Ep #45: Rebellion and Weight Loss

Do the hairs on the back of your neck stand up when someone tells you what to do, feel like you will always be a rebel when it comes to food and never figure out how to come with peace and feel comfortable in your body? This is episode is for all you rebels out there who really want to find peace with your bodies but feel so clueless on how?

I am Dara Tomasson, and this is Weight Loss for Quilters, Rebellion and Weight Loss.

Did you know you could lose weight and keep it off for good? After 25 years of hiding behind my quilts, I have finally cracked the code for permanent weight loss, and I’ve lost 50 pounds without exercise or counting calories. I’m Dara Tomasson, professional quilter turned weight and life coach, where I help quilters just like you create a life they love by losing weight and keeping it off for good. Let’s jump into today’s episode.

Alright, who can relate to this? I know whenever I talk about rebellion I feel like Billy Idol is singing in the background, ‘with a rebel yell.’ And Billy Idol was the quintessential rebel for me growing up. I felt like everything he did was just so rebellious and it kind of scared me. I would be eating a bag of chips or eating a whole thing of ice-cream and saying, “Yeah. Well, this is for you.” And the rebel, whenever I would rebel against something it was like I was paying the price in the long run.

And I know that I’m not the only one because I have now helped so many women who have really struggled with that. So, today’s episode is going to be talking about why we rebel and what happens for us. So, rebellion is defined as an open resistance against the orders of an established authority. Well, it turns out the established authority on weight loss and all that is not very established. In fact, every time you do a Google search for weight loss, there is a new promise, or a lifechanging article you must read.

It does feel like we have been sold a bill of goods. I hate being told what to do. Ever since I was a little girl I was so picky about what clothes I would wear, the kind of shoes I would pick and how I did my hair. I even started making my own clothes in junior high because I wanted to dress the way I wanted to dress which meant that I did not want to rely on clothing stores to find the perfect outfit. So, this streak of independence and weight loss has been a real struggle. And all of those diets, what are they doing? They’re telling you what to do.

All of those science reports, they’re telling you what to do. When things get forced on us we feel all sorts of pressure and then of course our rebel instincts just shine through. So today I’m going to show you why you have good reasons to feel rebellious about weight loss, but learning how to take out that rebellious spirit and replace it with confidence moving forward. And I’m even going to share with you a, b, c, d, e, and f, I created my own acronym on how to quell the rebellious spirit and how to use that spirit for good.

So, it’s going to be a fun twist on how to really use that rebelliousness for your good.

Alright, before I go into the heart of the podcast I actually wanted to share something that came up today in our coaching call. As I say, we always start with three celebrations per call, that is necessary. And part of it is to rewire our brains and the other part is to just feel so much more calm with our changing selves. And today was really interesting. One of my clients, she just went to Primitive Gatherings for I think five days, four or five days for a retreat. And of course, there’s yummy desserts and there’s all sorts of things.

And this client, she just recently retired and so she’s having these new newfound freedoms. And she loves bread. She’s told herself her whole life how much she loves bread. And when she went to the retreat she was looking forward to it. And as she was eating the bread she realized it actually isn’t as great as she thought it was. And today she was able to say, “You know what? I think I can break up with bread. I think I don’t need it as much as I wanted.”

And it’s not to say that she didn’t eat the desserts. She had planned the desserts and she enjoyed them all. She knew that the number on the scale was going to go up. But this is the most beautiful part. She has all the skills and abilities to take that weight down and because she’s not fighting against anything, she doesn’t have any pressure on herself. She just knows what it takes to lose the weight and she does it from a place of loving, a place of understanding, and she’s not afraid of the scale anymore.

And she doesn’t put all that pressure on herself which today we’re going to be talking about. And then she’s able to have so much success. And she’s now been in this program for, I think she’s at 16 weeks and I think she’s at 25 pounds. So, it’s really exciting to watch. And how really it’s a lot simpler and easier than you ever imagined. Alright, so I just wanted to share that with you because I find these stories so inspirational. And I do always want to recommend to you that these women I’m sharing their success stories, could be you.

