on YouTube, you saw the hand motion; if you’re listening on the podcast, like what was the hand motion? But it’s, I just did an up and down line. And the reason why is because that it’s the truth. I tell my members, this is the advice and how I work with them on it. You get on the scale daily or weekly, but not to see the number and the progress. You get on it to see what’s going on in your brain.

You look at your weight to see progress over a month or a quarter. I know, hear this, because the month and the quarter is really how you’re going to see your progress. If you look over the, your body changes and fluctuates so much through the month that it can be, you know, misleading. And also because you’ve tied your worth to that number, you’ve tied your moods to the number. So my first tip is that if you decide to get on daily or weekly, do it to coach yourself and to change your thinking. But if you really wanna see your progress, do monthly and quarterly because you’ll start to feel differently. You’ll start to feel better when you start to disconnect, you know, your worth from the scale.

Now, if you’re in Transform Boss and you’re listening, we have a lot, the weight loss course, we have some scale episodes, so you can do that. Also, I’ve done a lot of Boss teachings on the scale, because the scale comes up so many times for ladies. So you have lots of resources there for you. Now this is the thing, what if you could redirect your brain to the goodness, to the progress that you’re making, to how you’re starting to do things differently. How you’re starting to change the way that you think about things. You know, you’re reconnecting to your body. You’re starting to find your hunger and your fullness. You’re starting to uncover some reasons why you’ve been hanging onto the weight.

I just, what if you could start to redirect your brain to the progress that you’re making and that you have made versus how far you have to go. When you do this, you start thinking differently. You start feeling better. Ladies, ultimately, I think for most women, why they wanna release the weight, we have, you know, some of the whys around looks and all the different things like that. But ultimately we just wanna feel better in the body that we have. We want to feel freedom in the body that we have. And we wanna feel freedom in our mind. We don’t wanna obsess about every little bite and every little food. Ugh, what’s the next diet? What’s the next exercise part? What’s the next thing?

And so if you want to start feeling better about weight loss, here’s my take. You want to one, start to redirect your brain. When your brain is like, we should be doing more, it’s looking for a new keto plan, all the different diets out there, you wanna just take a breath. Okay brain, I knew you were gonna do this. And then you wanna start to talk to yourself more than you listen. You wanna redirect it. You wanna say, oh, but this is what we’re doing. You know what? We’re following Shannan. We’re listening to some of these things. We, maybe you did a challenge. Or maybe you’re new to me and you’re starting to take the free course. Maybe you’re a Boss, you’re a Transform Boss, you’re in my membership program and you’re, you know, doing this work wherever you’re at. You just wanna start to talk to yourself more than you listen.

And you want to number two, think a one better thought. Ladies, this is important. I think we were taught that we’re supposed to just feel happy all the time and we’re supposed to just think amazing thoughts. Your brain is always gonna have negative thoughts, always. Always, the rest of your life. This is part of your brain. There’s, I won’t go into all the science and all the things cuz I’ve done lots of episodes on that, but your brain is always gonna have negative chatter. The difference between someone who has success and someone who doesn’t is someone who has learned how to redirect their brain to think a one better thought.

Not a rosy posey affirmation. I, you know, I mean, I love thinking I can do anything, but sometimes I’m not ready for that thought yet. I need something that’s just a little better than I can’t do it. So if you’re thinking I can’t lose weight, maybe the one better thought is, you know, I’m learning to do something different. Maybe I’m learning to show up for myself, because it produces a different feeling in your body. You can stop the podcast right here, or stop the YouTube video and you can just, I want you to just for a moment, think the thought, I can’t lose weight. See what feeling it produces in your body. Then I want you to do, I am learning how to lose weight in a different way, and I want you to see what kind of feeling that produces in your body.  See, this is what it’s about. I know you want a different answer. You’re like, Shannan, gimme a food plan. I know, maybe you’re not, you’ve been here maybe long enough, you’re like, no, I wanna do this work, but this is the work. It’s starting to redirect your brain and then also think a one better thought.

The third piece of my take on it is I want you to decide how you want to feel. Ladies, I think we just walk around and like whatever happens, happens, and we just let the day guide us. But I love to decide, like, you know, today, I really wanna feel calm. Today I really wanna feel joy. Today I wanna feel committed. Today I wanna feel accomplished.  And then I, once I decide how I want to feel, now I’m gonna feel all sorts of things throughout the day. But I wanna be intentional to throw some goodness in there too. Ladies, you’re gonna feel bad and good every day. I’m not sure there’s a day where I’m all good or a day that I’m all bad. I mean, maybe there’s a day that I’m all bad. I mean, if you’re going through grief, you know, lots of things that maybe that happens, but somehow you wanna sprinkle a little like goodness in there.

And how you do that is deciding no matter what it is, you know, I think about when my mom passed and I remember at the, the very days after I was around my family a lot, you know, my dad and my extended family and I had a lot of support, thankfully, very blessed. And I remember us laughing about my mom, you know, she was so great. So even in the throes of grief, the throes of like just, you know, I wanted to get on my knees, I, I wanted to just, I couldn’t believe my mom was gone. I still could sprinkle in a little bit of humor, a little bit of joy. And that’s all that feeling on purpose can, you know, I think that offers you is that no matter where you’re at, no matter what you’re doing, how do you sprinkle in a little bit of goodness? And I think you do this by deciding how you want to feel and then thinking thoughts around that.

And you know ladies, feeling good, changing your thoughts and beliefs about weight loss and the process, I remember when I very first started this journey, it was all about, I just wanted to get the weight off. I understand that. I know many of you are right there. That’s where you’re at. You’re like, Shannan, I just need to get this weight off. But over time, as you do this work, you’re going to start to think differently. You’re gonna start looking at your progress. You’re going to start to feel good.

You’re gonna start to be like, whoa, like this feels easy. And then the questions that you ask yourself are gonna be so different. It’s gonna be like, well, how can I care for my body today? How can I take care of myself? How can I think differently today? How can I feel differently today? Woo, woohoo. I know. Ladies, it’s so good.

So next week is gonna be a pretty powerful episode. I’m gonna talk about shame. You know, there’s so much shame around, you know, weight loss, so much shame around, you know, carrying extra weight. And I’m gonna really kind of dive in a little bit on it. And of course, if you wanna come work with me and you wanna take this work deeper, then come check out Transform Boss Weight Loss, and you can go to jointransformboss.com to get all the information. I know it’s good. 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.