Month: July 2022

You are listening to the Weight Loss for Successful Women podcast with Shannan Christiansen episode number 148. 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 my love. I am so happy to be here with you today. I hope you’re having a beautiful summer. It’s kind of monsoon season here. In Arizona, we have a lot of like overcast, lots of humidity. So it’s not my favorite month. I always say don’t come in August or late July because I can deal with hot, but when you add a little humanity into it, woo hoo, it’s horrible. So that’s kind of what, but it’s nice. I like the storms. That’s always fun to see the storms and get a little tiny bit of rain, even though it’s only been kinda, I dunno, spitting a little bit. It’s not full rain, but you know, I’ll take it. I’ll take it.

I’m excited, getting ready, next week, going to the east coast. I have not been there on the east coast for a good bit. So I’m excited. I’m a little nervous with all the travel delays. I know the airlines are really struggling right now. A little nervous, but it will all be good. And I think, you know, we’re going to have a fabulous time in NYC and excited to just kind of be for a couple of days and rest and relax with my husband. Right. So good.

So today, I want to really get into how to start. And I thought about this episode because for most women who are listening to me, you probably have been on the diet rollercoaster for a really long time, anywhere from 5, 10, 15, you know, 30, 40, 50 years. And we’ve started a lot, failed a lot. You know, I was on the diet rollercoaster for almost 38 years.

I think about that, 38 years of looking for the next quick fix and having some success along the way. I’d lose weight and then eventually gain it back. I always was hopeful. I do have to say that, you know, I know so many of you still, there’s some piece of you that is hopeful. And I know for some of you, you’re just so tired of it.

I remember when I was getting ready to go back to the last kind of quick fix that I did. I remember when I decided I wasn’t going to diet anymore and that I had had enough, it was a pretty monumental decision and it came from frustration. But it also came from hope. I just knew there had to be a different way. And I knew that it had to do something with my mind.

You know, I always loved self-help, I’ve loved self-help for as long as I can remember, I’ve watched all the great teachers and thought leaders. I’ve loved them all and learned something from them all. And I just knew that somehow that was tied to weight loss. And I knew too, that losing weight and getting off the diet roller coaster and really losing it for the last time, it was going to be a process that was one, going to be really slow.

And two, it was going to be filled with success and failure. You know my loves, I think wherever you’re at in this journey, whether you have lost some weight, whether you are upset because you’re the heaviest you’ve ever been, whether you are on a plateau, whether you have lost all your weight and you’re in maintenance, I just want to tell you that to really get off the diet rollercoaster and to start this journey of losing the mental and physical weight for the very last time, it starts with this process of believing new things. Starting to believe that the way to get off this diet roller coaster is really all within you.

It is two pieces. It is healing your relationship with food and healing your relationship with yourself. It has to do with mindset change and it has to do with reconnection to your body. You know, I tell my ladies all the time in Transform Boss, our bodies are miracles, every part of our bodies are miracles. And when you can start to, you know, reconnect with yourself and reconnect with your body and you can start to feel your natural hunger and fullness cues, when you can allow negative emotion and not have to buffer it away, that that becomes the magic my love. I know we’ve been searching for the magical pill, potion, diet, but it’s not in there. It’s within you.

And you know, if you’ve been thinking, okay, I really want to start, or I want to continue this journey of losing weight for the last time, I want to give you some reasons why it can feel hard to start this journey. I think number one, we, as women, have learned to put ourselves off and we do this because two things I think. One, we have this feeling that we need to be perfect, that we need to do it all, that we need to do 52 things. You know, then our brain starts to tell us it’s complicated.

And then two, we start feeling overwhelmed. And if you’re a woman, you probably already feel overwhelmed. You have all the things, all the responsibilities and all the different roles. And so this thought of learning how to heal the relationship with yourself and heal the relationship with food, it can start to feel overwhelming. And then add on that you like to be perfect, you want to do it perfectly, you just can continue to put yourself off. You can keep pushing “the start date.”

And number two, you start, but you do too much, so you try to do all the things. You know, I’m going to meal prep, I’m gonna eat this diet food. I’m going to exercise every single day. I’m going to journal. I’m going to meditate. I’m going to read and listen and learn. And I don’t know, all the things my love. I think about it, if you’ve ever read that like 75 Hard, it’s the new quick fix out there. I don’t know. There’s like all these different things. I’m like, holy moly. So that’s what I’m talking about. You start, but you do too much. So you burn out. And this is another thing. Your body is a very delicate thing.

And what I mean by that is there’s a lot of functions, a lot of things, and when you do too many changes to your body at once, it doesn’t know what’s going on. And so it kind of goes into survival mode. And so then you get frustrated because your body’s not responding like how you want it to respond. And so again, you start, but you do too much.

Now there’s a third way. And this is how I think you start your journey to losing weight for the last time. You start really slowly. I have a bunch of new ladies who are in Transform Boss Weight Loss, and I take them through this 21-day challenge. And I know at first they just want to jump in, so many of them, and they want to do all the things.

And I start them out really slowly. I, you know, they have these very, you know, 5 minute to 10 minute things that they have to do every day. And it’s very simplistic. And you know, I’ve even had some of them like, wait, this is it? Like, trust me, trust me. This is what I always ask them to do is just trust the process.

