You are listening to the Weight Loss for Successful Women Podcast with Shannan Christiansen and Coach Jenn, episode number 192. 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 my goodness, we have Coach Jenn is here with us. I am so excited. I love her, and I know so many of you long-time podcast listeners love her too. And before I get into today’s episode, Jenn, we just had the most amazing experience, Unstoppable Live 2023. Come on. I mean, we do this once a year event in Transform Boss, and it’s a virtual and in-person event. And we just did it, I think two week, a weekend ago, I dunno, two weekends ago. And it was just amazing to watch ladies in transformation and to hug ladies, and it was just amazing.

So Jenn, what’d you think about it? I love it. I told Shannan I at the end, I said, listen, I just feel like you’ve taught me so much. I know it and I know, and I don’t know it all, but I’m like, you just keep pulling out more to teach and digging deeper and changing my perspective. And I just always get so much from Unstoppable every year. And oh, I got little chills. I mean, getting to see everyone in person, it is like best friends that you’ve known all your life that you get to spend the weekend with. It’s the best. It’s the best, and watching. And I just have to tell you, so these are for all my Transform Bosses who were in person who were VIPs and did the photo shoot. I’m looking at some of the photos.

T’s been, Telyn, I call her T, Telyn has been sending them to me. Oh my goodness. I mean, gorgeous.  I just can’t even wait. I can’t even wait. So I’m with you, Jenn. You know, as I do this work, you know, ladies, this is evolving. I think about when I very first did the podcast to today to when I very first started, you know, Jumpstart, and then it merging into Transform Boss Weight Loss. And I think about even myself, how much I continually evolve and continually learn, and then I just share it with everyone. That’s what I do.

So when you’re a Boss and you’re in my membership, I just share every single thing I’m learning. All my mistakes, my failures, everything. I shared this story about, you know, what I’ve been personally going through with my health. And then I learned things and then I’m like, okay, let’s go. And I tell you ladies, Transform Boss is just, it’s the best. And Unstoppable Live for sure was amazing. And we already have 2024 scheduled, booked, ready to go. And I can’t, I can’t wait. It’ll be here before we know it. I mean, ladies, I don’t know if you know this, but holy moly, when this releases, it’s like almost June. Like June 1st is the next day. I mean come on. Time just goes so fast. It really does.

So today Jenn and I are gonna talk about relationships. You know relationships is, I think about weight loss. Weight loss is a pillar of what I teach in Transform Boss, but so is relationships. And I think sometimes ladies are like, just tell me how to lose weight. Just gimme all the tricks. Tell me how to lose weight. But this is the thing, ladies, we’re like these whole humans and we have so many different facets of our lives. And what I really do in Transform Boss is try to help with all of them. You know, I have a money course and a relationships course because every piece of that, of you, is part of this process. And we use food to comfort us to deal with emotions, and as a coping mechanism. It’s so much deeper than, Hey, give me a keto plan.

And if you want a quick fix, sure, try it. But you’ll end up, I think the statistic is 99% of folks gain it back. I’m not into that. I’m into long-term weight loss. And so part of that is relationships. June in Transform Boss is relationships month. And I’m gonna teach on relationships, we’re gonna do a workshop. Our whole challenge inside the membership is on relationships, because relationships are foundation. And I think about when I started this work and kind of the “state” of my relationships, not just the relationships with the other humans, but also the relationship with myself. The relationship with myself was horrible. I was just in automatic mode doing all the things, checking off all the lists.

My relationships with others were okay. I wasn’t investing my time. I didn’t prioritize my relationships for sure. They were just like this byproduct of, you know, whatever the to-do list was, whatever I had to kind of get done. And I tell you ladies, I know because I lived in that mode compared to the mode that I live in now. I’m not perfect for sure, but I’m so much better at investing time and investing love. Love. I was just reading First Corinthians today. So if you read the Bible, first Corinthians is all about love. I tell you, it’s so powerful.  Love, and now I have so much love for myself that I can show others love. I can show, people are always amazed, like, Shannan, are you for real, right? Like, can you really love the humans the way you do?

