You are listening to the Weight Loss for Successful Women Podcast with Shannan Christiansen, episode number 196. Welcome to Weight Loss for Successful Women, a podcast for women who are ready to break the diet cycle and end their struggle with Wait for good. Here’s your host, fortune 100 executive and certified life coach, Shannan Christiansen. Hello. Hello. So happy to be back with you.

I am getting excited. We’re getting ready to leave for Cancun, and we have not been there since pre pandemic. We used to go all the time, and so we’re really excited. It’s our first kind of tiptoe out of the country. We like to go and travel all over, and so I’m getting extremely, extremely excited about it. So we’re getting ready to,

hit our 200th episode. I know. So if you’ve not heard rate and review it on iTunes, and then email support@bflycoaching.com, we’re gonna be gifting a couple prize packages of my favorite things. And again, even if you don’t listen on iTunes, you can download on your computer and you could still rate and review it. I know it takes a few extra steps,

but I would really appreciate it. You know, I ask ladies to rate and review the show because what happens is it then spreads. We have ladies all over the world who listen to this, and I just love that. I love thinking about someone all over the world who just needs to hear that there’s a different way to live their best life in a body they love.

Mm, it’s good. The deadline to rate or review is July 4th. So let’s get into the show. This one’s a good one. I mean, they’re all good, but I love this one because I see ladies really struggle, and I too have struggled with this. This week’s episode is all about thinking that something, your life would be different. We have these beliefs that maybe we thought something would be different or we wanted something different.

Maybe we wanted a different career or relationship. Maybe we thought we’d have more money in the bank, whatever it is. Maybe you thought I would’ve been married, or I would’ve had children or not, or, you know, have better relationships. Or maybe I thought I was gonna do this career and I didn’t pursue it. I mean, there’s so many different ways.

These are all roles and identities that we thought we either, you know, should have had or that we should have been, and we wrestle with it. I wanna bring this into weight loss because I had this thought that, you know, I was going to have this body like, you know, something out of a magazine. And as I was losing my weight,

I had to grieve the loss of this identity that I would have a body with clear skin, tight skin, you know, all of the different things. And I know a lot of ladies as they’re losing weight, struggle with loose skin, stretch marks, you know, all the things. I think that for me, I had to go through a process of reimagining what my body looks like and liking the version that it is,

rather than holding onto this dream of what it should be. Play that back. It is so important because we do this in so many things. I think of my first husband, I didn’t want the divorce, you know, I thought we should be married. And you know, I had my son with him and it was very devastating. But he wanted a divorce and we got a divorce.

And for many years I kind of struggled with that and I held onto wishing that we were still married, wishing that it had been different. But what it did was it just kept me suffering and in resistance to what was, and then carrying a lot of shame and guilt, because if I would’ve been different, if I would’ve been thinner, prettier, I don’t know.

I don’t know if I would’ve done cartwheels, maybe I could have held onto him. But the true reality was this was the facts. He wanted a divorce, we got a divorce. Eventually I had to allow myself to grieve the loss of what was allowing yourself to grieve it, allowing yourself to grieve that, you know, different pieces of your identity that you think should be different.

So I think about this too, because you’ve been overweight for any length of time. You’ve developed this overweight identity, and maybe it’s being the funny fat person or the person who’s always a mess. You know, you know who I’m talking about. You know, I’m just, oh, I’m just a mess, right? Or being the person who cooks for everyone.

The person who pleases everyone, the person who bakes for everyone. And you get to decide which pieces you wanna keep through the journey and which pieces you want to allow to release. These are part of your overweight identity, right? I’m the person who eats this. I’m a person who can’t control herself. I’m a person who can’t stop at enough. And you have to grieve that person.

So for me, now, I can stop when I’ve had enough. I don’t eat to sickness or extreme fullness any longer because I have changed that part. And I had to come into realization like, oh, this is who I am now. I show up for myself imperfectly, but I show up for myself. I keep commitments to myself. This is who I am now,

you know, growing up I had this identity of, you know, Shannan, you know, single mom, you know, trying to get her life together, you know, all the things. But I don’t even know if anyone else said that this was in my mind. You know, she’s always late, she’s always this, she’s always that. And I had to decide which parts of my identity I wanted to keep and which I wanted to just let go and allow myself to grieve.

You know, ladies, I had to allow myself to realize, I used to have a vision board. And on it was, you know, pictures of some body. It wasn’t my body, but some body that I wanted, you know, some image of some model or you know, plastic surgery or all the things. Even if I had, I have not had plastic surgery,

but even if I did, my body would never have clear, smooth skin. And I will always have loose skin. I’m getting older. As you age, your, you lose elasticity. It’s just part of the process. And I had to allow myself to grieve the loss that that just never was gonna be. I had allow myself to feel all the feelings of it and go through the grieving process,

the grieving process of feeling shame for the decisions that I had made, for feeling guilty. I had allow myself to get angry with myself. And then I had to get to the place of love, the place of forgiveness for myself and some of the choices that I’ve made, because I am just living a human life, an imperfect human life. Suffering is the resistance to what is.

