Ep #65: Holiday Edition – The Tale of 2 Holidays

You are listening to the Weight Loss for Successful Women Podcast with Shannan Christiansen Episode number 65. 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. Love. I am so happy to be back with you.

 

I’m excited about today’s show because I want to talk through the holidays. This episode is going to be released a couple of days before Christmas, and I know right now you might be in the thick of it, and I really want to help you handle the holidays without all of the normal exhaustion and overeating. But as always first, I want to give a listener shout out.

 

This is where I read a review of the podcast every single week. And this week’s listeners shout out is to Theresa Sterling. She wrote, I love to listen to this episode over, and over again. It reminds me not to beat myself up. If I eat off plan and to recognize my daily successes, these podcasts are so helpful. Thank you.

 

Thank you so much, Theresa. You know, I love these reviews. I really do read every single one of them. And you know, we do have a giveaway going and it’s for a $150 gift card, and I am going to draw on episode number 67. So, we’re almost there. We’re only a couple of weeks away. So, if you like the show rate and review it on Apple iTunes, and then just send me an email at support@bflycoaching.com.

 

Again, must be on Apple or, or iTunes. And then, you know, you will be in the drawing again, make sure you write a review because we are going to draw an episode number 67, which is only two weeks away. Thank you so much ladies for leaving the reviews. I really do love them and appreciate you taking the time to do so.

 

So, I had the best weekend. We did our Christmas early with everything happening. We’re kind of doing multiple Christmases with different parts of our family. And so I did my son and daughter-in-law and my grandbabies, and we had so much fun. My husband and I just love them to pieces.

 

And we baked cookies and had a really great dinner and of course opened up gifts. And, you know, my grandbabies were just the cutest and you know, it, it really put me into the holiday season and I love our traditions that we do, and I loved baking cookies. And even my son got in the kitchen, which was lovely.

 

He rolled out all the sugar cookie dough, and I don’t know, it was just a really fun Christmas event. And it just kind of started our holiday season. And I just, I love it. And I know that this year is different. It for sure is different for me and our family, but, you know, I’m just going to enjoy it.

 

And I, we have a really fun daily challenge going on right now in our Transform a group it’s the 24 days until the New Year. And so that has been super fun too. Every day. I’m doing it with the ladies, this challenge, every day. And, oh my gosh, so many of my ladies are just doing it. They are showing up and I love it so much.

 

I just think loves at the end of the day, we do get to decide what we want to think and what we want to do and how we want to feel. And I’ve just decided in the last couple of weeks of 2020, I am going to focus on all the many blessings and how grateful I am for all my ladies and my family and all of you.

 

And, you know, I have so many blessings in my life and I just want to, you know, really take the time to appreciate all that I have and really enjoy the season and what it’s about and for me, and just love it up for real. So, let’s get into this show and, you know, and part of the next couple of weeks, my team and I, we have been working on all the things that we’re going to do in 2021.

 

We actually have the entire year planned out and we are going to roll out some amazing things and Transform Weight Loss Program next year. I mean, I always over deliver. And I think about my ladies all the time, I think about how can I help them lose weight?

 

How can I help them live their best lives? How can I just help them feel better? And how can I research? You know, I love research. I love learning new things. And so this is one of the things that I do for my ladies. I really look for the best tools, the best things to really help them lose weight.

 

And so I am super excited about 2021 and excited about all of the amazing things that are going to happen in Transform next year. So love let’s get into this show and I want to tell a story. So this was probably, I don’t know, maybe seven or eight years ago. And I was living in Utah with my husband and we, I had a really amazing job and I had this amazing team and I had just finished my master’s degree, my MBA, and I wanted to do something amazing for my team.

 

And I had around 60 leaders and, you know, this was team leaders and department managers. And I thought, you know, I’m going to bake cookies, Christmas cookies, and use all my mom’s recipes and put them in really cute containers. And, you know, I just really wanted to show them how I appreciated them.

