Ep #43: Questions I Get from My Ladies

You are listening to the Weight Loss for Successful Women podcast with Shannan Christiansen, episode number 43.

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. So excited again to be back with you ladies today. I’m going to do something that I have never done on the show. So, wait for it.

But, as always, before we get into the show, I want to give a listener shoutout to P. She wrote, “Thank you. I feel like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders, no pun intended. I too have been a victim of restrictive diets for the majority of my life and I’m very excited to try this with my new sisterhood of friends.”

Thank you so much, P. It was, again, such a beautiful review. It means a lot to me that you love this and you’re listening. Thank you to all of the ladies who have taken the time to leave a review. I just appreciate it more than you know.

So, loves, still in quarantine. Seriously, I was thinking about how crazy this year has been and mostly I’ve tried to really find the good. I mean, I’m a coach. This is what I do. So, I’m looking at all the areas that I’m learning and growing, how I have more time because I’m not traveling. But some days, love, I just really miss being around people. You know, like groups of people.

My husband and I would travel a lot. Every month, a couple times a month at least. So, we’ve been in the house a lot. So, ladies, I bought this date subscription box. So, we can have a date at home.

We’ve tried it. We’ve received two months so far. They are pretty creative with the games. So, you kind of get this game plus you get, you know, where you can make something together. And, you know, they give you the dry ingredients for this kind of dessert.

And we actually have not done the dessert part because it’s not that we don’t like dessert. We love dessert, but it’s actually not been things that we like. So, we have done the games and they’re pretty fun actually. We’ll keep it for a bit and see wat comes in our third box. But honestly, love, I just like having fun with my husband and he’s the best part of it for sure.

So, today, ladies, are you excited? We are going to do questions and answers. I get tons of questions and today, I want to take some time to answer them.

One of the questions that I get a lot in lots of different ways is, “Where do I begin? How do I start? I keep wanting to start but I keep putting it off. I keep last-supper-ing it.”

I see this a lot with ladies. And I did this myself for a long time. They start in The Transform Society or even with my free course. What happens is they start thinking about all the restriction, all the diets they’ve been on, and then they start having their last supper. And they keep doing it over and over again.

Love, I did this for so long. There are really two things at play here. One is this fear of failure, wanting to be perfect. And the second reason is not wanting to feel the feeling of restriction. So, let’s dive into number one.

So, the fear of failure and wanting to be perfect is one of the top reasons I find that we stay on the diet roller coaster. We want to eat perfectly. We want the perfect body. You know, the one of the 18-year-old on the magazine. And we promise ourselves that if we’re just perfect, we can lose all of our weight in three months.

So, we place all of these expectations of perfectionism, and then, love, we feel overwhelmed by it. And when we feel overwhelmed, we do nothing. We just keep putting it off. But really, love, we’re putting off our dreams. We’re outing off us.

Now, the second piece is not wanting to feel restriction. This comes from a long diet history of, you know, quote unquote clean diets or calorie restriction or getting rid of an entire food group. When ladies join the Transform Society, we start them in stage one of a four-stage process.

And stage one is the how. The how to lose weight. They start by doing simple consistent steps so they don’t start shutting down, feeling overwhelmed. And if they start to, I teach them a technique that starts to help them get quick successes, so they can start to feel proud instead of overwhelmed.

I also teach a process where I meet the ladies where they’re at. If you’re eating two Big Macs and fries every day, you cannot go to chicken and salad. I teach you to up-level. And by up-leveling, you’re not making major shifts. It’s just one small shift at a time.

You can create your realistic plan, choose the food that you like, and you don’t have to cut out any food groups. Dieting is not the way, love. If it was, there would not be a billion-dollar industry.

Another question I get is, “I’m so busy, I cannot find the time to write my realistic plan, get my sleep in. I’m honestly exhausted.” I see this with so many women. It comes back to this need to take care of everyone, to put everyone’s needs above their own.

