Ep #35: The Number

You are listening to the Weight Loss for Successful Women podcast with Shannan Christiansen, episode number 35.

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. Again, so excited to be back with you ladies today. And today, we are going to talk about the number. I love talking about the scale, the number, but as always, before we get into the show, I want to give a listener shoutout to Gee Schaub

She wrote, “Shannan, I love everything about this. I’ve known you since 1996 and have seen you go through many of these stages. So it’s fabulous that you’re sharing your journey and can help other women. You are a female advocate and we need more women like you. Cannot wait to listen to every episode. Thank you for your support during my cancer journey in 2018 to 2019. It meant a lot.”

Thank you so much, Gina. It means a lot to me that you are loving this and listening. Thank you to all the ladies who have taken the time to listen and leave a review. I cannot express how much I appreciate it. And I love women, that is for sure. I love watching the ladies grow and transform.

I was just in our private messaging channel in Slack where the Society’s accountability teams are. And loves, I just have so much love for these ladies. The Society is my private membership community and we have the most amazing, beautiful ladies.

We have accountability teams and it’s where they can get extra support and communities from ladies just like them. It is unconditional, no judgment. Just support, kindness, and love. I am just so inspired by these ladies, how they show up for each other, how they are creating these amazing friendships. My heart is just so full for them.

The Society membership is closed right now, but I am in the process of creating a new course. It is going to be amazing. The name of the course is The Transform Weight Loss course. It hands down will be the best weight loss course out there.

I’ve taken everything I’ve learned from my transformation, my clients’ transformations, and what ladies struggle with to simplify and enhance it so the ladies can transform their thoughts and beliefs so they can lose weight, feel better, and ultimately, change their lives.

It will be a four-stage process that takes you through the first stage, the how, how to lose weight, all the way through the fourth stage, living your transformation, going into the maintenance phase. Seriously, I am so excited about it. It will be housed in our Society membership so of course, my Society ladies, you will get it first.

But we are going to open the doors for six days in June. If you want to be the first to know about it and receive a brochure in your mailbox with all the details, go to bflycoaching.com/waitlist to learn more. I am just over the moon about it. I just love helping the ladies. I love watching transformation. And I just can’t wait for more ladies to come into the membership.

So loves, let’s talk about the number. I have obsessed about the number for most of my life. I wanted to weigh 120 pounds. This was the number. If I just weighed this weight, then everything would be good. I could achieve all my goals and dreams if I just weighed 120 pounds.

I remember this one time walking on the Ocean City Maryland Boardwalk with my friend. We were in high school. And I had these green pants on and I was feeling so good. I had wanted these pants for a long time and I was excited to be wearing them.

And then loves, a group of boys walked by and made comments. They called me fat, they made fun of how I looked. I was devastated. I wanted to cry. I didn’t at that moment. I pushed it down. But I did have the thought, “If I just weighed 120 pounds.”

I then made one of my many commitments to get down to 120 pounds. I was so tired of being overweight. So, I went on one of many restrictive diets. I did not get to 120 pounds. I got to 167 pounds. I still thought I was super fat. I still had all of these thoughts around it not being good enough.

So eventually, I started to gain weight and got back over 200 pounds. This was a random number that I had been maybe when I was seven or eight. I’m not sure. I thought this is what I needed to weigh, and if I did not weigh it, that I was not good enough. My body was not good enough.

When I coach my ladies, they all have a number. A number that if they hit it, everything will be okay. Everything will be perfect. But loves, the number on the scale does not define you or have any relevance to you feeling good or not.

The number on the scale is just a number. It’s a neutral piece of data. Nothing more. It does not define you. It doesn’t make you better or worse. It’s just a number. We’ve created so many stories in our minds around this number.

We hate the scale. We hate the number. When we say we hate it, we’re really saying we hate our bodies. We’re saying that we’re not good enough. Loves, this is where the war began. It’s when we think the number on the scale means something about who we are.

It just does not. It does not mean you are a good or bad mother. It does not mean you are a good or bad human. That number does not mean anything about you. It is just a number. Love, you are good enough and 100% lovable no matter what the number on the scale says.

I teach my ladies in The Society to get on the scale and look at the number and then see all the thoughts that come up. Notice all the thoughts and then change the thought. That is where the real work comes in. Learning that the number on the scale means nothing, that you can love yourself at 250 pounds.

Because if you learn to love yourself today, learn that you’re good enough today, the number will not matter. And when you decide or if you decide that you want it to be lower, it will go lower. That is the power.

Learning that you’re good enough, building a life that you love, that is how you lose weight. It’s not about dieting and restricting to reach some number you weighed when you were 14 or dreamed of weighing when you were 14.

I teach about natural weight. This is a weight that you feel good at physically. You feel strong. You feel good in your skin, in your body. That number is different for every person. I have clients who love how they feel at 200 and feel good physically and mentally.

I have clients who are at 150 and feel amazing at that number. Natural weight is about you, your body, what feels good physically. The number, actually, it means nothing. We obsess about the scale, getting on it, hoping we lose weight. And if we lose weight, then we say we’re good. And if we don’t, then we say we’re bad.

Loves, this is why so many of us have been on the diet rollercoaster for so long. We’ve not learned to love the process, to love ourselves and our bodies right now, today. We don’t spend time creating a life that we love. We think when we get to the number, then we will love ourselves, then we’ll create the life we love.

But it doesn’t work. When we get on the scale, feel bad about ourselves, we then use that as an excuse to overeat, to not pay attention to our hunger because we hate our bodies, we disconnect from them. And then loves, we buffer. We overeat. It is a vicious ride. It is the diet rollercoaster.

Loves, you have a choice, a decision. You can decide that that number on the scale means nothing about you. And that you are going to spend your time and energy noticing the thoughts and then changing them, and then creating a life that you love.

What if you could get on the scale and just look at that number as data? That it does not mean anything about you? What if you could love yourself today, love your body, and create a life that you love today? Love, it is the only way.

So, the transformational questions today, what do you make the number mean about you? And how can you create a life you love today? What is the very first step? So good loves, okay loves, bye for now.

If you love this work and 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!