Ep #80: Transform Cheat Code to Weight Loss – Planning

You are listening to the Weight Loss for Successful Women podcast with Shannan Christiansen, episode number 80. 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, of course, am just super excited about today’s show. On today’s show we are going to get into the second pillar of the cheat code. Planning. Now my love, if you think planning is not your thing, you for sure will want to listen because I felt this way too, but it has changed everything for me. We are in the middle of a four part series on the Transform Cheat Code to Weight Loss.

So you will want to make sure you take a listen to all these episodes for sure. But first, before we get into the episode, I want to give a listener shout out. And this week’s listener shout out is to Doreen. I just read your podcast. Very enlightening. I will try this principle to my journey. Thank you Doreen. Now love, if you love this show, please rate and review it. This helps other women find us. And this work is for every woman, every woman on the planet. For sure.

So it is getting hot in AZ. I mean it is. I live in Arizona and it’s starting to get hot for sure. And I have to tell you a story. The other day I was preparing for our Transform live event and it’s happening in April. And I received the proofs back from some stuff we’re mailing to our ladies, and love, I am serious, I got so excited. I had so much energy. I was dancing around and I just felt so much energy. So I told Paul like, Hey, I’m going to go for a walk.

He was like, I’ll pass. It’s 90 degrees outside. But I loved it. In the middle of the afternoon I went for a walk and I actually went live on Facebook with my Transform ladies. I actually love taking them on my walks with me sometimes. I know so fun.

So let’s get into it. We are going to go into the second pillar of the cheat code. And it’s planning. Planning is using our prefrontal cortex instead of our automatic brain. Now, you know, love, I’m a little bit of a nerd and I love researching the brain, but have you ever felt like you were eating against your own will or you want to lose weight so badly and just can’t understand why it’s so hard? The reasons diets don’t work is because it’s not about the food or an exercise plan.

You mostly know what to eat or how to move your bodies. I mean, we’ve been inundated with that stuff, our whole lives. But you start something and then you’re tired, you’re irritated by something at work, or the food just looks so good. It’s kinda like it’s calling your name.

So there are two pieces to planning. Making decisions ahead of time, and the realistic plan. I’m going to teach you both. Now I know when you hear plan, your brain is like, Oh no, but stay with me Love. This is different than anything you’ve heard of. And don’t worry. I didn’t like to plan either. I thought planning was handcuffs, but what I’m going to teach you is freedom.

Have you ever eaten a bag of M and M’s or potato chips, and suddenly you notice you’ve eaten the whole thing and you can’t believe that you’re at the end of it. So I want to talk about the brain and kind of how we’re wired for a moment. I have done so much research on the brain. I find it fascinating on how our brain works, and our brain likes to be efficient, to conserve energy. So many of the things that we do every day are automatic. Have you ever driven to work and wondered how you got there because you’ve driven it so many times, you don’t even have to think about it any longer. The part of our brain, the automatic brain, it stores all of our habits. Now we also have another part of our brain,

our primitive brain, and this is responsible for our survival flight or fight. This was super important back in the cave days, where there was so much danger for our ancestors, but now we don’t have as much danger, but our primitive brain, I call mine Lizzie is always looking for it. So any kind of change we embark on becomes danger.

When you’re starting something new or you’re starting to change, Lizzie will start to serve up all the reasons why you’ll fail, why you can’t do it. She will tell you all the reasons why you should just stay in bed with Netflix. Has this ever happened to you? These two parts of your brain are in charge about 90 to 95% of the time.

So that is why sometimes it feels like you’re eating against your own will or why weight loss can feel hard, but there is another part of your brain. And this part is the prefrontal cortex. It’s your higher level brain, your thinking brain. When we make decisions ahead of time, when we plan, we use that part of our brain. And what happens is we have a higher likelihood of success.

I want you to have success in weight loss. I want you to feel freedom in your body my love. When you make decisions ahead of time, you are using your thinking brain and you will have more success. Now love, let’s get real for a moment. How many times have you quit on yourself or broken a commitment to yourself? I know love, we as women do this all the time.

