Ep #12: Diet Beliefs Busted

You are listening to the Weight Loss for Successful Women podcast with Shannan Christiansen, episode number 12.

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. In today’s show, we are going to dive into all the diet beliefs that are keeping you stuck. I love this topic. It was so hard for me to reprogram my brain after years on the diet roller coaster, but it was key to me losing weight.

And as always, I will leave you with a couple of transformational questions so you can start taking action today. But first, I want to give a listener shout-out. This is where I’ll read a review of the podcast every week. This week’s listener shout-out is to AngelQueen.

The title of her review is, “I can relate. Shannan puts things into perspective. I find that I can relate to her experiences. I find myself accepting those experiences and starting to move forward. Thank you, Shannan.”

Thank you so much AngelQueen. I love these reviews. They really do inspire me. I love that you ladies are listening. If you love this show, please rate and review the show. I would just so appreciate it.

So ladies, I love the holidays. I just made a list and planned out all of the fun stuff that we’re going to do in December. Every year, I rent a big old 15-passenger van and we take my immediate family to go look at Christmas lights. It is the best. We sing Christmas carols, it’s so fun, and we go all over looking at lights.

I love this tradition. I just love the traditions of the holidays. I’ve loved over the last few years starting traditions that don’t center around food. I like finding cool things we can do as a family like games, service activities, and even things like making crafts together. Honestly, it is the best. I love those g-babies and they love and they’re in for whatever.

But I also like planning what I want to do and what I’ll say no to. This has been a work in progress for me. I used to say yes to everything. I wanted to show up for everything. But now, I guard my time. I look for the things that mean the most to me.

I used to do things I didn’t want to do and then love, I would build resentment for doing it. Loves, we do things out of obligation but what if you did the things you love? How would it feel to do the things that you love out of love? Not obligation.

We do things we don’t love and then we eat to buffer our feelings away. And now I love the things I do. I say no to the things I don’t want to do, and I don’t feel guilty about it. I choose what I do with my time, and loves, it is so powerful. So powerful to do the things that you love out of love.

So loves, let’s get into the diet beliefs. We have been programmed with all of these diet beliefs. We think they’re true. I see this come up with my Jumpstarters. They will be making progress and then an old diet belief will pop up. Then they start to sabotage. I did this too for so long.

I would be making progress and then an old belief, or I would hear someone talking about the new diet and my lizard brain would be like, “See? You’re not doing it right.” I think there are probably hundreds of diet beliefs and today I’m going to talk about eight of them. So let’s go through some of them.

Now loves, I’m not a doctor, so you should always consult your doctor. What I share with you is my research and my experience. So let’s get into it. Number one, and one of the hardest for me to let go of was that you have to count calories, points, macros, fat grams, carbs. I mean, every diet plan I had ever been on had some form of counting something.

I mean, if it was Weight Watchers, it was point. If it was Atkins, it was carbs. When it was the low-fat era, it was fat grams. It was always something. So dropping that diet belief took some time. I’ve lost my weight – hear me when I say this. I’ve lost my weight without counting any of it.

I’ve learned to pay attention to how food feels in my body. We have hormones that tell us when we’re full and when we’re hungry. But we become so disconnected that we just don’t feel any of them anymore.

Think about how our great-grandparents ate. They didn’t count calories. They didn’t count anything. They ate when they were hungry and they stopped when they were full. So ladies, listen to episode nine of you haven’t. It’s where I really go in-depth on this topic.

Okay, number two. Okay ladies, this one, my goodness. We’ve been told so many different things. So number two is that you have to eat three meals a day and a few snacks, and that you have to be eating all of the time because if you don’t, your metabolism will drop.

Loves, it’s one of the biggest misconceptions. The amount that your metabolism drops is so minute that it doesn’t affect you. Some people do intermittent fasting or different things like that, and they lose and maintain weight. Some people eat three meals a day with no snacks. Some people eat two meals a day with no snacks.

I’ve seen my clients do many different variations. And I believe that snacking is always an emotional event. Now, I know love, your lizard right now is like, what? But snacking is always an emotional event.

It is because I am trying to buffer some feeling that I don’t want to feel. I believe our body needs food breaks. Eating all the time never gives your body time to release the fat. Your body cannot release fat if your insulin levels are raised. So you have to give some time in your day where you’re not eating.

Now loves, I believe this is such important work. Do the research yourself. Test what works for you. My clients do many different things and they’re losing weight. And they have tested in their body what feels good for them. How does your body feel when you eat breakfast? Are you even hungry? Try giving a couple hour break during the day from eating. How does that feel in your body? Test different methods and see what works for you.

Okay, on to number three. Oh my goodness loves, the number three diet belief, I just need the right food plan and exercise plan. Loves, it has never been about the food. The reason we carry extra weight is because we eat food when our bodies does not need it for fuel.

And we overeat mostly because we’re trying to avoid or resist some feeling that we don’t want to feel. There is no magical food plan or pill. Trust me. I have tried all of it. You have to become the scientist of your own body. You have to learn how food feels in your body.

And let’s talk about exercise. We have been told that we must exercise to lose weight. Remember Biggest Loser? I mean, I watched that show and they exercise like, 10 hours a day. But loves, you can lose weight without exercising.

I used to use exercise as another way to beat myself up. I would start a diet and include exercise, and then I would start slipping and not exercising, and I would quit on the whole thing and beat myself up. I love walking. I do it because it’s the time where I think and it feels good. I never used it as a tool to lose weight.

