#136: Weight Loss and Having Fun Being YOU

136. Weight Loss and Having Fun Being YOU

Do you think that you’re living the life that you really wanna have? And if you’re not, how come? Well, today we’re going to explore this in this episode called Having Fun Being You. My name is Dara Tomasson and this is Love Yourself Thin, episode one-thirty-six, Weight Loss and Having Fun being You.

All right. So do you have fun being you? Today we’re going to go kind of, I might, I might hit some nerves. That’s okay. It’s actually really important to get to what’s really going on and I’m excited about sharing lots of different thoughts and strategies. This is going to be a very powerful worksheet, so if you haven’t printed off the worksheet, I do encourage you to do that, and one of the tips that I have for you is to listen to this episode once through and just like on your walk or doing dishes or maybe like pressing a bunch of squares or something and then going and printing off the worksheet and then re-listening and really seeing what is it, like, really do the work. So that’s what I would recommend that you do, and that’s how you get the most out of these episodes.

So, but before we go into the episode, I’m going to share the ripple effects of what happens inside the program when women show up for themselves. So one of the members in Love Yourself Thin, she is really interested in developing a business where she sells her cross-stitch patterns and her quilting patterns. And in the past she was kind of insecure about being online, showing her, her face. She didn’t feel as confident and with this process she collaborated with three other quilters and they have created this 12 month, like year-long stitchery, stitch along, quilt along. And so the impact of other people is going to be huge because they are going to be a part of a community where they get to be engaged, they get to be interacting with people and to really build this community and the more that she is comfortable with her body, the more that she puts these tools into place, the more she’s able to impact people for good and build that community. It’s very, very exciting. And so now these women that are going to be joining her program are going to have such a different experience for Twenty-Twenty-Four because of them showing up for themselves. So way to go. Love it.

All right, so today I’m gonna talk about this idea of having fun being you. And this comes up quite a bit in the coaching that I do inside Love Yourself Thin. And a lot of it has to do with women feeling like they can’t really live the life that they want to live until they have lost the weight that they want. They don’t think that they can be happy being them until they have taken off that extra weight and they hold themselves back. And so the problem is now you’re operating, imagine like the fuel you’re operating out of my life isn’t enough, I can’t be good enough, I can’t do all these good things until I’ve lost that weight. And I’m gonna be getting a little vulnerable with you in today’s episode because I, I know that it really makes an impact when you can see other people who have struggled with something and then they’ve been able to overcome it. And so much of the work that we do in Love Yourself Thin really has to do with resolving difficulties, challenges, setbacks, and then really stepping up into like who you want to be and you’re no longer letting your past dictate your future.

Now I’m gonna share about when, so I grew up in a home with three brothers and two sisters. We were all pretty close in age. My mom had my older sister, and then there’s a four-year gap, and then there’s my brother and I, we’re 16 months apart. And then my sister and I are two, almost exactly two years apart. And then my sister and my brother are, I think there’s another, I think there’s 16 months. She’s November. He’s February. And then then the next two are 14 months apart, the last brother. And so really close in age and we got along fairly well. As, as you can imagine, there’s always kerfuffles and, and disputes. But I grew up feeling pretty, pretty happy about the kind of family that I had, and we always had a really nice home and my mom was a great cook and we had lots of people over, lots of parties and, but there’s always a but, at twenty-one years of age my mom and dad split up after twenty-eight years of marriage. And that was devastating to me. It really was. And so, so much of what I thought our family was, we had this kind of solid foundation just felt very, I was very distrustful, I was totally blindsided and I never really remember my parents fighting or arguing and it was really hard for me.

And so I had one year left of university and every week I just prayed and prayed that things would change and they never did. And my parents went through the divorce and then I ended up graduating from university with an education degree. And then I served a mission for 18 months in France and that was hard leaving my family and, and all the different struggles and challenges of my family having to figure out what it looked like to have divorced parents and figuring out what that all looked like. And while I was gone for 18 months, my dad remarried and his wife had three kids, and there was all these different dynamics. It was, it was a really challenging time. And I remember the summer between graduating and going on my mission, hanging out with my friend Barb. She had an amazing family and they would, they would run together, they would do these races and they had this cottage in a beautiful place at Waterton Lakes, their house was the house where my house used to be. Like people would all just come and play games I remember feeling really jealous of her and feeling like, you know, that’s just not my story anymore. And you know, my parents sold their house and my dad was living in one place, my mom was doing her own thing and it just felt really unstable and insecure. And I felt really discouraged that I wasn’t going to have that, that kind of life anymore.

