Have you ever felt like you’re on your own, lacking support, and continuously failing? In today’s episode, I’m diving into these feelings by drawing parallels between weight loss and “Little House on the Prairie.” We’ll explore the struggles and challenges that come with trying something new. I’m Dara Tomasson, and in episode 148 of “Love Yourself Thin,” I’m sharing how connecting with you through my podcast and YouTube channel has been transformative, offering insights and tools to improve not just your life, but the lives of those around you.
In this episode, I talk about the concept of pioneering, relating it to both historical figures and modern-day challenges. I reflect on my own journey, from being a school teacher and professional quilter to becoming a life coach and weight loss expert. Through stories of my ancestors and personal experiences, I emphasize the importance of taking the first steps in new endeavors and the transformative power of resilience and mindset shifts. I invite you to reflect on your own pioneering moments and challenges, encouraging you to see yourself in a new light and embrace change.
If you are ready to lose weight and change the way you think about hunger, sign up for the lifetime access membership for Love Yourself Thin! Doors are open and you can find all the information by clicking here.
What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
- The definition and significance of being a pioneer in both historical and personal contexts.
- The impact of mental health on physical health and how to address these issues.
- Strategies for overcoming challenges and achieving success through mindset shifts and resilience.
Listen to the Full Episode:
- 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:
148. Weight Loss and The Little House on the Prairie
Do you ever feel like you’re totally on your own and you don’t have a lot of support and you feel like you just keep failing? Well, today’s episode is going to be really helpful because we’re talking about the little house on the Prairie and all the struggles and difficulties that. Inevitably come when you’re trying to do something new. So my name is Dara Tomasson, and this is episode 148.
Love yourself Thin weight loss, and little house on the Prairie. For those of you who are used to listening to me on my podcast, you just, I just go along with you on your walks or when you’re quilting or whatever you’re doing. I also have a YouTube channel, so you can check me out.
You can see my face. I’m so please go, you can check me out there and when I’m recording. On my YouTube channel. I actually have the handout. I always say, Hey, there’s a handout. The handout is right in front of me as I’m recording. You can see it there.
Before we go into this episode where I’m going to tie all the tall tie it all together on what the purpose of talking about. Little house on the Prairie and weight loss. I wanted to share the ripple effects of what’s happening in the membership how the lives of the members their family, their friends, all these people are benefited by the work that we do. I often hear women say, oh, it’s so selfish for me to work on myself, but truly the people around you and your life experience, everyone benefits from these tools. So, this is one of my clients and they had actually just planned their 45th wedding anniversary and they went away on a, a week long vacation. And then their car needed $7,000 worth of repairs. And immediately her husband was like, oh, don’t freak out.
She knows about the 50 50, and she knows. Enough about the model. That a car repair that’s in the circumstance line. Then you get to decide what you want to think about it. That’s a huge win and it just takes so much pressure off of everyone else in the household.
She’s able to enjoy her life a lot more. Those triggers don’t. Last as long and they don’t have as many re ramifications. Let me talk about this idea. Actually last week I was in Chicago at H and H and unfortunately I didn’t get to meet Laura Ingles, but she was there. I couldn’t leave my booth. But Riley Blake, they brought her in and apparently it was, it was really great.
I’m sure she was wonderful. Apparently she’s like really down to earth, but I grew up watching little house on the Prairie, as I imagined. A lot of you also enjoyed that show. I’m going to, I’m going to talk about. The definition of a pioneer. What I thought was interesting was the, the original origins of the word actually are from French. pied is our feet. It’s along the lines of, this is someone we haven’t walked this before.
This is the first time it’s being walked. When we look at the definition, so there’s the noun version and there’s the verb. The noun is a person who is among the first to explore or settle a country or area, especially one of the first Europeans to colonize the Western us. So a lot of my ancestors were pioneers.
So from Sweden, from Norway, from England, From Ireland and Scotland. They came two america and to Canada. They started fresh. It was really, it’s, it’s really amazing to learn about their lives and see what they’ve done.
The other definition of pioneer that’s a noun is a person who is among the first to research and develop. A new area of knowledge or activity, a famous pioneer. Of like birth control, for example.
Even life coaching is pretty new area. It’s interesting when you think back about psychiatry, when we had Sigmund Freud and these Different. Therapists that was also the wild west at the beginning.
They’ve had a lot more time to refine it but the verb form of pioneer is to develop or. Be the first to use or apply a new method, area of knowledge or activity. The technique was pioneered by. Like a Swiss doctor in the 1930s. Right? So it’s like someone who is using the new things.
