Ep #9: Become the Scientist of Your Body

You are listening to the Weight Loss for Successful Women podcast with Shannan Christiansen, episode number nine.

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 loves. This past week has been so amazing. I have been working with my ladies in my jumpstart program and it’s my signature program that my ladies are in, and we just finished week three. And week three is all about feeling the feelings.

You know, we had our group coaching call on Thursday and they just inspire me. They are showing up and taking action even though it is super hard. I just have so much love for them. They really have just made my week.

The breakthroughs they are having are life-altering and I just cannot wait to see their transformations. And I am so loving this show and so grateful that you are listening each week. Today we’re going to talk about food and a different way to think about it.

For so long, we have labeled food as either healthy or not healthy. We’ve been told that one day a food is good for you, and then the next day it is not. Learning how food feels in your body and if it fuels you is important when getting off the diet roller coaster for good. And then of course, I will leave you with a couple transformational questions so you can start to take action today.

But before we get into today’s show, I want to do a listener shout-out. This is where I will read a review of the podcast every week. This week’s listener shout-out is to Sarah Turner. She wrote, “I’ve been listening to these, and the way Shannan breaks things down makes perfect sense and it feels so easy to follow. Anyone who thinks they’ve tried everything should really listen to this to break open their minds to a new way of thinking.”

Sarah, I love that review. I am just so grateful for it and I love that you’re listening. So we just came back from Sedona and my husband and I went up there for a really quick getaway. We have been so busy and we just needed a little break.

It is so gorgeous up there and honestly, I always feel so peaceful when I am there. We stayed at this beautiful resort and had a beautiful room with a fireplace and an outside patio. And the views were spectacular.

And I posted some of those pics in our Weight Loss for Successful Women private Facebook group and we’ll put the link in the show notes so you can see them. I just love taking some time for me and for us. It is absolutely the best.

So I feel really rested and I’m so excited today to talk about food. And I get asked all the time, what should I eat? I even have ladies email or comment asking for a food plan. I know that you want to know what to eat to lose weight. We have all looked for that magical food that we lose tons of weight on.

But everyone’s body is different. What my body needs for fuel and what your body needs are two different things. This is one of the reasons why I believe we have all been on the diet roller coaster. We never learn to pay attention to our body and what fuels it.

So in today’s show, I’m going to talk about another one of my four fundamentals that I teach and it’s all about fueling that beautiful body you’re in. When I first started dieting, it was all about counting calories.

So I remember I was on 1000-calorie a day diet and I would make sure that every day, part of the 1000 calories, I had a Snickers bar because I loved a Snickers bar. I still do. And almost Snickers, I love it. So 200 and some calories would be nothing that fueled me and ladies, I have to be honest. Some days I had all 1000 calories full of sugar.

I would feel terrible but I was sticking to my 1000 calories. Then entered the low-fat era where everything was low fat. Do you remember SnackWell’s? I loved the chocolate ones with the marshmallow filling. I mean, they were chocked full of sugar. They didn’t really make me feel that good, but they were low-fat and you all remember Susan Powter.

If you’re old enough, you remember her with her blonde hair, running around really telling us that low-fat was the way to go. But then ladies, everyone changed their minds. Then Atkins came and it was completely high fat. And now keto.

I have to tell you this really quick story, but honestly, I did Atkins many, many times and let me just tell you, I’ve eaten enough cheeseburgers with bacon for a lifetime, even though I still eat them today. For real, I did.

And this one time when my son, he was younger, we got a little George Foreman grill in our third-story apartment and I was making hamburgers every single night. Now, my son was always a meat eater. He loved it. But after about a month of hamburgers on that little George Foreman grill, he looked at me and said, “Mom, I just cannot eat another burger. Please stop.”

So you know, this is the things that we do, ladies. We listen to everyone else and what they tell us. It’s funny. My husband just reminded me, I don’t know, maybe a month or two ago, that I actually once went to a hypnotist. I actually had forgotten that I had went to her.

And I went there because I thought I needed to stop eating cheese. And I know that sounds crazy, but I love cheese and I thought that – I mean, I was convinced that if I just stopped eating cheese, I would lose the weight. So I went to her and she was so sweet and nice. I didn’t stop eating cheese, and the crazy part is I still eat cheese today.

I eat it, I’ve lost weight on it, and it actually feels good in my body. First, fat was horrible, and now eat 70% worth of fat on keto. I mean, all of this happened in my lifetime. The change in philosophy.

So loves, our bodies are amazing. Some of us produce humans out of them. I carried a human. I have a son who now I have four beautiful grandchildren and my son was once in my body. I mean, when you really think about it, it’s so crazy.

And even for those of us who don’t produce humans, I mean, our liver reproduces. We get a cut and it heals. I mean, I can go on and on about our bodies. They have these built-in signals that tell us what feels good and what doesn’t.

