Ep #18: 5 Practical Tips for Losing Weight

Are you convinced that you will never lose the weight because you’ve tried every diet out there and none of them have worked therefore you must be broken, and the weight will just inevitably keep coming? Well, I want to invite you to keep listening because I was you. And just three years later I’ve lost three pounds, I’ve lost 50 pounds and kept it off without a lot of pressure, stress or worry. So keep listening, your future you will thank you.

I am Dara Tomasson, and this is Weight Loss for Quilters episode 18. 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.

Okay, so this is episode 18 and I’m not sure if you’ve noticed but I haven’t mentioned any practical how to steps of losing weight yet. Now, there is a very practical reason for that. Now, let’s talk about diets. So diets tell us what to eat but not why to eat. Diets don’t solve the reason we are turning to food for comfort. Diets don’t empower us around foods. Diets have a lot of restraints because they don’t teach us what’s really going on. So when I say that weight loss is never about the food I 100% agree with that.

So the problem is when we have diets telling us what to eat but we don’t even really have a relationship with food or with our body and then we don’t have a relationship with learning how to solve problems, then of course diets don’t work. Because I like to compare it to, we’re trying to solve a problem.

We have a problem of a broken sewing machine but we’re just getting our iron fixed. Or we’re cleaning our house, having a clean house isn’t going to solve the sewing machine that’s broken. Having an iron that works properly isn’t going to solve for the sewing machine that has a problem. And we have been trying to use food to solve problems for us for so long. So that is why we have such a problem with diets and this diet culture. So in this episode I’m going to teach you a tool that I talked about in my last in person event with my group program.

And there is this concept called how greed. It’s like, just tell me what to do, just tell me and I’ll just do it. How many times have you said that? Tell me what to eat and I’ll just do it. Why doesn’t that happen? There are rows, and rows, and rows of books in libraries. There are podcasts. There are YouTube videos. There are programs. There is so much information on dieting. And the reason it doesn’t work, the reason why we can read the book, we can write down the list, we can buy all the containers.

We can even go to the grocery store, prepare all the food, and have everything ready to go. We could have a great system. We can have the apps downloaded. We can do all of that and that still doesn’t stop us from eating that darned ice-cream at 10 o’clock at night or shoving handfuls of chocolate chips in our mouth at 4:30 because we don’t know what we’re going to be making for dinner yet. Or we are making dinner and it’s just not ready yet.

Or it doesn’t stop us from stopping in at Starbucks on the way to an event and grabbing that special drink and then just getting a little treat on the side. So in this podcast I will be answering the question of why we have all the information, but we don’t follow it. And then I’m going to be sharing five very practical doable actions to take to help you take 10 pounds, 20 pounds, even if you were very consistent with this, up to 100 pounds if you do this consistently. So that’s what you can expect with this expect with this episode.

But before we go into it, I wanted to do a little bit of a client shout out. I am so proud of my clients. I am so thrilled with the work that they do. And I just love celebrating and I really love showing you what’s possible because all these clients are just like you, the only difference is they have tools and they use them, the tools that I teach. So let’s just say client A, B and C.

So client A changed her schedule so she could attend class, which involved some prioritizing of herself.

Client B consistently steps on the scale every day and is overcoming her lifelong struggle with that number.

Client C is learning, this one is so much fun, and she even sent me the video. There’s a guy who lives in the Yukon and he is from East India or from India. And he does these really fun joyous dances. And so she even sent me the video of the dance. And she said she wanted to have joy throughout her day. And one of the things that brings her the idea of having a lot of joy is learning these dances that this man does up in the Yukon.

And I love that she’s learning some new dances to do at home to bring her joy throughout the day instead of using her brain juice to plan afterschool treats and snacks. And it’s been 20 years since her boys lived at home, but she says been doing the afterschool snacks even when they left home. So I love that about my clients.

Okay, so are you ready for this episode? It’s going to be so helpful in learning how to get out of the how greed. So the first thing we’re going to do is we’re going to look at what happens when you get into this mindset of saying, “How? How do I do it? How do, just tell me what to do, just tell me what to do and then I’ll do it.” So the issue we have with that is we need to become the who of somebody, of the who of how someone eats before you get to the how.

So the question is why don’t to do lists work? Now, this might sound like a little bit of what is she even saying, who, how, who. Let me give you an example to illustrate before I go into explaining a little bit more. So when I first had a baby, and it was funny when I shared this at the event because there is another lady who also has five children. And she also had a very similar experience.

