Ep #89: Double Down On Time and It Is Not What You Think

You are listening to the Weight Loss for Successful Women podcast with Shannan Christiansen episode number 89. 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. Today, we’re going to get into it. I’m going to discuss time. I love, oh my love. You will not want to miss this one. And I want to say, if you are loving the show and you have not left a review, please rate and review the show. Also make sure that you subscribe so I am on your list every Wednesday morning.

So ladies, I forgot to tell you last time that we were together about my baby’s. Oh, you know, Memorial day weekend, we had the best weekend and, you know, I love, I mean, I would say I really do try to enjoy all the days, but we had this really special Saturday and Sunday, and all my babies. Well, the three older ones spent the night, but I got to see all of them, of course, but the three older ones spent the night and it is just, I love having them. I, you know, love watching them and talking to them and playing with them. And they have been really wanting to swim, really wanting to swim, but, you know, it has been pretty chilly in the pool. And so finally the pool was ready and they went swimming at night with the pool lights and they thought it was so super cool and had the best time.

And, you know, Sunday morning we got up, we went and we walked to the playground and it was fun even though on the way back, it was getting warm outside. And so, you know, my two girls, they were struggling a little bit, but they made it back. I actually had to carry my four-year-old a little bit of the way home, but it was all good. And I just, you know, oh, I do just love those babies. I’m not kidding. And Paul and I, of course had some really amazing time together. And, you know, it was just a really fun relaxing weekend. So I hope all of you had an amazing Memorial day weekend and got rest and fun.

And of course, you know, just really took some time to have some joy over that weekend. So I have to tell you ladies, yesterday we had a coaching party. So I don’t know, I haven’t had one in probably like nine months. So every week in Transform, there is a coaching call and I do group coaching and it’s amazing.

And you know, I love coaching. It has transformed my life and I’ve watched it transform my ladies lives. Honestly, I’ve seen them have breakthroughs and aha moments and they’re really walking and stepping into the new version of themselves. And so one of the things is we used to do what I like to call a coaching party and we all get on zoom and, you know, I can see some of them, some of them I just hear them, you know, they don’t have their video on and we just kind of like get into limiting thoughts and limiting beliefs and really see how those are showing up for us. And I have to say, we did one yesterday and I think this is going to, for sure, become a monthly event. It was so fun. And the ladies really enjoyed it. Plus it was just so amazing to like do the work and do it together. You know, I heard a lot from the ladies that it just felt good to like be a part of whether they were, you know, coming on and talking or just, you know, being in the chat. Again, it’s always optional for my ladies. However, they want to show up, however they feel comfortable, but it was just so amazing to do this work together. And I shared a story about a struggle that I had had recently and kind of walked through my limiting thought that I was having. And it was just so fun.

I just, I love my ladies in Transform. I just love watching them grow and show up for themselves. It is just the absolute, it does. It gets me emotional. Honestly, I feel like all the chills in my body because they’re just these amazing, beautiful women. So I just had to give a shout out to them. I just love them.

So let’s talk about time and weight loss. So I want to take us back to the Biggest Loser. How many of you ladies have watched the Biggest Loser? I did. I was a die hard. I couldn’t wait for the new season. I watched every episode. I tried out for the Biggest Loser. I didn’t make it on obviously, but I was like, I really wanted it.

It just, you know, I would watch those transformations and losing the weight so quickly. I mean, that was the thing. Right. And I used to have this thought that, oh, if I could just be like quarantined, right. If I could just like, not have to like, and all my focus was just on losing weight and exercising.

Oh, if I just lost it all, right. And we watched these amazing things. Like, remember the week one, it was like, you know, they would lose like, I don’t know, 30 pounds in a week and, or, you know, crazy numbers. Right. Yeah. And it just started to, that show cement this belief that I had, that, you know, you, I could lose 10 pounds in a week. And that, that was the way. And that if I could just lose the weight and have this transformation, that everything would be better. Oh, love, but you know what it did. It actually just kept me stuck. It kept me looking for this quick fix.

It kept me having these like expectations of losing five pounds in a week or 10 pounds in a week. Or, you know, if I didn’t have a week that I would lose, then I wasn’t doing it right. I wasn’t doing it good enough. And it made me continue to think that if I just lost all the weight, that once I lost the weight, it would all be better. So there was this time where I went to a nutritionist and, you know, went on this very clean kind of protocol, you know, really no sugar, flour. It was just very strict. And I really committed to it. I was going to do it and I did. I lost weight. I got down to a really good, you know, size where, I mean, you know, I was feeling really good. I had lost a lot of weight and, you know, I was, you know, thinking like, okay, this is the way, but this is such the crazy part about this. So I remember when I was at this very small size and still was not happy with my body.

I had loose skin. I, you know, still saw pictures where I thought, oh, I don’t look that good. You know, I’m still not a size two. You know, I still had all of these thoughts. And so here I did, I lost weight. I was at a very, I don’t know. I think I was probably, I don’t know, anywhere from a size eight to a size 10, again, feeling really amazing, feeling so good in my body, but not really because even though I had lost this weight, I still had all of these thoughts that it wasn’t good enough, that I still needed to lose weight. I still wasn’t small enough. I had all this extra skin and I still had some fat on my body.

