129. Weight Loss Ruts and Failed Driver’s Tests

When you took your driver’s test, did you pass or fail the first time? Well, today I’m going to be talking about my failing of my driver’s license and all the lessons we could learn. And before I do, I want to share with you one of the ripple effects of Love Yourself Thin within my program. And then I’m going to be sharing with you how my first failed driver’s test is going to change how you look at your life forever. I know it’s a huge promise, but I promise it’s so good.

All right, so today’s ripple effect I’m going to be sharing inside my Love Yourself Thin with one of the members is her backyard backs onto her parents house. And her parents are elderly and she spends a lot of time taking care of them. But not only does she take care of her parents, she has eight children who have all left the home. But she has a handicapped sister who she has full responsibility for. And one of the problems that she’s had is that she has used food as a reward. She also has a lot of responsibilities with church. And so she just finds herself doing a lot of things for other people and then even when she has some time to herself she always feels a little bit or she has felt in the past insecure about well, I don’t know if I should start something because I don’t know if someone’s gonna need me and so she’s had some of these patterns. I’m sure that a lot of you can relate to that. But this is what I wanted to share, the ripple effect, is now her parents, they have been honoring her boundaries that she has created with them. They have been able to ask other children. They have been able to be less demanding. They have been more respectful of asking ahead of time because they don’t take her for granted before. And it wasn’t that they didn’t realize that they were taking advantage of her. They just, that was the experience that they had. But as she’s able to articulate boundaries and able to communicate better without feeling like she’s going to hurt their feelings, she’s able to feel so much more power. And so they too feel a lot more joyful because they are so much more aware. So that’s such a fun fun thing.

And I love that we often say to ourselves, well, old dog can’t learn new tricks. Well, that’s not true. When you, your brain, if you can work with your brain and help your brain, your brain says, Oh, that’s okay. It’s like a computer program, right? It’s like, Oh, we just need some new code. It’s not that the other code was bad or terrible. It’s just, we just need an upgrade. No problem. In fact, my phone just got upgraded and it’s weird. It like looks so different anyways. So it does take a little time to get used to, but it’s incredible.

All right, so today’s episode is going to help you so much, especially as you move forward in 2024, new, fresh year, all these new opportunities. And so we’re going to talk a little bit about our brains and how we can help our brains. Okay, so let me just tell you the story about when I took my first driver’s test. So I have a brother who is 16 months older than me. And so he kind of took me aside and he said, you know when you’re driving the driver instructors and I took like a driver’s ed class and everything. He said but when you’re taking a driving test they don’t want you to be like really nerdy and listen to like all the rules. They want you to drive like normal people like normal people don’t, they don’t stop at all the railroad crossings, and he said, and normal people don’t, they don’t go exactly 50, you know, they really like that. So this is what my brother told me, and I’m, I’m kind of like a rule follower, and I kind of like to do that. And so, but I thought, well, I better, I better listen to what he says, because he’s my older brother and he did pass on his first time.

So needless to say, I failed because I did, I didn’t stop completely at the railroad crossing and I didn’t drive exactly at 50. Turns out you’re supposed to. Yeah, So basically it’s better to follow the rules because it creates safety. So how many things in your life are you doing that aren’t safe? Now, I know you’re not out like hurting people, robbing banks or even, I’m sure you’re not even going out and saying mean things to people, but how many things are you doing that aren’t safe for you? And that you’ve fallen into ruts or shortcuts or justified your actions and you’ve maybe gotten a little bit lazy and didn’t take the time to really care for yourself.

So let me give you some real life examples that I see all the time in my program. So a member will sign up, a member of Love Yourself Thin, so she loves quilting and she loves going to her local quilt shop and taking these classes and they’re so much fun. But she finds that she’s not getting her homework done, because like she’s doing a block of the month because every time her daughter calls or every time someone calls and says, Oh, someone had a baby, can you make a meal or a daughter calls and says, Oh, can you pick up the kids from school or can you do this with them? She immediately says yes, even though she has her own things that she wants and she’s retired. And so she feels like. there’s like an expectation. But that is not safe for her mental health is to always put herself on the back burner and never do things that she wants. Because what is the result that happens typically when people do that? Yeah. They start feeling some resentment. They start feeling like they’re not being respected because they’re not respecting their own time. And so now we’ve fallen into a rutt of I’m not as important, other people are more important. So I’m curious, is that you, do you do that?

