You are listening to The Weight Loss for Successful Women Podcast with Shannan Christiansen, episode number 193. Yeah, and Coach Jenn is here too.  Ooh, so fun. 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.

Hi ladies.  Hello love. Oh my gosh, we’re so happy to be back with you. Love it. Jenn and I just recorded last week’s episode, which was all about relationships. If you missed last week, you for sure want to go back and listen to it. But here we are, we’re in June. Crazy. Halfway through the year, ladies. I mean, I can’t believe it. Before you know it, I’m gonna be shopping for Christmas. I already know this. Everyone’s like, don’t bring it up. It’s coming.

So this month is spectacular. We have our challenge, which is so exciting. You can go to bflycoaching.com to register for the challenge. We also are opening on June 20^th we’re opening. You can go to jointransformboss.com or bflycoaching.com and get in. So this is a very exciting month for us. And you know ladies, Transform Boss, it’s community, it’s coursework, it is the tools. Very simplified. You know, we’re gonna do some really amazing things.

July is going to be our eating basics month. All our workshops, our calls, our teachings, even our challenge is gonna be around how do you eat to lose weight. We’re actually doing a really fantastic workshop on July 8th. And again, this is for ladies in Transform Boss, all about how to eat to lose weight for the last time. Ladies, it’s just so good. I mean, I don’t know. Are you ready to get off the diet rollercoaster or like, yes, but like are you really? It’s a good question to ask yourself, because we’re so used to just like, oh, let me find the new diet. Let me find the new pill, let me find the new potion. And there’s lots of it out there, right?

But they’re so short term, they just don’t help you with any of your thinking. Any of the reasons, you know, why you carry weight. Why is food comfort? And you know, we say, oh, I just love food. Do you? Cuz I bet if you’re anything like me, you’re not even tasting it, you’re just eating it and then it’s gone. You’re like, oh, then you’re grieving it because you ate it too fast and you didn’t even get to taste it. So this work really stems from just learning how to live your best life in a body that you love. And it’s all thoughts and thinking and mindset.

I just remember thinking it was the food, but the food is really the least amount. I mean, it really is. Because I teach ladies to lose weight with allowance and with, you know, learning how to just eat all the foods. You know, last night, yesterday, I baked a cake. I know, Paul’s like, I know I was just in the mood. I wanted to bake a cake. So I baked a cake. I hadn’t baked one in a long time. And I don’t know, you know how some days you just get an itch. So I was just like, Ooh, I just wanna bake a cake, so I baked a cake. You know, I had some of it, it was good. I don’t know, it’s just there actually, I was thinking like, oh I should probably take this to Taylor and Telyn cause we’re not gonna eat a whole cake.

So I was like, oh, I should take it over to the babies and surprise them with the cake I made. So, you know, but this is how it goes. You can just eat a variety of foods. You don’t have to go crazy with it. So I invite you to come join us in Transform Boss. It is much more than a weight loss program, although I’ll teach you how to lose weight for the last time. So good.

So today I’m excited because we did a book club last month. I’ve done an episode on this. But I really wanted Jenn’s perspective on it. I think this is just one of the best books that I’ve read in a very long time. I read a lot of books, a lot of books. I love books. And this book is called The Gap and the Gain by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy. And I love it. There’s so many different amazing concepts in the book. I think our ladies love it. I’ve also even shared it in my day job. I mean, this is how much I really love this book, because the premise is that I think our natural default is we live in the gap.

The gap is where nothing’s good enough. Like have you ever seen those dog races where they have the little bunny and the dogs are like chasing the bunny, but they never get the bunny. You know, it’s like a fake bunny. They never get the toy or the bunny. It’s just like you’re running around this track. Well, I think for many of us, that’s how our lives are. We’re just chasing the bunny around the track and we never feel like it’s good enough. We like, I didn’t lose enough weight. And then you start aging and your body changes and you have stretch marks and loose skin and wrinkles and all the things. And then suddenly you’re not good enough. And then you start looking back at your life like, oh, I should have done more. I should have went to college. I should’ve done that. I should have married someone different. Right? And you just, it’s just this gap thinking. It’s just it, it doesn’t serve you at all. But I think our default is the gap.

The gain is about looking backwards at how much progress you’ve made and really celebrating your successes and your wins. But there is so much more. And you know, Jenn, I really just wanted to hear like your take as you’ve taught it, as you’ve implemented it in your own life as you’ve coached women. What are your thoughts about the gap and then the gain? I, it’s so funny cuz I really, I just had a conversation with my 10-year-old son or 11-year-old son about the Gap and the Gain. I was like, listen, giving him this scenario about how to stay in the gain cuz he was in the gap. And of course he rolled his eyes at first. But I said, listen, this is something that you can learn now and change your perspective instead of waiting till you’re my age and, right, what a difference.

I mean there are so many different concepts in here, but two of the things that really stood out to me, and I just taught these in our Masterclass inside of Transform, is the first one was determining our own success. Like what that looks like for ourselves. Because he says in the book that it’s called the Social Dilemma, where reference points are created for us, not by us, right? What it looks like to be successful. And then we are, we’re just that dog chasing that bunny. We’re never getting there because when we get there, when we hit these goals, he talks about this in the book too. Most successful people do this. They are the ones that are in the gap a lot because they’ll hit a big goal and then they’re like, okay, what’s next?

