Do you feel like no matter what you try for weight loss, you just always keep falling off the wagon. I get it. I’m here for you. My name is Dara Tomasson and this is episode 1 47. Love yourself Thin podcast, weight loss, and falling off the bandwagon again. Okay. So I looked up. Bandwagon. because we always talk about falling off the diet wagon to the bandwagon. Essentially. When you see a parade they will have a wagon with a band on it and the band will be playing. They want you to be. They like, if you fall off the wagon, then you’re not part of a crowd and then you’re excluded.  Then you’re kind of bummed out, right? Today we’re going to talk about all the wagons you’ve been on and all the wagons you’ve fallen off of.  I’m going to give you some support on how to stop doing that because you’re wasting a lot of energy.

You’re getting bumps and bruises by falling off.  Really the main goal is to create your own wagon and be in your own way and create your own success, because that really is the way you’re going to guarantee permanent weight loss. I’m going to give you, we’re going to walk through some scenarios.

We’re going to look at why did you fall off the wagon? But before we do that, I need to share the ripple effect of what happens with the women in my program. I really love to do this because

we lose sight of what the purpose of losing weight is in the first place.

The way that I described weight loss for me and in my program is we get to the root of the issue. So finally, you can start living free. From all of the frustration the disappointment.  All those annoying things that happen when you gain the weight back.  The work that I do and the approach I take is we learn how to get to the root of the issue.

Weight loss is the side effect of what, at what we do.  Yes, we can purposely go and we can purposely say, I want to lose this weight. That’s totally legit is totally fine.  All in because we recognize that weight loss being overweight is not about you not having self-control.

We recognize that it’s I have more of a problem. I have this addiction to sugar or addiction to food, or I have this addiction to overeating.  I don’t know how to be with myself. I don’t know how to solve these problems. I don’t know how to work through these issues.  I’m, I feel really stuck because I don’t have the emotional capacity.

If that doesn’t sound like you, if that sounds like you just want someone to say, do this, do that, do this, do that. Then I’m not your girl, because my approach is I help you become your own best expert. I help you get to the root of the problem so that you can live a life that you want.  In this example I have a, I’m a member in the membership and her sister came for three weeks. And in the past. There would be a lot of conflict and this was as she could, she describes her sister as her sister can really push her buttons. And they can get into some doozies, right? She was there for three weeks and that didn’t happen. It’s not so much that her sister changed, but it’s the way that she thinks differently about her sister and the way that she was doing things, she said she even had she’d be on a call. And her sister would just let her be on a call.

Now I have on both YouTube and on podcast. But in the worksheet  1 47. We have these different diets. If you,  just want you to write down what diets did you do? I have a bunch here.

So have you tried Keto?

And, you know, the concept of Keto is really quite interesting. We go really low carb and then our we get our body into a state of ketosis. When it’s in a state of ketosis, it’s able to eat its own fat easier. I talk about dining in, so there’s a concept that’s similar.

What about wait so now, so think let’s just stay on keto for a minute. So with Keto, we’re really limited on how many carbs.  There’s a lot of restriction, quite a few rules. Then there’s some fears on checking your ketone levels.  If they are too high, then you’re not into fuel burning.

You’re not into fat burning. We tend to have a little bit more fear around our food. We have a lot more restrictions and we’re kind of obsessing about, is this allowed? Is this not allowed? you might be checking an app. You might be checking like Pinterest . You’re just looking at asking permission if this is okay.  It puts you in the good student mentality and it takes you out of becoming your own best expert.

I’m curious about your experience with Keto for you?   If you did, what was it?  I want to take one step more. What was one thing you liked about KIDO?  It was kind of in a formula. Like if you do this, you will get this. What about weight Watchers? How many of you have been in weight Watchers? What things did you like about weight Watchers?

What didn’t you like? What things resonated with you, what things were really big trigger.  Being weighed in public, having someone, a check, telling you if you’re good or bad, depending on the number on the scale. Like what kind of triggers were there? Did you learn anything that sustainable? Did you learn how your body worked?

Did you learn about what works well for you? What doesn’t, I’d love to hear it.

Intermittent fasting. there’s lots of different approaches to intermittent fasting. There’s they talk about different windows.  Drinking like water. Focusing on fats. What is your experience? Have you tried it, have you got research? What things resonate with you? What doesn’t. But what about being hungry?

What about the idea of like eating your own fat?

So, what about paleo? Did you go to the paleo? I just found A weight loss woman who  calls it prime bod. So it’s like going to your primal body. She doesn’t do a lot of working out and she eats a lot of meat.  Then what about Atkins diet? I remember my dad did the Atkins diet and we went to my sister’s wedding.  We went swimming and he had such low energy.