 

And, you know, I knew it was going to be a big task. It was going to be about 1200 cookies, which is no small feat for sure. But, you know, again, I was just coming out of my MBA and I had just finished my last class and I was getting ready for graduation because I graduated actually in December. And I really kind of had a half-baked plan.

 

I really didn’t fully think it all through. Plus, you know, I was eating all of the things, you know, I was, you know, not making realistic plan back then. I had not really done this work yet. And, you know, I was, you know, just kind of winging it. So, this weekend came that I was gonna put it all together and I was going to create the cute containers, bake all the cookies, pack them all up.

 

Yes. In a weekend, yes. Bake 1200 cookies and pack them up by Monday. And you know, it was overwhelming, I would say to the least. So, I want to paint the picture for you. I was 230 pounds. I had just graduated with my masters. So again, completely, extremely busy time. I was already depleted and exhausted before even going into this weekend.

 

We were living in Utah at the time and going back and forth between Utah and Arizona and love, I was just physically and emotionally exhausted, but I had my mind made up and I was going to get it done. Have you ever felt like this where you’re so exhausted mentally, that you feel like you’re drowning and you’re so physically tired and your body just hurts all over?

 

So, I started Friday night after work with getting everything ready, laying out all of the ingredients, prepping my kitchen. So, Friday night I started making all the containers. And you know, that feeling when you start to realize that this is a bigger task than what you thought it was going to be, and it was going to take you way more time and you start feeling panic, like, how am I going to get all this done?

 

It hit me that Friday night. So, I worked late into the night and then I was back up at four or 5:00 AM to start to make the first batch of cookies. It took longer than I expected to make the dough and bake by 10:00 AM on Saturday. I was so behind. I wanted to cry.

 

My back was hurting. My body was hurting. My mind was like, how am I going to get this done? And I had no plan for eating back then. So, I was eating cookie dough, you know, at the same time. And as cookies came out of the oven, you know, I had to test them. So, I was eating them too.

 

So, on top of just, you know, feeling panicked, feeling overwhelmed, thinking, why did you get yourself into this? I was also feeling physically sick. And, you know, I was just pushing down all the feelings. I was pushing down my feelings of overwhelm and frustration at myself.

 

And then I was also feeling so much pain, like physical pain in my body, but I had my mind made up. I was going to get it done and thank goodness Paul stepped in on Saturday and really helped me. And we worked all day, Saturday and Sunday. I was so exhausted. I mean, ladies, do you know that moment when you’re just so tired?

 

You’re just like you’re almost like a robot that has no energy left, but I did it. And of course, I put on the happy face on Monday and brought the cute containers in, you know, like it was a breeze not talking about the horrible experience of the weekend. I really did not enjoy it. And this leads me to, I just didn’t have a good plan, not on how to get it done and also how not to overeat through it all.

 

I didn’t know how to handle the urge to overeat. When I was feeling negative emotion, I was just pushing it all down with the cookie dough and a massive amount of work. Yes. Work is a buffer too when it has a negative consequence. And this is for me, one of the ways that I know, when I’m overworking, it’s just another way that I’m pushing down my emotion.

 

I was going through that holiday season, like a robot, just doing all of the things I thought I should do. And I should “for sure” do. Fast forward years later, I wanted to do the same thing, but I had learned the process I teach. I knew how to make a plan, how to handle an urge and how to feel my feelings instead of pushing them down. The whole holiday season was different.

 

I was not eating against my own wheel. Have you ever felt like that where you feel like you’re just eating on automatic pilot against your own will? I had a good plan. I reduced the number of cookies. I made the dough a weekend before and put it in the fridge. I had a plan also that included a couple spoonfuls of dough, not, you know, 20 spoonfuls. I made the containers weeks before the baking. And when it came to the weekend of baking the cookies and packing them up, it was a breeze.

