137. Weight Loss and How Love Yourself Thin is a Vacation

Do you love going on vacations? And if you do, why? Why do you love vacations? I wanna hear from you and what has been your best vacation? Well, my name is Dara Tomasson and this is Love Yourself Thin episode 1 37, Weight Loss and How Love Yourself Thin is a vacation.

What an intriguing title. I am really excited to dive into this topic with you and to really look at my membership and how it really is so much like a vacation. You’ll be so surprised. Now before we dive into the bulk of the podcast. I wanna share this ripple effect of one of the members in my program. In fact, it’s not just her, of course, it’s the ripple effect of the women around her. And so this member she was in a terrible accident, work-related accident, and she was debilitated. She could barely walk. She didn’t have the strength to open a door herself, like turn the handle and open the door. She was in really rough shape and so she started her rehabilitation. And then as she joined Love Yourself Thin, she started really focusing on the mindset tools and working through the pain ’cause we do a lot of like going into your body and seeing what’s really going on. And she can do so much now. It’s just unbelievable.

And one of the things that she’s doing is that she works at a cafe. She volunteers there. And so not only is she benefiting, so the woman that owns the cafe is so excited to have someone like her who’s just so friendly and kind and thoughtful. And then, the business owner, she’s able to go on vacations every once in a while. She’s able to have a little bit more freedom in her life. But we have all the regulars that come. There’s all these ladies who come and this is a pretty small town and they just love their morning connection. They love that time together and they just laugh and they have such a wonderful start to their day and it’s just impacting those women’s lives. That this woman is able to work at the cafe and able to share with them so many insights. She has such great perspective on things because she has so much of the life coaching tools and she uses them and she’s such a good example of what happens in your life when you use them. So I love the ripple effects of all those ladies at the cafe and that cafe owner whose life has been benefited so much by this member of love Yourself Thin.

Okay, so let’s talk about why I am saying Love Yourself Thin is like a vacation. Okay. So have you ever been on an all-inclusive vacation? Have you ever done one of those? My husband and I did once and it was actually pretty awesome because you just pay once and then you go to dinners and they bring you drinks around the, the pool and you don’t have to worry about anything. You just go there and you’re just, you’re just all in. And so Love Yourself Thin is a lifetime membership, you pay once and you’re in for life. So in Love Yourself Thin what happens is you learn, you get the 12 modules that teach you all these, these tools. And then you have, there’s three live coaching calls a week where you can get coached by me or watch other people getting coached. You then get all the replays from all the calls from all the times, and you have all these bonus classes that I’ve offered. They’re all inside the portal. You have mindset videos in there. You also get ask a coach. So there’s all these benefits in Love Yourself Thin, there’s a money back guarantee. There’s certain things you need to do to, to guarantee 20 pounds in 90 days with mindset videos and different supports in there. And so it’s like with a vacation, you say, this is the the end result that I want. And with love yourself in, it’s the same thing. It’s like I want to take care of my mental health so that my physical weight is a side effect. I want to lose this weight for life, and it’s just so exciting.

Now let’s tie these together. So why go on a vacation? So is it that you wanna set aside your everyday life and you wanna just have a break? You want to actually, you know maybe you are very a curious person. I had the privilege of sitting beside a gentleman, one time in a plane just recently. And he was living in a nowhere town. You know, we call these nowhere towns in Northern Canada, Ontario. And it was basically you finish school in grade nine and you started working for the railroad. And that was just the expectation. And he was, he was telling me that when he was at school, you know, he didn’t really like school very much but he loved explorers and he loved adventurers. And so he devoured these books in the library about all these famous explorers like Christopher Columbus, and all of these men that would go and Cortez and all these people. And he would find himself looking out the window a lot. And he had this one teacher for, I think he said like four or five years. And she would often say to him, so where are you right now? The streets of Italy, or are you you know, in the, the jungle in South America? Like, where are you exploring? And it was just, just such a sweet story and he eventually was able to work for the airlines instead. The airline and the railroad had a connection and he was able to figure out how to work for the airline. And even though it wasn’t a glamorous job, he knew that eventually he would be able to get some connections in the airline that he could do some traveling, and he ended up traveling at all the places that he wanted to. Even lived in South America for many years. And he found his teacher and he told her and he let her know. And as a former teacher, that just warmed my heart so much.

So what is it that you want on a vacation? And what does it take to go on a vacation? So is it, you need to have a certain budget. You need to have a purpose. Just like this gentleman, he wanted to go and walk the streets that these famous explorers walked. You need to have an itinerary. You need to know when are you leaving, when are you coming back? You need to clarify. Are we gonna be driving, taking a train? \Are we taking a plane? Like, oh, and if we are, when are we going to and if, and then we require accommodations and, and planning all of that. What is the objective of our vacation? Is it to, my friend right now is with her sons in England and they’re connecting with all of these relatives that she has been meeting with online for so long, and so is it to connect with your family? Is it to connect to your, your roots? Like what are the objectives? Or is it just to lay on the beach and and not have to think about anything? I have some friends that love these crazy marathons and they do these challenges. They’re not marathons. They’re tough mudders, and they go all over and they compete in them. So what, what is your objective? What connections are you wanting? And then of course, everything we do in life is because we want to feel a certain way. So is it that we wanna feel excitement, thrill, joy, amusement discovery, anticipation, relaxation? Like what are those feelings that you want?