It is so important as you start to lose weight for the last time that you start slowly and that you understand that you’re not going to do any of it perfectly. And you pick one thing. One thing. So for all of my new bosses, they’re doing the challenge. They’ve chosen one thing to focus on, and they’re doing this 21-day challenge in Transform Boss Weight Loss. Now, if you’re not in Transform Boss Weight Loss, pick one of my basics. I have four of them: realistic plan, body basics, which is like sleep and water, I have reflection work, which is all of the thought cycle and thought work. And then your hunger and fullness. Pick one, not all four. Just pick one.

And we’ll put it in the show notes so you can go in and see some of the basics. But you just start with one. This is so important because you will want to do all of them. And again, when I was talking about starting and talking about the first and the second thing, whether you put yourself off or you do too much, again, this, the third way that I’m teaching you now, is so that you can start. Your brain is going to resist the slowness, because it’s different than what you’ve done before. You’re going to have all these thoughts around, it’s not enough. I need to do more. How am I going to lose weight? But I promise you this, from what I know, from what I’ve experienced, what I’ve seen with my clients, the ladies who go slowly, they pick a basic, they start slowly and then they start failing, they start learning. They get community support. They start to make small up levels of small changes. Those are the ladies that have the most success.

You know my love. We want the success and we want it so quickly. It’s how we’re wired. We just need to know that, you know, this process of starting with one thing, doing it, and then slowly upleveling, it is everything. Now, what is an uplevel? An uplevel is just where you make one minor change. So for example, you leave a bite on your plate. You, you know, you make your realistic plan, but you know, this week you’re only doing it two days out of the seven. And then next week, you’re going to add in another day, or, you know, you’re going to check in with your hunger and fullness one meal a day, and then maybe next week you’re gonna do one meal, and a snack.

Upleveling is just making a minor change. To start to lose weight for the last time you have to start slowly. You have to do it imperfectly. You have to have community support. And you have to slowly uplevel. And you know, if you really want to do this, I will say this over and over and over again, you have to do it slowly. You have to change your mindset, again, what you believe along the way. Because you are capable of learning new things, of creating new habits. Our brain is amazing. We just can’t do it all at once. So this old, you know, adage that the tortoise beats the hare, well my love, every single time.

If you want to take this work deeper, take my free course at freebosscourse.com. All right, my love. Talk to you next week. 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 147. 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 my love. So happy to be here with you today. So excited, I have had the most fun week. So as I’m recording this, we just wrapped up the challenge, our launch we opened, and it was so fun. I love all the challenge groups, but we just had so many amazing women. We have had so many women join Transform Boss Weight Loss, and you know, my team and I we’ve been so excited and we of course always think about our women and want the very best for them.

And it’s just exciting to watch women learn that there is a different way. I think for so long, I just was wrapped up in diet culture. It was almost my little blanket and I was wrapped up in it and it was just, Ooh, it was hot in there. It was causing me a lot of grief. I have to tell you, right? I mean, this diet rollercoaster of being on a diet, being off a diet, wondering what I should eat, what I shouldn’t eat. And when I see so many women and I hear their stories, I just want to send all of you ladies love today because that’s where it starts.

Honestly, it’s where it all begins. And it’s just this love for yourself, acceptance for yourself. And it’s this process of healing your relationship with food, with yourself, and it is the absolute best work. So I have to say to all my challenge ladies, all my new bosses, I love you ladies. And I’m really excited to watch your journey.

So I have to tell you, ladies, I am getting excited though. Paul and I, we are headed to New York City next week. I’m going out east for a work trip, and so we’re going to take the train up to New York and I’m just excited about it. We haven’t been to New York City, you know, since pre-pandemic it’s been, I dunno, maybe even four years, I think. And I’m just excited to get up there, feel a little buzz of the city. We’re going to go see a play and just walk around Central Park and just hang out and have fun, eat some good food. New York always delivers on that, for sure. So getting excited. You know ladies, rest, recovery, it’s so important and I am for sure going to spend those days resting and recovering and having fun.

And I know we need more fun in our lives ladies, but it’s the everyday fun, it’s, you know, I think about this, especially with Transform Bosses, you know, just creating this life that has a lot of pleasure, that has a lot of fun. We always try to make things fun in Transform Boss, because weight loss has been so hard and heavy, and it is deep, but fun.

It just has to be a part of all the things we do. How can we make it fun? How can we make it simple? So today’s episode, I think it’s going to be a fun one for sure. We did a book club back in, I want to say it was in June I think, I know time goes so fast. I barely can remember, but I’m pretty sure it was in June in Transform Boss Weight Loss. So we do book clubs a few times a year and we did this book, it’s called Soundtracks and the author is Jon Acuff. He’s written several books, and in Transform Boss Weight Loss, we love him. We do a couple of his books and this was the first time we ever did Soundtracks.

And it was really, you know, I really enjoyed the book. It was really, when I think about this book, it really reinforced so much of what I taught. You know, I told my ladies, I’m like, oh my goodness, I feel like he’s in my brain because, you know, as I was reading the book for the first time, just earlier, not even a couple months ago, I was like, whoa, like I just felt like we were on the same wavelength, but I love the way that he teaches. I love the examples that he gives. And he’s super funny. I highly recommend his book.