 

I turned up the Christmas music and really enjoyed what I was doing. I was not physically and emotionally burnt out. I mean, isn’t that what we want? We want to feel better. There were three things that were so different between those years, that helped me to enjoy it instead of feeling exhausted and completely overeating. So, I want to share with you the three things that really changed it for me.

 

Number one, I had a plan. I had a realistic plan, so that was a food plan. And if you go to blfycoaching.com/6 so, episode six of this podcast, I really go into depth on the realistic plan, but I also use the realistic plan for planning out things that I do too. And so, I had a plan on how, and I had really thought through the holiday season, not just my baking, but everything I wanted to include my traditions, spending time with family. I had really had a plan again. I used my prefrontal, my thinking brain instead of Lizzie instead of my automatic brain.

 

And because I had this going through the holiday season, it helped me to, you know, overcome when I wanted to overeat or when I wanted to buffer by overworking. And so, if you’re in my Transform Weight Loss, if you’re one of my Transform bosses, go to stage one on the membership site, Making Decisions Ahead of Time and Triggers to Overeat, you can also do workbook pages, 41 and 42. This concept of making decisions ahead of time and planning.

 

We think planning is like handcuffs. Like it’s going to take more time, it’s going to slow us down. But what I have found is planning his freedom, making my realistic plan every day, knowing what I’m going to eat, knowing that I have lots of food that fuels me, but also, I plan non-fuel food. I plan cookies. We just baked this weekend and I had a couple spoonfuls of the dough and also cookies on my plan. So I didn’t have any mind drama. And I knew that I, you know exactly what I was going to do. So I wouldn’t feel this feeling of overwhelm and dread.

 

So number two is I’ve learned how to allow urges, allow the feelings of urgency or wanting to overeat without taking action against myself. And to learn more, you can go to episode number three so bflycoaching.com/3. This concept of learning how to sit with an urge and sit with, you know, this wanting, right. We want to eat a cookie, or we want to eat a bag of chips or we want, right. This comes in and I like to call it an urge and I have this really simple three step process.

 

And so anytime that you are aware that you want to overeat, or you want to eat off plan, then you’re just going to stop right, be aware of it. Then you’re going to disrupt the thought by counting back from 30. I know it sounds like what Shannan, but seriously, it’s life changing. You’re going to disrupt the thought, count back from 30 and then just take a breath. Because love, there are three ways that you can handle this urge to overeat.

 

You can fight the urge and resist it and tell yourself how bad you are if you eat it, or you can sit there and thought loop over and over, like, should I eat it? And can I eat it? I want to eat it. Well, if you eat it, if you’re going to be bad, I mean, you can just, I mean, how many times ladies, I want you to think, have you been sitting there thinking about what you want to eat and want to eat off plan, right? You are thinking about, you know, wanting to eat the bag of M&Ms or wanting to eat, you know, even, you know, trail mix or something healthy, but you’re just kind of obsessing about it. I’ve done this so many times. And so, what happens is when you’re fighting or you’re resisting the urge, you are really trying to push down those feelings, but they keep popping up. And so, you just are in this endless thought loop.

 

And number two, we can give into the urge and eat off plan or overeat where we just, you know, again are overeating or we can allow it. And allowing an urge is just allowing the feeling, the urgency or the feeling of wanting, right. The feeling of desire for it. Right. We desire the food. And so, you can feel it. And again, you’re just going to stop, disrupt the thought, count back from 30 and then breathe. And you can do this as many times and then will happen as you’ll notice, the thought will disappear. The feeling of urgency, the feeling of desire will dissipate. Yeah. It’s an amazing process.

 

And then number three, how it was different for me was learning how to feel a feeling. And so, you can also go to episode seven, I’ll really dive deep into this. So again, bflycoaching.com/7. And you know, this is important in this work. You know, I used to believe that I was overweight because, you know, I didn’t have wasn’t eating the right foods or I wasn’t exercising enough. And what I’ve learned is that the reason why I overate was because I was buffering, I was pushing down emotions that I didn’t want to feel with food.