And it’s just a matter of them saying yes to themselves. And we’re not, especially unicorns in my program. They are regular humans having a regular human kind of experience, but they just decided that they are going to commit to themselves and that’s what they’re doing. And it’s super fun to watch how much their lives have changed so completely. So, there is a fun success story.

Okay, so let’s get into the podcast. So, we’re going to go into the common reasons why we rebel and then why you justify rebellion. And then I’m going to talk about how to use that rebellion energy for good. And that’s where I give you my A through F strategies. And then we’re going to talk about how you don’t need to be rebellious anymore. So that’s the outline. And I do want to remind you that we have these amazing handouts that I created for you because I know that this is a really challenging part of your life that you kind of just wish it would just go away. I get it.

You know what it always felt like? It felt like I had a little stone in my shoe always. And the stone in the shoe just got bigger and bigger and it was so uncomfortable. And I just always had such a hard time really enjoying my life when I just had this annoying little stone in my shoe. And it felt justified to be mad and angry. And so, this episode is going to be really helpful.

Alright, the common reasons to rebel. So, when I look at rebellion and I just review why we rebel, it often happens around when you’re a teenager. And I talked about this in a previous episode near the beginning about the cycle that we go through. So, when we’re a baby we just instinctively know when we’re hungry and when we’re full. It’s in our body. And then we get introduced to different foods and our brain starts getting these real zingers, I call them zingers of your first candy. It’s just so ridiculously incredible, this feeling of euphoria around food.

It just goes right through you and your brain, you create this desire that says, “This is very important.” We can get a lot of energy from this piece of food. So, what happens is, it creates this really strong desire for that food. And so, as a child we are told all the rules around food, eat this, don’t eat that. You’re not hungry. You have to eat. Don’t waste anything. Eat everything off your plate. But then, no, you’re not having a snack. It was really confusing for kids because all it seems to be is just rules, rules, rules.

And then when you become a teenager you fight back, you fight the rules back and you say, “That doesn’t make any sense. This is ridiculous, what are you talking about?” And so, there’s this rebellious cycle and you’re pushing back and you’re saying, “No, don’t make me do this.” But then science kind of catches up on you and you gain a bunch of weight.

So then instead of going to being an adult of like when I was talking about my client who planned ahead for the desserts. She knew that the scale would go up, but she also knows how, she’s not afraid of the scale anymore because she understands the science and she feels in control. And so, the problem then is if you go rebellious and then you get to a certain number on the scale you feel really bad. And so, then you go back to the rules, rules, rules which are like diets.

So, you get this cycle of rules, rebellions, rules, rebellion, and you never break that cycle to being an adult, emotional adult eating. And that’s what I teach my clients and that’s what I have been able to master for myself. And it’s just an ongoing relationship as you change the way you think about yourself, your body and feeling empowered with all of that. So having said that we basically stick ourselves into being a teenager again. And we feel a lot of pressure.

And because teenagers, they often get a lot of pressure from their parents of, “This is how we behave. At the Tomasson house this is the way we are, at the Bowie house.” Whatever house you grew up, you have all sorts of expectations and you do feel like they’re being put upon you.

I mean even if your parents don’t say anything, the idea of just having this new awareness of I’m in this world and I look at these magazines, and nobody in the magazines are overweight. Nobody in the magazines have acne on their face. Nobody in the magazines has greasy hair. Nobody in the magazines has a messy house. And so just even the subliminal messages of what makes an appropriate person or acceptable person is very confusing.

And the problem is we’re not really sure how to communicate our feelings very well because we weren’t really ever told to express our emotions. So, when you were a little kid even you said something that your mom didn’t agree with, she kind of shied away from you. So even as a child you got this mixed message of I’m not really supposed to talk about my feelings. When you skimmed your knee or got hurt you were given a sucker, or you had a fuss, you fussed in the store, and they gave you something. So, we really don’t have a lot of experience. I know that they’re getting better now.

You also had different mixed messages, for example, your mom bought sugar cereal because she wanted to be nice. But then she told you not to overeat. Or your mom told you bad news with a bowl of ice-cream in front of you, which meant you weren’t allowed to cry or be upset. Or what about the family says we have to have dessert every night but then girls shouldn’t go out and do sports. So even those kinds of things were super confusing and difficult to kind of navigate what’s going on.

