Ep #73: Struggling to Change?

 You are listening to the Weight Loss for Successful Women podcast with Shannan Christiansen episode number 73. 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 am so happy to be back with you. Of course I’m excited about today’s show. Are you resisting change? Oh my Love, do you try to start losing weight, and then you find that you keep quitting, giving up? Well listen in to today’s show, I’m going to explain why and how you can live in transformation. You will not want to miss today’s show.

But first, I want to give a listener shout out. This is where I read a review of the podcast every week. And this week’s listener shout out is to Deb Lowe. I needed this podcast today. I have heard you say this, but sometimes I need to hear things multiple times for them to really sink in. My little girl has been acting up and looking for attention, and instead I gave her sugar and wondered why she kept feeling sick. I love these podcasts so much. It’s like having you on my shoulder, reminding me why I can do this and achieve my goals. Thank you so much, Deb. I love that review. I appreciate it so much.

You know Loves, we have this little girl inside of us and she is always just saying, Hey, I’m here. Ah,

so good. Now, if you love this show, please rate and review the show. It helps us to reach other ladies who are struggling with the diet rollercoaster. It also helps me when I see the things that you love so I can do more of that.

Ladies, as I record this, it is Valentine’s day. I know Valentine’s day can bring up so much stuff for the ladies. If you have a spouse or a partner, some of us have these expectations. We look at social media and see others get showered with gifts or flowers, and we think something has gone wrong. I just want to challenge your thinking a bit if you’re struggling with this. Whether your partner participates in Valentine’s Day or not, it has nothing to do with their love for you because you get to believe whatever you want.

You get to think my partner is so in love with me, and that creates the feeling of love. Not anything they do or don’t do. I know this is mind twisting for so many of us, because we were taught that we feel love from others, but Love, it’s not transported from them. We have a thought and it produces a feeling. When I think Paul is so in love with me, then my brain goes to work producing the evidence that he is. And when I think that thought, I feel love. If I were to think he didn’t get me flowers so he must not love me, then my brain goes to work on producing evidence for why he doesn’t love me.

I tell you ladies, if you want more on relationships, go to episode 25. Because Love, the one thing you control is the way that you think and believe about something. And this is everything. I have so many loving thoughts today. I’m thinking about Paul, my family, my ladies, you, and my love for me. I’m over here in a love fest. I’m excited because Paul and I are going up to Scottsdale for the night and we’re staying in a really nice hotel.  We’re doing a little staycation because we’re still waiting for the arrival of baby Emma. Thank goodness that little girl is still in there. I’m so proud of her mama and my son. We are at 35 weeks now. So good. And by the time that you listen to this show, fingers still crossed, she hits 36 weeks on Thursday.

So Love, let’s get into today’s show. Change.  As humans, we are wired to resist change. Our primitive brains, also known as Lizzie, is wired to scan for danger. And back in the cave days there was a lot of danger, but now not so much. So anything that is different or change, we resist. It’s just how we’re wired. Even when we want to change, when we want it so bad, our Lizzy brains are wired to resist it. This is so important because for most of us we have spent a life practicing certain thoughts, behaviors, and they have become just automatic. How many times do you think, how did I just eat the whole bag of chips? Or why did I finish that bag of cookies? It feels like we are zombies and someone has taken over.

But Love, it’s us. It’s our automatic brain. Our brain also likes to be efficient. It conserves energy to sustain us. Again, programming from the cave days. They did not have access to food like we do. So our bodies are always looking to conserve energy. We have an automatic brain. We live unconsciously most of our day, meaning our habits, our beliefs, our automatic responses are in charge.

So change, it can feel hard at first because we’ve not created the habit, the neural pathway where information can easily travel through. This is important to understand. Part of our resistance to change comes from not understanding our programming, how we’re wired. So we create these thoughts like I can’t do it. I’ll never be thin. This is too hard. I should be eating less. I should be moving more. We beat ourselves up for how we’re wired. We believe we should be different. If only I were different, it creates so much resistance and negative thought looping in our brains.