 

And then on the flip side, when I ate or overeat, especially something that was highly processed or highly, you know, had sugar, I would get this one to two minute dopamine hit. I would get this feeling, this positive feeling. So, I would push down the negative feeling and I would get this one to two minute positive feeling.

 

This was every day for me, this was over and over again. I didn’t want to feel negative emotion. And I was buffering with food. And as I learned this process and what I teach all of my bosses, my Transform Bosses is that learning how to feel a feeling is one of the most powerful things that we can do. We have been so disconnected from our bodies, that we don’t even know what feelings feel like in our body.

 

And we have this automatic brain. This is why have you ever felt like you are literally eating against your own will? Like you said, only notice that you’ve eaten the bag of the chips. Are you, you know, eating the bag of M&Ms, and you’re like, what has happened? Like I’m eating against myself. And this happens because we have this automatic brain and this are because our brains like to be very efficient.

 

And so, you know, we want to overeat or eat off plan because we believe the food will make us feel a certain way. We think it will take away the negative emotion. And it does for just a moment. The best way to identify what urgency wanting or desire feels like in your body is to just one, notice it, notice the feeling and start to go down all the way from the top of your head, through your body and just see what that feels like. What does desire or urgency or wanting feel like in your body is your, you know, your, does it give you like a little headache?

 

Does it feel like anxiety where your heart might be racing a little bit, or you have a little pit in your stomach or your legs or your shoulders feel really tight, or you get a little, you know, tweak in your back. What does it feel like in your body and go through your body and really identify consciously what the feeling feels like in your body. That is how you’ve processed a feeling. It’s no more complicated than just being aware of what it feels like. It doesn’t need to be complicated. It doesn’t need to be anything more than processing the feeling in your body and naming what it feels like.

 

It takes about 90 seconds to processing an emotion, 90 seconds to identify the emotion that you’re having. And when you allow the feeling, when you allow the negative emotion, it’s the most amazing thing. When I am coaching my ladies in Transform, we have coaching calls and I will take them through processing an emotion. It’s amazing. They’ll start, and they’ll feel, you know, whatever, negative emotion they’re feeling, maybe it’s frustration or fear, or, you know, discouraged, whatever it is. And I walk them through and all they do is just identify what it feels like.

 

And what’s so interesting is you just can, I can hear and see if they’re, if it’s, if they’re on camera, I can watch and watch them processing emotion right before my eyes, or I can hear it. You can hear it in their voice. At first, they feel, you know, you can, you know, see or hear the frustration. You can see the tenseness in body, and then you will see it process through, and it will become this lightness. And they’ll say, Oh, my shoulders feel lighter. After they process the feeling. Feelings will not kill us.

 

And we are everything we do is because we want to feel a certain way. So, learning how to identify how feelings feel and then processing them through our entire bodies. That is the way to really honestly, end overeating. And I know it’s like Shannan. And I’m like, I tell you the more that I even myself, do this work, everything I’ve ever done is because I want to feel a certain way.

 

And when I can feel negative emotion without taking negative action against myself, it just changes everything. I want to say that again, because it’s so powerful when I can feel a negative emotion, like frustration, anger, disappointment, shame without taking a negative action, like overeating shutting down, right? When I can feel the negative emotion without taking a negative action against myself, it changes everything, everything my love.

 

So, to recap, there were three things that I did differently between my very first holiday season seven or eight years ago to the one, a few, a couple of years ago. And this is how things can be different for you and how to begin to end eating against your own self.

 

Number one make-up plan. Number two, allow an urge to overeat or eat off plan and three process your feelings, become more conscious and aware. And the transformational questions are number one, what is causing you to feel overwhelmed and frustrated right now? And number two, what triggers you to overeat or eat off plan? So good my love.

 

Are you ready to get off the diet roller coaster, feel better and lose weight, then get on the wait list. My love Transform is opening on January 13th, go to bflycoaching.com/waitlist. Ooh. 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 on over to bflycoaching.com. See you next week.