And so all of those old thoughts and I hadn’t changed my mind at all. I just followed this strict, you know, plan. And so then, you know, lots changed in my life. We moved, you know, these different things happened and I gained it all back and I had all my old sabotaging behaviors were there. And because, this is a really important part my loves. There’s some science to this too, because I was restricting my body in such a short period of time because I had lost this weight over probably a three to four month period. My body could not adjust. And so it was also going through a lot of trauma trying to like, is she going to starve us? Like what’s happening?

And so my body was going in and out of this kind of fat storing mode, because remember, our bodies are made for survival. And so when you go from eating all the things to restriction, your body is like, whoa. Right? And then your body is just like, okay, I’ve got to like store it all up. And so then I would have to restrict more to make the scale move. And it was just this, oh, it was just this really bad cycle. I know love, have you had this happen? I know you have. And so, you know, there again, going from eating all the things to restriction, it does not work long-term. Your body can’t catch, catch up, your body, you know, also that your body has these set points. And then what happens is ladies start to feel like you’re on a plateau and then you start telling yourself you’re not doing.

Then you try to restrict more than your body’s like, oh my gosh, we’re going to starve. Food’s not available. I mean, it is just really traumatizing to your body. And so I just want to ask you my love. Are you just so tired of starting the next best thing? Are you just like, so over restricting overeating, feeling like this is your struggle.

My love I do this work because I want something different for you. I really do. And the way is not through restriction and punishment and the new diet fad, it’s learning how to change your mindset. It’s learning how to eat food that fuels your body and also eating a cupcake and learning how to when something in your life, when stress happens or when you, you know, like feel tired or when you know, something major happens, you can move through it, feel the feelings without buffering, without eating all the things.

And you know, I, I want to think about like all the diets out there. I mean, there’s so many, my husband just read this article that there’s some new diet pill, and I was just, oh, it just made me so frustrated. I was just like, ah, right. Like, let’s do that again. Right. Let’s do that again. How many? I mean, I, I did it. It doesn’t work long-term because at the end of the day, if I don’t, if I didn’t learn how to manage my mind and no pill, potion, shake, food plan is going to help that, because my go-to was always eating. When I had stress, when I felt tired, shoot, when I felt joy, I wanted to eat all the things.

And so my love, the only way that I have found to lose weight for the last time, I think for most humansis  to learn how to change your mindset, feel a feeling, and allow yourself to do it in a way that is loving and in a way that you give yourself time. I tell you my loves. We don’t want to give ourselves the time. And you know, I think about this right now. I just want you to think, how long have you been on this diet roller coaster?

Because my love that is actually how long it has taken you to lose weight. I know, hear me, hear what I’m saying. If you, you have not lost your weight for the last time, this is how long it has taken you, It took me 38 years to lose my weight for the last time. I love this quote by Jon Acuff.

I just love it so much. He’s an author. He has a lot of fabulous books. So yeah. Look him up. He’s really amazing. He said, we give the problem a year and the solution a week. We have been programmed to just, here’s the thing that I’ve been struggling with my whole life or 20 years or 10 years or whatever it’s been for you.

But yet I want to just like, get it done. And I want to flip the switch. I want to get it fixed in a week or a month or six months. And this idea of, you know, restricting your time, telling yourself that you need to lose this weight in six months, it is keeping you stuck. It is keeping you stuck my love.

So what do you do? You allow yourself time. You learn how to change your mindset. You do this work, the work of learning tools to break your diet brain, to show up for yourself, to lose weight in a way that you lose it for the last time, the last time my love. And we think it’s hard to change our mindset.

We do. We have these beliefs that it’s hard, but honestly, even the tools that I teach my ladies, it’s simple, easy tools that usually take two minutes or less. So this is what I want you to do. Whatever timeframe you have in your head, I want you to double it. If you’re like, I need to lose weight in a year, I want you to give yourself two years. If you’ve been on the diet roller coaster, let’s just say for 10 years, and it takes you two years to lose it for the last time, well, my love that’s the fastest you’ve ever lost it. I want to say that one more time because our brains are like what, Lizzie’s like, huh?

If you’ve been on the diet rollercoaster for 10 years and it takes you two years to lose it for the last time in a way that you could always do, like you can always do it. Always do it. Well, my love that is the fastest you’ve ever lost it.

So my love, the transformational questions are one, how long have you been on the diet roller coaster? Two, how fast do you want to lose it? And then I want you to double it. And then three, write all the thoughts you have about changing your mindset, all the limiting beliefs about how hard it will be, how you can’t do it. And then I want you to write one thought that you want to believe about it. One thought about what you can do, what you are doing.

And if you want to learn more about my tools, take my free course. You can go to bflycoaching.com/ready to take it and learn the fundamentals of what I teach, tools that can help you start to lose weight for the last time.

So good my 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.