So even for me, I feel like I am being a pioneer in the weight loss industry, because I am saying weight loss doesn’t work when you are just focusing on counting calories, tracking steps and swapping movement. I’m saying no, no, no weight loss needs to be much deeper. We have to actually get to the root of, of the issues. Then the second part of a verb is actually opening up, open up a road or terrain as a pioneer. You were actually physically doing it now.
My great grandfather, he and his two brothers came up to Canada from the United States and they literally dug ditches and for as many ditches as they dug, they got land. They opened up the land to get the new opportunity to have, and they brought their sheep I’m curious for you, what have you pioneered in your own life?
What have you done that had never done been done before? Had you been in your family? I was the first girl in my family to go and graduate from university.
What were some of those barriers? Are those, the things that you’ve done for yourself. For example, I had five children. I had never had five children before I’d never had a child before. I’m doing things that I had never imagined or that I had done. I didn’t know exactly how to do it until I figured out how to do it. I just want you to kind of get curious on. Let me think about what have I done in my own life? That has been amazing and awesome. According to the definition that had never been done before. Since you’re the only one living your own life. There’s a lot of things you’ve never done before.
I liked the idea of reverse engineering, your from your successes. Learning how to look back and say, oh, I’ve been really successful here.
There’s a couple of different ways. I want to think about pioneering in this podcast. Cause I’ve been thinking a lot about this and I, especially as I got back from Chicago last week, It kind of blows my mind that I’m a mom of five children who was a school teacher who then became a professional quilter instructor and author. Now I’m a life coach who goes around to various places and helps other women see that they don’t have to be stuck, that they can use tools for their brain. I have people that I pay every month.
I have a team. This podcast is rated in the top 2% of all podcasts. Like I’ve done all of these things. First of all. I never thought I could. I never thought it was even a possibility. I also mentioned that I’ve lost 50 pounds and kept that off all through perimenopause when I feel like I’ve struggled with my weight for so long. I just keep doing it. It’s so fun and I keep figuring out how to keep moving forward.
I asked you about what have you pioneered already in your own life? Then when you think about pioneers, they started out with bare minimum. There wasn’t a lot of resources now, of course. In our society, we have tons of resources that we could go on YouTube and pretty much research anything.
That’s always a fresh start for yourself because no matter what. Coax you have, or what YouTube channel you watch. Somebody to help you. You’re the one who has to figure it out. When you watch a little house in the Prairie’s. I remember an episode where the barn had to go on fire. It was so scary and they had to figure out how to save the animals and how to rebuild after such a hard hardship.
I think there was a time when the dad didn’t break his leg or arm or something, and then he couldn’t work. We were figuring things out and then we had our obstacles along the way. Then how do you decide how you want to overcome those obstacles? What kind of person do you want to be? How does that reflect you? Laura’s sister, she became blind. And that was so scary.
How do you work through all of those challenges? every time you have that challenge, it’s like a new fresh start. You have to figure it out. This is where I see the mental health. If we don’t take care of our mental health then we have what’s called the allostatic load. I think that it’s a L L O S T a T I C.
It’s the wear and tear on our body. If we’re not working through the difficulties and the strains and the stresses then we just kind of put our hands in the air. We give up and we turn to food and we do all sorts of stuff that doesn’t, that doesn’t help us. You have any way I wanted to talk about pioneering is maybe in a way that you haven’t really thought before. I want you to ask yourself, why do you think of yourself the way you do.
You must be willing to make the effort to see yourself differently and ask the questions. Who says. Or why?
I want you, you all know the story. If we haven’t shared it before. Just a month and a half ago, or so, I woke up on a Saturday morning. It was the first Saturday of spring break. Over here where I live, we have two weeks of spring break. I hadn’t planned anything for the kids. At seven 30 in the morning, I was going to get ready to go for my run I tend to do every Saturday morning. I realised that the Raptors were going to be playing basketball in Portland that evening. I realised that I have a car and money and I can go in my car on the ferry. Through the border, I could just drive to Portland. No big deal.. So interesting because the former me. I would never have done something so last minute, I didn’t know where we were sleeping that night. I didn’t know about a hotel or I have a friend that lives there. I was like, it doesn’t matter. You can always get a hotel. If people think I’m crazy or people think that’s irresponsible that I didn’t plan ahead. That’s okay.