But I want to share with you five concepts that he talks about in the book. But also I just want to kind of relate them to weight loss and to the things that I teach. Number one, the whole book, it’s called Soundtracks and what he means by that is your thoughts. I know it all comes back to your thoughts ladies. Part of my brain is always like, oh, I wish it was something different, but yeah, it’s our thoughts. So Jon describes our thoughts as soundtracks. And I like to think of this and how I teach it is it’s like a jukebox, right? But it had all these records, right? All of these soundtracks. And that’s kind of how your brain is. You have all of these different soundtracks. These records that have just been playing in the background.

I love what he said. He said, they’re secretly shaping your life. This is important because I, for some so long myself, I was thinking about, you know, when I was on the diet rollercoaster, I really looked at all the things outside of me. I blamed my genetics, my mother. I always told myself, I didn’t have enough time. I was always looking for an external way to lose weight, you know, through a diet plan or an exercise plan. And it really was never any of that. It was always the way that I was thinking about it. It was these soundtracks that were playing in the back of my brain, and they are playing in the background.

You know, part of our brain is our automatic brain. It is our habit brain, and it stores so many of our memories, our beliefs. And a belief is just a thought on repeat. So whenever you have a thought and you think it over and over, and you build evidence for it, it becomes a belief. And so you have all of these beliefs that are just playing in the back. And what happens is, as I teach, you have a thought, and then it causes a feeling in your body, and then you do, or you don’t do something. And really understanding that this is what’s shaping your life. We think it’s out of our control, but the one thing I’ve learned, I don’t control anyone else. I know, I wish I did, but I don’t.

But the one thing that I do control is the way that I think about something. And your awareness as you’re losing weight for the last time is so important. You starting to become aware of these thoughts that are just playing in the back of your brain. Thoughts like you’ll never lose weight, you’re always going to fail. Look at your mother, look at your genetics. Look at your health problems. These thoughts are causing feelings in your body, like frustration, disappointment. And when you feel that way, you end up in the pantry, you end up overeating. You make a plan for the day and then suddenly you’re eating something you didn’t want to eat.

So just understanding that you have these well, as Jon says soundtracks, and they are secretly shaping your life. Number two, broken soundtracks, I call them thought errors. But these are just these thoughts that we have, and we believe them. We think they’re true, but I just want to offer this to you. This is something that my teacher, Brooke, she said when I very first was learning from her and it has stuck with me ever since. Just because you have a thought does not make it true. I know, right? So you have these thoughts, these beliefs that have just been percolating in your brain. And so many of them are just broken soundtracks. They’re just thought errors. They’re not the truth. They don’t serve you. And so understanding and challenging those thoughts. I love this.

You know, I teach ladies talk to yourself more than you listen, because you’re going to have these thoughts. They’re not going to go away. You know, I’ll tell you, they’re just not, you’re always going to have some whisper of some old broken soundtrack, of some old thought error, but when it comes, you just replace it with, okay love, we got this, or you’re one-better thought, your new thought that you want to practice and you just do it over and over again. I talk to myself all the time in my brain and sometimes out loud. And I replace these old broken soundtracks with new beliefs, new thoughts.

Number three, this is my favorite actually. So I do reflection work every morning where I just dump out my brain and I just, you know, go through my thoughts and I pick a thought and I pick a broken soundtrack and then I do a thought cycle. And then I replace the thought. But I love the way that Jon has these three simple questions. So if you don’t know what reflection work is, first go back to episode 19 at bflycoaching.com/19. Or you can just search wherever you listen to podcasts and find episode 19, so you know what reflection work is. I teach it in that episode.

But there are three simple questions to ask and to challenge your broken soundtrack. Here are the three questions and I love it. Is it true? Is it helpful? Is it kind? So you dump out your thoughts you’ve done about your brain on a piece of paper, and there is the thought that you’re having is I’m just going to fail again at weight loss. Then you just ask, is it true? Well, I don’t know. You might not know yet. Right? So, okay. We’ll leave that. Is it helpful to think I can’t lose weight? I don’t think it’s helpful. How’s that helpful? It’s not helpful. It just keeps you feeling discouraged and disappointment. But this last question is everything. Is it kind? It’s not kind to think that. It’s not kind to, you know, look at your journey and judge it.

And you know, I failed so many times in weight loss until I didn’t. And all of those times, all of the diets I tried, everything led me to search out the process that I have today. I wouldn’t change any of it. And so really challenging these broken soundtracks, these thought errors that you have, and you can do it with these three simple questions. I love it. It’s my favorite part of the book by Jon. Is it true? Is it helpful? Is it kind?

Number four, borrow from the best. I love this too. You want to start to practice new thoughts, new beliefs, and it’s okay to borrow from others. I love this thought, everything is for me. I heard it many, many years ago and I have practiced it probably five years now. I just love this thought. One of the thoughts that Jon has is pivot don’t panic. And I love that thought. So anytime you feel like, oh, I just made a mistake or had a failure or overate, pivot don’t panic. I like to call it the next best action. That’s how I teach it. But I do like this thought about pivoting and not panicking, because sometimes you’re going to overeat. Sometimes you’re going to have challenges. Sometimes you’re going to find that you want to give up on yourself. And all you need to do is take the next best action, pivot, don’t panic.