And the reason I’m, I’m sharing this is because we all have different obstacles, we have different setbacks. And, and in the worksheet I want you to look at that, like what were some of your biggest setbacks in life to becoming who you want to be or to the life that you wanna have? So was it your parents’ divorce? Is it even right now in your life? Are you going on the kind of vacations that you want? What about your body size? Do you have the size of family that you wanted to have? What about your marital status? What about your family of origin? Like your citizenship? Like the kind of house you live in? All of those kinds of things. The cars you drive in, the kind of ways that you spend your time. Are you accomplished in your sewing area or your life? If you’re not a quilter, of course you don’t have to be a quilter to listen to my podcast, but there’s just happens to be a lot of quilters around my life. Like, are you using your time in the way that you want? Are you feeling accomplished at the end of the day? Like, are you living in integrity with the kind of person that you want, or have you given up on having that kind of life? Like, what is the story that you’re telling about your life and how is that impacting you? So as a, you know, twenty-one, twenty-two-year-old, and then having this, this big shift in how I grew up and the, my way of thinking about myself. And, and then looking at other families and seeing, you know, they, they seem like they’re better.

They seem like they have it together and it was interesting for me and part of the weight loss and the weight story that I have is so when I was in France, I put on weight, and then when I came back from France, I kept the weight on and it was very, I was very detached from my body. I remember going shopping and thinking, why am I, why am I wearing size-sixteen? Like, why am I wearing these larger size clothes? Like, I’m like a size-six. What’s happening with these, this, like Old Navy, why is Old Navy changing their sizes so much? Like I was so in denial of what was going on, but subconsciously I was keeping myself safe. I was thinking by being in a larger body so that I didn’t have to be in the dating world and thinking, well, they’re not gonna ask me to go out because I’m kind of on the larger side, or whatever that was. It was, there was a lot of like subconscious stuff that I didn’t even realize I was doing. And of course when I was eating my meals, I was eating more than my body needed because you know, it’s a way to sedate yourself. It’s a way to to hide yourself and to distract yourself from emotions. And so that was very interesting. And it wasn’t until I actually had a, a really close friend who was older than me. She was wise and she kind of set me aside and said, you know, Dara, what’s going on? Like, why are you keeping on this weight? I’ve noticed that, you know, you’re eating a lot and you’re overweight, and I was the time, I think I was about 26 and I really did wanna get married and I really wanted to, to move on in my life, but I wasn’t, and I was sabotaging myself and didn’t even realize I was. And it wasn’t until this good friend with love and kindness came up to me and said, Hey, like, what’s, what’s up? Do you even realize you’re doing this? And that was a huge wake-up call for me. And that’s when I went to a therapist and I started to interview married couples that I admired and I was able to see what it was that made a healthy marriage.

And so let me that, so this is a little bit a vulnerable city here, which is really important. ’cause what do I always say? The more willing you are to be vulnerable, the more success you’re gonna have. Now, one of the things that really helped me to heal this and to start having more fun being me. Like I didn’t have to change, I didn’t have to be married to be happy. I didn’t have to be thin to be happy. I started understanding that I was looking on the outside looking in, thinking their life is better than mine. They are better because of this. I, I am deficient. I can’t be that way. And it was very interesting as I started to look at other people and their lives and able to see what was going on, I could start seeing all of the amazing things about my own life. And at that time in my life, I was a school teacher. I had a lot of really great things going for me. I had a really fulfilling, we have in our church, we have what’s called, like, we’re all volunteers. So I had a a volunteer position that was actually, I had lots of responsibilities, but I really loved it. I loved connecting with the people. I had a great job. I really loved teaching those kids. I really loved putting my heart into it. I had a lot of kids that had behavior problems and I was very good with setting really good boundaries for them. And it was so interesting because they didn’t wanna go home at the end of the day. They really wanted to hang out with Miss Bowie and I started running again and really like looking at my body. I started allowing myself to pay attention to hunger, and I was a lot more proactive in the ways that I was spending my time. I. I was quilting on Saturday nights and not feeling like an old maid. I, you know, I really started to have this balance. And as I was doing this, I was able to look at my life and start saying things like, you have a really cool life, Dara. I really liked the way you ,you quilt on Saturday nights and I really like the way that you go and like plan social events. I love that you go and you throw rocks in the river and, and have people come with you. I really like that you go running with your roommates. I really like that you go to university and you take on extra classes every once in a while. And I started just like with my friends, my friend Barb and her family always saying like, their family’s so cool. They do this. Their family’s so awesome. They do that. I started doing that for myself. So I started making a list of all the ways that I thought my life was really cool and it was really interesting for me to look at my life in that way. And and then of course, the more I did that, the more my life was more meaningful and I felt really happy being me. And then I was able to attract more guy friends and I was able to take care of my body better. I felt more comfortable in my body, so I wasn’t as insecure. And then those friendships I was able to start dating more and experiencing different relationships and then eventually got married to my husband, which we’ve been very happily married for twenty-three years.