Okay, so one of ironies of this all is that a vacation requires work. And I think that one of the disservices when we talk about weight loss and mental weight loss is we think, well, I just wanna get a pill, or I just wanna have someone tell me what to do. In order to have any success in anything in life, even a vacation, you have to be willing to put in the work. Now the next question I have is you have to pay. You have to pay to go on vacation. Now certainly you have to pay money. You also have to pay in your time. You have to take time off of work. You have to take time to research, you have to take time to investigate. And you know, thank goodness we have the internet, which really does help get feedback from people. We can learn so much. One time my husband and I went on vacation and the hotel that the travel agent booked was terrible. This is before the internet was really as big as it is now. And you know, got there and it was like, this is not acceptable. We cannot stay here. So we had to figure out a new location and, and get all that figured out. But you know, we have, we had to put in some time. And so it takes effort.

And then we need to also show up. We need to be organized. So if we are going on a plane, we have to have the appropriate papers, we have to have a passport, or if we’re going on a train, we have to know where is the train station. Or if we’re driving in a car, do we need to get our car tuned up? Do we need to get an oil change? We have to, like being committed to being there, we have to put in effort, we have to figure out, oh, are we gonna get an Uber to drive us? Like, what is it that we have to do in order to make sure that we are going to execute this vacation. And I think that when we talk about our permanent mental and physical weight loss, it requires effort as well.

Now I wanna share a quick story about our family this past year in 2023. So I actually wanted to take my family to Iceland and I bought the tickets in January. I was so excited. And then in February, end of February, beginning of March, I started to book things. I thought, oh, this is plenty, plenty of time in advance. And my husband and I had gone to Iceland before, and it was really simple. It wasn’t hard for planning. However, I did not know that there were, I think my husband’s cousin said, they were anticipating like 1.25 million people to travel within Iceland in 2023. I think there’s a lot of people during Covid that had all these bucket lists and all this time to research where they wanted to go. So Iceland was a huge destination and I could not get a motor home that would be big enough at the times that we wanted. And then I was thinking about going in hotels, but it was hard to find hotels and they were super, super pricey and they weren’t even that nice. And I thought, Nope, I’m not doing this. I’m not gonna spend all this money to go to places that weren’t awesome. And so canceled those tickets and you know, paid that penalty price, then decided to go to Maui. And so that was great. Did all the research, booked a place, did everything, and we were to go to Maui on the Sunday and Wednesday was the fires. And we had no idea, of course, the magnitude of the fires and how devastating they were. And just didn’t feel right about staying in Maui during that time, but we didn’t have any other location to go to at last minute. And also the cost of changing the flights and with my kids with their timelines, my son going to university, my daughter with her job and everything. It just like, this was the time we needed to go on vacation. And so in the airport going to Maui, my husband and I decided we can’t stay in Maui, but we’ll go somewhere else. Because once you get into Maui, you can just take planes to other Hawaiian destinations. And so Sunday morning we’re at church and we looked at each other and we said, we can’t go to Maui. I, we don’t feel right about it. And, but our flight was at, I think our flight was at one-thirty or two o’clock. And so literally in the airport, our bags were packed like we’re all there. And my husband and I are like, we don’t know where we’re gonna stay. We don’t know what island we’re gonna go to. And of course we have five kids and so you can’t just stay in like a little hotel, right? There’s, there’s a lot of us.

And it was very interesting because it really helped me because I thought, well, what do I really want? I want to just have fun and connection and discovery with my kids, and I wanna give them this opportunity to explore new and beautiful places. And so it made it very simple. I didn’t have a lot of drama about it. A friend of mine, her brother-in-Law, owns a place in, in Oahu and called him. He’s like, I’ll get back to you. I. And so we just Googled the place on Sunday night. It’s actually really awesome. We had spent the Saturday preparing for supplies for Maui, so reading glasses and phone chargers and baby clothes and work gloves. Well, we just filled up two duffel bags full, full, full of supplies. Met Quilter Kate at the airport that evening, and she brought three suitcases. We filled them all, and my husband and I stayed, we got a place to stay with the kids that night and I booked tickets to Oahu. The next morning got a rental van and it all worked out and it was super fun and we had a great time.

And the reason I’m sharing this, and one of the things that I wanna just relate to you when it comes to weight loss is that weight loss is really about going into our brains and seeing like what are the things that are holding us back? Why am I using food? How am I using food to distract myself? Or how am I using food to like not show up for myself? How am I using food like a distraction or a kind of quieting my brain. I’m like using it ’cause I’m afraid of something and so I need to distract myself from it or divert myself. Like, I really want you to think about that because you are very smart and intelligent. You are I believe it and you, you know, you’ve promised yourself so many times to be good around food and then you still find yourself eating that chocolate bar, or you still find yourself buying that ice cream and turning to it when you know that it’s not gonna serve you. You have proof that you know it, but for some reason it feels like it’s just this magnetic pull that keeps you from your really making like a really good decision for yourself. And so when you learn these tools and when you can be really focused on like, what is the purpose of my vacation? What is the purpose of my wanting to lose weight? What is the purpose of this? Then you’re able to really focus.

