#104: Weight Loss and Doing Hard Things on Purpose

doing hard thingsAre you finding yourself resistant to tackling difficult tasks? Do life’s challenges sometimes leave you feeling stuck and overwhelmed? Well don’t worry. I get it!. Making changes can be tough, and leave you feeling overwhelmed and stressed. In this episode, I delve into my June challenge for our lifetime members, which I’ve named the “I don’t wanna do it, but I’m gonna do it anyway because I love myself challenge.” It’s vital to acknowledge that certain things are indeed hard, but embracing these challenges is essential for personal growth and transformation. Life isn’t always easy, and that’s okay—it’s the ebb and flow of a balanced life. Tune in to discover practical strategies for reframing your mindset and making daunting tasks feel more achievable. Weight Loss for Quilters | Weight Loss and Self-Sabotage  If you are ready to lose weight and change the way you think about hunger, sign up for the lifetime access membership for Love Yourself Thin! Doors are open and you can find all the information by clicking here.

What You’ll Learn from this Episode:

  • Three things that keep people from doing hard things

  • We have to be willing to sit in our discomfort

  • Overwhelm leads to inaction

Listen to the Full Episode:

Featured on the Show:

  • If you are ready to lose weight and change the way you think, sign up for the lifetime access membership for Love Yourself Thin! Doors are open and you can find all the information by clicking here.
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  • Participate in my giveaway for two free coaching calls with me! All you need to do is send me 5 completed worksheets and you will be entered in the drawing. Giveaway ends August 31st. Send worksheets HERE.

Full Episode Transcript:

Dara Tomasson Podcast

104.Weight Loss and Doing Hard Things on Purpose

Do you get super resistant to doing hard things and feel overwhelmed or a lot of pain? Well, I hear you and I get it, and this episode is going to be right up the alley because I see you. You want to make changes, but it just feels so hard. My name is Dara Tomasson and this is Love Yourself Thin, episode 1 0 4, Doing Hard things. All right, so I wanted to report to you what happened in the month of June in the lifetime membership, I challenged the group to this challenge called, I don’t wanna do it, but I’m gonna do it anyway because I love myself challenge. And in that challenge, I let them decide whatever thing that was hard that they resisting, but they knew it was good for them. So if it was drinking their water, if it was getting to bed earlier, if it was to exercise, was it to lift weight? Whatever that was, they got to choose. And believe me, we had a variety of that. So this episode I’m gonna share with you the takeaways that the membership got from doing that challenge. I’m also gonna give you the obstacles and some strategies of helping you plus some fun stories. So at the end of the episode, you can expect to have some practical ways of changing the way you’re thinking. All right, but before we dive into the episode, I wanna share a win from one of my clients in Love Yourself Thin. And I love doing this obviously, because well, there’s a couple obvious reasons. One is there needs to be more good in the world there. You need to hear the good news, and I think we can just get bombarded with all the negative. And two is these women are just like you, but they have tools and they’re using them. And three, I am inspired by them and I want to help inspire you as well. This one is a super simple win but she’s a brand new member. She’d been in the program for a week and she went to Costco with her son and daughter-in-law and grandchild and they were gonna go get an inexpensive lunch. And so she asked her kids, oh wait a minute, I can’t eat any of these things, or I’m choosing not to eat any of the Costco options. And so she ended up just buying them their lunch and saying, I’m not hungry. And she realized when she checked in with herself, are you hungry? And she thought, nope, I’m not hungry. And so she was able just to sit there and enjoy just being at lunch with them and not having to eat anything. I love that. Side note, this actually happens to me a lot with my kids and now that my mom lives nearby, she will often come to Costco with us. And so my mom and the boys, they get whatever they want to get and I go and do all my groceries and sometimes I’ll buy a rotisserie chicken and I’ll just eat that with them. So there’s lots of different ways around it. Or I’ll have some really nice snap peas or something that I’ve just bought, and then I can sit with them as they finish their dinner and as I finished my groceries. So I loved that when that she was sharing. Okay, so let’s go into the month challenge of, I don’t wanna do it, but I’m gonna do it anyway because I love my self challenge. And this is a really tricky thing to do, especially in our society today, where we just really have a very low pain tolerance for doing uncomfortable things. I remember hearing this as a teenager when we talked about a drive through mentality, and it’s totally true. We have this like, want it fast. I want it quick. I don’t wanna have to wait. And it’s just gotten even worse. And now I see, it’s interesting on my way to church on Sunday, just with the timing of the ferries coming in, there tends to be like five or six Amazon trucks that just come to the stop sign when I’m going to church and I think, okay, Amazon, you just order something, you don’t even have to leave your own house and it just comes. So we have really been conditioned to just click a button and things just happen for us. And so doing hard things or having that muscle of working through something that’s hard, I believe we’re kind of losing that muscle. So there are three things that I see happen a lot that keep people away from doing hard things. So the first thing is resistance. So resistance looks a lot like, I don’t want to do this, this isn’t seem fair. This is dumb. There’s a lot of judgment, there’s a lot of criticism, there’s a lot of either it’s mostly outside of you, like blaming, oh, if the government wasn’t this way or if my mother didn’t pass me these hips, or you know, if our culture didn’t serve such big portions or if we didn’t always have to celebrate with food at everything, right? There’s all sorts of so much resistance. Okay? So I want you to think in your life, what are the things that you’re really resistant to? And then why? Like, why are you resistant? Why is that coming up for you? The next one that I see happen a lot, and I see this especially with the women that joined my program, they get overwhelmed. Because I have a lot of resources and there’s, like there’s a big learning curve. And so overwhelm is a problem because when you’re overwhelmed, it leads to inaction. So think about if you got, like, let’s just give another example. You got a beautiful new sewing machine. You went to the show, you went to the quilt shop, you went online, you did all this research, and you see this incredible sewing machine and you just know it can create so many things. It can embroider, it can do all of this even with long arms. You know, there’s men or women that spent $50,000 and they never really use it because they get overwhelmed. And so the problem with overwhelm is that you don’t know how to break it down and work through it. And that’s a huge problem because then you actually never start, you never really get the process going. And so it sits there and waits and you never actually accomplish it. So that is a huge obstacle of doing hard things. And then the third is pain tolerance. Now this is a really tricky one because I find that a lot of the women I work with in my own personal experience, I have a lot of perfectionist thinking. So there’s a lot of all or nothing thinking. And I’ve recently noticed this in my daughter, which is, this is a really common pattern, and she’s almost 19. So she came back from her first year of university and her first year of university was incredibly busy. She had a very structured schedule with her classes, her studying, and it was really challenging and the reason I I’m thinking of this is, this is how I was at university. So I was just very, very structured and I said, okay, I only have this much time to do this thing, and I didn’t plan a lot of downtime. My daughter was much better than I was. She did that. But then what happens is when you have that level of intensity you have this crash and you don’t know how to find that balance of, well, what looks like a regular day, what would it look like if I balance this? And like I said, she’s done it way better than I have and I’ve been super impressed. But it brought me back to actually most of my life I’ve been that way where I don’t ever really give myself downtime and it’s just busy, busy, busy. And I don’t know how to have the pain of trying to relax or just being satisfied with what I’ve done. And so the result is you have a very low pain tolerance and you can’t really be with yourself. So, for example, if you wanted to say, okay, we’re gonna relax with a family tonight. We’re gonna just sit outside around the fire and we’re just gonna talk. But in the back of your mind, you have this narrative going well, you didn’t get that much done. And as soon as that one thing is done, then you can sit with the family and relax. How many of you can relate to that? And then you don’t ever end up really sitting and relaxing because you’re always doing the next thing. I just had a, a one-on-one coaching call with a client yesterday, and that was exactly what she brought up. She said, . I’m always looking at the next thing. There’s always something looming. It’s hard to be in the moment. And she wants to be an overachiever but the problem is she’s never given herself the parameter of knowing what success looked like. So it was like she was always chasing that. So this is what I’m talking about with pain intolerance. So as I’m sharing some of these examples and talking about this, I want you to just reflect with yourself right now of how much resistance do I have for doing things, and then how often do I feel overwhelmed? And then what is my level of having pain, of being uncomfortable? And I just recently did a extended fast. So I started on Sunday night and I went all day Monday and till about five 30 on Tuesday. And it was really surprising to me how many times my brain says we should go eat. And this is the interesting part. I don’t go and eat the sugar, I don’t eat any of that, but I have like an apple and some nut butter or I’ll have