#131: Weight Loss and the Power of Small and Simple

Weight loss and power of small and simpleIn this inspiring episode, discover the power of small and simple actions in achieving weight loss and keeping it off. So what is one simple thing that you could do today that will transform your life? One thing that you could do differently that would make a huge impact?

I provide suggestions of simple changes you can start implementing in your life that would make a significant impact. Central to this is the practice of entering your mind without judgment. I discuss how self-love and self-care is another important practice in a weight loss journey. I encourage you to identify small changes that you can start implementing in your daily lives for improved physical and mental health.

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What You’ll Learn from this Episode:

  • How trauma and PTSD can affect your ability to lose weight
  • Don’t underestimate the power of small things
  • Small and simple tools you can use in your weight loss journey

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.
  • Leave me a review in Apple

Full Episode Transcript:

Dara Tomasson Podcast

131. Weight Loss and the Power of Small and Simple

I know a lot of you are thinking that it’s easy to lose weight it’s just not easy to keep it off. And I agree. And so this process that I’m teaching of how to lose weight with your brain is super impactful because you’re finally learning how to get to the root of the problem. And so this episode is really learning about the power of small and simple actions create a huge impact. And so my name is Dara Tomasson and I am a life coach that helps you to get to the root of the problem so that physical weight is the side effect of the work that we do. And this is episode 131, Weight Loss and the Power of Small and Simple. 

Okay. So today’s episode, there’s going to be a lot of little stories and analogies and they will all kind of come together into one culmination, which I’m really excited for you to be a part of. Now, before we start though, and we really focus on this tool that I’ll be teaching in this episode. We’re going to look at the ripple effects of the work that the members of Love Yourself Thin do to those around them. So one of the members in the program, her neighbor, their granddaughter, who they’ve raised, she committed suicide at 15 years of age. And she had struggled for a long time and they really tried to support her and help her and all the things that she was doing, but she made that decision. And the thing that was really impactful was the ability of this member of Love Yourself Thin to be so present with everyone and everything around her. So instead of eating everything in the house when she was so upset by this information, instead of you know kind of withdrawing and just being to herself, she was immediately after they found the girl she was able to be with her neighbor, she was able to be present, she was able to help them so much. Because she was able to process all of her own emotions and just really be with them for what they needed. So she was able to help them so much. And so they had such a, a different experience with such a difficult time in their life when they lost this special girl. And so that not only affected the neighbor and then those people around her, she’s able to talk to them more. She’s able to be present with them more. And the one thing that I really loved with this member, she said when she first found out and afterwards, after she spent that time with the family, the thing that amazed her was that she was able to just go into her home and make herself a cup of tea and sit and just cry. And she said before Love Yourself Thin she would have just eaten everything in the house. She just would have, it would have just been a way to avoid all the feelings. So I just love those ripple effects of what happens when you really show up and you do this work. 

So I came up with this idea of this podcast originally, actually, when I was heading to quilt fest market and festival in Houston. And my husband drove me to the airport bright and early. And I had to make sure that I weighed my suitcase to make sure that I wasn’t overweight. And so it turns out when I was weighing at home, the scale at home, I think it was our very unscientific manner of my 14 year old holding the suitcase, standing on the scale, and then not holding on to the suitcase standing on the scale, and doing the subtraction. It didn’t work very well, because it turns out it was 64 pounds, not 50. And so, they have a repacking station for these exact same situations. My husband’s with me, and it was wild, and the thing that, that really actually got me. And it was so surprising, was my husband’s approach to helping me unpack. What I would have done is I would have just taken out some things, zipped the suitcase back up again, and then tried it again to see what it weighed. Instead, what my husband did was he opened up the suitcase and he just started taking one thing out at a time. And he started weighing those things because we had to get rid of 14 pounds, right? Because it was 64 pounds and it was 50. And I wouldn’t have thought of it that way. And it was, it was so impactful to me because it was just one little thing. And the other thing that really surprised me was the impact of just little tiny things that you think, well, it’s just some fabric or it’s just this, or it’s just that. And what an impact those all had when they accumulated. 

And it struck me with the way that we approach food and the way that we approach ourselves, and just with all the coaching I do in my program, of how these tiny little shifts make such a huge impact in the lives of these women. And you know, I, I love this story and I want to share this story because, you know, as children, we learned about stories and we would hear these stories and I think that a lot of us have these stories as a backbone to the way that we show up for ourselves. And so I’m going to just read this story and as I read it, I want you to think about what impact this might have for you. 

