Ep #59: You Are Not Broken

You are listening to the Weight Loss for Successful Women podcast with Shannan Christiansen, episode number 59.

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 always so happy to be back with you, my love. I’m excited about today’s show. We are going to really dive into why I know you’re not broken, and that you can lose weight. So, stay with me until the end and I’m going to give you three tips that can help you.

But first, as always, I want to give a listener shoutout. This is where I read a review of the podcast every week. And this week’s listener shoutout is to Dana.

She wrote, “Words cannot express how grateful I am that I found Shannan and her Transform Society. I’ve listened to all of her podcasts, and number 50 did not disappoint. I’ve learned so much about myself in these past couple of months since I started listening. I’m a stronger, more confident person. I am learning to control my thoughts about everything; how I spend my time and finding joy in my every day. Thank you, Shannan, I’m looking forward to the next 50.”

Thank you so much, Dana. I love this review. And you know, Dana, I love you. She’s a transform boss. She’s amazing. And I appreciate the review. So, you know, ladies, we are drawing for the first $150 gift card on episode number 60, which is next week. So, you know, loves, go onto iTunes, Apple Podcasts and rate and review this show. And then just email me at support@bflycoaching.com with the title of your review and we will get you in the drawing.

And also, subscribe, wherever you listen to podcasts and the show will be waiting for you, you know, every Wednesday. And then, on Fridays, we do Facebook lives or some bonus episodes. So, super fun.

So, my loves, this week has been election week. And I am sure, like all of you, I’ve had all the feelings, from excitement at the beginning of the week, to uncertainty, frustration, and fear. And I just want to tell you ladies, and what I told my Transform ladies in our Facebook live, you know, how I’m coping with this week is really feeling all of my feelings.

And I think that that’s the power of this work. It’s deciding that I’m going to feel all of it, the positive emotion and the negative emotion, without buffering, without taking negative action against myself.

I can feel fear and uncertainty without eating a bag of chips or, you know, for me half of a Texas sheet cake. And I think that that’s the power. I teach and what I know to be true is that when we can learn to feel any feeling and not take negative action against ourselves, everything gets better. And a negative emotion or a negative feeling lasts 90 seconds.

And when we feel it all the way through, we can decide if we want to believe something different. And there are many of you, myself, with everything that’s happened, we don’t want to feel good about it. And I think it’s okay, I know it’s okay to just feel all the feelings.

So, this week, and as you’re listening to it, go inward and make sure that you’re getting rest and you’re getting water and that you’re doing self-care and that you’re feeling all the feelings. Don’t try to push them down.

I know I did this for so many years ladies. I just pushed down feelings. I pushed them down with food and shopping social media, all the things. And I think, as you start to learn this work and as you start to move forward in it, you just realize that it’s actually less painful to just feel the feelings. So, that is my love for you this week. That is what I want for you this week, is just to feel everything that you’re feeling.

So, I do have some very exciting news. So, we are having our fifth grandchild and we are super-excited. And as I record this, the Friday before, we actually found out what he or she was going to be. And our fifth grandchild is going to be a baby girl. And her name is going to be Emma Leigh, which I just love so much.

We are so excited and I have to tell you a little funny story because, pretty much, I have two grandsons and I have two granddaughters. So, this was really the tiebreaker. And I would say most everyone wanted a boy, including my grandchildren. They all wanted a boy too.

And in my head, I was like, “It’s totally going to be a girl,” because everybody wants a boy. And when my son and daughter-in-law went to find out what they were having, my husband and I watched my grandbabies.

So, it was last Friday morning and we had all the grandbabies and my son said, “Hey, mom, we’re on our way from finding out.” Of course, he wouldn’t tell me over the phone. And he’s like, “I’m going to call you when I’m inside your gate and I’m five minutes away and then come out with the grandbabies and pa.” And I was like, “Okay…”

So, my son text me and said, “Hey, I’m almost there.” So, I said, “Okay.” We grabbed the grandbabies. We go outside. And my son had told me, “Hey, mom, record whatever is going to happen.” So, I’m like, “Okay.” I got my phone and I’m standing outside. I’ve got grandbabies, pa, we’re all standing out there.

And then, I see my son, who is on the trunk of his car coming down our street and he’s got these – I don’t know what they were but they popped out confetti. And he basically comes and shoots the confetti out. And basically, it all came out pink and then right away, we knew that there was a girl and my grandbabies were like, oh, and everyone was excited.

And then, my son comes over and I look down. Yeah, I didn’t hit record. I had my phone and I forgot to hit the record. So, yeah, it didn’t get recorded. I mean, it’s all good. We still experience the moment. But we totally forgot to record. I mean, I totally forgot to record.

So, just a funny story. But we are having a beautiful baby girl and her name’s going to be Emma and she is coming March of 2021 and she is perfectly healthy and all the pictures look great. So, we’re super-excited about that.

So, one of the things that we’re doing right now in Transform is a book club. And we’re doing the book Atomic Habits. And I love this book. I mean, I love it. I’ve read it several, several times and I love doing book clubs.