Even with my daughter, she is 17 and so she works and works with a bunch of young adults. And they have a lot of mixed messages of I want to be able to eat whatever I want but I’m supposed to be really thin. And so, they think that they either have to go to the gym all the time, or they won’t be acceptable and then they really start having unhealthy eating problems. And they have eating disorders. They’ll either purge or restrain themselves with the anorexia. It’s so confusing for so many people.

And so just that amount of pressure, any time you put that much pressure on yourself, and you don’t give yourself a way out or a way to solve the problem, it just feels intolerable. And so, you’re going to explode in some way. Now, one of the things that I see is we’re not really sure how to be successful with weight loss and so then you don’t feel confident moving forward. And the problem is, you’ve tried so many times to be successful with weight loss, and you get your hopes up. And then you keep failing.

You thought that you had it all figured out, but you put the weight back on. You really want to feel good in your body and figure out weight loss, but you have convinced yourself that you won’t be able to. So now you’ve put yourself in this trap of thinking the only way that you can feel happy is by being thin. The only way that you have tried to get thin is by using willpower and being punitive. And that is not sustainable. That way of talking to yourself isn’t going to work.

And they do all sorts of studies about even the one study about talking to rice. They had the two jars of rice and the one jar they said all these really nice things to and the other jar they said all these terrible things. And it started molding and being disgusting when you were speaking even to it. And so, if you’re expecting that that’s how you’re going to have success by being really mean to yourself, that’s not going to work.

Another part of rebellion, and the reason you have rebellion with your relationship with your body and your weight is that you don’t want to accept your reality. So, if you are so afraid that if you accept yourself the way you are, you will never change. You can’t imagine living overweight and so you hate everything about your body and your relationship. You turn more and more away from yourself and rely on food, or shopping for any amount of joy.

And the reality is to have permanent change you have to understand what the patterns are of you overeating that’s gotten you where you are at. And if you don’t open your eyes to it, you’re never going to have the information, you’re never going to really understand what’s going on.

Another reason why rebellion comes up is you don’t know how to get the attention you want in order to get help. So, you secretly hope that someone will tell you what to do. You want that magic pill or that surefire way that will catapult you to success. And so, because you don’t know how to communicate very well and you don’t want to draw attention to yourself, or you don’t really know how to ask, then that also once again, you feel really scared, you feel trapped, you feel vulnerable. And so, one of the ways that we fight against that is by showing rebellious acts.

Now, why can you justify rebellion? I do believe that you have every right to feel mad and angry against society about weight loss and all the mixed messages and misinformation. I was totally shocked when I learned how simple weight loss science is. It’s so simple. Keep it simple and you don’t need to fight against it.

I often think about the analogy of the animal that got their foot stuck in a trap. A passerby finds him in pain and wants to help. The captured animal swats and growls at this well meaning person who is the one who will releases them from the current circumstances. But rebellion is our reaction to wanting help but being afraid to accept it because we don’t know who or what to trust anymore. After all it was the human who created the trap and set it.

I sometimes fall into the trap of even being an adult and I’ll fall back into being a teenager again and I do the same thing. Someone’s trying to help me, and I just push against them, and fight against, claw, and swat, and growl. And I realize, this is the problem. I am being scared and I’m not asking for the help that I need. And so of course you can feel cautious and untrusting as you listen to this podcast. You have been promised all sorts of results. You have bought all the books, and the containers, and the steps, and the watches, and all the aerobics equipment, everything.

You have gone full guns at different times of your life so of course it makes sense that you have this rebellious streak in you. You have doubt and you mistrust, and you fear and disgust, all of those things come up and it’s totally reasonable for you to have such a negative attitude. I totally get it. But what I want to offer is I want you to use that rebellious energy for good. I think a good fight is a great thing.

If you have a lot of emotion and something gets riled up in you, I say, let’s go for it, let’s use that energy and kind of change it a little bit, shift it just a touch and then it can give you so much power. So, I have created the a, b, c, d, e, f’s of what to do with that rebellious energy for good. So, you have rebellion in the first place because you feel pressure to be different than you are. You sense that the way you currently are isn’t good enough. That feels terrible.