And I can because I can love humans, forgive humans, accept humans for whoever they are, whatever they believe, whatever they think, whatever they do. A human can come however they are in front of me. It makes me emotional actually, I don’t know why, but it just does. You get to be the human that you are, and it’s gorgeous and beautiful and amazing, and you get to just show up and be yourself. And I just have so much love for that. And I think it comes from this space of just me loving myself for who I am, good, bad, all the things, you know, and being this imperfect human. And so, relationships, they’re so foundational. And it starts with one, working on the relationship with yourself.

So Jenn, what do you think? I know. You got me teary-eyed over here Shannan. You really do because you create the safe space for everyone where they just feel your love. That not everyone accepts everyone to be able to just show up as they are. But I think ladies in Transform, and I know myself and other people in your life, I would guess, just feel that way with you. Because when we’re judging others, it’s usually comes from us judging ourselves or some underlying thing with ourselves. And you just show up with love. Everybody feels it. It creates a safe place to just show you all the good, the bad, the ugly, all the things.

I know, like before Transform, I would, I mean, even when I started Transform, Shannan can attest to this, I would start crying and I’d be like, I’m so sorry. And I would always apologize for showing emotion or certain things. And over time, I have Shannan’s voice in my head of like, let it be there. Just allow yourself to feel it, because I was worried like I’m being too emotional or I’m showing this, and now I get to just like, I don’t know, Shannan, you do. You just create this safe space. So yeah, when I was thinking about relationships and just kind of how along my journey, how it’s impacted my weight and weight loss, for me, a lot of the time it’s come from these manuals or these expectations that I have of others.

And it just left me living in a state of constant disappointment, constant frustration, constant annoyance. And it’s these manuals of how I thought everybody else should show up. And once I was able to kind of release those, and I think it is through loving myself more and allowing others to show up as they are, it just has created so much strength in my different relationships with everybody. Normally when I would want to snap and be like, Ugh, I can’t believe they’re doing that. It’s like, okay, why is this bothering you? And like, breathe. Does it really matter? Like let them just choose to show up, right?

Yeah, I love that. You know, I think too, and thank you so much, Jenn. Like Jenn talks about me, but Jenn creates a completely safe space for ladies, for people, for me, for our team. She really is amazing at just loving the other humans and accepting them. And you know, I think all our coaches are, all our boss mods are, I think we work really hard. We have this thing that we really live by with our clients, it’s just that they are the most important, you know, they’re not visitors, they’re not a bother to us. They are the most important piece of our business. Jenn, you’re just amazing at creating that for all the ladies you coach and just all of our ladies.

But I was thinking about this manuals and expectations, and you know, we do, we have these expectations of other folks. I think mostly it’s a direct reflection. And again ladies, when we talk relationships, we’re talking about normal everyday relationships. If you are in an abusive relationship or something outside, you know, that is verbally, physically, emotionally abusive, that is not what this is about. And if you reach out to us at support@bflycoaching.com, we can give you resources to get help with that. We’re talking in the spirit of relationships in just normal everyday relationships that, you know, can be taxing, that can feel hard, that, you know, like, Ugh, you didn’t shut the cabinet again. Ugh, you didn’t do the dishes again. Oh, you didn’t meet some expectation of mine.

You know, we have these, but I really do believe in most of the cases it’s because of the expectations of ourselves. We put these, really, this is why the work always starts with us first. I’ve spoken about this to Transform Boss and the ladies, but Paul and I, about five, six years ago now, I don’t know, but we had a really, really hard spot in our marriage. And you know, we were ready to almost throw in the towel. And we have rebuilt it to a place where it’s so loving. But he didn’t need to change. I didn’t need to change. I worked on myself. And that my thoughts about myself and my thoughts about him, and he also did the same.

But if you’re in a relationship, it never takes the other human. It just takes you. People are like, oh, I’ve gotta like get my spouse to change, or my partner to change, or, you know. No. Actually, when you start to change, when you start to think differently, when you start to drop the expectations and the manuals, it’s shocking at what can change actually, and the manual and expectations you have of yourself. And when you pressure, I think we put this pressure on ourselves to be perfect, to lose the weight, we spin. But what that does is just paralyzes you and you do nothing. You don’t do anything. You just, you know, keep doing what you’ve been doing.