Here are some other thoughts that you can borrow as you’re starting your journey or continuing your journey to lose weight for the last time. I’m learning how to heal my relationship with food. My journey, my time. That’s from our favorite Nancy Castelli. Light and easy. This is from Jon, but I love this one because my brain loves to go to the hard. So just asking or replacing with, oh, this is fun, this is simple. I got this. So good.

And number five, absolutes are not true. I love this too, because you know, we talk in absolutes a lot. Like everything is going wrong. Nothing is going my way. I always fail. Nothing ever works out. And absolutes are just not true. Really. Nothing is 100% always going to be that way. It’s just not. And so when you talk in absolutes, it’s just a trigger to realize that that could be a broken soundtrack, and it’s a great way to catch yourself and then practice that new one better thought. Ladies, I highly recommend the book Soundtracks from Jon Acuff. I think it really does help in this journey to losing weight for the last time.

Because it starts with identifying and becoming aware of all of those broken soundtracks and replacing them with new one-better thoughts. See love, when you believe something different, you feel something different, and then you do something different. If you keep thinking the same things, you’re going to keep feeling the same way, and keep doing the same thing. We all know the definition of insanity is just doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

This is what I loved about the challenge ladies, and the ladies who are newer to this work. It’s understanding that there is a different way. There’s a different way than being on the diet rollercoaster. If you want to go deeper in this work my love take my free course. I talk about my basics. Go to freebosscourse.com. And subscribe to this podcast every week in your library. So when you subscribe or you hit the plus button, I’ll be right there, right there for you on Wednesday morning.

All right, my love. 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 146. 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 my love. So happy to be here with you today. My love we are in the thick of the challenge. I love the seven-day free challenges. They are so fun. It’s so fun to meet new ladies and watch them experience this work for the first time and to get some hope again. And we are open. Yes, Transform Boss Weight Loss is open. So if you’re listening to this, we are open this week. We are open until July 16^th. So fun. I can’t wait to welcome all the new ladies in. You know, Transform Boss Weight Loss is a really comprehensive program with a full weight loss course, coaching, support, community. There’s just so many different facets. If you want to learn more about it, go to jointransformboss.com. It is the best weight loss program on the planet. I know this. I love it so much.

So something you might be noticing if you’re listening this week is that we’ve put some of the challenge teachings on the podcast. So there are some bonuses on the podcast that are going to expire on Sunday. So you want to listen to them this week. So if you’re in the challenge it’s great for replays. If you’re not in the challenge, it’s just a way to experience a little bit of the challenge. Now there’s other facets to the challenge. And then of course, we’re not going to put on Tuesday nights challenge teaching because it’s all around coaching and we’re going to do some coaching so we won’t put that episode.

But Ooh, what a bonus this week ladies. I love the challenge this week. I just can’t even barely sleep. I want to sleep cause I want to get rested, but I tell you, I get so excited. I love interacting in the challenge Facebook private group. Like it’s just so fun. I love welcoming in all the new ladies to Transform Boss Weight Loss. Oh, my loves it is the best.

So I was talking to my team and talking about, you know, they’re so excited because they too love, you know, showing women that there’s a different way and that they can change their lives and become the hero of their own story and take back their power and control. So today I just want to talk a little bit about the why of weight loss. Now my very first episode of the podcast is all about compelling reason and why, but I want to give a little different spin and tell you a little story today. We have the why, right? If I asked, why do you want to lose weight, you could tell me all the reasons.

We have external reasons, internal reasons. We want to feel better in our clothes. Maybe you want to ride a roller coaster, or you want that seatbelt to click on an airplane. Maybe you just want to feel better, look better, feel healthy. And then too, we have some internal, you know, reasons where we want to feel better about ourselves. And it is so important. My why has gotten me through so many times where I wanted to quit, where I wanted to give up and I had to keep reminding, even to this day, I write down my why’s. Like, why do I want to do the things right? Why do I want to have a business? Why do I want to keep showing up for certain things aspects of my life? And it’s important because there are times where you want to give up, where you just want to stay comfortable. And so really understanding your why is so important.

Now, it’s also important to understand the complete picture of your why, because what I found when I was losing weight and I was going through the process, my brain was setting old diet, old socialized expectations that were not really meeting me where I was at. So I’ll give you an example of this. So way before this work, I had lost some weight and I was feeling pretty good, and I had this goal that I wanted to wear a bathing suit. And I have this picture in my mind. And this picture in my mind was, again, a socialized picture, you know ladies, perfect body running down the beach, you know.

And so I had lost some weight, I was feeling so good and went on vacation with my husband, and we went zip lining and all of these things. And then, you know, I saw this picture of myself in the bathing suit, and my love, all of these negative thoughts came in like, oh my gosh, look at the loose skin. Look at your arms. You know, all of these things. Because I had this beautiful why of wanting to feel confident in my bathing suit, and then I saw a picture and it just derailed me. I remember looking at it and just thinking, what does it even matter? Why do I even want to lose weight? And what happened is I slowly started to regain the weight that I had lost. I started sabotaging my success.

