Month: February 2022

You are listening to the Weight Loss for Successful Women podcast with Shannan Christiansen episode number 126. 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. I have been thinking about this a lot. How we talk to ourselves. We know that we have some negative talk, but I’m not sure that we fully understand what an impact that it has on us, and how all of these thoughts that are guiding our behavior are living in our habit brain. Hmm. But first, can you believe we are almost in March? Do you feel like time is just going so fast? Oh, me too. I am getting super excited because we’re going to this beautiful, secluded cabin for the weekend, and I cannot wait to read, be by the fire and just relax with Paul. We have been going pretty hard this year and it’s always good to get away, especially with my love.

So in today’s show, I want to talk about how I lived in my habit brain, my automatic brain, for most of my life. We all do. It’s how we’re wired. Our brain likes to conserve energy, likes to make everything automatic. You don’t have to think about breathing, thinking. I mean, you don’t really have to think about a lot of things. It just seems to happen automatically. Even sometimes when we’re standing in pantry and we’re eating off our plan, like we’re like, Hey, how did that happen?

See our brain, our Lizzie, is always thinking about our survival and conserving energy. It’s a really important part of what our brain is supposed to do, right? Survival is its number one priority. Our brain is also always seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. Our brain likes to be efficient and feel good, but that’s not the human experience. So this is where the rubber meets the road. And this is where we feel like we are in the river of misery, as one of my teachers likes to call it. We have this old thought or belief, like I can’t lose weight. It’s stored in our habit brain. And then, you know, we’re doing this work, we’re in Transform Boss, we’re taking the free course, and we start to practice new thoughts like I’m learning to lose weight.

Now this is where we’re using our thinking brain, our prefrontal cortex, but it feels hard to practice the new thought. It feels hard to believe something different, because we need more energy for our thinking brain. And we don’t fully believe it because of all the other thoughts in our habit brain. There is a technical term, cognitive dissonance, that’s really what that is. But I like one of my teacher’s terms, the river of misery. Our brain is so complex. So we have this subconscious, our habit automatic part of our brain, this part of our brain that has all our thoughts, memories, lots of data. It filters out information that it deems not useful.

This is important because we have these thoughts and beliefs that are sabotaging our success, but they could be hidden in our habit brain. It’s not that we can’t access them, it’s just they fly through so fast, we’re not even aware. You can walk past a mirror and a thought comes in. Maybe it’s something like, Ooh, you’re looking fat today. Oh, you might not even be aware of it, but the thought is there. This is important because we have this negative thinking and self-talk, and it’s affecting our feelings, the way we think about ourselves, and ultimately the things we do and the outcomes we have.

How we talk to ourselves, what we believe about ourselves causes our results, our outcomes. If we believe we will never lose weight, well that is the outcome we will have. And these thoughts are just sitting there on automatic repeat. I always think of this as like a jukebox and just old records that we just play over and over again. And so we think this thought, I can’t lose weight or weight loss is hard. And then we feel frustrated. And then when we feel frustrated or we feel disappointed or we feel confused or overwhelmed, we don’t take action that serves our best self. We disconnect, we eat off plan, we overeat. And then our outcome is we either stay at the same weight or we gain weight. And we do this over and over again.

So what are you to do? Here are four transformational questions and actions to take. Number one, start to come into awareness. The easiest way is to ask yourself a question like, what am I thinking right now? It is crazy how your brain will answer you. And you might be surprised about what it has to say. This is why I love coaching. Every time my coach asks me a question, I’m always surprised what my brain has to say. Sometimes I’m like whoa, I’m thinking that? So you can do a little self-coaching and bring yourself into awareness by asking yourself, what am I thinking right now?

Number two, decide on purpose what you want to think, what you want to believe. Then number three, practice that new thought throughout the day. You can put it on your phone as a reminder, put post-it notes, you know, it’s just allowing yourself to come into your thinking brain throughout the day and practice that new thought or belief. Now a tip, make sure that the belief is something that you can believe. This is not about believing rainbows and daisies. This is about practicing a thought that is one better than your old thought. So if your old thought was something around, I can’t lose weight, maybe a one better thought is just I’m learning the process of losing weight. And again, that I am and learning, it really is a thought that mostly you can believe. So if you can mostly believe it, it’s a really good thought to practice.