So once when a lion was asleep, a little mouse began running up and down upon him. This soon awakened the lion, who placed his huge paw upon the mouse and opened his big jaws to swallow him. Pardon, oh king, cried the little mouse. Forgive me this time. I shall never forget it, and I may be able to do you a favor in the future. The lion was so taken at the idea of the mouse being able to help him that he let him go. Sometime after, the lion was caught in a trap, and the hunters tied him to a tree. Just then, the little mouse happened to pass by, and seeing the sad plight of the lion, went up to him and soon gnawed away the ropes that bound the king of the beasts. Was I not right? Said the little mouse. And so, of course, this is an Aesop’s Fable, and a lot of us have heard this story since we’ve been growing up. And the moral of the story is a kindness is never wasted. And I was thinking about this story and about the impact. And I thought about just the impact of the little things. And one of the things that happens in coaching is that we have these different patterns, thought patterns that aren’t helpful, but the problem is we don’t understand that they’re there. We don’t realize that they’re there. They’re like these terrible, hidden problems without us even knowing, that those problems are even there. 

So today I was coaching a lady in, in the program and she had a gastric sleeve 10 years ago and she went through all the surgery and everything and she lost five pounds. That was it. And she was so, so frustrated. And she said she was so frustrated for so like, she couldn’t even talk about it for years. It just upset her so much. And after spending some time with her I use the, the tool called the model that I use in my coaching practice. So now she’s a member of Love Yourself Thin. She has the modules and I have the 20 pounds in 90 day money back guarantee. There’s just simple things you need to do to guarantee it. And she’s not quite stepping up to that. So what I, I said, well, let’s model this out. So in the last three weeks, she’s lost 0.2 pounds. So that’s a fact. That’s what we can all agree on. And then I said, well, now what is your thought about that? And she said, I knew this wouldn’t work. That was her thought. And then I said, well, how do you feel when you have that thought, I knew this wasn’t going to work? And she said she felt really ticked off. And so I said, okay, now when you feel ticked off, what actions do you take? So she does things like she doesn’t go out and she doesn’t socialize because she’s just mad and she’s judging herself about her body. She goes through the modules but she only focuses on the things that are negative. And so she’s actually not really getting the whole beauty of the modules because her brain is only looking for evidence to prove that this doesn’t work. And so then of course, when she’s spending all her time, like not socializing, being more depressed, focusing on all the negative of her body, doing the work, but only focusing on the negative parts of the work, then of course, when she’s spending all her time doing that, because she’s ticked off, then the result is she doesn’t figure out how to solve the weight loss problem. Okay. So when we realize that our thoughts become our reality, this, this brain tool that I teach is evidence of that. 

So there’s two things that I wanted to talk about in this podcast episode when we talk about small and simple. And I, I do want to just make a quick quilting analogy because, I think back in the day when they truly had very little. My grandma, so my grandma was born in 1913 and they had very little. And so for Christmas one year, she got a doll and it was a handmade doll. My grandma made it and it was all from scraps. And then for the next couple of years for Christmas, my grandma got an outfit, a new outfit for her doll because they really didn’t have much at all. They didn’t. So when you think about quilting or this homemaking, when you have little and you do, you can be super resourceful with it. And so even though my great grandma, Sarah, she had very little, she knew the power of small and simple. And so she preserved, like, or guarded all of the extras. And so even if there was like a shirt that my great grandfather wore, and then there were some parts that were more worn than others, she would be very careful and deliberate about cutting that out and reusing it. And so we can use this small and simple in such powerful ways and we can do so much good. But if our brain is always focusing on not enough or all the negative, then it’s impossible for our brain to come up with it. And it was interesting after the coaching from this member of Love Yourself Thin, when I was able to show her when she didn’t just let herself feel ticked off and she reacted from it, then of course, she just made it so much worse. 

So the tool that I want to talk about today with a small and simple is learning how to go into your brain without judgment. And after coaching her for a little bit longer, she realized that she has a lot of PTSD from the work that she did before as a nurse, and she’s watched people suffer and die and watched their bodies deteriorating. And so she’s realizing that she doesn’t have a very healthy relationship with her body. And when she doesn’t have a healthy relationship with her body her brain is always thinking of all the negative, then she starts having a very fearful relationship with her body. Now, I’m going to talk about PTSD. And I want you to ask yourself, do you have PTSD with your body, with diets, with your experience with trying to take care of your body and it not going how you want, with people judging you for your body? Like PTSD is when your brain is triggered and you revisit situations that brought you a lot of fear. Like where it’s like you had fear and you didn’t know how to resolve that problem. And so when that happens, if you don’t go in and start bringing in some tools and ways to help yourself, then you stay stuck, then you, you don’t progress. You don’t allow yourself to move forward. And psychologists, one of their common ways of working through PTSD is cognitive behavior therapy. 