Everywhere you go and everything you do feels off because your body doesn’t look like you can be on the cover of a magazine. And that’s kind of what you think the world expects us to look like. And so, you’re just walking around with this stone in your shoe and it’s really annoying and uncomfortable. So, with all of that pressure, the pushback is real but when you overeat and react to the pressure, and carry around all that extra weight, you are the one who suffers the most because you don’t feel comfortable in your own skin, you end up paying the price.

So, this is what I recommend for you to change. A, accept that the culture, and expectations, and pressure are there, it is what it is, it really is. And one of the problems that I see is women spend all this time trying to fight against reality and reality is reality. And so, A, is accept the culture, and expectations, and pressure that are there.

B, be curious about why you are listening to those cultural expectations. I am so glad I did not listen to various cultural expectations that I thought were there for me growing up. I’m really glad that I just decided, no, I’m going to go to university and I’m going to do all of these things for me. I’m going to, as a single adult, I am going to have a profession, and I’m going to buy a car, and I’m going to go on vacations. And I’m going to just do what I want to do. And I’m so glad that I was able to stand on my own. And so just be curious of why you’re doing the things you are.

So, A is to accept, B is to be curious C is to have compassion for yourself. That is so important. And compassion, another word for that is unconditional love. It means that you love yourself no matter what and you love yourself in a way that just feels awesome. Even when life isn’t going super great, you can have that compassion.

It’s like if a toddler is being really difficult all day and you just are so impatient with that toddler and then they fall. And you can just have so much compassion for them. You’re like, “I see you. I see you hurt your knee, it’s okay, just come here, I’m going to give you a hug.” That’s the kind of compassion I’m talking about, that you can offer yourself. You do that for so many other people, and I don’t think you do that very often for yourself. And I really want to impress upon you how lifechanging that would be for you.

D is dare to change your approach. Old keys don’t open new doors. I say that a lot, but it is so helpful to me. So, dare to change and it’s okay.

E, evaluate what kind of life you want to have. So, I love that you’re a quilter, or a creative of some sort and you’re listening to this podcast, in fact, if you’re just listening to this podcast I can tell that you have some level of hope that you can change. So, we can create any kind of life we want, just like we can create any quilt that we want. We can actually paint, there’s so many different paint colors. We could have our house painted in so many different colors. And we could buy all sorts of clothes or whatever it is.

So, we can choose whatever kind of life we want, and I want you to evaluate what kind of life you have and why you got there, and then what it would take to have the life that you really want.

And then F, is fun. Don’t take yourself so seriously. Your value and worth are already at 100%. Remember, the day you were born your worth was, yeah, perfect, she’s amazing. And so, the number on the scale or the size of your pants does not influence that result. So, ask yourself, what could I do in my life that feels like more fun? So, when you follow these steps you become the master of your own thoughts which then create feelings of hope, empowerment, and confidence. These feelings generate actions that get the weight loss results you want.

You rely on yourself to plan your food as you understand weight loss science. You figure out how to troubleshoot this plan as you are more objective and less self-critical. You don’t put so much pressure on yourself to lose weight so you can feel better about yourself. No more need to be rebellious. I love that the women in my program don’t ever tell me what they eat. I love how independent they are with their eating. I help them along the way.

If you are ready to stop rebelling and start accepting what is going on and then being curious and compassionate with yourself, then be daring with yourself to change and start evaluating what’s going on, to figure out things so that you can have more fun in your life. I want you to check out my lifetime membership where we transform lifelong rebels into women who love and accept themselves how they are and create whatever body they think is most fun.

So thank you so much for joining me, I do want to let you know if you are listening to this just as it comes out that from June 13^th – 17^th 2022, I’m offering a master course on how to break up with food so you can create your own joy. I will give you practical doable steps to break free from your dependency on food being one of your main sources of joy, which by the way as you know is a false pleasure. I’m so happy to help you stop the vicious cycle of food addiction and learn how to create your own joy independently. Alright, take care everyone, bye bye.

Thanks for listening to Weight Loss for Quilters. If you want more info, please visit daratomasson.com. See you next week.