something and it’s, quite often, I will be able to process that urge. But there are so many times in our life where food is just the thing that we use to take the edge off of what we’re doing. Busyness is another way of taking the edge off, right? Just keeping yourself busy. So the way we can resolve this is, first of all, and this is the takeaways from the group. It is important to acknowledge this is hard. Doing weights is hard. It’s uncomfortable. I don’t like being bad at something. I don’t like other people being better than me. I don’t like my 11 year old being able to do things that I can’t do. And so that is the first step is just to acknowledge, yep, this is hard. And now what? And when you give yourself that acknowledgement, it’s just such a calming, has such a calming effect on you because you’re now saying, yeah, it’s hard and I don’t like it, but am I going to go through it or am I going to keep avoiding it? And then I, like, in 20 years from now, five years from now, tomorrow, I know that I’m not gonna be any different. The second one is to make it fun and don’t attach much to it. I made a goal, I’ve actually made it three months in a row. So I have this business goal where I wanna sign 20 people in my program in 30 days, and I had a not so great selling experience, and I was afraid to make goals in some ways, the other ways I was okay, but there was this one kind of being able to make this business goal in this way. It was actually kind of traumatic for me because of this previous experience I had. And so I decided, no, I like making goals because just like with my weight, I like making a goal and then standing on the scale and getting data, collecting data, and then I become powerful because I’m getting this information. So I thought, okay, I’m gonna make this goal. So I made a goal three months ago to sign 20 ladies in my program in 30 days. And the first time I did it, I think I signed maybe five, but I got really good information and I wasn’t doing this goal for me to say, ah, if you get 20 people in 30 days in, that means you’re awesome, Dara. No. It was like, I have this desire. I want to learn the skill of selling my program to 20 ladies in 30 days. So I was able to take me and my ego out of it, and then the second month I did it. I got a few more people and this third month I’ve almost reached it. It’s really exciting. I have a few more days left and I’m almost there, but the big difference is I’m not making it mean anything about me as far as my value as a worth as a person. It’s me learning a skill, and so I’m learning the skill of how to do this. And I’m learning how to do it with more fun. So I’ve got some fun incentives. I have a quilt that every square that someone signs up, they put their name on a square, and then I’m going to do a raffle, a draw for whoever signed up in that time period. And then they will get a quilt by me. So I’m able to put my twist on things. So it needs to be fun and don’t attach yourself to it. And now this is one, I’ve talked about this in the past, but it’s such a good reminder, it’s talk to your future self. And one of the questions to ask yourself is, will this matter in five minutes? In the next five days, in the next five months or the next five years? And when you can take that pause of if I continue to go to food or go down to the pantry every time I stress out, will this matter in five years? Yes, it will. Because five years of doing this over and over will get my body in a place that I don’t want. And so that’s gonna be really helpful for you. Now as I’ve been talking about the three things of doing hard things, I think about our group and in the Facebook group people share different things and like some of the ladies, they were really surprised at how much they loved just walking, just having that time after dinner or in the morning just to be with them. And so they would share different insights they had. And I have now started a practice of when I go for my run, walk, jog, whatever I decide it’s gonna be, I don’t bring my devices with me anymore. And so I’m just with nature and it’s just really great. And so as I shared that, then other ladies in the program, they have started to do that and they have found so many new insights. Other ladies in the program had a really good start, and then they started petering out and they realized they had some all or nothing thinking, and then they were able to go back and pick up where they’d left off even though it wasn’t perfect and they were able to learn so much about themselves, some ladies saw the difference of having consistent water or having going to bed earlier. So just having that commitment. Some ladies also saw how much they neglected themselves, how much they put themselves on the back burner, how much they needed external validation. And that’s really good insight. I had a conversation with a lady. Recently who just joined my program and she was kind of resistant to joining because she said, I have spent thousands and thousands of dollars on weight loss things, and I just feel like it’s such a waste. And I said to her, it’s only a waste if you don’t collect the data and you don’t go and see what was the thing that didn’t work well for you. And when you can really look at that and break that down, then you’re always learning. And it’s not a waste. So failure is a great teacher. All right. So I just wanted to share a little analogy that I hope will kind of bring this podcast all together. So I don’t know about any of you, but what is your relationship with plants and gardens and keeping a plant alive? Like what is your relationship with that? And so this is the analogy of the plant. So when you buy a plant or you’re given a plant, one of the challenges is some plants really like direct sun. Some plants like having more sun, some plants, they’re all different. So now your job is to figure out what’s the best situation for that plant? What’s the best window? Is it too cold from the window? What’s the best amount of heat? Is it by the heater? And so you figure that out. But then what happens? The plant starts growing and thriving, and then you need to repot the plant. And so then the, the plant gets uprooted and it needs to get some time to settle into the new root system and, and then you have to kind of figure out, well, how much more water does this plant need? And if it was on a window ledge before, now it needs to go maybe on a shelf because it’s in a bigger pot. And so this is the thing. The plant is always changing and growing. And when you figure it out in one way, because it grows, it’s gonna change. And this is the deal with weight loss. We are a living, human, breathing person. And so we’re constantly changing and evolving. That’s why diets can’t keep up with us. That’s, that’s one of the reasons they can’t keep up with us. And so even for my my, myself having lost 50 pounds it is not a one and done. I’m constantly having different thoughts, having different situations and having to take that time to go in and feel those feelings and to work through those different challenges. And so we have to be willing to do hard things. Life is not easy all the time. It’s not supposed to be. That’s not a balanced life. So I really hope this episode has helped you. So as you listen to these podcasts and as you reflect on your own experiences, I wanna invite you to come and talk to me about what that has meant for you. It has been such a thrill to talk to these different women who have been listening to my podcasts and finally join my program. And I wanna hear from you of what’s keeping you back? Today was funny, there’s this business coach that is making this offer and it sounds really awesome and it sounds incredible and, you know, it sounds like she’s gonna show me her formula for this different social media thing. And I realized, I thought, I don’t really wanna spend that much money because I don’t think I’m gonna be able to have the time that I need to really learn all of it. I’ve got so many things going on with my kids in the summer and my business, and I’m trying to relax. And I wanna hear that from you. Are you thinking that this is gonna take a whole bunch of time? Or what are the things that are holding you back from coming? A lady today I was talking to, she said she doesn’t believe that she’ll ever be at her perfect weight and we were able to really look at why, like where was that coming from and we were able to resolve that. So that is my invitation to you. You don’t have to even come on a call if you don’t want. You can just email me. But I am sincerely interested in learning about what’s going on for you and what’s keeping you from learning the tools that will help you to create permanent weight loss, both mental and physical. All right. You have an amazing day. Bye-bye.
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