And when I used to think of my habits, when I think of myself 10, 15 years ago, I really had no idea actually how many habits I had, from brushing my teeth or kissing my husband before I go to sleep.

We all have just hundreds of habits every single day and we’re just so programmed. And we have formed these habits over years. And this really leads me into why I know that you’re not broken. We have this – I’ve talked about our primitive brain, our primal brain. And I like to call her Lizzy. And then, we also have this other piece of our brain which is the automatic brain.

And this is where all of our habits are stored. And we have habits that we have created over a lifetime. And our brains are wired this way. And we create new habits all the time. And so, I’m thinking about a habit that I got into for a while. So, this was before I lost my weight. And I started drinking coffee and I like a cold brew.

So, I started going to Dunkin’ Donuts and this, again, I started to, every time I would go and get my coffee from Dunkin’ Donuts, I would also get a donut. And so then, every time, it just became this habit that when my brain would see Dunkin’ Donuts, immediately I would want the reward of the donut.

And we create all of these habits and each one of our habits are tied with a reward. And so, we do this all the time. I think about this even when I was pregnant with my son. I mean, this was a bazillion years ago. But I would get up every single night and I would eat a Little Debbie cake.

Every single night, I would get up in the middle of the night, I would wake up and I would eat a Little Debbie cake and it became a habit. And we have tons of these habits. You know, Friday night used to be pizza night. Every Friday night, we would have pizza.

When I was growing up, every Friday night, we would go out to eat. And so, we have formed all of these habits over years. And what has happened is we’ve taken the habit and we get the reward of whatever it is, even brushing my teeth. I love how my mouth feels after. There’s a reward there.

And so, all of these habits that we’ve formed over time are in our brain. And so, loves, you have this automatic brain. This is how we are wired. And our brain likes to be efficient. And it wants to use the least amount of energy.

And so, what happens over time is we just have these very unconscious habits. When I think about me going to Dunkin’ Donuts and getting a donut, I didn’t really have to put much thought. It was just pretty automatic. I’d get in my car to go to work and I would be at Dunkin’ Donuts before I even knew it. and I was ordering the donut before I even had a thought about it.

When I used to feel stress, immediately I would find myself in the pantry and looking for something, something sweet because I wanted – I had this habit of when I had a negative emotion, I wanted to comfort myself with food.

And so, you have all of these habits and, I would say, instead of really looking at our brain and really looking at our habits and really learning about all of the different thoughts that we have, I would say we kind of start a war with ourselves were we think we can’t lose weight, we think we’re going to fail. We think it’s too hard. We start to dislike our bodies. We just create this war within ourselves.

And I just want to say, love, you’re just not broken. You’re actually perfect and you can lose weight. You can live in a body that feels like freedom. You just have to start noticing what’s happening in that beautiful brain of yours and really understanding all of the habits that you have created around eating, and the conversation that you have with yourself.

If you continually tell yourself that you can’t lose weight, that you’re not capable of it, that you were meant to be this way, that it’s your genetics, that it’s this, that your mother was heavy or your family is heavy. If you keep telling yourself that weight loss is hard and that you can’t do it, then that is what will happen.

And I’m just here to challenge that. I know that there is a different way. So, I want to give you some simple tips to just start yourself out with. And the first one is just to notice the thoughts that are happening right before and during your overeat.

I think this is really important when you’re eating over what you wanted to eat or you’re eating foods that weren’t on your plan, just noticing what was happening in your brain before that. And the second piece of that is knowing all of your habits.

If every time you drive down a certain street or you go into town, you have to stop to get that donut and coffee, is that a habit that you want to keep? And really know all of them. We have so many habits tied around food and they could be habits around weekends, nights, being in the office, working. Certain habits we have with friends or family members. And just understanding all of the different habits that you have around food.

And then, write it all down. The third tip, write down the thoughts that are happening right before and during your overeat. And then, number two, write down all the habits that you have around food and those three tips, and really writing them all down is really the first step in starting to change your beliefs and your thoughts around losing weight. And it all starts with the simple thought that we can’t lose weight, that we’re broken. And really understanding that this thought is there.

Because so many of these thoughts are in our subconscious. And until we start to shine a light on them, until we start to recognize and notice them, they drive our behaviors because we have these habits and we’re just wired this way.

And love, I want to say it again because I don’t know that you can hear this enough. You can lose weight. You can live in a body that feels like freedom, that feels good. You can reach your goals and your dreams. And it’s just one simple step at a time. And at all starts with noticing what’s happening in that beautiful brain.

So, I want to ask my transformational questions as always. So, what do you want to believe about your ability to lose weight? And number two, how can it be fun and easy? And number three, the three tips, so noticing your thoughts that are happening right before and during your overeat, and also noticing all of your habits around food, and then writing them down. How can you do this for just one day? One day, noticing your thoughts and then writing your habits.

That’s so good, my loves. I really do believe that you’re not broken, my love. you’re just not broken. And, ladies, Transform is closed right now. But if you go to bflycoaching.com/join, you can get on the waitlist. Alright, bye for now, love.

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!