And then you’re like, why am I not getting, you know, different outcomes? Oh, that’s right. Because my thinking’s not changing. What I’m thinking about myself, and when I’m thinking about others. It is work. It is work to think differently about someone, to start to drop expectations of the manuals. Because we were not taught, we were taught that someone’s coming to save us. Someone’s gonna be this perfect human who’s just gonna serve us. Truly. Watch every single movie, every single movie, every single chick flick, every, every single one. The guy or the woman, they’re perfect. You know, the whole thing. And I’m just saying, it’s false. That’s not real.

Humans, we’re just imperfect. And when you can accept, I talk about Paul in a way that is just beautiful because I think he’s just amazing, and I love him. I have so much love for him. Oh, I can’t, I, I mean so much love for him, but I have practiced thoughts about loving him. He’s an imperfect human. He’s, I’m sure ladies are like, oh, but if I was married to Paul, like, ladies are asking, does he have a brother? I’m like, no. Like he’s just a imperfect human. I just choose to think thoughts that are loving and see how this relates to weight loss is when you start to change the way that you think. When you start dropping, you know, the manuals, the expectations, you feel better.

You don’t need food as much to cope with just your everyday normal run of the mill life. It, it just really improves. But you know, you said something too Jenn, I’ve been reading this book, Dan Sullivan, he’s a business coach, but I’ve been reading a couple books by him. I think he’s brilliant actually. And he wrote this book on being bothered. And you used the word bothered, which I loved, because it’s not about asking yourself why you’re bothered, it’s really just, okay, I’m bothered. Allowing yourself to feel it and then saying, okay, I can’t remember exactly how you phrase it, but this is how my brain interprets it in my own, you know, teaching is okay, now what’s the next best action for me?

Because what happens is when we start to get bothered, when we start to get frustrated with someone, we get paralyzed. We don’t do anything. We just sit around stewing. Have you ever just stewed, stewed, stewed? And you have like the whole speech, you’re gonna tell that other person and you have the whole thing and you’re just stewing, stewing, stewing. Cuz you’re just so frustrated and angry, and then you do nothing. You’re just paralyzed. I mean, maybe you have the conversation, it doesn’t go good, and then you’re even more looping and you’ve ruined the day and you’re just like, Ugh. But you’re totally blaming them. You’re, right. I mean, I know I’ve done this.

I mean, I’m not coming from a place, I’ve done all the things wrong a million times. So now I’m just like, oh, okay, what can I learn? So this thought of like, when I’m bothered, when I’m feeling frustrated, just acknowledging, I don’t even need to know why. Because the why of it actually makes me go down the path of blame and other humans mostly. But I loved how he reframed it to just like, okay, what are you gonna do next? So, okay, I’m bothered. Now what? Right? Like, let’s go, like what’s the next action? Because it’s not serving me to stay in this state of, I like to call it puddling.

I love to use that word. And I just have been reading this book and I love that. Just simple question, ladies. I know that sometimes ladies are like Shannan, it just sounds so simple. No, it’s, it’s simple concepts. Everything I teach is simple concepts. It’s the daily practice, it’s learning, right? That’s why I think you need support. That’s why I think if you’re not in Transform Boss, we’re opening June 20th, get in. You need the support. You need this constant influx of like, oh, okay, this is what I need to do. This is what I need to learn. I need it. I mean, I get so much out of Transform Boss, I tell you, because it’s a constant reinforcement.

So Jenn, anything else on relationships? The only other thing I thought about and how it can impact weight loss or just even your own relationship with yourself is relationship with others, and as you begin to lose weight, being concerned with like, how will I fit in? Or I don’t wanna make this person feel bad. I know that we’ve had this come up in the membership before, ladies reaching out to us. I’ve experienced it before. We’re like, what if I’m no longer fitting in to how I do in this relationship? Or maybe we don’t want attention of the weight loss, right? How many times have you lost weight and someone’s like, oh my gosh, you look so great. And you’re like, stop. Now you have this pressure to keep losing the weight or to keep it off.

