Ep #64: How Other People in Your Life Affect Your Weight Loss

You are listening to the Weight Loss for Successful Women Podcast with Shannan Christiansen Episode number 64. 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. I’m so happy to be back with you. I am excited about today’s show.

 

Welcome back to the three-part, a series that I have been doing on love and how it affects your weight loss. Today, we’re going to dive into love with others, and this is all about our capacity to receive and give love. But as always, I want to give a listener, shout out. This is where I read a review of the podcast every week.

 

This week’s listener shout-out is to Tanya Carter. She wrote, thanks, Shannan. This podcast is fuel for our intellect. What about eating? Because you liked the taste of food or snacks. That’s been an issue for me. Thank you, Tanya. Thank you so much for leaving a review. I really do read every single one of them and it is not too late to get in the drawing for $150 Amazon gift card.

 

And I’m going to do the drawing and episode number is 67. So, post your review on iTunes or Apple podcasts, and then shoot an email to a support@bflycoaching.com. And we will get you with the title of your review and we will get you into the drawing. So, my loves Christmas is coming.

 

I know it is we’re in December and I know for so many of us, we are getting ready for Christmas or the holidays and we’re preparing for year end at our jobs. And it’s just a very, you know, again, busy time of the year and, you know, loves, I really have been thinking about this, even for myself, just making sure that through this month that I really focus on my own self-care and continuing to show up for myself.

 

One of the things that we’re doing in the Transform Weight Loss Program is this 24 day challenge. You know, we want to finish the year strong in Transform, and it is so fun. I, myself and my daughter-in-law actually created these little mini advent calendars. And we mailed them to all of the ladies who are in transform and every day they get to peel off a new challenge.

 

And again, it’s just super fun and it’s just something to keep us involved in our own self-care while everything is happening. And I am going to do it myself. I think it’s going to be super fun. And I’m going to do the challenge along with my ladies. And you know, this is one of the things I think for so many years I did is when it came to the holiday season.

 

I just forgot about me. I was thinking about others and thinking about doing for others and, you know, serving and you know, which is all amazing. And I know for so many of us, it’s very important, but if we forget about us, if we forget about our own self-care, if we don’t take care of ourselves, the way in which we will show up will not be to our best selves.

 

We just won’t, we’ll be tired and exhausted and maybe even a little bit grumpy. And so, doing this work and showing up for yourself, I see so many of my ladies in Transform. I mean, you know, here we are in December and you know, they’re coming to coaching calls and they’re coming to study halls and you know, they’re showing up for each other in the community and they’re doing amazing things because they know how important it is to show up for themselves.

 

So, you know, ladies, I announced this last week, but Transform is opening again on January 13th, that January 13th, 2021 Transform opens. And you know, some ladies are like, Hey, Shannon was Transform? You know, it is a monthly membership community. And it’s where I teach and coach ladies on how to lose weight and get off the diet roller coaster.

 

It is a mix of community coaching and my signature four stage proven weight loss course. I mean, it’s pretty phenomenal if I say so myself, okay, ladies. So, let’s dive into it today. So, I want to talk about how our relationship with others affect our weight loss.

 

Our life is full of relationships to others. I mean, I’m a mother, a wife, a Mimi, a leader, a CEO, an employee, a sister, a daughter, a friend. I mean, so many of us ladies, we play so many different roles and we have lots of different relationships in our life. And you know, I want to tell a story as we get into this episode, I want to talk about a relationship that I had.

 

This was in between my first husband and my current husband, Paul. And this was a very, I would say negative relationship. It, it wasn’t a very healthy relationship. It was a relationship where, you know, I did not feel loved and there was also lots of other stuff going on and I continued throughout relationship to have these thoughts.

 

So I thought I could do more, be more lose weight. And then I could have more love. I thought that if I did this, he would love me more. But what ended up happening was the more I thought I was unloved, the more weight I would gain. I see this in so many of my clients. They believe that if they lose the weight, they will become more lovable.

 

They believe that they are less because of the number on the scale. They believe people treat them worse. Don’t love them as much and that if they could just be more, be perfect, then they could feel more love from others. This thought would, you know, even when I was in that relationship. And I know so many of my ladies and my clients and my friends and family,

 

they have this thought that runs through their head. If I had more love from X insert, whoever that is, then my life would be better. And then my love on the flip side, we have these other beliefs about other people. If they could just do what we needed them to do, when we needed them to do it, we wouldn’t be as stressed or overwhelmed or frustrated.

 

If they could follow our manuals, our expectations, then everything would be great. I mean, right. If he just did or she did what I needed her or him to do, then everything would be great. And then I wouldn’t be so stressed and I could lose my weight.

 

I remember love, I tell you, I lived in this constant state of thinking that my weight was caused by something outside of me, whether it was Mother or my family or my ex or whatever the situation or thing was. I always had some person that if they would have just been different, I would have been different, but love, there are three things I know for sure.

 

Number one, you are a hundred percent lovable and worthy and no number on the scale means anything about who you are. You were born that way and nothing about this life changes it. We believe that if we were thin, if we were loved, if we had different parents, if we were brought up differently, then things would be different. We would be thin. The only thing between you and your dreams are your thoughts and beliefs. You could decide today that you were good enough, that you were beautiful enough, that your body was beautiful, that you were enough lovable. The only reason you believe something else is because of your thoughts. I really want you to let that sink in. You could decide and think today that you were enough.