Again, it started with this simple reason why I wanted to lose weight, but I had not changed my thinking. Because I was working with a nutritionist at the time and I was just focused on the food, and I wasn’t evolving my thought process. I still had this idea of who I was going to be suddenly miraculously turn into, I don’t know, 120-pound photoshop model, and ladies it’s, we’re socialized. We see this all of the time.

And then also what happened, and I think this happens for many of us, we set this kind of imaginary finish line of when I get there, it will be better. When I lose my weight it will be amazing. It will be great. And then when we get there, it’s just not good enough. How many times have you, as you’re on this diet roller coaster, you have started to regain your weight because there are these sneaky little thoughts that it’s still not good enough. And then you start shoulding, S H O U L D I N G yourself. And you start telling yourself that you should be doing this. You should be doing that. And again, it’s just this thought looping that we’re going to feel better when we get there.

We get there, and then we move the finish line because it’s still not good enough. This work of evolving our mindset, evolving our thinking is so important. Whenever you have this thought that you will feel better, it will be better when I lose this weight, it will, you know, everything will change or I will feel better then, I just want you to know that it’s available to you now.

I had to keep, as I was losing my weight for the last time, evolving my thinking and my why. I wanted to lose weight because of many reasons. I wanted to have a healthy, free body. I wanted to show women that you could lose it and keep it off without dieting. I had all the external and internal reasons. To lose weight for the very last time I had to evolve my why and really understand the core of what I wanted. I wanted to live in a body that felt free. I wanted to feel healthy and be able to move my body. I wanted to stop, one of the reasons. I didn’t want to think about food all the time. I wanted to feel more confident and better about myself.

I wanted to fall in love with my body. I wanted all of it, the stretch marks, the loose skin, all of it. I wanted to love the body that I was in. It ultimately was such an important why for me and I wanted to evolve my thinking. As I was losing the weight, I continually got coached. I continually worked on my thinking and my beliefs. That is how I learned to lose weight for the last time. I learned how to love myself through the process of losing weight. And I started to enjoy the process. And I knew that it would not be better there when I lost all of it than it was back then.

So just understand that today, everything is available. Today, you can feel better about yourself today. You can love the process of losing weight. I learned how to lose weight in a way that I could always do. And my why’s, they keep evolving as do I. Your why, the reason, the thing that keeps you moving forward, is important because you will want to give up. There are times where you won’t want to invest in yourself. You’ll want to stay comfortable.

You’ll want to not do the thing. But your why can keep you moving forward. And as your thinking is changing, as it’s evolving, as you’re learning to believe new things about yourself, it’s just the package deal. Your why with your new beliefs is how you lose weight for the very last time. If you want to lose weight for the last time, you have to know all of the reasons, learn to love yourself through the process and learn how to believe different things about yourself.

And if you want the support, the tools, then come join us in Transform Boss Weight Loss. We are open until Saturday and I cannot wait to be your coach. Go to jointransformboss.com. I cannot wait. All right, 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 the Shannan Christiansen. Episode number 145! 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! So happy to be here with you today.

We have a special guest co-host today with me, Transform Boss Weight Loss, coach Jen Taylor. I love her. And I’m so excited that she’s with me today. We have a good topic today. I mean, they’re all good. They are, but this one I really love. So if you are a woman, you want to listen to this for sure,

because we’re going to talk all the things about how we carry so much shame and guilt for showing up for ourselves for having dreams, for having goals. So I cannot wait episode 145. You know, we’re five episodes from 150. I can’t believe it. We’re going to do a little something special at episode 150. We also, we have so much fun stuff going on and transform boss,

weight loss. We have our Transform Boss seven day challenge. So if you are not in it, you want to get in it and go to bflycoaching.com/me just me register for that. It’s seven days of everyday live with me, replays daily, simple challenges, daily videos. I really teach the basics of how to start your journey to losing weight for the last time.

And so the challenges are fun, supportive. I think ladies just, they start to find that they can do this so good. So you want to do that. And then of course, mark your calendars, July 12th, we open July 12th through the 16th. Transform Boss, weight loss will be open. We’re open for five days. So if you want to come and join us in our membership community and just basically transform your life and weight,

you want to eat. You want to go to jointransformboss.com. That’s where you want to go. July 12th through 16th. So let’s get into today’s episode. Jen has joined me and we are going to really get into this challenge that I believe that women have. I think it comes from many different things. The way that we were brought up, what we witnessed,

the examples that we have in our lives, the women that came before us, our mothers, aunts, and grandmothers, even teachers, we have learned in a nutshell that we need to put everyone before ourselves as a mother, sister, wife, daughter, friend, that all the folks come before us. And what happens is that we translate that into not showing up for ourselves and not taking care of ourselves,

not having dreams, not having goals. And then when we start to show up for ourselves, right, because we get little sparks of hope that we’re going to do something for ourselves. We start to have a lot of shame and a lot of guilt, whether you are a mother or you’re not, you have some role in your life, whether it’s,

again, friend, aunt, daughter, sister, employee, even our bosses, right. Have more of a role in our lives than we do. And so today we just want to kind of talk about it and then leave you with a couple of tips of how to start to dream and how to start to show up for yourself before I go any further,

I of course want to bring on Jay. She is kind of a podcast pro. Now she’s been on here a few times and she’s amazing, but Jen, for all of our new ladies, give a little intro to yourself and a little bit about your journey and where you’re at now. Good morning, ladies. My name is Jen Taylor and I live in Utah.