And as Shannan was talking about like why it’s so important to have this work and this community is because you go through these emotions of, first, I think you’re completely unaware of these thoughts, all the things going on, then you come into some awareness, but you still wanna avoid it a bit. And so I think just being around this community, this work, consistent teachings, it allows you to continue to step into, okay, I have this awareness and continue to push back against Lizzie when she’s like, just ignore it. Right? Just, just let’s go over here. But that’s just what kind of came up for me is those times where you feel like you might become too shiny or you might not fit the mold in a relationship. And I just think so many ladies have experienced that before, maybe are experiencing it now.

Yeah. I think it’s the fear of success. You know, as you were talking, I was thinking like, that’s it, right? It’s this fear of success. If I lose the weight. Ladies, there’s many of you who you know what to do basically, right? We teach a lot of tools in Transform to make it easy so that you can heal your relationship with food. But at some level you’re like, okay, I kind of know what to do. But the reason why you’re not doing it is because of two opposite sides of the coin with fear. Fear of success, and fear of failure. And it just keeps you paralyzed.

And so if you have this thought that relationships are gonna be different, or you’re having a really difficult relationship in your life and you’re so scared of losing it, and you have this fear and you’re like, oh, and if I start changing, I start change, right? Then this other person isn’t gonna change, right? You start really puddling and then you just sabotage your success. I mean, you sabotage it over and over again and you just then beat yourself up about what you should be doing, what you could be doing. And you know, we’ve done this pattern for so long, ladies, I just think there’s a different way. And is it easy? No. But living in automatic and carrying extra weight that you don’t want, and having relationships that feel difficult, that you are not happy with, you’re not happy with yourself, ladies, I think that’s the most difficult thing in this world.

So yes, implementing some tools and doing some different things and coming to a coaching call, I don’t know. I think that’s the easiest part. Even though it’s work, I think it’s the easiest part. Coach Jenn, I know relationships have really changed in your life through this work. What has been just the one thing outside of dropping expectations that have really helped you change the relationships in your life? I think it is just what you mentioned, like always coming back to me. When I can come back to me and worry about me and focus on me, and not in a selfish way ladies, right? I know this is what we think is like, but then I’m selfish. No. This is when I am my absolute best for myself and everyone around me doing the work on my thoughts and deciding how I want to show up in that relationship. Shannan once said that to me. It’s stuck because it is so powerful. When you decide how you want to show up in that relationship, that’s all your brain needs to focus on. You can stop worrying about all those other people because you get to create your thoughts and your feelings for that relationship. And it’s been such a game changer for me.

Hmm. So good Jenn, focusing on what you, the only thing you can control, yourself. Yeah. Yeah. And doing the work on yourself. I see it. I mean, I see it. I look on social media, I see every, I see the thousands of weight loss programs and keto coaches and folks calling themselves coaches, all the thing, right? And I just wanna say that this work of living your best life in a body you love always comes back to how do I one, become aware of what I’m thinking? And then two, how can I slowly start to change what I’m thinking so I can feel differently so then I can do things differently? And how can I learn how to feel my feelings?

Woo. I know. I mean, it’s, I said it in 30 seconds, but boy, there is a lot of layers. I always think it’s like an onion, right? You’re just peeling layers and as you progress, I’ve seen this in our membership, right? Ladies lose all the weight and then they’re like, oh, now I wanna do this. And then, right? So you’re just always up leveling. And you’re always growing and learning and failing. That, for me, that’s, that’s my best life. I’m loving all the humans. I’m growing, learning, failing. Mm mm All right my loves. I love you, coach Jenn. And this month is a fun month. June, we’re gonna have a challenge. So we always do a free challenge with our launches. So if you’re new to us and you wanna join the challenge, just follow us on social. You can go to facebook.com/bflycoaching, Instagram at Shannan Christensen or YouTube at Shannan Christensen so that you can follow us and get all the information. And then we open. We open. You can always go to bflycoaching.com. It has the latest and greatest. That’s our main website. And it has like all the things. So it it’ll have when the challenge is up, you’ll be able to sign up. So BFLY Coaching will have everything, when Transform Boss opens. It’s gonna have the link there. So bflycoaching.com. Really, I know it has all the good stuff. It has all the podcast episodes. It’s a great website.

All right my loves. 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.