They’re allowed. They’ll have to think whatever they want. But I wanted to be that kind of mom. I’m the more that we can ask ourselves, this question that I just asked you is
Why do you see yourself in that way? Who says you can’t be different? Who says you have to plan everything? Months in advance or weeks in advance. Are you going to day but day in advance? Who says. Then why, why do we have to. Why do we have to be You know, You have to kept back because of that. Obviously if I had a commitment that I, I was teaching at church the following day, of course I would take my responsibilities, but I didn’t have that. I was okay to go. I want to ask you to to go with me here. I want you to look in a mirror I have a little hand him hand held mirror in my drawer beside me and my office. I want you to ask yourself without the punishing lens of culture bias or criticism. I want you to look at yourself in a bold, fresh and nonjudgmental way. It could look like something like this.
This is my body. What I see is the reflection of my genetic heritage, my ageing, my history of dieting, my history with food.
What would that be? Like if you just looked in the mirror and said, Hey. This is who I am. This is why I am the way I am.
What do I want to do about it?
Some of us have habits that don’t serve us like compulsive eating. We have used food as a distraction. We have used food to numb out. So of us that use food to calm down. It doesn’t even matter really what the food is. You can be a compulsive eater with vegetables.
I want you to, just to ask yourself. What would it be like for me? To not do that anymore .To be a pioneer because of pioneer. Literally I’m walking a path I’d never walked before.
What would it be like for me to finally say, you know what? This doesn’t serve me. I don’t feel good when I do this with food. I don’t want to be that person.
When you slow down and I’m so glad that you’re here by the way. It’s awesome.
I want you to really give yourself some time to think about these thoughts because research shows that if you don’t change the way you problem solve and you don’t change the way you think about things, You’re basically thinking the same way you thought when you were eight or 10 or 12 years old.
If you haven’t elevated your thinking, then you’re not able to change the way you are operating. When I was a elementary school teacher, I often would have students that came from. Other countries it was really fun. I started an after degree program for English as a second language, one of the things that I learned from that was the importance of developing your brains. For example, so if you learned Chinese growing up and you were 10 years old and you came to Canada. You would still be speaking Chinese to your parents at home, but if you weren’t formally taught Chinese writing. Then that would be like a hole or a disconnect in your brain. The research showed the importance of teaching the written work, along with the spoken to help compliment that development in the brain. As I do this work as a life coach, what we, I encourage the members of my membership to do is to really. Fill in a lot of those emotional gaps that we have really struggled with. When we were kids and we were crying and sad and someone said, oh, you know, buck up. Don’t cry in here.
Like my grandpa would literally say like, I’m going to kick you out of my house. No crying, allowed. Then we didn’t learn how to overcome our work through or even embrace like, oh, it’s normal to be a human and to be sad, it’s normal to cry. It’s normal. For this. This emotional intelligence and this emotional piece that happens in semi program. So amazing and it really helps women. To become more balanced in their life.
I love that you’re here either watching me on my YouTube or listening to my podcasts. I do really want to encourage you to check out my membership. If you think this podcast is amazing. Oh, my goodness.
It’s so incredible in my program because in the program, we actually do the work. It’s, I don’t know. There’s lots of different ways I can describe it, but when I think about when I was first learning how to do free motion quilting. I’d watched these. YouTube. Tutorials I’d watch these people and they would be demonstrating these free motion, quilting techniques. It was amazing and it was, I was. It was quite often I was overwhelmed and just felt so inadequate.
I felt very overwhelmed. I really doubted myself how I could ever do anything like that.
It’s great to watch them. But it wasn’t until I got that. Paper, the full scat paper from you from U-haul. I folded it in half and then folded it in thirds on a clipboard. And I would just be really messy and it looked terrible. And my. It was awful. I was terrible. Every motion quilting at the beginning.
Then I just kept trying and I kept learning techniques and I kept failing, but I did not quit. That’s why I make this podcast for you, because a, I know that what you don’t know, you don’t know. I love being able to give you the good information. Then the second piece is to invite you. Like, if this is resonating with you, if this is feeling. Like, oh, here’s the solution. I promise you a hundred percent, your brain is always your best investment. And when you come inside my membership. That’s what happens?
Your brain becomes an even better resource because you are finally working through all of the challenges, all of the murkiness, all of the tangled, all the mess. I invite you to join us. It is. Such a happy place inside. Love yourself, then. Alright, I’d love spending this time with you and I will see you on the next podcast. 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.