I am a wife and a mom to two boys. So we’re into baseball, all the things right now, a little bit about my journey is, you know, I actually, I mean, I struggled with my weight loss probably started my college years, but then I had lost my weight and I had a pretty significant life event happen. And I just allowed it to,

you know, I kind of lost my footing. I didn’t have this work. I didn’t know how to manage my mindset. And it just sent me down this spiral and I really used, you know, food probably to help buffer through that, to help me get through that, that event as I was working through it. And thankfully I came into this work in 2020,

believe it or not, I, that always blows my mind to think about the timing of that. This work is just incredible to be able to be aware. And of course it’s always a work in progress, but just managing your mindset, having that awareness has been everything for me. Yeah. I, you know, I love it, Jen and Jen is a senior weight loss coach was transformed by us and she helps and serves ladies.

Right? And I think that this is a common theme. Jen is the one who wanted to do this podcast. She recommended it to me because you know, with our clients and with our students, as we’re working with them, they have this difficult time even thinking about a dream. Like what do I even dream? You know, when we’re kids,

right. I think of my grandbabies. They dream all the time. As we go through high school, we start to have goals and we want to achieve this, get married or not get married, have children or not have a career or not. Right. We have all of these things that we are thinking about. And then I think what happens throughout this is that once we kind of settle into whatever our path is in this life,

in our twenties and early thirties, we just think, okay, this is it. And then we start putting our dreams and goals kind of to the side. And it happens slowly. Especially we get busy with our daily lives and having these thoughts like, Hey, I’m just trying to survive. Right. I’m just trying to like do the things and survive in this world and have a career or support my family or you know,

all the different things that we do as women. And so we stopped dreaming. We teach a lot about dreaming and having goals and transform boss and women always. I mean, I would say for the most part really struggle with, well, what do I want? And what do I like? And you know, what makes me happy? What brings me joy?

So often I think that this is one of the reasons that contributes to carrying extra weight. Because when you are not dreaming, you don’t have these goals for yourself. You’re not doing things for yourself. You’re not showing up for yourself. There’s something inside of you that you’re not okay with that. And I always call it the little girl inside of us.

She’s like, Hey, I have these dreams, I have these things. And so what we do is we push her down with food, with cupcakes and chips and pizza and all the things, because we have this fear, shame, guilt around having dreams. I know I struggled with this a lot. You know, I think about when I was a single mom,

I struggled with thinking about myself. You know, I was just trying to provide for my son and raise my son. And the last thing I could even think about was me. And when I did things for myself, I remember even just like having a weekend where he’d go camping with my parents and I would have guilt thinking, well, I should be there.

I should be there with him. I’m going to miss out on something. I’m not going to be the mom that I need to be. So anytime that I would try to do something for myself, I would just have so much shame around it. So Jen, I’d love to hear from you. When you think about, you know, your mom,

wife, daughter, sister, friend, you have a career, all of the things. Tell us a little bit about how shame and guilt have shown up in your dreams. Has there been a time where you stopped dreaming and having goals and how did you kind of like kick start that back again? Yeah. As you were during your experience, I was like,

yes, yes, yes. I have a husband who travels for work. And so a lot of times the responsibility is on me during the week to get things done. And I found myself for a long time where, you know, I would feel exhausted from just doing the daily tasks and I would go take some time for a massage or even just doing nothing.

Right. Just carving out time. Like you said, the kids are off at a friend’s or a family members. And then I would, I would just feel so much guilt and shame that I should be with them right now. I’m missing out. They’re going to remember this forever and think I’m a horrible mom and that I don’t care about them. I felt exhausted.

I would take the time. But then guilt and shame would just creep in. I listened to a lot of different influences. You being one of them, Shannon. And you know, you hear all of different inputs from ladies who have begin to dream again, who have begun to show up for themselves. And it’s like, okay. Yes, I do deserve that too.

And that little girl that you talk about inside of you, like, I love that visual because that is what it is. Right. I giggled a little, as you said, my grandbabies have all these dreams because my boys are the same way. They throw out the craziest, this is what I want to do when I grow up. And somewhere along the way,

we just lose that. We think that we have to fall into a certain role and feel certain shoes and that we no longer get to keep discovering and rediscovering ourselves. And I think that’s where we get stuck. You know, I found that when I stopped dreaming, that’s when I was just going through the motions of life. It just felt like that hamster wheel.

All right, let’s just make it through tonight so I can wake up tomorrow and do it again for me when I started slowly like dreaming for myself again, or showing up for myself, it just ignites something inside of me. And I start to think, you know, what if, like, what if I did this? What is possible? I love that.

Jen. Where do you think you learned that from? Like, when you think about like, go back to that time and space where, you know, you weren’t dreaming, everything was about family, kids, you know, all of the things, maybe you weren’t taking care of yourself in the way that you wanted to. Why do you think that happened?