And I love this quote from Byron Katie, when you argue with reality, you lose, but only a hundred percent of the time, there are things in my life that just are, maybe I can control some of it. Maybe I can’t. I just need to know what is the reality? This is the reality of my body. This is the reality of my life.

And I have to fall in love with the parts that I want, keep those the things I can control. And I want to leave to the past. I can, the things I can’t control. I have to learn how to think about them differently. Allowing yourself to be in what is allowing yourself to release the dream. Some dream that you had,

maybe you thought you were supposed to be something and it didn’t turn out that way. Your life look different. And sometimes we just have to allow ourselves to grieve it. Allow ourselves to go through the grieving process of the loss of what we thought should have been to the reality of what is. If you’re anything like me, I didn’t wanna feel all those feelings.

I didn’t wanna go through the grieving process. I just wanted to resist it. I wanted to resist what was, I wanted to live in a fantasy world. I wanted to, you know, think, oh, this plastic surgery or this thing is gonna solve me. You know, all the things. But I had to allow myself to decide this is who I am.

This is the body that I have, and I want to love it. I want to care for it. I want to be the person who lives in a body that feels good to her, that feels like freedom to her. That is what I wanted. I think this shows up in many areas of our lives. And for some of you, you might not even have realized that you’re still hanging on to some old version that you thought you should be,

or some old dream that never happened. And I think this shows up too. Like, I should have married someone different. I should be partnered with someone different. I should have done this differently. Oh, if this wouldn’t have happened, right? And we just stay in this puddle of, this should have been different, and it just keeps us looping and it keeps us struggling and it keeps us resisting.

What is when we can come into acceptance of just what is this? Is it? This is it. This is my life. This is who I am. This is the body I have. These are the decisions that I’ve made up until this point. Great. Now, what am I gonna do for my myself right now? How am I gonna allow myself to go through the process of feeling all my feelings,

allowing myself to grieve that old identity and let it go? Or really step into who you are today? I think, you know, we anchor ourselves into the past, into some old version of ourselves instead of just acceptance for who we are today. So this is the deal, my take on it. Awareness first is the first step of this awareness of the identity or dream that you are still holding onto,

or some thought that it should have been different. Two, feel all the feelings. Allow yourself to go through the grief process. You can get help, you can therapists, coaching, right? Lots of help out there for this. Allow yourself to feel all the feelings and go through the process of it. And this is not a one and done.

I remember actually my first marriage, years later, he had come to visit my son. We didn’t live in the same states, then he left. And I remember this one night, I cried for like six hours. I didn’t know it then. I know it now. I was grieving the loss of what was. And from that point forward, I started to heal myself and heal the thoughts that I had,

that it should have been different. I, I’ll never forget it, actually, me and my son, we lived in this third story apartment. My son was probably, I don’t know, eight at the time. I just remember like, I mean, crying for hours, ladies hours. And then it just started this healing process that I went through for many years of letting that go,

coming into some acceptance of eventually who I was preparing myself for, the relationship of my dreams. And so, you know, ladies, feel all the feelings. Allow yourself to go through the grief process. And then three, recognize who you are today. Ah, this acceptance of who you are, this acceptance of my body, what it is today,

all of it. The good, the problems, all the things. Just acceptance. And recognize the identity of the person you are today. And then lastly, dream. Dream for your future self. Allow yourself to have new dream. What is the new dream that you have for yourself? You may have had an old dream. Maybe it didn’t turn out whatever you thought,

but now that doesn’t mean, oh, it’s over. It’s never over until you leave this earth. It’s never over. You get to dream. You get to become whoever it is that you want. You can do anything. I believe this. When you tell the people that you love, that they can do anything, because I know you do. I just want you to tell yourself that.

I want you to tell yourself I can do anything and dream again. Oh, love ladies. This process is so good. And you know, I watch ladies, we do future self work and past work in Transform Boss. I watch clients go through this process of acceptance and coming into the identity of who they are today. So powerful. Hmm, so powerful.

Next week I’m gonna talk about how to lose the, I need to start over. I need to get back on track. I know ladies, I’m gonna talk about this a hundred episodes because I think it’s what keeps us on the diet rollercoaster. And of course, if you wanna take this work deeper and then check out Transform Boss, it’s my monthly membership program.

Or teach women how to get off the diet rollercoaster, how to step into that new identity of themselves and become the boss of their lives like they always have been. You can learn more at join Transform Boss dot com. 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 bflycoaching.com. See you next week.