And so one of the ways that I help women when they have a situation of this PTSD is I say, okay, I’m going to slow this down. This isn’t happening to me. This is what’s happening in my brain. So, I am triggered by a thought or I see an image or I hear something or I smell something that then brings back an image or a memory that was in my brain and it reminds me of a time where I felt really scared and I didn’t know how to resolve that problem. So, that’s all that’s happening. I’m okay. I’m safe. I’m in my my car or whatever it is and I can solve this. Like this is okay. This is just a normal human reaction And the more that you can can do that with the PTSD, you can just allow it. Because one of the problems we have is that we have roadblocks and so this client of mine who had this thought, I knew it wouldn’t work because she has such a, a disgruntled relationship with her body. And so she then puts herself into that fight or flight mode. So that’s the thing that’s the most beautiful part about this is that we can have scary things happen to us. We can have hard things, we can have a lot of challenges and difficulties, but we also are powerful and we have a beautiful brain and we have abilities to resolve our situation and we don’t have to ever be stuck or afraid. We can overcome all of this. Okay? 

So when we think about that, you know, we think about going back to my story that I read. I mean, this is the king of the beasts and he could have killed that mouse in two seconds. And then when he was in trouble and he was defenseless, he was able to have the help from the little mouse, right? And so I think it’s really important for us to see that those little tiny things that we do can make a huge impact. Just like all the little pieces of the fabric come together and they make a beautiful quilt. And they make a beautiful, we’ve seen beautiful quilts at different quilt shows online. And it’s amazing all those little details. They then bring it all together.

So my question for you for this podcast is, what are some of the things right now in your life that you know are probably not helping you? So we can go as simple as, are you getting at least seven hours of sleep? Are you drinking water? How much water are you even drinking? Are you speaking to yourself harshly? Are you spending a lot of time scrolling? Are you spending a lot of time watching things, watching YouTube videos, playing video games, being on your phone, scrolling, or are you actually quilting and doing things, being creative, like whatever that is. So, what is one simple thing that you could do today that will impact your life? Like, you could just decide today, I’m just going to work for the next month. All I’m going to do is I’m just going to work on drinking water. Or every time I speak unkindly to myself, I’m just going to say, Hey, we don’t do that anymore. Right? If you were babysitting your grandkid and you took them to the park and some kid kept calling them names, would you let them do that? Or would you put a stop to it right away? Right? So how do you want to take care of yourself? This is such a powerful question. 

And I do want to offer that just like the little mouse was able to free such a huge animal with his skill set. don’t underestimate the power of small things. I have to say that in my journey of losing this weight and keeping it off I would say one of the most impactful tools that I have used when it comes to the small and simple things is every single day I weigh myself. And every day before I get on the scale I say I love you no matter what. Your worth has nothing to do with the number on the scale. But you like your reasons for being thin. You like your reasons for being less weight because you know how much of an impact it has on your health. So, before I even get on the scale, I say, I love you no matter what. That has such a huge impact. And then I go on the scale and I say, Hey, why is it this number? And I don’t do it at a place like, hey, why is it this number? What’s wrong with you? I say, hey, why is it this number? I even say it when I’ve lost two pounds. I say, oh yeah, it’s because I only ate when I was hungry. Oh, yeah, it’s because I’m getting good sleep. Oh, yeah, it’s because I’m not eating sugar and flour unless I plan it. Oh Yeah, I’m paying attention to my hunger It has made such an impact because what it has done is it has really empowered me to be my own boss. So yes, I I still have roadblocks. I still have struggles. I still have different obstacles which sometimes feel really overwhelming. But I know that the power of the small and little things make a huge impact and so don’t underestimate the power of a small little thing ’cause it can make such a huge difference. Just like that little mouse made all the difference for that lion. 

So, in the comments, or you can email me or go talk to me on Instagram, I would love to hear from you of what are the things you think, like as you’re listening to this podcast, are holding you back. And if you were to take them out of your suitcase, right? You have this overweight suitcase of 64 pounds, it needs to be 50 pounds, you know, just taking out just little things at a time, it doesn’t take long for it to now go to 50 pounds. And so what are those things in your life right now? One thing even that you could do different that would make a huge impact? I want to hear it. All right. It was so fun meeting with you today I’ll see you next week

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