The problem is we’ve become so disconnected, loves. So disconnected because we have listened to everyone else tell us what we should eat. I do not teach or recommend a specific diet because I have found a better way to lose weight and keep it off.

I will never tell my jumpstarters what to eat. I will never give a food plan. I just don’t believe in diets because our bodies, loves, they know what fuels it. My body knows when something feels good in it, and when I eat something that is non-fuel, my body knows that too.

When I eat foods that fuel me, I feel energized, I feel good. When I eat foods that do not fuel me, I feel heavy, sluggish. My body now craves good food. It wants food that fuels me. All kinds of different foods. There is no major food group that is out of my diet and I have lost weight on all of that.

I eat potatoes and carbs. I know, ladies, it sounds crazy. But I do because it feels good in my body and I can lose weight and maintain my weight on it. We have to become, ladies, the scientists of our own body. We have listened long enough to the “experts” on what we should or should not eat.

And what I’ve learned is that when I listen to my body, it knows. Have you ever had flowers that maybe you had not watered and they are wilting? And then you give them a little bit of water, I mean, they just spring up. That is how your body feels when you eat food that fuels it.

It can also feel neutral. There are foods that I eat that I don’t feel good or bad, I don’t feel as energized, but that’s okay too. I still consider those fuel foods. And you know, for so long we have labeled food as good or bad, but honestly loves, it’s not good or bad. It’s just neutral. It just is.

Foods either fuel you or they don’t, and ladies, some “good food” might not fuel you. So for example, when one of my clients, she eats fruit, she comes alive. She loves berries and they feel so good in her body. They make her feel energized. Now ladies, when I eat fruit, it makes me feel sluggish. It kind of gives me a belly ache.

I don’t eat fruit very often because for me, it’s not fuel. Now, a banana is probably the easiest fruit that feels okay, sometimes neutral in my body. But loves, a baked potato feels great in my body. It energizes me. I can lose and maintain weight having some potatoes in my diet.

This is what I’m saying ladies. We all have these different bodies and we have to – I want to say it again – become the scientists of our own bodies. So you ladies know, protein shakes are all the rage. I mean, so I decided I was going to drink them with almond milk, another “all the rage.”

I started to notice that I felt tired after I drank one. Almost a little sick. And I was crazy hungry 30 minutes after I would drink one. After some testing, I realized it was the almond milk. Almonds, although many would say is healthy, was not good for my body.

It’s funny because I ate a Kind bar the other day because I do like them before I shot some videos for my jumpstarters and I kept having to stop the video because I wasn’t feeling that good. And my son edited the videos and he – I’m not even kidding. He was over here in my office. He was like, “Mom, seriously, stop eating almonds.”

I was like, okay, I know I got to stop eating the almonds. So loves, stop relying on everyone else to tell you what to eat. Stop looking through Pinterest to find the next food plan. Test foods in your body and see if they feel good.

Ask yourself 10 minutes and 30 minutes after you eat how did the food make you feel? Do you feel energized? Do you feel satiated? Or do you feel sluggish and have a belly ache? I’m teaching this to my jumpstarters and they are having amazing results.

And you know love, sometimes you’re going to choose to eat foods that do not fuel you and that is okay. Put it on your realistic plan and make the decision to do it. Loves, you can eat the donut or not. It has always been your choice. I’ve learned how to do this successfully, not like the past where I would eat a donut and then it would end in a full out three-week binge.

It’s funny, when we went to Sedona, I just had a New York cheesecake. It was awesome. And I put it on my realistic plan and I ate it. I stopped after a few bites because I was full, but I got to enjoy it and then I was done. No drama, no deprivation, no crazy stomach ache.

Loves, that is the power of learning the foods that fuel you and that don’t, and then making the decision that if you want to eat a food that doesn’t fuel you, you just put it on your realistic plan. I am telling you loves, this has changed my life. Honestly, I was on that roller coaster for 38 years and these fundamentals have just changed it for me.

So loves, here are the transformational questions. Number one, what beliefs do you have around healthy and not healthy food? And number two, what would you have to think to start becoming the scientist of your own body?

So loves, spend some time over the next week paying attention to your body and what fuels it. You are so worth the time investment. Become the scientist of your own body.

So much fun loves, spending some time with you, and to celebrate the launch of the show, I am going to be giving away a $50 Amazon gift card to 12 lucky listeners who subscribe, rate, and review this show on iTunes. It doesn’t have to be a five-star review, although I sure hope you love the show.

I want your honest feedback so I can create an awesome show that provides a ton of value for you. Visit bflycoaching.com/podcastlaunch to learn more about the contest and how to enter it. I’ll be announcing the winners on the show in an upcoming episode. So much love to all of you and I just can’t wait to spend more time with you on next week’s episode.

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 over to bflycoaching.com. That’s B – F – L – Y coaching dot com. See you next week!