I do believe that, as women, we have to put our oxygen mask on first. We have to take care of ourselves. That’s how we lead by example. If you show your family that you come last, then when they have families, they will believe that they should come last.

Hear me on this, ladies, you teach through your example. Love, you cannot not find the time for yourself. The crazy part is, we say we don’t have the time. But how often are you watching Netflix, scrolling through social media?

Really look at where you’re spending your time. My ladies spend about 10 to 15 minutes a day doing their realistic plan and reflection work. And then they spend about another hour or two a week coming to the coaching calls or doing the coursework or spending time with their ladies in the accountability groups.

They choose what works for them. Love, your lizard brain will always tell you that you don’t have the time, or to put it off until later. Know that those thoughts will be there, then just do it anyways. You are worth the time, love. This, I know for sure.

Another question I get is, “I’m making my realistic plan, but I keep eating off of it.” I get this question a lot. If you don’t know what the realistic plan is, go to bflycoaching.com/6. It’s actually episode number six in the podcast.

So, loves, first question I always ask my ladies is, is your plan realistic? Or is it just another salad and chicken diet plan? You must meet yourself where you’re at.

One of my ladies in The Transform Society said, “Is it idealistic or realistic?” I thought it was so good. We go deep into planning in the society and I give a few tools. So, for my ladies in the society, use the B-Fly Gage. It’s the best way to make your realistic plan.

If you’re not in the society, really look at your plan and ask, is this idealistic or realistic? Also, if you’ve made your plan and it’s realistic but suddenly the cookies in the pantry are calling your name, maybe you out two on your plan, but now you’re on your fourth one.

Ask yourself this question; what am I not wanting to feel right now? It’s such a great question to ask to disrupt the overeat. Once you’ve answered it, then take the next best action. You can stop in the middle of an overeat.

You don’t have to say forget it and throw everything to the wind, throw the whole day out, scrap everything and eat everything in the pantry. You don’t have to do that. You just say, “What am I not wanting to feel?” And then, take the next best action. You’ve got this, love.

Another question I get a lot – yes, ladies, a lot – is, “I just can’t find the motivation or willpower.” Love, this is one of the biggest miss and self-sabotaging thoughts. Believing that we need motivation to do something.

I teach a lot on the brain. I actually have a whole module on the brain inside my Transform Weight Loss course. I love learning about it. And we have this automatic brain and a primitive part of our brain too. These two parts are in control 90% to 95% of your day. Yes, love, 90% to 95% of your day.

If you have the habit of overeating, then your automatic brain will continue until you use your prefrontal cortex to plan and make a different decision. Your prefrontal cortex is the thinking brain. It does not come from motivation or willpower.

I expect that my thoughts will always say, “Don’t do it. Eat this. Eat off-plan, it won’t hurt.” And when you start expecting it, then you can take a different action. Hear me on this, ladies. Every goal, every one I’ve ever achieved, I mostly did not have the motivation for.

Motivation is a feeling. It lasts about 90 seconds. Achieving any goal is small consistent actions and failures. Love, just know that you won’t have the motivation, and do it anyways. That is how you become unstoppable.

That is what my ladies are becoming: unstoppable. And they’re transforming before my very eyes. I am so excited about next week’s show, love. We have a never before on the podcast event again. Like, so good.

So, I always like to leave you with a few transformational questions, so here they are. Number one, what can you do for yourself today? How can you put your oxygen mask on first? Number two, when you make your realistic plan, is it idealistic or realistic? And number three, what if you knew that you were never going to have the motivation? What feeling could still help you reach your goals? So good, my loves.

Love, if you are wanting to take this work deeper and you love this work, The Transform Society is opening in July. If you’re ready to get off the diet roller coaster and you want a community of women to help and support you, then sign up for the waitlist. You will get all of the information on when it opens, the free trainings, and a brochure mailed right to your home. You can get it at bflycoaching.com/waitlist. Bye for now, love.

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!