You are listening to the Weight Loss for Successful Women Podcast with Shannan Christiansen, episode number 202. 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.

I know ladies, I’m really into the two hundreds. Can you even believe it? I can’t even imagine myself when I’m be like in the three, in the four hundreds every episode. I’m gonna just be like, can you believe it? I know ladies, I’m very proud of this podcast. You know, it’s been a lot of time and a lot of work because I want to put this work out into the world and it’s so important for me to help women all over the world learn how to live their absolute best lives in a body that they love.

And all of my coaches, my entire team, our backend team, everyone is so committed, our volunteer bosses, everyone is so committed in that support of all of our ladies. So today’s a special episode because I have three of my coaches on and I wanted to bring them on. They’ve all been in maintenance two plus years, and they are learning how to live in maintenance.

And I wanna talk about maintenance. I’ve been in maintenance now for a good long while, and I remember thinking like coming to this space where I was like, okay, this is the weight that I like. This is the body that I like. I feel good in this body. This is where I want to be. You know, I talk a lot about natural weight,

not a weight that someone has given me. It’s a weight that I decided that I feel good in, that I like. And that’s what I teach being in maintenance for all of these years. I think I always just want it to be easier. It is easier. There are lots of pieces that are easier for me. And today, what I want the ladies to share is for those of you who are approaching maintenance,

some tips and tools, but also those of you who maybe you’re starting your journey, I wanna show you just some hope, some, you know, different things that can even help you now no matter where you are in your journey. So I wanna kick us off. And I was thinking about this and one of the things that has really changed for me when I think about living in maintenance is my relationship with food.

Being able to look at something, have a thought, Ooh, that looks good. Ooh, let me order those crumble cookies, right? Having that thought and then following it up with, all right, you could have them, but you don’t want them. They’re not on your plan today. It’s all good. And not having a ton of negotiations.

Before I would have all of these negotiations, I would have all of these, like back and forth. I would think about this for hours and then sometimes I would order the cookies. And so this freedom of not having to negotiate with myself, knowing that I’m still gonna have thoughts like that. If I see a good jelly donut, ladies, I’m gonna have a thought like,

Ooh, that would taste good. That thought is there. I just now have a secondary thought. And the secondary thought is one that I have developed over time. When I started this work and I saw the jelly donut, I’d be like, oh my God, I gotta eat the jelly donut. Now I have the thought of, I don’t know,

you know, it’s not on my plan. It’s good. I could eat it if I really wanted it, but I don’t really wanna bellyache donuts, gimme bellyaches, right? I like, I just can like talk to myself kindly and just in a way like, oh yeah, I’m good. For me, that is the freedom and maintenance. We think we’re gonna just change our thoughts and we’re never gonna have these old limiting thoughts that we had before.

And it’s just not the truth. I’m always gonna be transparent with you. You’re still gonna have thoughts. These thoughts are gonna enter you. Just have a secondary and third thought that really can help you. So we’re gonna go to Coach Kelly. And Coach Kelly, you’ve been in maintenance now over two years. First, what has been different about this maintenance then other times in your weight loss Loss journey?

You know, as you were talking and it is about that relationship with food, and as you go through this process, you think like, you know, this is never gonna happen for me where I don’t want it. Like it was just such a foreign thing when Shannan would talk about, you know, you get to a point where you make that decision,

I just don’t want it. And, but it does happen when you trust the process. Hmm. I can remember when I first started, and maybe it was in week three, and I had kind of a, a bad weekend, I overate and I was like Saturday night. And I was like, screw it. You know, just start over on Monday.

And I was like, I don’t need to ever start over again. And that was very pivotal for me in my journey of I don’t have to start another diet again. I wrote my plan Sunday morning and continued on. So there’s none of this, you know, I failed, so now I have to quit. Oh. Because it only gives you that relief for that one little moment.

And then you’re back to, okay, where am I at? And then the other thing that I think has helped me in maintenance is really slaying the scale. Because I think as women, we are so tied to that scale. I was coached on what my natural weight was. You know, I thought I needed to lose 15 more pounds and just really got to the point that I liked where I was at.

I like my curvy figure. I like the way the clothes are fitting, you know, I just wanted to firm up a little bit. And so it’s that slaying that scale of, that’s the only thing that I can tell that I’m being successful. There’s so many non-scale successes. Hmm. And then the last thing I think is just talking to myself.

