EP #91: What is Hard About Losing Weight and What to Do

You are listening to the Weight Loss for Successful Women podcast with Shannan Christiansen, episode number 91. 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. Ooh, I love today’s episode. I mean, you know, ladies, I love spending this time with you, but this episode, it’s a good one. So you want to make sure you listen, and if you’re loving the show, please take the time to rate and review the show. I read every single one. And also make sure that you subscribe so every Wednesday morning I am in your podcast list. And also I release bonus episodes. You don’t want to miss those.

So I have had a wonderful week. I did a workshop with my Transform ladies this week, and I love these workshops. I added them in this year. I just wanted to do something extra. It’s a bonus in Transform. I love to give bonuses. And this month we actually have two different workshops and it’s kind of a part one and a part two. This was all about, this first one was about planning and the power of planning. I shared all of my best tips and strategies. I was not a born planner. I know some of you are, but I was not.

It’s so interesting how it has transformed my world from my weight loss, my career, even how I take care of myself. I learned a long time ago to do the things I don’t want to do first, to plan, even plan fun, rest relaxation. When I plan it is amazing how I feel, how I’m living my best life with my best self.

Sometimes I get lazidaisical and I don’t plan. And then my brain starts thought looping on all the things, worst case scenario. I start procrastinating, putting things off and you know my love, I just have some grace again. This process that I teach and the process that I’ve learned, it’s not about being perfect. It’s about showing up and just taking the next best action and learning tools and techniques that can help you live your best life in a body that you love.

This morning I was on my walk and love, it was hot, like a hundred degrees hot. My brain was like, skip it, it is Friday. You can make up for it tomorrow. You can, you know, I had all of these thoughts going through, like, you have so much to do. You can go earlier tomorrow. It’s so hot. You could take a longer walk tomorrow. You have so much to do today. Just stay home. Pretty much throughout the whole walk, I had all of these thoughts going through my head. But I had planned, you know, to walk. And I also planned when I got home to do my upper body workout with weights. So Lizzie was really piping up.

She was like, stop. And I just continued to let those sentences because that’s what they were. Thoughts are just sentences, go through my brain. I did not make them mean anything or that I needed to quit. And this really leads me into today’s topic. What is hard about weight loss? See, it’s not the process, not the scale, not the food, not the exercise. You know what is hard? No, our thoughts, our feelings. The process is easy, but we have these sentences that go through our brain. They cause us to feel a certain way, and then we act, we do this over and over again, but I’ve learned a couple things throughout my journey.

Number one, just because I think it, because I have a sentence that goes through my brain does not mean I have to feel a certain way or make it mean anything. And most of the time it’s not even true. And number two, I can feel bad and still choose a different thought and take an action that serves me. I’ve learned to feel my feelings and I’ve learned how to choose different thoughts to produce different feelings.

Today during my walk, it was not a breeze. Some days it is. Some days my walks, shoo, they go by fast. But today I had to keep coming into awareness, keep going. It felt hard today. So I felt it, but I did not take any action. I just kept refocusing my mind. I just kept telling myself today we planned to walk and this is what we’re going to do.

When I think that I feel determined and I just keep putting one foot in front of the other, even though thoughts like take the shortcut, you’re going to die in this heat, I just allow those thoughts to be there. And even when I got home and I was full on in a sweat and I thought, oh, I don’t want to do this upper body workout, I just did it anyways.

Thinking that weight loss should always feel easy, it kept me looking for a magical solution, pills, surgery, diet plans, food plans. It kept me wanting to be comfortable. And ultimately it kept me on the diet roller coaster for almost 38 years. I was listening to my teacher, Brooke Castillo’s podcast today, and it was all about hard. It was perfect timing actually. She said something and it is everything. This is a direct quote, “do not quit, do not change the thing that you’re attempting to do to make it easier so your thoughts will change, change your thoughts so you can do the harder thing to become stronger, to do the thing that will make you grow, to do the thing that will make you accomplish something that you will actually be proud of on the other side of it.”

See love, one of the things I teach my ladies in Transform is that we do hard things. We have so much evidence of it. The hard is what keeps us growing. It makes us feel alive. When we are comfortable, we are actually the most dissatisfied in our life. I’m going to say it again, because this is so important. When we are comfortable, we are actually the most dissatisfied in our life. If you’re dissatisfied with your life, it’s because you’re not doing hard things.

I know this because I have fell into it. I’ve fallen into it many times. But when I get out of my comfort zone, the easy, and start pushing myself to do the hard things, like feel my feelings, all of them, well my love, everything changes. You have overcome so many hard things love – raising children, loss, grief, trauma, pain, shoot, glass ceilings, struggle, love you are a boss. See weight loss is easy and it is hard.

The hard is our minds. The first step is just to embrace the hard and decide that you are going to show up and do the work that you are worth it, and that you are ready to learn how to lose weight for the last time. See, I love the hard, even when Lizzie gives me all the reasons to quit, I just let the sentences come in and decide on purpose what I want to think and how I want to show up for myself.

If you’re in Transform you have our course, coaching calls, and all the roadmaps to guide you. If you’re not in Transform, start with my free course, it will give you all of my fundamentals of the cheat code so you can start your journey on losing weight for the last time.

The transformational questions are number one, what reoccurring thoughts come up for you when you’re showing up for yourself? Like I don’t have time, it’s too hot, I should be doing something else. Number two, what would change for you if you started to love the hard?

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 very last time. Ooh, so good.

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.