So then I continued that tradition of, how cool is it being me? And that might sound really strange to some of you. You might think, oh, well, Dara, that sounds really like selfish, or, that might sound really self-absorbed, but I’m, I’m gonna offer you that the more that you can love your own life the more your life is so much more fulfilled. And I love pretending that I am like the narrator of my life. So I’m just gonna share a few examples of what I’m talking about when I say that I, I have this kind of list of how awesome my own life is. So where we live, we live on a mountain and we have a really beautiful fire station at the bottom of one of the roads that you come up. I live on just off of a Jingle Pot road, which, how fun is that? Such a fun name. And I live in Nanaimo, which is also a super fun name. But there’s a really, there is a beautiful fire station. It’s actually probably the nicest fire station I’ve ever seen. It’s like this beautiful wooden one with these gorgeous tresses and, and things. And we’ve got like a super active Firefighter group of guys. Like they love it. Like when you drive by it, they are often there, they’re hanging out. I don’t know, they just really love being like volunteer firefighters. And I don’t know when it started, but you know, there’s this thing called the Guy Fawkes Day. And so after Halloween everyone brings their pumpkins. I’m talking hundreds and hundreds of pumpkins and they line their pumpkins along Jingle Pot, and all along the fire station. And then they hang up a guy, they stuff him with straw and they hang him up from a crane and they make this huge fire with all of these pallets. These firefighters, they have like hot chocolate and they have like all these events. And I think how cool is that? That I get to live in a place that has really fun traditions like Guy Fawkes Day.

So that’s kind of a fun thing that I’m like, yeah, I live in a really cool place that does really cool things. Another thing that I do that I feel is like really fun and cool is I let myself go running. We have this place called Westwood Lake and it is so beautiful. It’s six kilometers, it’s actually a man-made lake, and it’s our city’s water reservoir. And it is really beautiful and it’s a, this gorgeous path and you can go different ways, but my favorite is just the six K. And I start on the right and so at the last kilometer there’s a huge hill. Feels really huge. It’s pretty huge. If you ever walk it, you can tell me what you think, and I like push myself to the end and then you get to the top of the hill and of course you go down and I always like fly down it. And every time I do it, I think, how cool is that, that I am, I just turned 50 and I just take myself on a walk every Saturday morning or, and sometimes throughout the week. And during COVID we went, my daughter and I did it probably five or six times a week, the boys rode their bikes. And I think that’s a really cool thing that I, that I do that for myself.

So I have made this list and could keep going. I could keep going with like all these cool things that I do in my own life. And I think to myself, that’s really cool that I do that. I really admire myself for creating the kind of life that I would want to have. We talk a lot about you know, our childhood and about feeling trauma and feeling like we were maybe in a place where we didn’t feel very safe and we didn’t know how to handle it. And so when we can do this kind of work, having fun being you, what it does is it gives you your power back. And so there are moments, there are memories that I have as a child that, that weren’t super awesome, that weren’t totally wonderful and great, but as I create this for myself and I think back at being a little girl, and maybe there’s times where I feel afraid. Like I was just talking to my mom on Saturday, we were doing errands and we were in a place called Duncan and they had, it sounded like the war alarm. Like, I don’t know if you remember being a kid and they would do the practice alarm and so where I lived in High River, see all these fun names, Duncan, Nanaimo, High River. When I was a little girl in High River, they would, they would have those practices and they would sound the alarms and we would talk about what do you do. And so for probably five years I would have nightmares of the war was coming and the air got thick and it was so scary for me and there’s a lot of of fear with that. And it was interesting on this past Saturday, where that alarm went on. And I thought, wow, my kids never had to, they never experienced that fear that that comes from that kind of of problem.

And so anyways, coming back to being now a 50-year-old woman and creating the kind of life that I feel really proud of. And it’s not that I have this you know, like a really fancy car or this or that. It’s the kind of life that I have. It’s the kind of relationships I have with my kids. It’s the kind of ways that we talk to each other. It’s our quirky, fun traditions. It’s different ways that we do things. Another one that’s really fun in our family is on the twenty-third of December, we have what’s called Adam’s Eve instead of Christmas Eve. So we do celebrate Christmas Eve, but on the twenty-third we have a sushi party and we invite a bunch of people. And my kids just made this up and I think, how cool. And then I have think, how cool is it that we invite all these people that they get to be part of our made up tradition and that maybe they might do it. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. But I get to have you, the family where people get to come and hang out and have fun.

So I’ve shared a bunch of ideas in this podcast with you. I got pretty vulnerable, which is, is totally fine. I know that you just listening, I love that you’re here and if you are, can relate to what I’m saying, if you feel like you wish you had a better life or if you had a more fun life or a better family, or whatever that is, I want to encourage you that you can just create it. And you’re not too old. It’s not past due. It’s not like you’ve, you’ve missed the window. You can do it. One of the things that I really admire in my lifetime membership, like I say, my average age of women is sixty-two. We have some women in their like late thirties. But they are changing their lives. They are doing things different. They are creating new experiences regardless of how old they are. They are not quitting on themselves and it is so inspirational to watch them. And so if there are things that you are jealous of in other people’s lives, I want you to pay attention to that because that is a clue. That that’s something you want. Jealousy is actually a really good tool saying, oh, I’m jealous of them because I want that too. And I just haven’t figured out how to make that happen for me. But I can figure it out. And if you want help to create that experience and that reality for yourself, come and check out Love Yourself Thin. You’ll love it. All right, take care. Bye everyone.