Shannan does such a beautiful healing You series on healing your relationship with food and yourself and looking at a picture of yourself as a baby. And would I talk to myself, would I treat my younger self? You know, this picture of me as a baby, would I treat her this way? Would I talk to her this way? Would I be that you know person to this little baby that we are?

I’ve really talked to myself and asked myself questions like, what’s happening right now? You know, like Sharon had said, what’s my next best action right now? And talking to myself like I would a close family member. And so I think we really forget about that self-talk. Yeah. Mm. Really, Kelly, I tell you, the way that I talk to myself is different.

And ladies, this is important. It’s not that I don’t have a negative thought. It’s not that I don’t have, you know, an old thought that comes in, it’s just now I do know how to talk to myself differently. I do know how to follow it up. No, it’s so good. So coach Sharon, when you think about maintenance,

you’ve been in maintenance now? Well, three plus years. Yeah, I think. So. You’ve been able to maintain your weight. What is a couple ideas or thoughts or things that have really kind of helped you through? Because you have lost weight before, right? You were on the diet rollercoaster, like all of us. What’s different this time for you?

That I don’t have to restrict. I can eat whatever I want and I decide what feels good to me. If I want something, I can have it. Mm. And I used to have the worst time trying to walk through the bakery or go down the snack aisle because it’d be like calling me. It’s like, Sharon, you got to eat me.

You got to eat me. Now I can go straight through. I don’t even have a thought about it. Food is the least on my mind. Mm. And if I have that urge, if I see something and I say, Ooh, looks pretty good. I say, am I really hungry? Do I want those negative consequences of eating it?

Yeah. My thoughts about food and how I feel about myself have really changed Being in maintenance, it’s still work. You still have to do the work. Just because you loss got to your natural weight doesn’t mean the work stops. Oh, that’s so good. That’s true. You Fact, you have to keep going. Yeah, keep going. That’s a true fact.

I love that you share that Sharon. Look ladies in our brains, because this is how we’re wired. We want it to be easy. Like, ladies, it’s just gotta be easy. This is easier. It does feel easier to me, but I still do the work. I still have to show up. I still have to talk to myself.

I still have to take a breath. I still have to, I love making my realistic plan, right? So like, it’s starting to change the way that you think and start to love the process. I think that for me too, was different. I started to like change the way that I thought about the process. Oh, a realistic plan.

Oh my gosh, it’s so great. I don’t have to have drama about food. I love it. You know? Ooh, I can put cookies on my plan. I love it. So again, it’s just changing the way that you think. So Coach Dana, you’ve been in maintenance now. Have you hit two years, couple years, your,

Your couple years? Yep. Couple Years. Yeah. Yeah. And tell the ladies one thing that has just really helped you or that has been different about being in maintenance now versus before. Well, I Have to say, honestly, I was never in maintenance before, before I joined you. Once I lost weight, it could have been 25 or 30 pounds or whatever it was.

As soon as I hit it, thought about, I’ve hit it, this is it. I would go back to doing things exactly what like I was doing before because I deserved it. Oh, I’ve lost this weight. So I would eat a little extra. I would leave my medical weight loss meetings and, and head straight on over for the bakery and grab a donut because I had all week to work that back off.

And I just had these thoughts up here, like you guys were saying, you could have a thought about something and then the negotiations would start. Man, I, and it wouldn’t even matter that I had just had an ice cream. If I saw this place and I was by it and I wanted, like, I would have to go get an ice cream,

it wouldn’t even matter that I’d already eaten breakfast, lunch, dinner, had I, I would, it would just be a thought loop in my head. I could not stop. Oh, And then I found you. And then I started doing this work, and then I started losing weight and changing my thoughts. And then I lost my weight and I felt really good in my body.

And I talked to you about it and I said, Hey, like I, this feels really good to me. It’s kind of natural. I’m just hanging it this weight and I think I like it. And you said, all right, yeah, you pick the number. So yeah, I still, I do the work like Sharon said, but being an allowance,

we don’t restrict. So I can have things in my house. We have treats here for the grandkids. It doesn’t bother me. You know, it doesn’t like take my attention. I start thought looping about it. It’s there. Yep. It’s there. I can have it. If I want it, I can put it on my plan. I don’t want it,

so I’m not gonna do it. But I, I do the work and I still slip up at times. There’s times where we’re just human, you know? It’s how we’re wired and we can fall off the rails too, you know, so to speak. We can have a bad day or whatever, but I’ve got these tools and I just know just like,

get it, here we go. Write that realistic plan, follow my plan, get in my water, and I’m right back on track. I mean, there’s, it’s just been, I know it’s silly to say, but it’s easy because I just have these tools and I’ve just, just been doing this work. And so it’s, it’s just like a new habit for me.