So I had my first baby, I was so excited. I was heading to a baby shower for me and my baby which was so fun. And I was just so excited about it all and I just felt there’s so many things that I need to do. And I got to the baby shower, and I was so excited to be there, and everyone had put so much work into it. And then I had this horrible thing happen, I forgot the diaper bag, I forgot to bring a diaper bag. And it was just the worst because I thought, oh my goodness, I’m not fit to be a parent. How am I to be trusted with this baby?

And the reason I share this story, and one of the ladies that was in the event with me, she said she did the same thing with her first trip in an airplane with her baby, she did not pack an extra outfit, that’s what it was. And so of course the baby had problems and soiled their clothes. And so she was stuck with this kind of naked baby and so she had to make do with the alternatives.

So the reason I give this example is that before we were moms, we didn’t know how to be a mom. And we could have read all the books which I did, I read lots of the books. But it wasn’t until I was actually in the process of having a baby and going places that I really needed to embrace that now I’m a mom. And now I have these responsibilities. And so when I truly identified as I’m the mom, and this is who I am now, then I understood how to behave, how to act.

So hopefully just that analogy is going to be really helpful to you as I work through how do you get out of how greed, just tell me how, just tell me how, versus I need to become the person who eats food in a way that’s just really loving, and really caretaking, and really meaningful, and really beneficial. So if you are focusing on the how, if you’re just in that mindset of just tell me what to do, what can happen is you slip into what’s called victim mentality. So it’s like I’m not capable enough, I’m not good enough, I’m not smart enough. I need other people to tell me what to do.

So you’re wanting people to tell you what to eat, when do you eat, how often should I eat, tell me how, what do I need to do, tell me what to do. And it’s because you’re putting yourself in a place where you don’t have a lot of power and you don’t believe that you are really powerful in your own way versus the who of you will understand how when you start doing. You will understand who you need to be when you build your own belief. You will start seeing what is needed. You will focus on how you are feeling.

So remember how we said about how diets are such a disadvantage because they’re not really teaching you to listen to your body, and trust your body, and to feel really powerful in that. Now, with the who and how list that I just read you, when we go into that of just tell me how, we have un-useful thoughts such as I don’t know what to eat. I have never done this before. It isn’t working. I don’t understand. And so when we have these thoughts that are just going around and around in our brain, our brain gets clogged up with disbelief.

And then what happens with that is we get overwhelmed in our own thinking. So it’s like that cyclone that just goes around, and around, and around. We don’t get in a really powerful place. So these are some useful thoughts I want to offer to you, useful ways of thinking. I can focus on science. I have guidelines. There’s lots I’ve learned. Growth requires challenging my brain and it also involves failing. I’ve got this. I have my own back. I love myself. I’m starting here and I know I can help myself.

So those are the kinds of thoughts that I want to just really encourage you to go to instead of the first list I read to you. Now, I want you to ask yourself, what’s your identity? So I want you to think about how do you describe yourself and your relationship with yourself? What are the words that you describe? So I am a late bloomer. I don’t always understand things at first. I’m not as clever as other people. Or do you say things like, I always figure things out. I always get what I want no matter what. I just I’m so determined and so committed to myself.

So I really want you to get curious about how do you identify yourself. Now, I want you to always go to take care of you first so that you can help others more powerfully. So in our most recent episode 17, I talked about this concept of selfish versus self-filled or self-created. And that’s a really important concept as we become more empowered in being in charge of our own life and getting our own results. So these are five steps of how to build belief in yourself.

So you get to the who, you really start embracing just like when I became a mom for the first time. So now that I’m a mom I need to make sure I pack these things in a diaper bag and just like my client. And so you embody who that person is. So you get to the who.

So you be the person who is thin. How does a thin person, how does she talk to herself? How does she dress? Does she put on makeup in the morning? Does she wear a bra that fits? Does she wear a bra? Does she wear hoodies and sweatpants? Does she put on a belt? Does she care about what she wears? Are her clothes laundered? What are the ways that she treats herself and thinks about herself?

So the second one to build belief is you answer how from your brain. You ask your brain. Now, we’ve talked about our lower brain and our higher brain. Our higher brain is our CEO, it is the part of the brain that wants the very, very best for you. And so I’ll give you an example.

When you’re in the shower maybe, if you’ve forgotten something and then all of a sudden, you’re like, “Oh, that’s that person’s name, or that’s the way to solve that problem.” Because your brain is now relaxed. Your higher brain is able to focus on solving the problem and then you go on with other things. And then it will come up with solutions for you. So it’s because you’re taking it from that higher place.

Now, so this is the first step of how to build belief is you get to the who, to be the person who is thin. Number two is you answer how from your brain, your higher brain.