He could barely swim and he’s like this six, four guy. He kinda got scared.

What about the Mediterranean diet?  Did you do that? How did you feel on that what are some other diets? South beach, whole 30. Elimination diet. What has been your experience when you decide I’m going to go on this diet?  What are the things that they all have in common?

Well, there’s quite a few. One of them is that. You’re relying on an expert to know you and your body better than you. When you have a baby, for example it is important to  research. It’s important to know that babies can’t eat. This or that.  There are definitely some guidelines that are really, really helpful.

Research is really helpful so that you can have informed decisions. What I’m wanting to really focus on for this episode is if your focus is on falling off the wagon.  Feeling bad about yourself and feeling like you’re such a failure. Instead of you’re focusing. I tried Keto. I liked this part of it, but I didn’t like this part. I tried weight Watchers.

I liked this and I didn’t like this. As you go through all the wagons that you’ve been on, you can start collecting the data on the things that resonated with you. The things that seem to work, the things that clicked the. The things that were helpful because when you go to get your own band, Together on your wagon. You can take all of these amazing. Wins that you learned from it. One of the things I liked about KIDO.

It seemed pretty simple. It’s like you do this, you do this and you get this and you get this. It’s not over complicated. of course it felt really restrictive.  I like variety somewhat.  I actually really liked vegetables.

No wonder I fell off the wagon. No wonder this wasn’t sustainable. No wonder. I didn’t want to hang out there because it didn’t seem fun. I wanted to share a story about one of my clients and she’s so amazing. I love all my clients. They’re they’re just so wonderful.   She had kind of figured out some foods that worked really well for her. She was doing awesome with her joy eats once a week. And she was able to go on a trip and was able to walk so much.

And she, I think she was down like, 90 pounds. She started at 320. 330 or something, and she was down 90 pounds. It was amazing.  There was kind of this challenge because she had so much success, but then she started feeling left out.

She started feeling some of that entitlement back, like I should be able to.  She stopped talking to her self.  She basically said I just fell off the wagon because she’s done it so many times. But the problem is it’s her own wagon. She made her own protocol. It was her own way of doing things.

Now instead of rebelling against some random Keto inventor or WeightWatchers or whatever that was. She was doing that against herself. This is like a foreign territory because she was not accustomed to being on her own wagon on her own way. Really creating her own success.

The other part was She, she’s not a robot, right? None of us are. We have to be constantly dealing with emotions.  I like to joke around when I was, you know, nesting on it before I had my, I remember specifically my second baby. Oh my goodness. I was.  Like hardcore nesting.

And I was obsessing about the laundry and having everything super organized. And I remember just feeling so deflated because I knew. That my husband, myself and my son were all wearing clothes and they were all getting dirty. there was no way I was ever going to get all the laundry done ever. Similar to brushing your teeth, you could brush your teeth for 10 hours. In one day, but that doesn’t mean that you wouldn’t have to brush your teeth every day for like a year.

Right?  It’s that maintenance and that’s the same thing with weight, with creating your own protocol.  That’s why, you know, falling off these bandwagons only lasts for so long. When you’re learning your own path, when you’re winding your own way It takes, it takes courage. It takes stamina.

It takes fortitude.  One of the things is we have battle scars. We have difficulties and you know, we have this optimism and then we have this history. In the back saying, well, you failed before. Like who do you think you are?  That’s really hard.

So in I was reading.  Again, so you can tell, obviously I’m reading a book right now because I mentioned it in my podcast. But one of the things that they said in this book, when women hate hitting their bodies, Stop hating their bodies. They talked about when you’re a little kid.

She said, I realised that I go further than simply saying I’m fat. I actually tell myself with all the hatred I can muster that I deserve to be fat. I’m just beginning to question what I really do deserve, and I’m beginning to see that I certainly didn’t deserve the treatment I received as a child. I see now that for years, I’ve been repeating to myself.

What I heard coming at me, from my parents. It wasn’t just about my being fad. It was about everything. I believe that I deserved their contempt, bad body thoughts came. Became my main weapon against myself. I’ll tell you truthfully. I’m scared about the rage. That’s buried in my bad body thoughts. Where will it go?

I can’t imagine not having that self abuse as my constant companion. And then she continues to say that we were all born deserving to be born in homes with unconditional love and acceptance.  Whether we got what we needed as children or not, the time has come to supply it to ourselves.  If like this woman, you feel frightened by the feelings buried beneath your bad body thoughts. You may want to seek professional help.