This is just neural pathways in my brain. This is what we do now. This is going on two years now that I’ve kept this weight off and I still like think, how am I doing this? I don’t know, because I, I still eat things that I like. I don’t, I don’t know what else to say about it. It’s,

Yeah. Dana, so you just took me right into my next question. Any of you could answer this, because when I very first started, I have this story about how I would go to our favorite Mexican restaurant and I would get three plates of food. Like when they would bring me my dinner, it came out on three different plates. Now I get some what I order at the Mexican restaurant.

I get it. And I have one plate and I don’t eat, you know, I never can finish it, right? And it’s so funny, we just went, we went to Mexico on vacation and we were coming back in the airport and I was hungry. And I, we walked into like a convenience store, you know, the airport, holy kale,

right? And I saw a Milky Way and I was like Milky Way. So this Milky Way is, there’s a story I won’t go into, but my mother, she wasn’t a sugar act, but she loved them. And so it just, I was like, oh, I want a Milky way. So I grabbed them, I bought the Milky Way.

And I, it’s so funny, I ate like a bite or two. I was like, I don’t know, this is kind of stale. I don’t know. It didn’t taste really good. And so, it’s so funny because I was just cleaning out one of our suitcases and I’d taken all the clothes and all the stuff out, but I remembered I had some trash in this bag that I was carrying.

And I pulled out and I was like, oh my gosh, there’s the Milky Way. And I tell you ladies, there was a day where I was never leaving a Milky Way, you know what I’m saying? I was never leaving half that milky way, three quarters of that Milky way in the thing. And I had just bought, like, I didn’t buy the king size,

I just bought like the small one. And so what my question to all of you ladies, is when you first start and you look at your realistic plan, I think ladies struggle because we’re like, no, put all the things you’re eating. And then they’re like, well, how am I gonna lose weight? And so your realistic plans then, your realistic plans now look different.

How have you worked through thoughts around eating less? What I noticed was, as I sat and ate my food, I was just really tuned in to, to listening to my fullness signals. And so I just kind of started, you know, we have the like one bite challenge. And so I just started noticing that I was leaving food on my plate.

And then I just said, Hey, like I think I can cut this sandwich in half. And then it was like a whole thing like, yeah, I don’t even need a whole sandwich anymore. So it just seemed like a natural progression. It wasn’t like crazy thoughts about it. It was just like, I’m feeling good. I feel like I,

I was hungry and now I’m feeling good, I’m feeling satiated. And so I just stopped eating. And so I just noticed that I was cutting back a little bit. So from a full sandwich to a half sandwich, it was just kind of a natural progression. And it, and same thing, like I just, you know, take a little bit less chips or whatever I have with my sandwich.

It really didn’t make me too crazy about it, but it just seemed natural to just kind of slow it down. I love that you say that it’s, ’cause I want you ladies who are like at the beginning of this, or you’re in the middle of this and you’re like, ah, I want you to hear this. ’cause what Dana said is,

so, because at the beginning we start worrying about, oh my gosh, I’m going to eat less. I can’t eat these foods, da da da. I just wanna tell all of you. That’s not what happens. I have three ladies who are in maintenance and all of them I know eat cookies, eat breads, eat carbs, eat all the things.

How they did it was they met themselves where they were and then did this process so that they could lose weight and heal their relationship with food. All of them did it on different timelines too and during different stages of their life. So Kelly, what did you wanna add? I just love the word that Dana used. It’s a progression, right? It’s not,

you know, I’m going to eat everything that I want and then tomorrow I’m cutting my food in half. It’s a progression of slowly making those up levels. But I think for me it was more about, I was very diety in the first part of my plans because I was on another diet, right? I had that whole restriction attitude that if I restrict,

then I will lose weight. Just like Shannan has always said. Just have to trust the process that if you meet yourself where you’re at, then you can progress all the way down to what you really want to eat. And I think that’s what we’re talking about. We eat so automatically we don’t even know what we’re eating. And so it’s a progression of,

I mean I had to add on food because if you restrict, you’re going to binge, you’re going to want it. And so it’s that whole allowance of I can have it. I think if we, it’s the whole thing with resistance too. If you allow yourself to have it, it clears up that drama and then you get to the point, I just don’t want it right now.