I like to call it just my brain drama. This is one of the main reasons so many ladies, I mean Americans really, are on the diet rollercoaster. We try to change to implement better habits, but we have so much resistance. So we go back to comfort, to being efficient, to our automatic brains. And then Love, we just stay the same. It’s a cycle we repeat over and over again.

I see this when some of my new ladies come to me in Transform. They are super excited. They want it so bad. They want to live in a body that feels like freedom, but then they have to do something different, learn something different, and then they start to feel overwhelmed. And some of them disappear for a bit because their brains want them to go back to what feels comfortable. Luckily, we have lots of support in Transform to bring them back in and to start the change process slowly.

This is so important to start breaking down the resistance to change. Simple, small steps. If you’re trying to completely change everything, restrict everything you’re eating, you’ll quit. It’s just how you are wired. You’ll go back to your automatic responses.

So, I know you’re wondering, Shannan, how do I go from resisting change to living in transformation?

You can learn new things. You can feel uncomfortable and you have evidence that you can change. Right now, I just want you to think about your 20-year-old self. Think about the transformation you’ve gone through since then, what you’ve learned, what you’ve accomplished, what you’ve overcome. Now I know for some of you, it’s hard to think of because you focused on what has gone wrong. But I want you to right now think about the transformation of who you are today, your story, what you have overcome.

It’s so important because we do not give ourselves enough credit. I think about starting my coaching business a couple years ago and where it is today. It has completely transformed. I have transformed. I had never been a CEO before. I had not built a company from scratch. It has been super uncomfortable, scary, but it has been transformational. I have lived in transformation. Now there were plenty of times that I could have quit. I have a great day job. I could have told myself that, who am I to think I could do this? Or I’m going to fail. But I know why this is important. I know why I want to change. I know why being uncomfortable will get me all of my dreams. And ultimately, I want to serve women.

So to go from resisting change, to living in transformation, here are a few tips that I have for you. Number one, understand all your why’s. Why you want to lose weight, why you want to change,

why it’s important, and write them down. Look at them every day. Number two, start small. Don’t try to do all the things. Do one thing. Change one thing. Remember, you have to recreate those neural pathways. And if you’re trying to recreate, you know, 10 different neural pathways, it feels like resistance. It feels hard. When you just do one, you’re giving yourself some space to do and learn something different. And then number three, ask yourself these two questions: One, what am I resisting? And two, what would I need to think or believe to feel whatever it is that you want to feel, meaning committed, inspired, some feeling that will help you take a positive action to produce the result you want in your life.

For example, I want to feel committed. Committed to my goal or my dream. To feel committed, I would need to think X, right? What? Maybe I’m learning how to show up for myself. I love the thought, I am learning. And then practice that thought. Practice it throughout your day. I tell my ladies, put it on your phone and have it come up as an alarm. Have the thought that you want to learn and practice be right in your sight and have it pop up several times throughout the day.

See, living in transformation is changing our thoughts, living in discomfort. Your dreams, your goals are on the other side of being comfortable. When you start showing up for yourself, when you start practicing new thoughts, new beliefs, you become the next version of yourself and Love, you’ve already done this. Think about your 20-year-old self. The thing is, and this is for all my ladies who are over, I’d say 40, we stopped dreaming. We stopped believing in ourselves. We think about the past more than focusing on our future.

We stopped getting excited about what could be, who we could become. Love, you have a whole life in front of you. You are living in transformation. And Love, find your tribe because you need a group of ladies who can support you and remind you that you got this.

And the transformational questions are one, What are you resisting? And two, What do you need to practice thinking to produce the results that you want in your life?

So good. If you want to learn more on how to get off the diet roller coaster for good and go deeper on this work, I invite you to check out Transform Weight Loss Program. This program is based on three elements: coaching community, and a weight loss course. This program will help you implement the tools so that you can live your very best life in a body that you love.

Go to bflycoaching.com/join to enroll. Ooh, so much 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.