Okay. Or come in and speak to me. The crutch of it was that when children are treated badly, they think they are bad. It’s just, it’s just so, so sad. I, I think about us. Having the pressure from society saying you have to be. Smaller you have, you can’t be too big.  You can’t take up too much space. But then we have these alternate alternatives. Alternatives of these diets that don’t understand the emotional compact the emotional component. And then we’re supposed to just be more good girls. Then if we fail on a diet, it’s like reinforces, I guess we’re bad. When I was raising my kids when they were little, I would say. Yeah, that was a bad choice. I never ever said you were a bad girl or a bad boy ever. Never.  That was just a bad choice you made. That was a good choice.

And when we make good choices, we have good consequences. Quite often bad choices, bad consequences. This is part of being a human.

One of them, so I’m just going to offer you some suggestions of things that you can do. To help yourself when you feel like you’re falling off the wagon and what, which, by the way, I want you to build your own wagon. I want you to be on your own wagon, your own path. You need to become your own best expert. When you can see yourself being triggered, when you can see like, oh dear, here we go again. I’m watching TV at night.

I’m having these thoughts. This is usually when I go get the popcorn, I’m feeling really lonely or whatever that is. You can go and get a drink.

Like preparing a drink, you know, cutting the lemon, cutting up the ginger, boiling the water. And saying to yourself, I’m going to take care of you. Don’t you worry. You’re not you’re. I will never, I will never quit on you. You are so important to me. You could also, even if it’s not time to eat. Recently I had this experience where I didn’t quite get the result I wanted.

I was feeling pretty frustrated.  I just went downstairs.  I just started chopping up the apples that needed to be. Used up  I thought, oh, I’ll just make some apple sauce, just the act of preparing the apples. Coring them, slicing them, putting them in the Instapot, sprinkling in the cinnamon.  Making that applesauce. I didn’t have to eat anything but just that act of that repetition of nurturing myself, preparing that food felt really loving.  Whenever I was hungry, I would have some delicious apple sauce with nice fiber and I had some beautiful Greek yogurt that I pair really nicely with it. I was going to take care of myself. Another thing you can do when you feel like you’re triggered is turn on some music. Or jump on you a little mini trampoline. Or just go outside in nature for a minute. Or if you get cold, you just go in your car with the heated seat.  Just kind of relax and let him just do some deep breathing.

I sometimes will go and just sit by my hummingbird feeder. I just. We’ll just put, like I have my glass, my Mason jar.

And I will just enjoy having that nice, warm water on my hands.

Maybe it’s reading. I have Christmas this past year, my son’s.  All wrote me really, really nice cards like letters right beside my bed. So maybe it’s that?

We all deserved it. To have unconditional love.

Some of us. Got it. And some. All of us. Didn’t.

The truth is a lot of us do not give ourselves unconditional love. And that’s why we are in such a deficit. So my challenge to you. Is to, to make a wagon.

Figurative wagon. And what are you going to put on that? Wagon.  I love you. No matter what, every time I walk on the scale. Step on the scale every morning. I said, I love you. No matter what.

What are you going to write on that wagon? What is the mission statement of that wagon? What is the, what is the theme song of that wagon? I love it all you need.  R E S P C T. What is your theme song?

What would it be like to write one? I love you. No matter what. I love you for always. I love you forever.

That’s such a beautiful children’s book about the mom. He says, my boy is making me crazy. But when it’s a dark night,  she’ll go into his room and she’ll pick him up and she’ll swing him back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.  She says, I love you forever. I like you for always, as long as you’re living, my baby will be.  And then she talks about when he becomes a teenager and he makes her crazy. And she just loves him no matter what.  Then eventually she gets really old. She calls her son and says, I’m getting really old.

I don’t know how much longer I’ll be here.

And he drove across town and he got a ladder. And he put her in his lap and he sang the same song.

What would that be like? For us just to love ourselves so much. And it’s not narcissistic. It’s not conceited.  It’s actually what we really need.  And when we build that wagon for ourselves. We will never fall off of it because it’s a place where we’ll always want to be. And inside my program, we learn how to do that.

And I’m so proud of that work. And in the month of may, if you’re listening to this at the time of release, Of 2024. We’re learning all about menopause. And then in June, we’re going to dive right into menopause and perimenopause. And we’re going to build a relationship with ourselves as we age and as we change. And I’m really looking forward to it.

So if you want to join us for that, I’d love you to come. All right. I’ll take care. Take care. Bye.

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 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 Thin, where we’re really going to take a deep dive into that. I can’t wait to see you there. Bye.