I think there are many influences. I think that a lot of it stems from just women in my life. I’ve seen them put others before themselves, not to say that they haven’t shown up for themselves, but they’ve put themselves last on the list because to them, they also learned that if you can make others happy, if you can say yes all the time and do all the things that is how it’s supposed to be.

And almost a sense of, I found myself tying my, my worth and my value to that prove that I can do this. Then that creates my worth and my value. Ah, Jan, I think that’s so powerful. Right. You know, when you say that it’s right, we tie our worth and value to this being perfection, right. Being the perfect mom,

being the perfect wife, the perfect daughter. And we find ourselves in this competition. Right. And I think this shows up even more now. I think even then when I was a young mother, I think of, you know, social media and all of the things. And I think it builds up to this pressure. I remember feeling this, you know,

when I was a young mother, you know, I was a single mother and I didn’t want my son to not have things that other kids had who had both parents. And so I even put more pressure on myself to do all the things. And I remember doing extraordinary parties or making sure he had a school project that it was over the top, just putting this pressure on myself for things that at the end of the day,

really had nothing to do with my worth or value. I was always worthy. I was always doing the best that I could. And you know, I think that this competition comes into play as women. I think, you know, there’s some societal pressures and things that play in there that kind of pit us against each other. It’s one of the things that I love about transformed boss,

weight loss, right? Is this really supportive community of women where no one’s competing and no one trying to outdo the other. But when I think of my life, I have done that. I have competed even sometimes unknowingly where, you know, I see someone and I want to be like them and it doesn’t even have to be a negative thing. But what it does is puts this extraordinary pressure on us as women to be perfect.

What happens is when we’re trying to be perfect at all these external things, our internal life really suffers. And I think we start living lives that we don’t even recognize. Yeah. I think that’s just it. Right. You put on the happy face, but internally you’re just like slowly dying inside. Like when you were saying about Shannon, I just remembered even Jake,

my oldest, I struggled with postpartum after I had him and I had this like crazy pressure on myself to even just keep the toys picked up because my house needed to look a certain way. And I just remember that internal feeling of, I’ve got to show up this way as a mom and I look back and how silly, like he’s a kid, of course toys will be out all day long,

you know? And that is just think the beginning for me of where that started to stem, that like expectation that I put on myself to be a certain way to feel valued by others. Yeah. You know, I think probably every woman who’s listening right. As they listen to this can have their own stories, right. Stories about how they have wanted to be the perfect,

whether it’s employee, you know, mom, wife, spouse, partner, friend, daughter, all the roles that we play and perfectionism doesn’t really exist because there’s no perfect stick, right? There’s no like a perfect meter out there. Right. It’s all interpretation. And it’s just a way that we, I think keep ourselves stuck and we sabotage our own selves and we keep ourselves really small.

You know, I think about, we had this call last night, this feelings, workshop and transform boss, weight loss, and Jen was giving this example. We either contract where we go inward and we kind of shut down or we expand. And I think about this even more than feelings, just in how we show up for ourselves. For most many,

many years, many years of my life, I was contracted. I wanted to stay small. I wanted to not make too much of a ruckus, not be an inconvenience, make everyone happy, put on the smiley face. And all that did was really keep me small. And now I think even over the last few years I have just really expanded.

I have really come out of my shell. I have been vulnerable. I share my challenges with other women. I share how I’m feeling. I share my imperfections. And I tell you, I feel so authentic having dreams and goals and showing up for myself and taking care of my mind and my body. My spirit has actually helped me. I’m a better wife,

a better mother, a better boss, a better employee, a better friend, a better daughter. I’m so much better in all of my lives because I’ve expanded, but we have this false thought that if we expand, if we go out there and we take time for ourselves that actually others in our lives, you know, they will suffer. But I just want to challenge that because I think when you show up for yourself,

when you start to take care of yourself and take care of your body and start taking care of your mind and your inner life, that actually you become more of your truer, authentic self, and you have more joy, more happiness, and you show more love to other folks. I could not agree more that when I’m dreaming that I am making and keeping commitments to myself,

I feel my most authentic. And then everybody else around me gets that. You know, I was thinking when we were talking, we say this phrase and transform a lot, but I love it because we do, we think it has to be, or it’s this way or this way. But the truth is, is that you can show up for yourself.

You can dream and you can show up for the others and you show up even better. I think that when we, I know for myself, when I choose to show up for me, whatever that looks like, maybe it’s five minutes, one day or an hour, the next right. But whatever that looks like, I think the way that we choose to show up for ourselves teaches others what to expect from us.

