Ep #8: Stop the Beatings

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

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 loving this show and just so grateful you’re tuning in each week. Today we’re going to talk about self-love and how we can stop the beatings. It is so important when getting off the diet roller coaster for good. We have to learn to love ourselves.

And ladies, stay with me. I know when I say that, your lizard brains start to go crazy. And then of course, I’ll 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 Zoey’s Journey. She wrote, “Listening to these podcasts, I couldn’t help but cry. I honestly feel like I’m not alone on this roller coaster for the first time in a long time. Listening to this felt like she was telling my story, the story I’m currently living, and giving me the courage and advice to change the storyline. My storyline. Figuring out my honest why and making a commitment to myself. I’m going to do this realistically, as suggested. Thank you so much for these podcasts. Can’t wait to learn more.”

I love that review. And I’m so grateful, Zoey’s Journey. It is such a powerful and impactful review. Thank you so much. And we are getting close to drawing for our winners, so for those of you who have reviewed and rated the show, we are going to do our drawing in episode 10.

Now, if you haven’t done it yet, there’s still a couple weeks so please subscribe, rate, and review the show and details on that and how to get entered, it will be at the end of today’s show.

So a couple weeks ago, I went to a retreat in Nashville. It was hosted by one of my teachers. She posted something back in April. It said something about a retreat plus her. So I was totally in. I signed up as soon as I got the payment link. I wasn’t even sure what the topic was.

But then I learned that it was a photo confidence retreat. Now, I have done a lot of work to love my body. I used to hate it no matter what weight I was at. Whether I was thin or not, I just didn’t like my body. I actually had so many negative thoughts about it.

But I learned through my process to really love it and you know, when I talk to my jumpstarters about the concept of loving their body, their first response, most always is no way, Shannan. No way can I love this body I’m in.

It’s so hard for us to believe as women that we could love the body, the skin, the fat, the stretch marks, the wrinkles. But loves, it is possible. So I received the pre-work for the retreat. I honestly had the thought, well, mostly I’m good with photos and this work will be fine.

The challenge was to take a selfie each day. I decided I was going to do it. All in. And in all kinds of positions, lighting, no makeup, and I realized I still had a lot of negative thoughts, especially about my neck. Now, stay with me ladies, I know, my neck.

I used to weigh 315 pounds. I have loose skin. And as I get older, the looser it gets. So I show up in Nashville, stay at this amazing hotel. It was the Thompson and it was beautiful. And honestly, we were so lucky. They upgraded us to a suite.

So it was beautiful and they had a bathtub, it was amazing. It was this older clawfoot tub. It was beautiful. Now, I have a rule about bathtubs in hotels. I honestly never use them but it was so beautiful so I washed it out and I took a bath every day. It was amazing.

So I show up the first night at the retreat, and honestly loves, I had all the thoughts. Don’t show up, Shannan, why did you do this? Call in sick. Stay at the hotel, it’s so beautiful. I mean, my lizard was in full effect. I was going to a retreat where I didn’t know anyone but my teacher. And I was super nervous and scared.

But I made a commitment, and I have learned that I can allow those crazy thoughts and still show up for myself, so I showed up. I made a commitment in the ride over to the retreat house that I was going to be vulnerable. I was not going to sit in the back row and be an observer.

So the first night, I put out that I had a lot of negative thoughts about my neck, and that in photos, I could see the loose skin. And of course, all the ladies were like no, you’re beautiful, what are you talking about? But ladies, I understand. When I look at my neck, I see the loose skin. There are times that I am hyper-focused on it.

So part of the retreat was a photo shoot on Sunday. I decided I was going to love the photos and my neck. We had this amazing photographer and I’ll ask Pavel and team to put her information in the show notes but she is amazing. She’s on my Instagram. You can follow me on Instagram @bflycoaching or @shannanchristiansen and she’s on there. It’s @teresaearnestsocial, and amazing photos. And she is quick.

So I received my photos Sunday night and I looked at my neck and loved it. But then, loves, my brain went to, ugh, that eyeshadow is too heavy. It started going after other parts of the picture. Loves, I just stopped and I realized again that my brain is always going to try to show me the negative.

It doesn’t mean that it’s true, and most of the times, it is not true. Loves, negative thoughts will never fully go away, but learning how to allow them and then know that they are not true is where the magic is.

Today’s show is all about finding self-love and stopping the continual beating up of ourselves. I remember my mom telling me that I should love myself. I did not understand it until I started to do this work. It’s about learning how to keep commitments to ourselves, to stop lying to ourselves, to show kindness and love to ourselves as we would show a stranger.

I moved a ton when I was younger and I was always having to make new friends. I put a lot of energy into my friendships and relationships. I wanted to fit in. I cared about what others thoughts. I was taught to be kind to others. But loves, there is one person that I am around the most who I know intimately and who is always there, and it is me.

As I’ve aged, I’ve learned the most important relationship is the one I have with myself. In my early adulthood, I never thought about that. I was always worried about pleasing others. I never stopped to think, what did I think of me?

I learned that the most important relationship is the one I have with myself. That I have to care for myself first, that I am my best friend. That I have to please me, take care of me, be kind to me. Because when we are neglecting ourselves, the other relationships in our lives, they feel heavy. They feel like burdens.

We’re missing the gifts and joy because we’re neglecting the relationship we have with ourselves. And then loves, we start to resent others around us because we’re not taking care of ourselves.

We also spend a lot of time beating ourselves up, thinking negative thoughts about ourselves. I made a conscious decision that I was not going to beat myself up anymore, which means when I have a negative thought about myself, I just allow it, and then I just say something like, “Love, that is not true.” Or I replace it with, “Love, that neck is beautiful.”

I talk to myself as I would someone I loved. I talk in a way that is kind, understanding, direct, and I hold myself accountable. My jumpstarters are really learning how to notice their thoughts right now and it is difficult at first. We have lived so many years pushing down our feelings and ignoring our thoughts.

So this process takes time and a whole lot of patience and kindness to ourselves. We have to learn to have self-thoughts, similar to how we would talk to our best friends, our children, our grandbabies. We need to be our best friends.

I am kind to myself but I don’t lie to myself either. That’s part of loving myself. I tell myself the truth. When I’m justifying a behavior, I can be honest about it. If I choose to eat the donut, it’s a conscious decision. I do not lie and tell myself I deserve it or that I need it.

I don’t beat myself up for my failures. I ask myself, what am I learning? What can I do better next time? And I don’t live in the lie of perfectionism. Loves, I am not perfect. I am a beautiful human and have learned to love myself in the skin and all of the imperfections that I am in.

And I know loves, that it can be hard because we have so many negative thoughts about ourselves in a day. But love, you can start to become a watcher of those thoughts. You can allow a thought and challenge it. No one ever had long-lasting change by beating themselves up. It just does not work.

Loves, we have done that enough for a lifetime. Love is the only way I have found to get off the diet rollercoaster and lose weight for good. Loving myself, working on the relationship I have with myself, caring and wanting the best for me.

And when you start to care for yourself, you will want better things for yourself. You’ll want better food that fuels you, you’ll want to move your body more, you’ll want to speak kinder to yourself, and then loves, something starts to shift. You’ll start to dream again. You’ll start to want better things for yourself. This is what happens.

So I want to leave you with a couple transformational questions to ask yourself and really reflect on this concept because this concept of learning to be your best friend and learning what really loving yourself is, it is life-changing, loves.

So number one, what are the prevalent negative thoughts that you have about yourself? And number two, what would change for you if you were your best friend? Love, decide on purpose to stop the beatings, to be your best friend, to love yourself. You are worth this, love.

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!