That’s not good enough. I need to keep going. And it’s this continual pursuit of happiness instead of creating our happiness with what that looks like for us. Not what it looks like from others’ perspectives or reference points. So I love that. Just kind of writing down what does success look like for me. And the ladies did it and it was very eye-opening, cuz it’s like, ooh, check, check, check. I’m already getting these ones, right? And we can create that for ourselves instead of feeling like we’re never doing enough. Cuz it really does just keep us in the gap.

And then the second one, the second piece that I really loved is called mental subtraction. And this is when we, it’s you know, they did studies on this, but he did this test with his family and said, okay, what if every time we complain about something it’s just vanished from your life, right? How many times are we like, oh, if my legs were just thinner, if this and then boom, your legs are gone and it puts you like, no, I’ll take my legs as they are today, all day, every day. It puts you in this state of gratitude. Because we are, we’re in the gap about how it should look, how we should feel, what we should be doing. You know, even me sometimes I’ve been like, oh I just want this other home. And it’s like, if my home was gone today, you know, I’d want it back in a heartbeat. I love my home. It’s my safe place. And so I think it just reminding ourselves, walking through this work of, okay, think of the last thing that you’ve complained about. Imagine if it was gone, how would that impact your life? And instantly you’re like, no, I’ll take it back all day, every day. And it puts you in the state of gratitude. So those are two of like the big, I mean there’s so much, but those are probably two of the ones that really stuck out to me.

I know I have chills right now cause I love thinking about when he talks about, and you just talked about like other people, we’ve been socialized to believe that this is what success looks like. Even though for most of us, these measures of success, how much money, what do you weigh, how much have you done in your life, is actually not how we feel successful. The things that I feel most successful about, the things that actually make me the most happy are the relationships, the love, right? Our families, friends, children, right? Those things, those relationships are actually, the love, right? It always comes back to love, ladies. This is why love is so important. It’s the cornerstone of everything. The money, the things, the deal.

I was thinking about this because I’ve been really kind of like cleaning out closets, just getting rid of just stuff. And I was like, I was having a conversation with my daughter-in-law and I was like, we just have so much stuff, like as a country as a thing, think about the garbage piles that are just filled. We waste so much. We have so much. And this is no judgment ladies. I have it too. And, but I was just thinking about like, I have enough and when it goes right into this mental subtraction of like, I love everything that I do have and I wanna create a home where everything in it I use and I love. And I love it because it’s special. But it’s just, you know, again, at the end of the day, the only thing that really matters in this home right now, my husband who’s in this home and my little puppy Cookie, and I don’t know if I shared on the podcast yet, but our little Gracie passed away. And so, you know, we’re still in a little bit of a mourning period of her. But you know, that’s what matters. My family, my grandkids, Jenn, I love Jenn.

I think of her as a daughter and I’ve watched her grow and I’ve watched her just blow her own mind. That’s what matters. And so when I think of like my success meters, I swear to goodness, you know, I’m doing my own work. But I’m getting to where I’ve talked a lot about this to my Transform Boss ladies, just like disconnecting from this number on the scale, not even care, like it’s so irrelevant. But we have put so much brain energy into this number on the scale or the number on the backside of our jeans.

And it’s so, and this isn’t like, I love caring for myself. I love feeling good in my body, but that’s what I love. So my measure of success is not a number on the scale. My measure of success is how am I showing up for myself? How am I caring for myself? How am I caring for the other humans in my life? I tell you ladies, when you start to change these little things, I think it’s transformational. Like, it’s so transformational. I have seen this. A lady is 80, 90 years old. We’ve had them in our membership and also in free challenges and whatnot. And this is no judgment. I just, I mean this in all the ways, cuz I just, when I see this, I just have so much love and they’re still like, I need to lose the 10 pounds. I’m like, you’ve lived this whole life and for the last 50 years, all we can think about is this number on the scale.

It’s consumed, we food, when’s the next food? What’s food is like, it’s food. It’s like ah. It’s like that is not in this life what matters. It really isn’t. And it’s just, ah, it’s consumed so much of our brain. And so it keeps us in that gap mentality of focused on these societal, I mean, you know, they have a hundred things out there now. I gotta try the new pump my lips up. So, you know, do, I don’t even know, I can’t even deal with all of it. Like I can’t have wrinkles ladies. I am gonna wrinkle it up. I’m gonna wrinkle it up one day. I’m gonna be gray all the way. We’re just focused on these things that are just so superficial. And again, no judgment. I’ve done it too.

I’ve done it so much in my life. I’ve, you know, bought all the products and done all the things. And I just think one of the best things about getting older for me is just this release of that and having my own measures of success. My measures of success in this life always come down to how I treat people and how I love them. That’s it. How do I love the humans and how do I treat them? Including myself. And all the other things are just noise. Just noise in this life. It’s funny cuz I was doing my journaling today. I do a little Bible devotional and it was all about first Corinthians. And I was just thinking like, how can I love harder? How can I love more?

