Ep #71: Do You Keep Going Back to That “One Diet” Over and Over Again?

You are listening to the Weight Loss for Successful Women podcast with Shannan Christiansen episode number 71. 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 excited to be back with you. I’m excited about today’s show. Have you ever felt like you were on a hamster wheel, like a serious hamster diet wheel? You keep trying the same things, but you can’t get started again, like one time or two times this program worked and then you gained your weight back, and now you’re just struggling to get started. It’s like you keep telling yourself you’ll start tomorrow, and then tomorrow comes and you keep pushing you off.

You will not want to miss today’s show. And at the very end, I’m going to give you three steps so that you can get started today. But first, as always, I want to give a listener shout out. This is where I’ll read a review of the podcast every week. And this week is from Lori_818. She said, I am so glad I stumbled upon this. It’s like she speaks directly to me. She covers everything needed to actually make a difference in my life. I feel like she’s organized all the crazy thoughts in my head from dealing with weight my whole life. She helps us identify our emotions and thoughts that I didn’t even know I had all of these years. I’ve tried everything and I always gain my weight back. This is really working and it’s sticking mentally finally. More importantly, I do not feel like I have to white knuckle through diets my whole life. I have hope for my future of freedom. Also Shannan’s loving way of talking is what we really need too. The whole time I thought I was too easy on myself and thought that I needed a coach to yell in my face biggest loser style in order for me to lose weight. It turns out I’ve been too harsh on myself this whole time, which is what leads to perpetual roller coaster. Thanks Shannan, and all of BFLY. Also, how do I buy stock in this program? I’m going to, it’s going to do amazing things for so many people, for sure. Oh my goodness, Lori, I love all of that.

I love that review. Thank you so much. You know, ladies, I really do know. I remember hiring personal trainers and thinking, you know, I needed a Jillian from the Biggest Loser in my life; and you know what I needed? I needed some love for myself. And now, I just, you know, I show ladies how to have love for themselves and how actually that is the way.  So thank you so much, Lori. I love it. If you love the show, please rate and review the show. It does help the show to reach other ladies who are struggling with the diet roller coaster.

So ladies, it has been raining in Phoenix. We have this about once or twice every year where we’ll have a week maybe of rain. I know I’m not complaining. This year I really enjoy the rain. I’ve loved seeing it and hearing it and mostly because loves, I have not had to be out in it. I won’t lie. It’s been really nice to watch it from my bedroom window. So, you know, in Phoenix, you never know what you’re going to get. I would say our weather actually is pretty consistent. It’s pretty sunshine here most of the time. So this year I just really wanted to appreciate all of the rain.

So I want to talk about this past weekend because I had such an amazing time. We, my granddaughter had actually texted me from her mom’s phone and wanted me to teach her how to bake a cake. She has been watching baking shows and now she wants to be on a baking show. And so I went and picked up my oldest grandson and my oldest granddaughter, and we had kind of a bake-off competition. It was super fun. They each baked a different cake. And then, you know, of course my son and his wife and the other kids came over and then my husband and my son and his wife actually voted on the best cake.

And it was just super fun. And I also did a little mini surprise baby shower for, you know, our granddaughter who’s on the way. And so it was just a super fun time. And, you know, again, it was just fun to watch my granddaughter and grandson be in competition and they were enjoying that plus having a fun time baking. And I just, Oh, I just love those moments. I love watching them, you know, just learn and have fun. And it really is just to me the best of times. And so I had this amazing, amazing Saturday with all of them and my son’s family and you know, my husband too. And it was just a great weekend, so, Ah, I loved all of it.

So I want to talk about today’s show, let’s get into it ladies. I see this so often with my clients when they first come to me and I experienced it myself over and over again, I would lose some weight on a program and then I would go off of it and gain the way back. And then I would keep trying to go back to it. I would tell myself if I could just go back to it, if I could just be good again. I think about this when I went to the nutritionist. Now I’ve shared this story many times on the podcast. I did lose weight following her plan. So let me tell you how it went.

I signed up for this nutritionist, you know, she was a very nice lady and you know, I wanted to look like her, to be honest, she looked amazing. And she gave me this very strict, very clean food plan, no carbs. I would say veggies, you know, and meat pretty much was it. And also it had supplements. I mean, it had all of, you know, the bells and whistles. So I did it and I did it for like five months. I lost weight and I was feeling great. I went out and I bought new clothes. I was telling my friends how great this program was. I mean, I was all in, but then love, I got promoted and I was being transferred from Chicago to Utah.