All right, another example that I see that we have these dangerous ruts is when someone says something to us and we don’t agree. How often do you not say what you want to say? And so when you have a thought like, I don’t want to hurt their feelings or I want to stay away from conflict. then that actually affects our health, our physical health because it does affect our thyroid, it also affects our thinking because when we’re feeling like I don’t feel connected, I don’t feel like I have a voice, I don’t feel like I can say what I want. What do we do? We tend to go to food. Say, well, the food doesn’t talk back to me and I can just, I can just connect with the food. So you don’t feel connected with the people like cause you don’t use your words. And so then you go and you connect with food.

A lot of us do that. I understand, but it’s not healthy and it’s not going to be serving us. Another unhealthy pattern that I see is not being respectful of our own time. So we’re doing things with other people, so we’re not respecting our own time, which also says that other people are more important than we are, and then the other one is not speaking our truth. So then when we’re not feeling connected to other people, then we’re connecting more with food. We’re connecting more with our Facebook friends and Facebook groups and connecting with YouTube. We’re not like living our own life. And so we’re spending a lot of time hiding. And the third example that I see happen a lot and the reason why when I talk about our mental health, if we’re not taking care of our mental health, then our physical health suffers. And if we don’t address the mental health, even if we use a lot of willpower and work through all of that, then we’re, we’re not creating healthy connections in our brain. And so that’s when the weight will come back right on because we haven’t taken care of those patterns of going to the food.

So another example of this is when we don’t have our physical and mental hygiene. So just like the importance of brushing your teeth every night and in the morning to make sure that our teeth are free from sugar bugs. If we are not looking into our brain, if we’re not actually seeing what’s happening inside, like all these thoughts that are compiling, then just like a beaver who keeps putting all these logs in front of the running water, it gets all dammed up and then there’s so much pressure and it can cause an explosion. And so then we will have what ,a temper tantrum or we do some binge eating or we do some binge shopping or we do some binge Netflix watching or we do some binge, you name it, right? You can even do some binge cleaning. How many of you have ever done manic cleaning before? Yeah, totally. Or organizing, or it’s like, kind of extreme. Or serving, like you just work all day for other people and you never really have any time to yourself because you don’t know how to be with yourself. And the problem with all of this is that you are not having your healthy life.

And so, I’m curious of what, as you listen to this podcast, what is resonating with you? What would you say are your ruts that you have fallen into? Do you take care of yourself? Do you slow down and, and think about what you’re thinking about? And do you have a, like, have a conversation with yourself? Are you curious and ask yourself, like, why are we doing what we’re doing? Why are we so tired? Why are we eating this chocolate bar at three in the afternoon? Like why are we spending all this time baking? Why are we keep saying yes when we, you know when we had already wanted to do these other things. Why are we? just checking out on Netflix for like basically the whole day? So I want to invite you if this is like really resonating with you and you can say yeah like I get this. I get it. I am not being natural. I am not following my own rules that would keep me so safe. Just like the rules of the road, like stopping in front of a railroad crossing. Of course you want to do that. That’s so, makes so much sense to be safe.

So if you’re finding that I do want to invite you to come and join us in Love Yourself Thin. I also want to invite you to really consider joining us for Reboot 2024. It’s my program. It’s going to be, it’s 800 if you attend live or 400 if you attend virtually. You do need to be a member of Love Yourself Thin and I will be working with you for the entire year on your goals and working through all those obstacles that happen in those goals, we will be having monthly calls and we will have a private Facebook group where I will have that. You will also have an accountability partner if you choose, and I will be teaching classes on how to be a good accountability partner. So If that is something that is really resonating with you and you want to have that support, come and join us.

I love to think of the analogy of if you want to have fresh peas or carrots or any vegetable, you have to be putting in the work five months in advance, four months in advance, depending on your growing season. So if you want to have that kind of life where you feel trust and you can honor yourself, you need to do it now. So in May, June, November, December, you can start seeing, in fact, you’ll start seeing the results the next month. We’ll just keep growing. All right. Have a wonderful day. See you next time.