And I really, really truly didn’t think I would ever get to that point because I had all the thoughts, I deserve it. I can’t waste this food. The triggers all of it. It just becomes a progression of allowing yourself that food so that you can heal your relationship with food. Ladies, I want you to hear everything that they’re saying. Re-listen to this.

’cause no matter where you’re at at in your journey, this is such gold that you are learning. And I know I got some transformed bosses out there too who think, well, if I just restrict, if I do better, if I eat less, if you do not meet wherever you’re at in your journey, you’re gonna look back at the last week.

Whatever you’ve eaten is how you’re gonna then start to continue to eat. You’re not going to just stop eating and you know, because this what Kelly said, you will then binge, you will binge. That is the diet roller coaster. And so it’s such gold to know, and it’s against everything anyone’s ever taught you. You know, we’re going on ww let’s clean out cabinets.

I’m gonna go to the store and buy healthy food. I’m gonna do all the things ’cause I’m gonna be perfect. And then I can’t tell you I’ve thrown away thousands of dollars of salad in my lifetime. Really, truly. I think I’m gonna cook the things and do the things and suddenly become a meal prepper. Ladies, I just wanna make a a public announcement.

I will never be a meal prepper. Some of you are and you love it. It is not my gig. It is not my thing. And so I had to like let that go. Like this wasn’t who I was. Some of you ladies love it, God love you, but for me it’s not. And so I think through this process too,

you get to figure out what works for you and what doesn’t. Hmm. It’s good. Sharon, anything you wanna add For me? I know when I first started, I was realistic. I posted my plan right out there as to what I ate and everybody’s like, whoa, you eat all that. It’s like, I even thought that in my brain.

Yeah, I, I eat all that. And then as I was working through the process, I’m sitting there and I got my plate in front of me and I start eating and I really started slowing down and paying attention and started asking myself questions. Am I really hungry? Do I need to finish that? I was part of the Clean play club.

Yeah. I was always told, you know, starving kids in Africa, we’re gonna send the food to Africa, you know, you gotta finish your plate. And I remember a statement and it stuck with me. You had said it’s either waste on your waist or waste in the trash can. And ever since I heard that, it’s like, well,

I’d rather throw it away and have it wasted on my body because your body does know what it needs for fuel and how much food it really needs. Yeah. Just it’s, pay attention to it. It’s so good. And I think too, like as I was listening Sharon and, and Dana and Kelly, all of us, as you are emotional eaters,

if you say you’re not, I’m gonna say there’s a rare human that at some point in their life hasn’t grabbed a food or alcohol to push down a feeling. I say this because as you start to learn these tools, you wanna go from I’m an emotional eater to maybe I’m an emotional eater 80% of the time, and then suddenly you wanna go to,

I’m an emotional eater 0% of the time. I just wanna like relieve you of that too. There are gonna be times where you reach for something and then you know, you’re like, oh, but you have these other tools like, okay, I’m starting to feel full. You know, you can come back to yourself. And so this is just important,

this whole process ladies, is about just slowing it down and learning how to heal your relationship with food so that you can be in maintenance. Dana, I actually never knew that you had never been in maintenance before for a lengthy period of time. I was like that too. I, I was right there with you. And I tell you ladies to like,

we have ladies who have like been in maintenance for a good bit or they still want to lose a little more, but they’ve been maintaining at a weight. Maintenance is a skill ladies, it is another skill set in your toolbox. And so learning how to level set your weight and stay without the ups and downs, that also can help you heal your relationship when it comes to the restrict overeating binge cycle.

So all of these tools are so important and I just wanna tell you, you wanna learn this work. You wanna come and join us in Transform Boss, you wanna take it deeper. Come join us in Transform Boss. You can go to jointransformboss.com. It’ll have all the information for you. And you know, we’ll just love you up.

I know for sure. And first, I wanna thank all the coaches. Beautiful, all of you ladies, and thank you for sharing all your expertise and your journey and being so vulnerable with our audience. And I love you ladies. I love all of you ladies, and have a beautiful evening and I’ll see you next 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 bflycoaching.com. See you next week.