Do you often feel like no matter how much you’ve done, how much work you’ve put in, you’re never going to feel comfortable in your own body? Welcome to my podcast because I’m this podcast, I’m going to help you really look at what’s been going on in your life. And so you can find a lot more calm and peace around your body, around food.

And really start living the life that you want to live. My name is Dara Tomasson and this is episode 145. Love Yourself Thin podcast, weight loss and pinball machines. Before we go into what I’m talking about with pinball machines I always love to share with you. the successes that are happening of the women in my membership.

I sharing their successes in the, in 2024, but I’m sharing the ripple effects of what happens in the lives of others, of the women in my program. This one is about a member in the membership who, she didn’t have the most organized quilt and craft room. She felt like it was unorganized and she made this really big goal this year to make six quilts, one for each one of her kids.

She was feeling frustrated because she wasn’t getting to it, but she knew that if she asked for help, then that would make sure that she would get it done and that it would feel more accomplished. She offered a friend of hers to paint her friend’s master bedroom in exchange for her friend helping her clean out her craft room.

I love this example so much Because now this friend has a beautifully repainted master bedroom and my member in the membership, now has this very workable, doable space. Once again, she’s reclaimed it and she’s able to feel so much happier in that space. And so it’s a win and these are the kinds of things that happen all the time in Love Yourself in the membership.

If you’re looking for that transformation in your own life, you can check out my membership. I also have a free Facebook group that I will link the show notes that you can look at. I have tons of free trainings on there. You can really enjoy that.

The tool that I want to teach you today in today’s podcast. So when we talk about a pinball machine, it feels really out of control. I want you to imagine a pinball machine versus a remote control car.

The objective is to get the ball up through all the different obstacles and get to the very top where of course you get all these points and you win. But with the obstacles, the ball can go in all different kinds of. ways and it can be very unpredictable, which when it’s a game, it’s fine because it’s not life or death.

But how much of your life feels like you are a human pinball and you don’t have all the control, you don’t have all of the ability to feel like you have a say in everything that you’re doing? I really want you to answer that question. One of the biggest obstacles I see a lot of women in my program is we’ve become what I call control enthusiasts.

I hate to admit it, but I am a recovering control enthusiast. In fact, if you’re not sure if you’re a control enthusiast, I’ll just run some scenarios by. When you’re sleeping, or you’re having a hard time sleeping, do you go in your head and think, if this person would just do this, if this person would just do that, if they would just change the way they’re doing things, do you do that?

Or do you have you say things like. If that person would just do this, everything, or the world, or the government, or the politics, if they just did that, everything would be better. Or the person in the guild, or the person at church, or your neighbors, or whatever it is. If you are doing that a lot and you’re spending a lot of energy in that, then you are feeling out of control and you’re not handling the obstacles that are just a normal part of being a human.

They’re not, you’re not able to work through them and that’s causing a problem. And one of the problems that we tend to do when we fall into that old habit of thinking is one of the ways to control it and to subdue it. is through food. It can also be through overscrolling. It could also be through overspending.

It could be through over people pleasing. It could be over perfectionism ing, right? Like we can all have these different ways of coping that don’t feel awesome and that we don’t feel empowered. And so the way I approach weight loss is I approach it. How to get to the root of the problem and then when you go into your brain, you start seeing, these are some unhealthy habits that I have.

When I do this, I’m not getting the results that I want. When we go into the root problem, then weight loss becomes a side effect of the work that we’re doing. It’s really exciting. In order for us to to overcome these obstacles, we need to really look at these loops that we create in our mind that feel really out of control.

We have this like looping in our head. The only way to calm down is we feel like is to write what I said was eating or scrolling. It’s Oh, you’re trying to avoid something. You’re trying to subdue it. You’re trying to numb out, you’re trying to get out of it. And that’s not helpful. Right? And I, I’ve been reading this book called

When Women Stop Hating Their Bodies. They’re the original authors of Overcoming Overeating. Really interesting book. It was published in 1995 and they started doing the work earlier. So it’s actually been really interesting to look at the biography here and how many scientific studies have been done previously.

A pattern that a lot of us have that we don’t even realize we’re having. Let’s say for example, a friend of ours calls or texts and say, Hey, I just got this job promotion, or Hey, I just won this award in this quilt show, or Hey, I just had another grandbaby, or I had this other family member have this wonderful success.

You start feeling jealous, but you know that you don’t want to be a jealous friend. That’s not how you want to show up. But instead of just feeling the feeling of jealousy. What do you do? You go and you eat something because then you’re allowed to feel bad about yourself, okay? I really found that fascinating as I was reading this because what it does is it legalizes that feeling so you have you know, you feel bad and So then you eat bad food it legalizes that bad feeling that you have inside of you. Now you say, Oh, it’s because of the food that I feel bad versus if I feel bad because I was jealous. This is like the best news ever. The best news ever is that when you learn to feel your feelings. When you learn to sit with them, then you are super empowered. Now I’m going to tell you a story because who doesn’t love stories? I live on Vancouver Island and I’ve been experimenting with travel.

