Ep #45: Why Busy Keeps Us From Losing Weight

You are listening to the Weight Loss for Successful Women podcast with Shannan Christiansen, episode number 45.

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. Welcome back to the show today. So excited to be back with you today. Did you ladies listen to last week’s episode? I, for the first time, had guests on the podcast ever. And three of my ladies came on the podcast. It was awesome.

I was thinking that I wanted to do more guests. I mean, I love talking to you ladies, but it was super fun having some ladies with me for sure. So today, we’re going to talk about one of the excuses that rattles around in all of our brains, and this excuse that we use, it really keeps us from losing weight.

But as always, before we get into the show, I want to give a listener shout-out to Marlene. She wrote, “I too am plagued with feeling that I have to be perfect. It sure can take the joy out of life. Never thought about that being an issue that could lead to struggles with weight. But you describe it to a T. Definitely something to think about and try to take care of. Thank you for sharing your journey with us and trying to help us with ours.”

Marlene, thank you so much. That was so beautiful and such a thoughtful review. It means a lot to me ladies that you love this and that you’re listening, and thank you to all the ladies who’ve taken the time to leave a review. I really appreciate it. And if you’re loving the show, please leave me a review in iTunes. I would so appreciate it.

So we just finished with the opening of The Transform Society. We had not been open since early March and I am just so excited to welcome in another group of ladies. Now we closed our doors this past Saturday, so we’re closed again, but loves, it was so amazing to bring all the ladies in.

And the launch, it was busy. I took off my day job and I still found myself working 10 to 14 hours a day. I wanted to make sure that everything was ready for my new ladies. I also did lots of free trainings and finished up a five-day challenge.

So my brain went into full “you are so busy.” That was in quotation marks. Busy is one of the excuses that keep us on the diet roller coaster. I did have a lot of things happening last week in my day. Every day had lots of activities, but I had time for me.

I got to decide what I was going to do each day. But ladies, you know Lizzy. She offered all kinds of excuses on why I should not go for my walk or eat on plan. What really was happening is I had a lot of emotions. I was feeling worried and excited and stressed. Ladies, all the feelings.

So Lizzy ramped up. This is how our brains works. Our primitive brain wants to keep us safe, comfortable. So in times of stress, the first response of our brain is to give us all the reasons, all the excuses to overeat, to not take care of ourselves.

Ladies, I know you feel me on this. We tell ourselves all the reasons why we can’t do something, why we’re so “busy.” Too busy to take care of ourselves, too busy to make our realistic plan, too busy to eat food that fuels us, too busy to move our bodies.

This excuse of busy keeps so many of my ladies stuck. Stuck with bodies that carry extra weight, eating food that makes us sick. And more importantly, putting ourselves off.

We keep telling ourselves that when it gets less busy, we’ll put ourselves first. When it gets less busy, we’ll do the thing. But then time just keeps ticking. We keep putting ourselves off until when?

Love, when do we show up for ourselves? When do we matter? When do we put ourselves back into the picture? We are so busy taking care of others that we keep forgetting to put our oxygen mask on. Have you ever ridden on an airplane and they tell you to put your oxygen mask on first?

And so we just keep forgetting to do it. And then loves, we just can’t breathe. We’re so physically and mentally exhausted that we feel like we’re talking through mud. We have to get honest about the excuse that we’re busy.

We get to decide on purpose what we do, what actions we take, how we show up for ourselves. And loves, we can do something different. We can decide that we’re going to spend 15 to 30 minutes a day on ourselves. We can talk to ourselves more than we listen to Lizzy. We can do simple, small, consistent action for ourselves.

This is how we put our oxygen mask back on. This is how we start showing up for ourselves. Just one small step at a time. So the transformational questions for you today. One, how is busy keeping you stuck on the diet roller coaster? Two, how can you find some time for you in your day? And three, why is it important to put your oxygen mask on first? So good my loves, see you next week.

If you love this work and you want to go deeper, take my free course. You can learn more about it at bflycoaching.com/free-course. Bye for now loves.

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!