Ep #61: 5 Tips for Thanksgiving

You are listening to the Weight Loss for Successful Women podcast with Shannan Christiansen, episode number 61.

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, as always, am excited about today’s show. Today I want to help you get ready for tomorrow. I know when this episode launches, Thanksgiving is the next day. And I know so many of you are making your final preparations, going to the store, making sure that you have everything you need.

I know myself; I start cooking on Wednesday. And I want to give you five quick tips on how to get yourself ready so you can have the best Thanksgiving. I don’t want you to leave you off the list.

But first, as always, I want to give a listener shout-out. This is where I read a review of the podcast and this week’s listener shout-out is to RMolnar6. She wrote, “So I may have just binged all 58 released episodes the past two days at work. I just could not stop listening to it. The advice is so practical and realistic. So many weight loss or self-help programs want you to do so many things and are impractical and unrealistic. This is for the everyday person. The content is so applicable and I even doodled a few reminders on sticky notes to keep on my desk. I see myself in the future listening to these over and over again because there is always something that I need to hear.”

Thank you so much, RMolnar6. You know ladies, I love these reviews. I really do read every single one of these reviews. I just love them. And as you ladies might know, or if you’re new to me you might not know, we also have a giveaway going on.

So if you rate and review the show, you’ll be entered into a drawing for a $150 gift card. And I just gave away the first one to Lisa Dolan. She won last episode. And I’m going to give one more away. So to be entered into the giveaway, you have to rate and review on iTunes or Apple, and then just email me at support@bflycoaching.com with the title of your review and you are in.

We are going to do the drawing on a future episode. So my love, the world may feel a little crazy lately with everything that’s happening. I have really limited my outside influences of news and social media. Paul and I just had a no news social media weekend.

Because love, I was feeling so much fear and confusion around everything. There is so much change and it may seem like every day there is something new. I just had a coaching session with one of my Transform Weight Loss program ladies. She’s a teacher and everything is changing. I mean, I am so grateful and thankful for our teachers.

And she’s one of them, and I have a lot of teachers in my Transform program. And I’ve coached a few of them because right now, for them, it does feel like everything is changing on a daily basis. I coached her to feel the emotion of overwhelm.

I think many of us try to change our negative emotion because we want to feel better. We don’t want to feel overwhelmed. But when we do that, we’re just causing this sense of chaos inside of our bodies. We’re trying to push it down and not feel it. We put on our fake smiles to make everyone else happy, but when we’re in pain, when we’re feeling negative emotion, we must feel it.

When you feel an emotion all the way through, and it takes about 90 seconds, it passes. The chaos leaves your body. Emotions are the up and down of every day. The positive, the negative. If I think of just a single day, I have all sorts of emotions, positive, negative. I want to feel all of them.

When we buffer, we are taking negative action against ourselves. We are, in most cases, putting ourselves off. Then we are mentally exhausted, feeling like we’re drowning, and then we wonder why. Buffering is using something external to push down an emotion and it has a negative consequence.

When we overeat cupcakes and fried chicken because we don’t want to feel the emotion, loves, it just continually perpetuates the feeling. And we keep feeling the negative emotion over and over again. Everything we do is because we want to feel a certain way.

We think the cupcake will make us feel better and it does for about 30 seconds. Then there is the aftermath, the stomachache maybe, the beatdown because we should have stuck to our plan. Then we start telling ourselves how we never stick to anything and how this is not working and how we’re failing, how we can’t fit in our clothes and how this is just – we’re never going to lose this weight.

This whole aftermath happens because we don’t want to sit with the negative emotion. Love, the goal of this life is not to be happy. I know we’ve been told that our entire lives. But it is to feel all the emotion. Because when we can feel our emotions all the way through, the good ones, the bad ones, we become unstoppable.

There is a piece that comes with it. Knowing that you can feel sadness or shame or grief or overwhelm and not take negative action against yourself, it is the best. And you do this one day, one hour, one emotion at a time.

Which leads me into Thanksgiving. Oh Thanksgiving, I love it. It is one of my favorite times of the year. My birthday this year is actually on Thanksgiving. And I would say for most of my life, Thanksgiving was all about the food.

I would think about the food, I loved my mom’s stuffing, I loved pie, I loved the cakes, I loved the rolls, I loved the potatoes. And turkey is actually my favorite meat. So I just made it all about the food, and I would go into Thanksgiving and I would eat Thanksgiving dinner – while I was cooking Thanksgiving dinner or helping my mom cook, I would be eating.