And number four, know that you will be in the river of misery. It does take more energy at first, but every time you practice the new thought, the new belief, you move one step closer to becoming part of your habit brain. You are creating a new belief system to get new outcomes.

And if you need help and want to take this work deeper then take my free course at freebosscourse.com. I will teach you how to get started with this work. So good. Bye for now.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Weight Loss for Successful Women. If you love what you heard today and want to learn more, come on over to bflycoaching.com. See you next week.

You are listening to the Weight Loss for Successful Women podcast with Shannan Christiansen episode number 125. 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. In today’s show I want to talk to you about how this thought “I will start tomorrow” keeps us on the diet rollercoaster. Oh my love, I am so excited, one, 125 episodes. Can you believe it? I know, 125 weeks I’ve been here. Yep. Every week releasing the podcast. And we just finished our February opening. I get so excited about welcoming our new bosses in. I love serving and helping our bosses lose weight and live the life of their dreams.

So I have to tell you my love, it is so cold. I know, it’s so cold here in Arizona. I’m sure all over the country, you’re like Shannan, stop being a wuss. I know, but I’m an Arizona girl, and you know, when it’s 40 and 50 outside, it is cold to me. Sometimes 60s, 70s are cold too. I know. And I love to walk and be outside, but lately I’ve had to put on my gloves and my heavy sweatshirts, and I’m still super cold. I hope wherever you are you’re getting some warmth. That’s what I wish for you. Some sunshine, some Arizona sunshine today.

So let’s talk about this thought, I will start tomorrow. I will be good tomorrow. I will do it tomorrow. Now tomorrow could be tomorrow, or after the holidays, after Valentine’s day, after Easter, after my birthday, after things slow down. When I have more time, when things are less crazy. This comes in many different forms, but it is all BS nonsense my love.

It’s just a way that you’re putting yourself off. You’re giving into the feelings of today. Breaking commitments to yourself and giving into the false pleasure of right now. Instant gratification, over all your dreams, goals, and feeling good about yourself. I know, I understand. I have a human brain too. Right now, your brain might be going well, let me tell you all the reasons why I can’t right now, Shannan, or why I need to wait. I’m here to tell you my love, it’s just Lizzie, your primitive brain, wanting to pull you back into the cave, to stay safe. You might have some fear, some doubt, some worry that you don’t know exactly what to do, that you might fail, but it is all part of this human brain, the human experience, your future self, you know her.

She’s lost all her weight. What would she tell you right now? I love my future self. She has more wisdom. She has achieved my impossible goal. She knows the way. I often lean on her to tell me that it’s going to be okay, that I can figure it out. So when I want to put off the thing until tomorrow, I know that it affects her. It affects my future self. Every time I put myself off, I make it harder for my future self. When you put off following your plan, losing weight, you’re making it harder for your future self.

I have lots of thoughts, doubt, worry, fear. I just don’t make it mean anything has gone wrong. I don’t put myself off. I don’t indulge in the instant gratification to put off my dreams. Right now, as I’m recording this podcast, I didn’t want to do it. It’s Friday night, I wanted to chill out, watch some TV. I had all the reasons that it could wait. I told myself, well, you can do it in the morning. Get up a little earlier.

But it was on my calendar. So, I showed up, honored myself and my calendar, and I’m recording it. And I am loving it too. I will feel better when it’s done. I gave my future self a gift. The gift of recording my podcast, of keeping my commitment. See, when I keep commitments, I build this fire. I build this belief that I am unstoppable. When you honor yourself, your commitments, your belief in yourself, you become unstoppable. That is what my Transform Bosses are – Unstoppable. So my love, stop putting you off.

Here are three tips, our transformational questions and actions, to help you get started. One, become aware of all the “I will start tomorrow” thoughts. They come in lots of different forms. And how they are showing up for you. Number two, make a plan of one to two actions you want to do like make your realistic plan, get more water, more sleep, do reflection work. We will list all of those episodes, our fundamentals, in our show notes. And then number three, decide that you will honor the commitments you make for yourself.