How can I, like that’s, these are the questions. It’s no longer what’s the number on the scale? What can I, you know, it’s like, how can I love harder, myself, the other humans? How can I, you know, how can I do that more in all spaces of my life? Ugh. It’s just one of the things I got from the book. But also just on this journey that I have personally been on. Jenn, what are you thinking? I love to hear what she’s thinking. She’s like, what?

 I was just thinking we could probably do like a three-hour podcast on this book because as you’re talking, right, just more and more pops up and it is, it is just this concept of staying in the gain or, and he even mentions right, as humans we’re gonna go in the gap. We can never just always be in the gain. So nothing’s gone wrong when we go in the gap. We just need to shift it to going into the gain. Just recognizing, you know, he talks about this in the book. If we’re not doing that and we’re not writing it down and not tracking it, our brains will forget it, right?

How often do we do this? We lose so much weight or we accomplish something and then we keep living our lives and then we’re like, oh, I’m just not doing enough. I haven’t accomplished anything. And then you look back and if you were to write down all the things that you’ve done, your mind is blown. Like, what? I forgot about that. And so just, I think this continual reminder for ourselves of like, how are we contributing? How are we showing up? What are we accomplishing? How are we making others feel and ourself? All the things, right? I love how you said Shannan, like getting in our prefrontal and asking ourselves those questions. Cuz that’s when we get into our thinking brain. The brain we wanna mostly be in, and we can really see the clear path from that brain, right? Rather than all the nonsense in our Lizzy brain sometimes.

Yeah. I love that. I heard, I know this too, even through my own work, you have these thoughts. He calls ’em statements, I call ’em thoughts. You have these thoughts and they’re just sentences. They’re just words, right? Put together. And when these sentences, these thoughts, they just go through your brain. We have like 60,000 of them a day. So they just go through and a lot of times we don’t even acknowledge them. We don’t even, right? They’re in our subconscious.

They’re just going through a brain boom, boom, boom. And the only way to get into your thinking brain is to ask a question. It’s the only way you can stop, because a statement, you don’t even like a thought. You don’t even acknowledge it. It’s just there. It’s actually causing feelings and you doing different things, but you just are so in automatic brain that you don’t even know. So you’re like, oh, I just ate a box of cookies. What happened? Why? Oh, it’s because you just, all these thoughts were going through your brain. You just went into automatic mode.

But as soon as you are in halfway through the box of cookies and you’re like, Hey, am I hungry? Am I physically hungry? And you stop and you get into that part of your brain, that’s where the transformation happens. It only happens with questioning, and you have to question yourself. We just don’t question ourselves. We just live life. Like, oh, this is the way it is, this is what it is supposed to be. And it’s when we start questioning ourselves and we start deliberately talking to ourselves and reprogramming, you know, our brains, right? We have neuroplasticity. Like we can learn new things, we can create new thoughts, new beliefs. We can change the record. Ladies, let’s change the records. We have these old records that are like, you know, 1972. I mean, you know, just nonsense playing in the back of our brain. Let’s change ’em out. Let’s change ’em out for new ways.

But the only way to do that is one, to question yourself, and two, to start to think differently and to talk to yourself more than you listen. Mm. Jenn it’s good, right? Yeah, I think so. Any last thoughts on the Gap and the Gain? I would say, ladies, you know, we’re gonna continue using these principles in Transform Boss, but I highly recommend this book if you have not read it. But any last thoughts, Jenn, on the Gap and the Gain? I would just suggest to go read it. Or the next time you find yourself complaining or thinking you’re not successful, anything we talked about today, you can begin with one of those concepts and just stop, ask yourself a question like, what is success actually to me? What if I lost that thing today? Or ask yourself a question like Shannan said. Get in that thinking brain. Because you will be amazed at the difference. You’re like, oh, oh, I’m here. Okay, let’s get to work brain. Yeah. So yeah, it’s a, it’s a book I will for sure continue to read over and over, cuz there’s so much in it.

Yeah, I know. I read his books over and over. I’ve been, the 25 year framework. I’ll probably talk about this, not for a while, cuz I, I wanna implement it in Transform Boss first. It’s always where I take all my learnings and teachings first. But I’ve read this book like three times now because every time I’m just like, ah, more, more, more so The Gap and the Gain, by Dan Sullivan, Dr. Benjamin Hardy. Great book. But more importantly, ladies, come join us in Transform Boss because then all of it’s there. Actually, you don’t even have to go get the book because Jenn does the synopsis of the chapters so ladies can learn from what she’s learning. And then we also have lots of ladies who have read the book and are learning the book and it’s just all in our community.

I know ladies. So we’re opening June 20th. You can go to bflycoaching.com or jointransformboss.com. We have a free challenge coming up too, which are always fun. I know, we’re gonna talk about the brain. I love it so much. All right, Jenn, I love you. Always fun to have you on the podcast. Ladies, give a shout out for Coach Jenn. She is an amazing human. And then I hope and wish you just the most beautiful week, and I’ll see you soon on the inside. 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.