I always – I mean, I would eat the stuffing before she even baked it. I’m not kidding. I was her taste tester. So she would give it like, is there enough seasoning in this? And I for sure would. So I would start eating as we were preparing, and I wouldn’t stop until like, Sunday.

And then Sunday I was like, wow, the leftovers start getting a little sad. And so I just did this over and over again. And what has really changed for me is that I’ve really had to get back to what this meant to me. What did Thanksgiving mean to me?

And for me, it’s a time to stop and really experience all the gratitude of this life I have. Everything from the clean drinking water I have to my family, to all my ladies, to my day gig, to my peers there, my people, to Transform ladies, to my friends, to just all the humans that I have just been blessed with knowing.

I mean, it is a time for me to experience this day of giving thanks. And I know it sounds a little cliché, but I tell you, it changes everything. When we get into this place of true gratitude, I think about gratitude when I think about my husband and how grateful I am for him.

And when I think about that, it just – the feeling that I have is just so much joy. And so on Monday, November 30th, I know exactly what I want to think about the past weekend. I want to think that it was the best Thanksgiving, that I spent the day with those I love, including myself.

That I ate good food but had a plan, stopped when I was satiated, that I spent the day in gratitude, and I took care of me. That even though this year will be different, I still was able to show those I love that I love and appreciate them.

So here are my five tips to have the best Thanksgiving and not throw everything to the wind, especially you. Number one, have a plan. And make your realistic plan. And also, have a plan for how you want to feel. What do you want to do?

Really think and plan what you want Thanksgiving, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, the whole event. Really think about what you want to eat, how you want to take care of yourself, how you want to show up, and make a plan. Take two minutes and make your realistic plan. Know what you’re going to eat. Make one at a minimum Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. And if you don’t know what a realistic plan is, go to bflycoaching.com/6. And it’s episode number six in the podcast.

Number two, drink your water. Water is so important. It keeps you hydrated. Sometimes you think you’re hungry, but honestly love, you just need some water. And I think sometimes when it gets cold or especially when we’re super busy, our daily water can get pushed to the side. So as part of your plan, know exactly how much you want to drink.

Number three, reflection work. Do a brain dump today or tomorrow. Get all your thoughts on paper. Just start writing. This is just so you’re aware of everything that’s happening in your brain. Maybe you’re nervous about family. Maybe you’re upset because you can’t be with your family. Maybe you’re afraid you’re going to eat all the things, scared that everything won’t turn out.

Whatever those thoughts are, I just want you to write them down. And really, this exercise is just so that you’re aware of everything that’s floating around in your head. And you just get them out. It’s not to judge the thoughts or to do anything with them.

Sometimes after I do a thought download, I’m just like, okay, I just feel better. And then I can look at some of the thoughts and say, Lizzy, I don’t really believe that, and then I can challenge some of the thoughts that I’m thinking.

Number four, and this one’s for all my ladies who are cooking. Have a sample plate. This is just a plate that you put to the side so that every time you want to take a little sample, you just put it on a plate. Do it every time. And then when you’re finished cooking, you can decide if you want to eat what’s on that plate.

And if you do find yourself sampling throughout the cooking, just place the same size of what you sampled on the plate. Again, this is awareness. Awareness of everything you ate. I mean ladies, I’m not going to lie to you ladies, but there have been many Thanksgivings that I was full going into dinner. And I don’t want that for you. So have a sample plate.

Number five, write a quick line or two on how you want to feel Monday morning. How Thanksgiving weekend went, what you did, how you felt, and how you showed up for yourself.

So the transformational questions today are, number one, what do you want to feel and think about Thanksgiving? Number two, what are all the things you are grateful for? So good my love.

I wish you all the best Thanksgiving and I have so much love for you. I am so grateful for each and every one of you and I just wish you the very best. And I’ll see you next week where we are going to start a three-part series on love and how it affects our weight loss. It’s going to be good, my love. Bye for now.

Love, you can text me. Yes, I have a personal cell number that you can text me at now. And I am so excited about this. I just rolled this out in Transform so all my Transform ladies could text me, and now I’m rolling it out across the board.

So you can send me a quick hello text at 480-605-3506. And then add me to your contact list and I’ll add you to my address book. And then I’ll send you at least a weekly inspirational text. I mean, so fun. So get your phone out right now and text me at 480-605-3506. So good, 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 over to bflycoaching.com. That’s B – F – L – Y coaching dot com. See you next week!