And if you want to learn more about my fundamentals and how to start to lose weight for the very last time, get my free course at freebosscourse.com. That’s F R E E B O S S C O U R S E.com. Ooh, so good 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 want to learn more, come on over to bflycoaching.com. See you next week.

You are listening to the Weight Loss for Successful Women podcast with Shannan Christiansen episode number 124. 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. I’m so excited. If you could see me, I’m cheering. Today is the day, as we release this episode, we are open. Transform Boss Weight Loss is open! I can’t wait to welcome in a whole lot of ladies into Transform Boss Weight Loss. There are women today, February 9th, who are deciding they matter, and they are investing in themselves. It is so powerful to watch. Go to jointransformboss.com to find out all about it.

Now today’s show is about healing your relationship with food. I’ve been doing a lot of research on disordered eating, and I want to first before we get into the episode, explain disordered eating versus eating disorders. An eating disorder as described by Mayo is anorexia, bulimia, and also binge eating disorder. Most eating disorders involve focusing too much on your weight, body shape, and food leading to dangerous eating behaviors. These behaviors can significantly impact your body’s ability to get appropriate nutrition. This requires professional medical intervention and help from doctors and therapists. If you’re struggling with this my love, you can go to nationaleatingdisorders.org to find resources and support.

In this show I want to focus on disordered eating. There are many different characteristics of disordered eating, like frequently dieting, obsessing over body and food, disconnecting from your body’s hunger and fullness cues, and gaining and losing weight over and over again.

Disordered eating has many causes, but I want to focus on how dieting has contributed. When I was on the diet rollercoaster I was either restricting or eating all the things. I would go from eating chicken and salad to pizza, sugar cookies, all the things. I had this mentality of either being on a diet, thinking I was being good, or off a diet, thinking I was being bad.

This on or off, all or nothing thinking, it was a symptom of disordered eating. I had disconnected from my body. I was so focused that my body was not good enough, that I needed to look a certain way or be a certain weight that I was damaging my relationship with myself, my body, and my relationship with food. Even when I was at a low weight, it still was not good enough. I still needed to lose more or get surgery because of loose skin. It never mattered what my weight was. It never did. It never was good enough. When I was on the diet rollercoaster I had so many beliefs on what was healthy food and what was not. My head was full of nonsense, just built up over a lifetime.

All of these were just thoughts and beliefs I had learned over time because of our culture of dieting and obsession with thinness. I did this over my lifetime over and over again. I gained and lost hundreds of pounds, did every diet, pill, and potion, and it left me hopeless and frustrated. I decided that I needed healing. I needed to heal from the inside out.

I needed to heal my relationship with myself, my body and food. I was never going to diet again. I started with my mind because my love, it’s where it all begins. I started finding all of the negative thoughts I had about myself, the food rules, the thoughts about how my body should be. I got coached. Did hours and hours of research.

I developed the Transform Boss Weight Loss fundamentals, and process that I teach my clients today. I started by healing the relationship with myself. Having acceptance, love, forgiveness for myself. I became a watcher of my thoughts, not to judge them, but to become curious. I teach my bosses how to start healing their relationship with themselves, their bodies, and with food to heal from disordered eating. The first tool that I teach is called the realistic food plan. You can go to episode 6 and 106, but this is all about healing our relationship with food. Healing it by allowing yourself to eat all the things. Allowing yourself to watch how you think about food. And then I teach them how to start reconnecting to their bodies, how to feel hunger and fullness, how to begin to accept their bodies and show themselves love, no matter what the number on the scale says.

You can keep being at war with your body, but no one wins my love. This I know for sure. You can keep searching for the next food plan or exercise plan. They don’t work long-term. If you want to lose weight for the last time, love the body you live in, and heal the relationship with yourself, come join us in Transform Boss Weight Loss – go to jointransformboss.com. We’re open until February 15^th, then we’re going to close the doors until June.

Today’s transformational questions and actions are one, if you had to rate your relationship with food, your body, and yourself, what would you rate the relationship? Number two, why did you give yourself that rating? And number three, what would happen if you started to heal those relationships?

I will talk to 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 want to learn more, come on over to bflycoaching.com. See you next week.