I exercise for my brain and strength. I had to stop believing that exercise helped me lose weight. Because of being on the diet roller coaster for so long, it just kept me setting these unrealistic expectations and then beating myself up when I did not reach them.

Exercise and losing weight, when I separated the two and focused on my process, my four fundamentals, that’s what helped me lose the weight. I love exercise. I do Pilates too and I love it for the strength. But loves, it has nothing to do with the amount of weight that I carry on my body. And separating those two in my mind helped me lose the weight.

So number four, when I lose the weight, I will start loving my body, find a partner, get a better job, reach my dreams. Loves, this is such diet mentality. We think that when we get there, it will be better. But loves, we all have a 50/50 life, so losing weight does not change that.

To lose weight for good, we have to start loving ourselves. Our body. And working on our dreams now. We can’t wait for there because there is no there. Yes, I feel better in my body now, but I still have a lizard brain. I still have a 50/50 life. I had to go after my dreams and learn to love my body while I was losing weight.

If you don’t start changing your beliefs and mind, then when you lose the weight, all the diet beliefs and the things that kept you overweight will be there. And then love, eventually, you will sabotage and gain weight. I mean love, that is the diet roller coaster. And I had to learn this. I mean, this work, learning to start now with my dreams and loving my body, that was key to losing weight and now keeping it off.

Okay love, number five. An entire food group is bad. Carbs are bad, fat is bad, fruit is bad. I mean, every new diet fad wants you to cut out some food group. But love, I eat all the food groups. I learned what food fuels me and what doesn’t. I did this and I lost weight.

Loves, there are simple and complex carbs. There’s no good or bad. I eat potatoes, rice. I mean, I lost weight on them. There are three nutrients that you need to thrive. Carbs, protein, and fat. That’s the truth. Looking at food as fuel or non-fuel is the key. Loves, stop listening to everyone else and listen to your own body. It will never fail you.

Number six, oh my goodness loves, so many of us are part of the clean plate club. My dad, bless his heart, and I just love him so much, but he grew up so poor. I mean, very poor. They used to steal food to eat. So when I was growing up, it was not an option to not clean your plate. I learned to eat everything on my plate. This was another hard belief that I had to give up.

I just had my birthday and we had these little bundtinis. They’re just little miniature cakes. And when everyone left, there were about six left over. I knew I did not want them and my husband was not going to eat them, so I threw them away.

Now loves, I know that this can be so hard because we were just told never to waste food. But loves, I have learned that food will either be waste in your body or in the trash. You decide. Hear me say this again. It will be waste in your body or in the trash. It will sit on your hips or in the trash.

I prefer the trash. I know that we were all told that people are starving in Africa or the homeless, but loves, most of us are not packing our leftovers up and sending them off. For me, I donate time and money to help those organizations. So loves, turn in your membership card to the clean plate club.

Number seven. Oh my goodness. This one was hard for me too. Nighttime eating causes you to gain weight. It’s not the time of the day. It is what you are eating. For many of us, when we’re tired, we choose foods that do not fuel us. So many of you I know struggle with nighttime eating. I know. I did this for years.

It would be around 7pm, I was tired from the day and not wanting to feel all the stress from the day, so I wanted something sweet. A sugar cookie, an ice cream sandwich, whatever I had around. And because I was tired, I would eat more of it.

There are a lot of studies, and actually they found that it doesn’t matter what time of the day you eat. So all of you ladies who work a night shift, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you are making your realistic plan, learning what food fuels you. Those are the keys. So love, bust the belief. It’s not the time of the day. It’s what you’re eating.

Okay, number eight. Oh my goodness, I hear this all the time. And I used to really believe this too. I just love food. And I hear this, I know right now you’re like, “But Shannan, I do. I just love it.” But loves, if you loved food, you would enjoy it.

You would slow down and choose foods that felt good in your body. You love the dopamine hit that you get. I hear this all the time, but it’s just a poisonous thought. We don’t truly love food. Even I’ll say it. I love something like chocolate cake, but loves, I don’t really love it. It’s just food. An object. It doesn’t love us back.

It’s actually caused us years of suffering and pain. Learning that food is just food, not comfort, not love, is a huge a-ha I had. I still enjoy some non-fuel food, but the more I slow down and taste it, the more I find that some of it I don’t even really like.

And when I was on the diet roller coaster, I was binging. I mean, honestly, I was overeating. I wasn’t even tasting it. I was consuming so much sugar that it lost the taste. Now loves, I will go weeks without eating a lot of sugar and then if I eat something like a banana or a Kind bar, it tastes really sweet to me.

That is the crazy part. We think we love it but really, we just want the dopamine hit and we want to avoid feeling our feelings. Food is not love. You are love, love.

So loves, eight diet beliefs. And I bet there are 50 more. So this is what you have to do. Identify all the diet myths, beliefs that you believe. And I’m sure as I was talking, you were like, no, that is not true, Shannan. I know. I know your lizard brain is going crazy.

But loves, the only thing that is true is that your body knows what’s good for it. You have to test what feels good in your body. What food your body can lose weight on. You have to pay attention and just test, test, test.

So the transformational questions. Number one, what diet beliefs or myths do you have? And number two, what do you have to think to change your diet beliefs? Loves, so good. We have been programmed with lots of diet beliefs. Find what they are for you and bust them. And then practice thinking something different.

If you love this work and you want to take it deeper to lose weight for good, my signature program, Jumpstart, will be opening on January 1st for six days, love. To get early access to all of the information on it, register for the waitlist. You can register at bflycoaching.com/waitlist.

Alright loves, talk to you next week.

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!