Ep #58: Keep It Simple

You are listening to the Weight Loss for Successful Women podcast with Shannan Christiansen, episode number 58.

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. I am so excited to be back with you. Can you believe, here we are at episode 58. I swear we were just at episode 50. So I’m excited about today’s topic because it’s all about simplicity and how important it is in weight loss.

But before we get into the show, I always love to give a listener shout-out. This is where I read a review of the podcast every single week, and this week’s listener shout-out is to BrownTabatha85. “I knew from the first time I listened to Shannan’s podcast that I wanted to join her membership. I was thankful for an opportunity to recently join the Transform Society. Shannan has been welcoming, supportive, and knowledgeable. I love that I get to create my own pathway and it doesn’t include being on a diet. Can’t wait to see my life change as my mindset is already shifting.”

I love it. Tabatha is one of my Transform bosses, and Tabatha, I love you to pieces. And I just really appreciate the review. And ladies, in episode number 60, I am going to draw for our very first $150 gift card. So if you leave a review on iTunes or Apple Podcast, just send me a note with the title of your review to support@bflycoaching.com and we’ll get you in the drawing.

I mean, so exciting. You know, I really appreciate all of you taking the time to leave a review. It means the world to me. I really do read every one of them and I always look to see if there are new ones. So I just want to tell you ladies thank you and I really appreciate all the support and all the time that it takes to leave a review.

So ladies, it has felt, I would say – I don’t like the word busy, but pretty full. I think we’re getting to a time; we’re wrapping up the year and my work is busy and Transform weight loss program has been so busy. And it really has been a time where I’ve had to pay attention to how I’m planning my time and pay attention to the amount of rest I’m getting.

And this is really important. I want to remind all of you ladies as we go into the holiday season, as we go into the end of the year, how important it is to reflect, how important it is to rest, how important it is to have self-care. And I think when it gets busy and we feel like we’re in a whirlwind, we forget us.

And you know loves, I don’t want you to do that. So we just wrapped up our free holiday training and closed Transform weight loss program for the remainder of the year. The next two months I really want to spend time with my Transform bosses. I want to help them have the best holiday season and so many of them are losing weight and I want to help them continue.

And I’m really working with them on they never have to start over, and they can lose weight. And I’m watching so many of them, I don’t know loves, just start to believe in themselves. And it is absolutely the best thing to watch, to watch a woman believe in herself, to watch a woman start to think that she matters.

My goodness my love, it is so good. So one of the other things that I’ve been doing over the last week is really thinking about how do I want to spend the holidays and what am I going to do over the next two months.

And I’ve made decisions ahead of time. I’ve thought about how I want my holidays, where I want to spend my time, and what things I want to do, and what things I don’t want to do. And this is a really important piece of the holidays. I think we always think we have to do all the things because we’ve always done them, and I learned this a few years ago where I decide what I’m going to do on the holidays.

And of course I talk to my husband and my family, but I really think about the things that bring me joy and the things I want to do. And I’m so excited about this holiday season. I’ve also thought about the business, about Transform weight loss program and what I want to do in the business with my ladies over the next two months.

And my team and I are getting ready to have a half day even to plan for 2021. And so I’ve just been thinking about my ladies and thinking about how to help them and how to help them have success quicker and reach their goals and dreams. And I am just – I have to say, I am loving all of the planning and all of the time that I’m spending thinking and putting all the possibilities out there.

I love that. And even though there’s so much noise in the world right now, thinking about what’s possible and the things that I can have influence over and where I want to spend my time, where I want to serve, it does help bring some peace and some calm to me.

So ladies, as you go into the next couple of months, I just want you to take some time and make some decisions ahead of time, which leads me right into the topic for today, which is how to keep it simple. I think we make weight loss really complicated and it’s from years and years of dieting and wanting to be perfect.

And I want to share a quick story of when I actually went to a nutritionist. And I went to this nutritionist and I had a friend who had had success with her, and I thought okay, let me try it. So I went to her and I did blood tests and all kinds of things.

And then she created this food plan for me, and it was very detailed. I think it was like, 20 pages report, which I got a little excited about and I was like, okay, and I read it. And then I read here’s your shopping list for your food, and then she also recommended I want you to journal and I want you to keep a food diary and I want you to exercise and throw in meditation and here’s some supplemental books you should read, and here’s some supplements you should take.