Right? We let them know this is what I’m available for it. This is what to expect from me. If we are just a yes person and saying yes to everything, that’s what they will expect of us. But if we can say no, and we need to, if we can say, you know, I’m going to take a half an hour for myself,

then it just becomes the new normal. And they know how we show up for ourselves. I love that Jen, because I think we consistently want others. You know, we have these thoughts that we want others to treat us really well. But we lead the example in that. I just want all of you who are listening to this, if you don’t love yourself,

if you aren’t taking care of yourself, you’re not taking care of your mind, your body, your spirit, that’s the example. You’re showing others in your life. And so when you expect them to do the work that you’re not even doing, that’s just where the rub comes in, leading and showing example, by caring for yourself, by showing up for yourself,

you’re teaching that to the other folks around you. I love that you brought up this concept and it is a concept for women. I tell you about saying no. You know, I remember when I first was dipping my toe in it. Cause I used to say yes to everything and do everything no matter whatever was asked of me. And as I kind of started to do this,

I realized that again, I can do it in a way with love. I can do it in a way with compromise, right? There’s some times where someone wants something of me and I’m like, oh, I can’t do that, but I can do this. Right. And there’s a way to think of it where you don’t have to forget yourself because when you’re doing things out of this,

I’m saying yes, but I don’t really want to do it. Energy. It’s resentful. You show up, not as your best self. Everything I do now is from yes. Energy with love. And I show up with love because I want to do it. When I say yes, I’m all in. And it feels so good to me, to this part of being women and putting ourselves last.

We just really have to just start to say no to that. We just to start to say, you know what? I’m worthy. I deserve this. I deserve to show up. I deserve to dream. I deserve to have goals. I have this beautiful life ahead of me. And this does not matter what age you are. I think, you know,

I’m going to speak as a woman who is now in her fifties. I have dreams and goals for 50 years to come because I have a whole life. And I don’t want to stop living when you stop living like so many things suffer. But when you have dreams and when you have goals and when you are taking care of, you know, all parts of yourself,

including your inner life, including your mind, everything feels better. And when you live a life that is authentic, that feels like the life that you want to live. When you start to ask yourself, Hey, you know, what do I like to do? So I want to give a few tips. And then I’m going to ask Jen to give a few tips.

But the first one I would say my love is to look at your life and just start to ask yourself the question. What do I want? What do I like doing? What do I, when I’m doing it, time just flies by because it brings me a lot of joy. Now ask this of yourself, not what your kids like to do,

or your spouse or partner. Like, what do you like to do? What brings you joy? And if your brain is like, I don’t know, then go out the second part of this and just start trying things. I mean, there’s a million dreams out there. My loves, there’s so many things to do. You have so many talents and so many capabilities.

And when you start to see what you like to do, your mind starts to get busy. See we overeat for many reasons, but one of them is we don’t have a life that has joy. It has happiness. We’re not using our capabilities and our talents. And so we’re bored. Netflix doesn’t do it right? And so we turn to food.

But when we can turn that the other way, when we can start to think of what we want to do, when we start to be a part of a community and we have that support, my love, it is just every thing. So one, ask yourself these important questions too. And that’s keeping commitments to yourself. I know that we can be afraid to make a commitment to ourselves because we’ve broken them so many times.

But I want to offer to you that you making a commitment to yourself, that you starting to show up for yourself and keeping that commitment. You will start to feel unstoppable. You will start to feel like, whoa, I really got this. And it starts by making a small symbol commitment, baby steps, right? You want to do one step at a time.

You don’t want to do all the things. You don’t have to be perfect, but one single step forward. So Jen, what tips would you have for the ladies? You know, a couple of things that popped in my mind were start being aware of the expectations that you have for yourself or that you think others have of you really be aware of that.

And then just take note of really what the truth is, right? Who do you want to be? And how do you want to show up? Because you know, the way that you need to show up as for you, not what you think others expect of you or how you should show up and just start being aware of your yeses. Are you saying yes,

because you truly want to do something or are you saying yes, because you feel obligated and it’s leading you down that hamster wheel. There’s going to be times that you need to do things. You just don’t feel like doing that’s okay. That’s just life. But there’s a lot of things that we say yes to that we don’t necessarily need to. The second thing that I would offer is,

and I use this a lot with the ladies because I find it so powerful for myself is visualization. It’s going to feel maybe awkward for the first time. But if you can take a moment and sit back and close your eyes and just really visualize what does the best version of you look like? And then like Shannon said, just start choosing one commitment that leads you towards that.

For me, visualization really creates all of those feelings. It creates a place for me to just really dream, right? I see like certain things that my mind might sometimes not allow me to go to otherwise. So those are my two things. I think it goes back to Shannon. What you said is just starting with one commitment and following through with that,

because that is where we are reminding ourselves. We can trust ourselves and that we’re capable. So good. Jen, thank you so much for coming on today and sharing a piece of you and all of your experience and love. I love you so much. You know, ladies, this is it. And I tell you, as I get older, I just have less tolerance taking care of ourselves,

our minds, our bodies, our spirits. It has to be a priority because living in a body that feels heavy, unhealthy that aches that hurts living these lives that we don’t recognize. We must want better for ourselves. Here’s the thing. No one else. Well, you are your hero. No one’s coming for you. No, one’s gonna rescue you.

You are your hero. So what are you going to do today to be your hero? Because I tell you my love. There is just nothing better. When you start to take back your power, fall in love with yourself, show up for yourself because at the end of the day, you will have more love for you and for the others in your life.

And if you really want to go deeper on this work and do not miss the challenge, oh my gosh, it’s coming up. It starts on July 10th and you can register@theflycoaching.com forward slash 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. That’s bflycoaching.com. See you next week.