I love to go to quilt shows. I love to do all these different things. It’s definitely, you have more flight options. If you take a ferry over, or we also have a helijet. Or we have Harbor air. These little tiny planes and we also have a new walk on ferry that takes you downtown. There’s lots of different options.

I thought, cause my little airport is tiny and there’s not as many flights and then it limits you on different planes that you can fly on. Like Delta this past trip, I thought I’m going to take Harbor air.

I’m going to see how that goes. Then I’ll just take the last ferry. It’s pretty straightforward and it would be at 10 45 at night. So I can just rest. There’s not many people on the ferry and it’s a really big ferry. The harbor air was fine. It was great. Flew over there. Had a shuttle.

No problem. Then I have a delay for my flight. So I’m an hour later, an hour and a half later. So I thought, okay, there’s still the window though. I still can make that ferry. My taxi driver is unaware of a bridge closure doesn’t even put it in his GPS and then keeps getting lost. I get my GPS out, which I don’t know Vancouver very well And I don’t know alternative plans we ended up driving past the road closure for the third time and I just said hey street worker, construction worker, how do we get to Twassen Ferry?

And he said, you just go this way. So I directed my taxi driver, the professional driver, who you can see the time is like the dollar amount is going higher and higher. I’m actually with another couple, a 69 year old man and his girlfriend from South Africa who has been traveling for two and a half days. We’re all going together because I couldn’t get an Uber and the lineup was really long for the taxis.

 And then as we were getting lost and then we were finding our way and I asked the construction worker how to get there. We ended up going to the ferry and I saw online on my phone that the ferry was 45 minute delayed. So normally it was leaves at 1045. It’s now around 1115. And I thought this is an answer to my prayers.

This is amazing. Like what a roller coaster, right? So we get to the ferry. They, the cars haven’t even loaded yet. It’s awesome. And a year ago, my daughter actually flew to Vancouver. I, I flew to Vancouver from Houston from quilt market, but I actually had a flight to Nanaimo. Where I live, but I thought, you know what?

I’ll go with my daughter. She’s never taken an Uber. She doesn’t know what it’s like. I didn’t feel really good about her being on the ferry by herself. And so I just let my suitcase go on the airplane and I just went with her. Again, it was kind of tight. Her flight was delayed. We had the ferry to catch.

We got an Uber. We were sharing it actually with another lady who was sitting beside my daughter and we got to the ferry. I ran up. the runway and then on to the, the special way to get onto the walk on part. And there was a worker there and she said, no problem. You can just buy a ticket at the guest services.

There’s a little shop there. You can just buy your tickets there. No problem. So I thought, Oh, this is allowed. You’re allowed to buy tickets on the ferry. You don’t have to get it right there. at the base of it. So I assured the, the couple that I was with, I was like, Oh, I’ve done this before. It’s no big deal.

So I, I tried to do that and that part is, is cut off, but then there are all the cars that are loading. So I thought, perfect, I’ll go down and I will find someone because there’s always ferry workers that are watching the cars and telling them what to do. And they can help me. And we can get on no problem while I, I’m starting to walk and it was like, I was like a Russian spy or something like there’s one of the ferry workers who approached me with like this face of horror and then another one like came in his truck and they were, it was like, they were the most amped up.

They just, they just couldn’t believe that this woman was there. And the, the older couple I was with, they. They couldn’t keep up with me, so they were like, kind of on their way. So I was by myself and they were like, what are you doing here? What are you thinking? And I said, Oh, I’m just going to get on the ferry.

I have this other couple with me. They’re like, where were you coming from? I’m like, from the airport. And it was the most interesting thing because they were super defensive. They were really abrupt and rude, and I just was able to. Not feed into their emotions. I was just very calm. I said, listen, I’m a mom of five kids.

My son’s birthday party is tomorrow. I’d love to be able to sleep in my own bed. The fairy is here. It’s an answer to my prayers, you know? And I’m just speaking so calmly and these guys are just so upset. And, uh, so they’re back and forth on their walkie talkies and things. And I guess the bridge and the captain of the ship won’t, don’t let us on.

And so we literally watched the ferry leave. And then this is the clincher. One of those guys says to me, well, I’m not supposed to do this. I’m breaking the rules. I will let you and this other couple sleep in the ferry terminal. I’m not supposed to, but I’ll let you, I’ll break that rule. I turned to him and I said, you know, this reminds me of the situation when my daughter went to high school and we saw that there was a dress code.