Love, did you hear everything I just said? Yes, I mean, it was overwhelming. At first, I was excited about it, but then it felt hard. And when it came down to it, the food plan she had recommended, it was so clean and restrictive. And there was no sugar, no flour, some vegetables were cut out, fruit was cut out. It was just so restrictive.

But I did my best and I tried to do all the things, and I did lose some weight with that nutritionist, but when life happened and when I wasn’t following it that strictly, I just started to gain the weight back. And when things had changed for me and we had actually moved to Utah and I just started to gain the weight back.

I say this to you ladies because someone can give you a food plan, you can follow it, but if you don’t learn to change your mindset and you don’t learn to lose weight in a way that you can always do, when I was reading this food plan that she had given me, I was thinking, “Well, at least I’ll be thin when I’m done with this so I can eat normally.”

But that’s not what happens because most of us never make it to goal weight and halfway through or 75% or 25% of the way through, we start to gain weight back. And we haven’t learned how to deal with our emotions, and we haven’t learned to deal with all of the stuff.

And so we just gain it back. And so what I want to offer to all of you ladies and what I teach my ladies in Transform is to start simply. And keep it simple. Weight loss can be very easy, and it can be very simple. So I want to offer you three things to start.

And if you’re already on your journey, this will be a continuation for you. And if you’re just starting, you can start right here. So number one is I want you to make a commitment for only one change. One thing. Maybe it’s making your realistic plan. Maybe it’s drinking more water. Maybe it’s getting more rest. Maybe it is movement more, getting a little more movement in. Maybe it’s writing down your limiting thoughts and beliefs.

Whatever it is, only choose one thing. Because your brain is going to want to be perfect and do all the things. I mean, I could have added in 10 more things, like I was going to meal prep, I was going to do all of this. I was going to change everything about myself.

But that doesn’t work. It doesn’t happen that way. And so what happens is you end up feeling overwhelmed and then you just quit. So number one, make a commitment for just one change.

Number two, plan what to do when you make a mistake, when you fail. So if your one thing is, I’m going to make a realistic plan, then have a plan for when you don’t make it. And how you do that is you just write when I don’t make my realistic plan, I’m going to take the next best action.

And so the next best action could be in the middle of the day to write it on a napkin. It doesn’t have to be fancy. It doesn’t have to be anything that you have to do, or you don’t need 10 journals. You don’t need any of it.

And if you don’t know what the realistic plan is, go to bflycoaching.com/6. The Power of Planning. It’s a great tool to begin and to start with. So number one, make a commitment for one thing. Number two, plan what you’re going to do when you make a mistake.

Because when we don’t plan for it and we make a mistake, then we binge, we overeat, and one mistake turns into a month of mistakes. And number three, allow yourself time with the one thing. The one change that you’re going to do.

Don’t every week add in something new. Give yourself a good amount of time to really sit with the one thing. The one change. And to really start to create a new habit.

You know loves, my advice to you is don’t compare yourself to others and don’t believe that you need to lose all your weight in this very short amount of time. Because if you take your time and you do it in a way that you can always do, it will be the fastest that you ever lost it.

And you want to know why? Because you won’t gain it back. If you’ve been on the diet roller coaster for 10, 20, 30, 40 years, then yes, weight loss has been slow and difficult. But if you take the next bit of time, however that is, a year, two years, three years, whatever it is, and you lose all your weight in a way that you won’t gain it back, it will actually be the fastest that you’ve ever lost weight.

I’m just going to leave you with that because I want you to really sit with that because that’s so important, my love. So the transformational questions are number one, what is your commitment for one change, one thing you want to do for yourself? And number two, what are you going to do when you fail or make a mistake? And number three, how much time are you going to give yourself with this change before adding anything else in?

So good my love. I mean, ladies, I love sharing this time with you. So next week, we are going to talk about something very important that I believe you ladies think about yourself. And I’m just going to – we’re going to bust through that myth. Alright ladies, my love, I will see you next week. Bye for now.

If you loved listening to this podcast, I would love to have you come check out Transform weight loss program. It is my monthly coaching program where we take this work to a whole new level. And ladies learn how to lose weight for good in a way that they can always do. Join me over at bflycoaching.com/join. I’d love to have you join me in Transform weight loss program.

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!