 

And number two, my love, we cannot control anyone. Not anyone. We, the only person or thing in this life that we truly control is ourselves. When we expect someone to be different and we expect that things should be different than they are. It causes us to suffer our own thoughts are what cause our suffering, not someone else. I know when I learned this, I couldn’t even believe it. And if you want to learn more on the manual and more on another thing that I teach in relationships, go to bflycoaching.com/25.

 

I talk about the manual and how we expect others to be different. And you know, loves, we do have these expectations. We have these expectations of other people and when they don’t meet them, then we have a feeling and it’s usually a negative one. And then we go and eat cupcakes or chips or whatever it is to feel better. Maybe it’s even just something healthy that we’re overeating, like, you know, whatever it is for you trail mix, yogurt, something that wasn’t on your plan. We cause our own suffering, the other person doesn’t. And I know I coach ladies on this all the time. We believe others cause our suffering. And I am just here to say, one of the biggest things that I have learned is that no one causes my suffering only my thoughts.

 

And I want to give you an example of this. So, I think about my husband, Paul, and when I have the thought that he loves me, then I feel love. It has nothing really to do with him or what he does when I think how amazing he is. And I think that he loves me. I feel love and you know nothing about what he does or doesn’t do matters.

 

I can always choose the thought of thoughts that cause the feeling of love. You know, I really did this work in my marriage a couple years ago, really deep work on my thoughts and our marriage has changed. Not because he changed because my thoughts about him changed. And I practice those thoughts every single day. I am just here to say my love that we do not control how others show up and how, what they do.

 

The only thing we control is how we choose to think about it. And more often than not these expectations that we have of others are manuals for others. That is what causes our suffering. Number three someone’s capacity to love, to give you love or for you or to receive love from you has nothing to do with you. I want to say it again.

 

Someone’s capacity to give you love or to receive love from you, has nothing to do with you. It is their ability. Their capacity for love was formed from their own self-love or lack of self-love. It was formed from their own experiences as yours. My capacity to give love is really high. I can give love. I can tell people I love them.

 

I can hug them. I can give love very easily. It is something my own self-love is very high. One of the things that I had to work on was my ability to receive love early in my life. I had learned to put up a wall between me and others. And so, though I could show love to others. It was difficult for me to receive love.

 

And it was one of the things that I really myself and my own work had to work on. Receiving love from others. Why I say this to you? My love is because often if we believe that someone is not loving us or they don’t love us, or they haven’t loved us enough, we think that something’s wrong with us, but I’m just here to say, nothing’s wrong with you.

 

My love someone’s capacity to love you has nothing to do with you. And really understanding this concept can help you understand that. You know, I see this and even myself, we have these things that happened to us when we were a kid or a teenager, someone said something, maybe it was a parent or a friend or a kid at school or an aunt or a grandparent.

 

And we just took that and we held onto it and we made it mean something about us, nothing that anyone says or does has anything to do with you. If someone says you’re X, you’re not beautiful enough, you’re not good enough. It has nothing to do with you. It has to do with their own thoughts and feelings about themselves.

 

And so, you know, I love this saying it was from, I always forget who it’s from, but I think it’s like Kat Von D maybe or something like that. But you can be the juiciest, most delicious peach. But if someone doesn’t like peaches, well, it has nothing to do with the peach. The peach is still beautiful and delicious and juicy. And I just want to say, you can be the most juiciest peach.

 

And if someone doesn’t like peaches again, it has nothing to do with your lovability or your worth. I say this and I practice this a lot. Whatever anyone thinks of me is none of my business. And mostly it has nothing to do with me. If someone said, Shannon, you’re ugly, you’re getting too full of yourself.

 

It has nothing to do with me. It’s how they feel about themselves. And it’s really important to really understand that. Now, if someone is like Shannon, you’re amazing. And you’re wonderful. Again, I don’t really take that on either because that has nothing to do with me. It’s how they feel. It’s how their perception is and why this is so important is because the only opinion about me that matters is the one that I have with myself.

 

I think about this. I’ll tell you, we have this dog, a little puppy. Her name is Gracie. And we got her from kind of a really rough place. And she was the runt of the litter. And I think she had been, you know, in her little life before she came to us, had been kind of bossed around, I would say, maybe not treated very well.

 

And so she’s very anxious and very, she needs some power for sure. I’ve tried. And she just, you know, she’s just, she struggles with other people. And when it comes to the grand babies, she, when they’re little, so until they hit about six or seven, she just barks at them.

 

And she’s very nervous around them. Why I say this is because when Gracie sees little Jaxie, we’ll use Jaxie. She’s three. When she sees Jaxie and she starts barking and she starts, you know, feel, you know, getting nervous. It’s because of fear, it has nothing to do with Jaxie. It’s just, Gracie has this fear. Gracie has her own problems.

 

So she barks at my little Jaxie. And again, it doesn’t mean anything about Jaxie and that’s such a simple, simplistic example, but I’m saying it because I think we have taken on other people’s opinion and we’ve made it mean something about us. And I just want to say someone’s capacity to give and receive love has nothing to do with your lovability. We carry extra weight because we don’t want to feel a negative emotion.

 

We have all of this drama, negative beliefs in our head about other people and ourselves. This work, the work I do and Transform it’s life changing, learning that you and you alone can change your thoughts and beliefs about yourself, about food. About other people will change your life. It’ll change your relationship with food and your body. And if you want to take this work deeper and you really want to get off the diet rollercoaster again, Transform is opening on January 13th.

 

So, get on the waitlist @bflycoaching.com/waitlist. It’s so good my love. All right, bye for now. 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. That’s bflycoaching.com. See you next week!