And then she went into high school and there was clearly no one was enforcing the dress code. And so I called the school and I said, Hey, I see you have a dress code, but I also see that you’re not enforcing it. What was, that actually doesn’t make my daughter feel safe going to a school where they have rules, but no one’s following them and no one’s enforcing them.

And within a short period of time, they just got rid of the dress code. So, the reason I’m telling you this story is Oh, so then I got to sleep, sleep, you know, ish, I laid down vertically, and that was around 11. 40 or so, by the time that was all done, and then the next ferry was at 5. 15. And so about, you had to buy your ticket at like 4.

30 and get on and everything. And so I had that, you know, four and a half hours and I just kind of laid there and tried to sleep. It was a very interesting situation for me because there were many times where I had the option to feel like I was out of control, right? There were things that like the flight being delayed, The Uber’s not responding, the taxi lineup was long, the bridge was closed, the ferry was, we were late to the ferry but then the ferry was delayed, then there were the people who wouldn’t let us on the ferry, there was lots of times where I had all these different obstacles.

And at every point, just like the pinball, it could, it just ricocheted off and you never knew how the situation was. But this is where, and this is the question I have in the worksheet, is what is safe for you 100 percent of the time? I’m feeling a little wave of emotion because the old Dara, the former Dara.

Life coaching, had my life coaching tools, there would have been so much pain, there would have been so much anger, there was so much anguish, there would have been so much shame like I was doing something wrong. I would have been like those girls that instead of, you know, feeling jealous and just letting yourself feel jealous, I would go and sabotage myself with the food or the shopping or the yelling or the screaming or the temper tantrum.

And then that’s what I would be upset about. I never actually got to the root of the problem. I’m so grateful to my past self for learning these tools, for my current self to keep working on the tools, and I’m so excited for my future self because I am more and more safe doing things. I’m going to, actually, the day that this comes out, I’m going to be in Chicago at H& H.

And that’s a big deal to be having a booth, investing in myself, and I don’t know what exactly what to expect, but I know that I, no matter what the pinball is, no matter how that ball ricochets off of whatever that is. I know that I have the skills and abilities to get my own back, and that creates so much security.

And one of the things about weight loss that is really scary is when you feel out of control, your cortisol just goes through the roof. And in Obesity Code by Jason Fung, he talks about how cortisol actually puts, you put on weight with cortisol, even though. You’re not eating any calories. So if you’re interested, he has this section here about cortisol and obesity.

He said, here’s the real question we are interested in. Does excess cortisol lead to weight gain? The ultimate test is this. Can I make somebody fat with prednisone? If so, that can prove a casual relationship rather than a mere association. So then he said, Cortisol may act through high insulin levels and insulin resistance, but there may also be other pathways of obesity yet to be discovered.

However, the undeniable fact remains that excess cortisol causes weight gain. So by extension, stress causes weight gain, something that many people have intuitively understood, despite the lack of rigorous evidence. Stress contains neither calories nor carbohydrates, but can still lead to obesity. Long term stress leads to long term elevated cortisol levels, which leads to extra pounds.

Reducing stress is difficult but vitally important. So as I read this and share this information, I want you to think about the level of stress that you have when you try to be a control enthusiast. When you try to control everyone and everything around you. Inside my program, we really dive into Where, what is your lane?

What is your responsibility and what is others? And the more clear you can get on that, the more calm, the more peace and the more at ease you are in your light. It has been a delight to share this podcast with you. I do have to say, this is the fourth time that I’ve recorded it. There was some technical problems and every time that I recorded it, I just said to myself, It’s just going to get better and better.

I love that you’re joining me on now on the YouTube. And if you are still joining me on podcast, amazing. If you want to see my face and you want to see some interaction, you can follow me on YouTube at Dara Thomason on YouTube, and we can connect that way. I love producing this podcast for you. I’m so grateful for my team that helped me do such an amazing job with it.

There’s so many hands that go into creating such an incredible Program and I’m so grateful for them and I will talk. Oh, and by the way, the month of May, we are ramping up for June, which is menopause month. So I have three webinars all about menopause. I have an incredible workbook if you want to kind of get your dip your feet into menopause for you, perimenopause, I’m still like jumping back and forth between the two.

I’m not officially in menopause yet, but I’ve been going through this since well about five years now. Um, so if you want to join us for Love Yourself in the month of June, we’re going to really look at menopause. We have some really exciting stuff happening in there, um, but May you’re going to get your eyes really open.

If you find so many tools and gems from the podcast, you wouldn’t even believe what a difference it is in the membership where we go deep into these topics. And for the month of May, we are going to work on how our mental health impacts our Our physical health. And so if you are struggling with anxiety or depression or any of those mental health issues, I invite you to consider coming and preparing for joining us in love yourself in where we’re really going to take a deep dive into that.

I can’t wait to see you there. Bye.