Number three is you get to trust your answer. And I’m going to say something that might sound really crazy, but I want to emphasize to you this. We know ourselves the best. And we actually have all of our own answers. And so you might say, “Well, Dara, why would I need to hire a life coach?” Because we have a lot of clutter in our brain, we have a lot of – what is that called? Self-limiting beliefs, we have a lot of just ways that we don’t allow ourselves to grow, and we keep ourselves stuck.

So if we knew that we had all the answers that we’d ever need already in our brain, and we just need to get to work to find it. It’s like I’ve lost something and I’m like, “No, no, no, I know I have it.” Has it ever happened to you in your house where you’re like, “No, I know I have a brand new rotary cutter or I have brand new rotary cutter blades, I know I have them? I remember specifically, I just need to find them, I know they’re here somewhere.” It’s the same thing, ladies.

So then you just get to work on finding it and that’s the same thing with our brain. But if you don’t have the brain tools then you just can’t, you just don’t have the capability of bringing them back in your brain. So number three is to trust your answer.

Number four is to try it out. So try out what you came up with.

And then number five is you learn from taking action. So on my computer I have a bunch of sticky notes, well, they’re actually cue cards taped onto my computer. And one of them says, make decision, implement, evaluate, rinse, and repeat in lieu of research. So it’s the same thing, ladies, we make a decision from the person who we think we could be and then you answer how from your brain, you trust your answer, you try it out and you learn from taking action. And then the more you do this the more you get to clean it up. You get to really start seeing who you are.

So I’m going to give you some examples that you actually are really good at this process. You just might not realize it. So do you want to hear some of my fun examples? The first one is when you were little and you couldn’t walk and your parents, or your caregivers, or they would say, “I don’t know if you’re going to be very good at walking. You haven’t figured it out yet. I don’t know. I don’t know if walking’s for you.”

Or, they said, “You know what? The more you fall the better you’re going to get at walking because your muscles are just getting stronger and stronger, so just keep going,” and they encourage you. Because the alternative of not following this building your belief steps is trusting yourself and then trying to walk. And then you’d learn from taking action. So you learn that if you held onto furniture and you kind of practice with your legs, and you could kind of go up and down holding onto furniture, that built your muscle enough. And then you practice balance that you could actually walk.

So you’ve been doing this since you were little. So let’s give another example when you were little. They said, “Hey, we’ve got these new running shoes for you, and they have these really pretty laces, let’s learn to tie your own laces. Because otherwise I’d have to tie your lace for you all the time and I think you’d rather be able to do it on your own.” And so you got to the who, I’m someone who can tie my shoelaces. You answered how from your brain, I can watch other people, I can take these two strings and I can change them a certain way, and I can twist them around each other.

You can trust your answer, you can try it out, so trying out tying those laces. And then you learn from taking action. You’re like, “I think I missed a step because these aren’t staying together.” So we’ve been building our beliefs since tying shoelaces. So what about this example, because the alternative of not doing that is that you would just be wearing slides, or Velcro, or have someone tie your shoes for you, or boots with zippers, you can do that too.

The next example I thought of was half square triangles. So half square triangles seemed a little bit complicated and difficult. And so in order to make a half square triangle, to get to the who, you just need to be a person who makes half square triangles. And then you answer how from your brain. It’s like, okay, well, I have some tools and I read some instructions and then I work through that. And then you trust your answer, so it’s like, okay, I’m going to trust it.

So now you think okay, well, I know how to do a seam, quadrant seam and I know how to use a rotary cutter, so I just have to use it in a different way. And then you try it out and then you see how it goes and you learn from taking action.

So the last example I thought just because I am a former professional – I still am a professional free motion quilter. I just don’t have people sending me quilts all the time. But you could decide if you wanted to learn free motion quilting, you could decide if you wanted to. And I have that free challenge on my YouTube, Dara Tomasson YouTube channel where I have a 31 day challenge, it will help you build your free motion quilting skills. And so you could decide, get to the who, I am the kind of person that’s going to free motion quilt her own quilt.

And then you answer how from your brain, okay, well, I’ll do Dara’s free challenge, or I have my first book that it’s really awesome, basics, free motion quilting. Am I going to be that kind of person? That’s the answering the how from the brain. And then you trust your answer, it’s like, okay, I think I could do, or even I could just doodle, that’s what my whole challenge is on my YouTube. And then I can try it out and then I can just learn from taking action.

Or the alternative is you just send all of your quilting projects to a longarm quilter, and she will do it for you, or he.

Okay, so just like going back to the example of my at my first baby shower, and I forgot the diaper bag, I hadn’t embraced becoming the who. I hadn’t really identified myself as a mom in that way of having all that responsibility. So when you learn to become the person who eats and who doesn’t turn to food for comfort, or doesn’t turn to food when stressed, who just allows herself to feel or himself to feel negative emotions, then that’s what’s going to help you change.