So for my example, going to Maui. We were just super focused on, we wanted to have a lot of fun with our kids. I had saved X number of dollars that I had put aside, and I really wanted to go and to have these, as a kid I never had airplane vacations, I call them. And my son had come home and when we had gone to mexico, he wasn’t able to come with us, so he had never had an airplane vacation, and I really wanted to give that to him. And so I had this money and I thought it doesn’t really actually matter the details of where we stay and, and all of that. But what I’m really focusing on is being together and having these kind of, these really fun experiences. And so for weight loss, it’s actually not that you love cinnamon buns, and it’s not that you love ice cream. I mean, those are just neutral. But it’s all about you not being able to have the ability to process negative emotions or even to have process positive emotions. And when you aren’t able to have that skill, then you just keep going to the food and distracting yourself from that.

So if you’re ready to make a change, if you’re ready to say, you know what I really want to feel relaxed, I really want to feel joy, I really want to feel all of these things, then you need to know that in order to feel that, you also have to be willing to feel bored or disappointed or frustrated or pain. Because otherwise you are, it’s almost like you are putting a damper on things like you. If you don’t allow yourself to feel frustrated, you’re actually not allowing yourself to feeling elated or clarity, because in order to be a healthy human, you have to have both.

So how I wanna summarize this podcast episode is that when you go on a vacation, it requires effort and your attitude and ability to make decisions to manage your brain will determine the success of your vacation. And when you can have that perspective when, you know, even on a wonderful vacation, and I’m gonna tell you we had an amazing vacation, but there were a lot of things that were hard in it. There was some mice in the house that we rented. That was gross. There was some things that were really hard and not awesome, but there were a lot of things that were awesome. And when you allow the things that weren’t awesome, you just say, yeah, this is just part of me being a human. It’s part of me having a human experience and I don’t make it mean anything bad about me. I said, yeah, this is the negative and this is okay. This is part of being a healthy human, to have the negative. And when I can just allow it and accept it and don’t react to it and don’t freak out about it, I’m allowing the joy and I’m allowing the wonder.

And so this is what happens in Love Yourself Thin. This is what happens when you allow yourself to go into those nooks and crannies of your brain that you’re like, no, I don’t wanna deal with the way that my mom talked to me about my weight. Or, I don’t wanna deal with the way that my, like when my husband said that about me, or I don’t wanna, oh no, I, when my school teacher said this, or when my friend said this to me, I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna live this up again. I don’t wanna trench it up. It’s like, but if you if you keep avoiding, resisting or reacting just like the beach ball, you’re pushing it down. You’re just making it worse and worse. And so doing anything in life that’s worthwhile does require effort. And so a diet with a shake or a pill, it’s just, that’s just a temporary fix, that’s not gonna last because it doesn’t get to the root of the issue.

So what I wanna do is I wanna invite you to check me out. Check it out, like check out, Love Yourself Thin and truly let yourself kind of take a step back and, and look at it. Just recently in my Love Yourself Thin program, I asked them what is one of the worst habits you don’t have anymore because of Love Yourself Thin? Now you’re gonna be surprised by this. So we have beating myself up when I do something wrong, being a victim and blaming others for my thoughts, feelings, and or actions. I have taken my power back and I’m in control of my life. Another lady said snacking between meals. Another one said, thinking I know what other people are thinking. I don’t even care anymore. Another lady said, thinking that I can’t change my thoughts, my eating habits. So she knows that she can change them. Another lady says, talking to myself in a negative way all the time. One lady said that she doesn’t use artificial sweeteners anymore. And then another lady commented on that and she said, I forgot about this one. I used to not be able to drink coffee without sweetener. Now I never use it. Thanks for the reminder. Another lady said I stopped calling myself nasty names when I goof up. Another member says, I’ve been contemplating this question for a few hours. I would say a huge thing for me is realizing fifty-fifty. I embrace the 50 good now without fear of the bad. That’s what I’ve been talking about this episode. Another lady said, yelling at myself nonstop. I. And then another eating bread and pastries. Another member said, definitely talking nicer to myself, asking questions with curiosity and concern and not criticism. Another one, she said that going down, worry road, overthinking. The habit isn’t gone, but I catch myself quicker and quicker. Another member she stopped closet snacking. And then another member, she said, automatically eating to deal with a feeling positive or negative, being kinder to myself about my weight and body.

So this is what’s happening in the lives of the members of Love Yourself Thin. And if you want that same experience in your life, I invite you to check it out. Like I always say, when you invest in your brain, you’re making your best investment. All right. Take care everyone. Bye-Bye.