We tell ourselves that we’re going to show up for ourselves. And then we put everyone else in front of us. Our family, our work bosses, kids, heck even strangers. So what has happened is that we don’t trust ourselves anymore. We do not trust that we will keep a commitment to ourselves. What I want to do is to start to break your diet brain.

When my new clients come to me in Transform, the very first part of my process is all about breaking the diet brain. You have this record player just playing in the back of your brain. Add in years of dieting, family, and the society we live in. And it’s no wonder you’ve had such a hard time losing weight for good, but stick with me love, I can help you.

So the first step is making decisions ahead of time. I want you to think about you. What do you want to do for you? How do you want to show up for yourself? This is about taking some time to decide on purpose what you’re going to do for your future self, your best self. Remember everything you do today affects your future.

So you might be wondering Shannan, how do I do this? The first step is just to start to write down all the things you want to do for yourself. Just write a bunch of them. Then I want you to constrain. I want you to pick the top one to three. Don’t overwhelm yourself with everything. Just pick one. At the most three.

Some of the decisions ahead of time I’ve made for myself are I make my realistic plan. I’m committed to eating on plan. I only eat when I’m physically hungry. I will honor my commitments that I make to myself. Always. I move my body for brain and strength, nothing to do with weight loss. Again, this keeps evolving over time for me, and some of them are just now automatic habits. So remember just pick one, at the most three, to start with.

The second tool I’m going to teach you is the realistic plan. I also teach this in episode six. So if you want a more in-depth episode on this tool, listen to that one too. The realistic plan will help you to start keeping commitments to yourself, help you lose the fear of food and all of the nonsense about what is healthy and not healthy. You will have more success because you’re making these decisions ahead of time. So here is exactly what you will do. You make a plan of what you’re going to eat the next day. Now this is important. Come back to me, hear me on this.

This is a realistic plan, not idealistic. This is not a diet plan. You’re going to meet yourself right where you’re at. If you ate pizza, fries, and a cupcake yesterday, you’re not going to put just chicken and salad today. The first part of this is about keeping commitments, showing up for yourself. This is not about a diet or even the food my love.

You are going to watch your brain because Lizzie, she’s going to tell you she’s confused. I’m not sure what I’m going to eat. How can I do this? It takes too long. But love it takes two minutes. You mostly know what you eat. And if you have an event or you’re going to a restaurant, you can put something as simple as protein, veggie, carb, dessert. You’re not writing the calories or the macros or the carbs. None of that nonsense. You’re just simply writing what you’re planning on eating. Now, no doing this in your head my love. You want to write this down. Even if it’s on a napkin. You might be thinking, but Shannan, how am I going to lose weight if I put a cupcake on my plan. Because writing your plan ahead of time brings you into awareness. It helps you to start paying attention. It gets you out of automatic brain and starts setting you up for success. This first part is so important because this is how you start reprogramming all the years of diet brain. Good or bad, you know how we did it, in or

out, off a diet or on a diet. I mean, how many times were you either all in or all out? I know love, I was too, but this will change everything for you. Now, the second piece of the realistic plan is to eat on plan. Keep the commitment to yourself. It’s so important. If you eat off plan, no beating yourself up.

We don’t do that in BFLY. Just ask yourself, why? Was it too idealistic? Did something trigger you that day or was it nighttime when you overate or ate off plan? Were you bored? Were you tired? This again starts to bring you into awareness. Ooh, it’s so good. So love make your plan for tomorrow. You got this and then make a couple, maybe just one, decision ahead of time.

So the transformational questions are one, What decisions are you going to make ahead of time? Two, How much of your time is spent in automatic mode? Robot mode I like to call it. Three, How can these two tools help you lose weight for good? And if you need help implementing the tools I teach 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 the weight loss course. This program will help you implement the tools so you can live your best life in a body you love. Go to bflycoaching.com/join. So much love for you 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.