And now you don’t have to have the how greed of just tell me what to eat, when to eat. So this is the part of the podcast where you get to the how to’s. This is feeding our diet mentality but I’m going to tell you, there’s a big difference between these how to’s and what you’re used to. And so are you ready?

The first thing that you can do that’s going to help you lose weight and keep it off is you need to drink water. So the recommendation is to drink half of your body weight in ounces. So if you weigh 200 pounds you should be drinking 100 ounces of water a day. This makes a huge difference. And so there’s lots of apps out there that help you remember. I definitely have my clients look for create habits that they’re going to do so they can ensure that they’re drinking the water. And so that is number one.

Number two, and from a recovering night owl and when I was a professional quilter for five years, I used to start my quilting day at 9:30, 10:00 at night because I would put the kids to bed. And I would quilt till 1:00, 2:00, sometimes 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning. So when I stopped doing that I actually dropped, I think it was seven pounds in two weeks. It was just such a huge difference. So sleep is important. I can’t emphasize that enough. And I recommend minimum seven hours of sleep.

The next thing is just a little bit of movement. So after you eat, just a little bit of movement like standing and doing the dishes, go walking around your house, maybe even going outside, just allowing your body some movement will make such a difference.

Number four, eat only when you are hungry. So how often do you just look at your watch and say, “It’s 12 o’clock, I guess it’s time to eat?” We’re not doing that anymore. We are going to only eat when we actually feel some hunger, when we say hunger pains, that’s a good thing. That means that your hormones are in check and that you’re operating the way your body is supposed to. So only eat when you actually feel hunger.

And number five goes along with this is stop eating when you feel satisfied. So one of the problems that I see so many people do and I myself was so guilty of this was I would make dinner, sit down and be like, “Okay, we’ve got to go, we’ve got to do this, we’ve got to do that.” And so my brain was never really focused on the dinner I was eating. It was always a step ahead of I’ve got to get this done, I’ve got to get that done. I’ve got to get, in my case I’ve got kids to get off to basketball or to this or that.

And even if you don’t have kids at home, it’s like I need to get this project done. I have this meeting to do. I have the Zoom call I have to hop onto. So the problem when we are not focused, when we’re eating is that our bodies, we can fill our bodies up with more food and then we feel disgusting, we feel really bloated, we feel really full and then we go into shame, all of those shame spirals we call them. So paying attention to your food.

I’ll give you a few more tips with that. So one of the things that I recommend with my clients is to just serve half of what you normally would. So now you are eating but when you finish your plate, you actually have to stop, make a decision to put more food on your plate. And that way you can say, “Okay, body, are you full? Are you satisfied? Have you overeaten?” And then that way they can really dial in and listen to their body. And I give lots of other strategies in my program. So those are just some to get you started. I don’t want to overwhelm you.

So there are some tips and tricks for you to start applying now and see how that goes. So just to summarize, this podcast episode, the tool is truly learning how to become the who so that you know how to eat. You know how to take care of your body. Just like when I became a mom and I went to a baby shower, I left the house, that was not part of my radar was to think I’ve got to pack a diaper bag, I’ve got to do this, I’ve got to do that. Because I hadn’t fully embraced that I’m a mom, it hadn’t, I mean it sunk in because it didn’t sink, sink in, it was not automatic.

It was just like when – if you’ve ever taught someone to drive, when they’re turning, they say, “Okay, I need to put the signal on, I need to slow down, I need to put my foot on the brake.” They have to slow everything down, they have to break down the steps and then when they do that enough times then it becomes automatic. And I want to tell you that the more that you can be thoughtful, I’m not sure if you’ve gone to the Instagram.

In the month of November every day I’m telling you how we lose weight with our mind. Because losing weight has so much to do with the way that we are thinking and paying attention to our thoughts.

So thank you so much for joining me. It’s always so much fun. I always want to hear if you took me on a walk, if you’re doing some chain piecing, if you’re doing some dishes or housecleaning, I always love hearing what you’re doing as you’re listening to me. And I want to hear back from you on different topics and suggestions of weight loss.

I got an email today and a lady fellow Canadian messaged me, and she was telling me how much she appreciates this podcast, and she takes me on her walks every day. And one of her suggestions for an upcoming podcast is being patient during weight loss. And that is an amazing topic. So hold on, I will be preparing a podcast on that. So if you have any suggestions, I would love to hear it.

Alright everyone, thank you for joining me and I can’t wait to keep serving you in this awesome podcast.

Did you know I have a YouTube channel with all sorts of free motion quilting content? If you want to up your free motion quilting game, I have a 31 day doodle challenge there that goes along with my brand new quilting book, Doodle School. Like I always say, make your food boring and your life more exciting.

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