We were in corporate housing and we were eating out every single night for around three months. And there was a lot of stress. I was in a new role. I had a lot of expectations for myself. I could not sustain this very strict protocol. I could not, I could not do it. And I had not done any work on changing my mindset.

I was actually scared of food. So if I started to eat pizza or a cupcake, I would binge and tell myself that I would be good tomorrow, and tomorrow would come and I would tell myself it would be the next day and the next day and the next day. And this would go on for months at a time. I would think if I could just stop eating all the junk and eat clean, I could lose weight, but I could not do it long term. I tried for years actually to go back on that nutritionist program, I actually called it the Paula plan, because that was the name of the nutritionist. Again, there was nothing wrong with her. She was an amazing lady. She was so nice, but long-term, I could not take away all of the food that I enjoyed.

I just could not stay on a plan like that. And I didn’t know how to stay and eat foods that fuel me when I had stress, when it was the weekends, or in times of celebration like holidays or birthdays; it just was not sustainable for me. I did not just do this with the nutritionist loves. I also did this with big name weight loss programs. I kept going back over and over again, trying to lose weight, like I did this “one time.” What inevitably changed for me, the only way that I knew how to get off this diet roller coaster was to deal with my feelings, my emotions, the thoughts and beliefs that I had that were sabotaging my success.

You can stay looking for the magical food plan. You can keep going back to diets. But ultimately you have to deal with your mind, your thoughts and feelings. This is where life coaching came in. For me, coaching was a way that I could see what was happening in my brain to see where I was stuck and then actual tools so I could change my thoughts and feel my feelings. I wish for all of us, there was a magical way. If I could find it, I would share it, I promise, but there isn’t.

So here are my three tips, so you can stop “trying to start over.” Number one, love, stop dieting. Stop going from food plan to food plan, looking for a magical food plan, going from restriction to bingeing,

being completely on or off. It happens because of this thought, if I can just lose the weight I’ll deal with everything else when I get “there.”  But it doesn’t work that way. If you believe that once you lose the weight you can eat cupcakes again, you did not learn how to eat cupcakes while you were losing your weight. If you cut out all the carbs and did not lose weight eating carbs, you will gain the weight back. So learn to lose weight in a way that you can always do, because love, there is no “there.” There is only today.

Number two, start with the realistic plan. You can go to bflycoaching.com/6; it’s episode number six in the podcast. The realistic plan is a way to start learning how to eat foods you enjoy and how to start paying attention to how food fuels you. Love, it is actually not about the food. It never has been, it never will be. And losing weight for good is about learning how to keep commitments to yourself, learning how to not be scared of food and not be scared of a cupcake, and learning how to eat in a way that is with love and not restriction and beating ourselves up. And it’s always about our thoughts and our feelings and the conversation that we have with ourselves.

Number three, meet yourself where you are today. Ladies, you have to meet yourself where you are. You cannot go from eating all the things to restriction when you don’t even know how to feel the feeling of restriction without going into a full binge session. How many times have you started to binge because you’re fearing that you’re never going to eat the cupcake, or you can’t eat the cakes for weeks or pizza for weeks, and you start feeling restricted, but you end up in a full binge session. This love, is why you’re always in or you’re out. And you know love, part of this is learning how to feel your feelings, how to feel restriction and not overeat and how to deal with buffering, how we buffer with food. And you know loves, the first step is just meeting yourself where you are today. This is why I love the realistic plan. It’s not about a diet or a food plan. It’s about starting to just pay attention to what you’re eating, how you’re fueling your body, how food feels in your body.

Ladies. So just to recap, stop dieting, start with a simple tool like the realistic plan and meet yourself where you’re at today, not where you were that one time you were on some restrictive diet.

And the transformational questions are number one, Why did the last diet that you’re trying to get back onto, why didn’t it work? And number two, What one action can you take today to meet yourself where you’re at?

And if you want to learn more on how to get off the diet roller coaster for good and you want to go deeper in this work, I invite you to join Transform Weight Loss Program. This program is based on three elements: coaching, community, and a weight loss course with all the tools. This program will help you implement all of the tools so you can live your best life in a body that you love. Go to bflycoaching.com/join.

So much love for all you ladies. 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.