#63: Playing Around With Weight Loss

63. Playing Around With Weight Loss

Do you feel like weight loss seems to be the nemesis in your life and you’ll never truly feel happy because you just can’t figure it out? Well, this episode is for you because I’m gonna show you how the more fun you have with weight loss, the more success you’re gonna have. Are you ready? Let’s go. I’m Dara Tomasson and this is episode 63, playing around with weight loss.

All right. Welcome to today’s podcast. Today we’re going to be talking about the importance of play, and that goes hand in hand with joy and ease. Now these are words that don’t usually come up with talking about weight loss, mostly because weight loss is all about willpower and struggle and difficulty. So this episode you can expect to understand how play is so important in the process of losing weight and I have a really great handout for you that’s going to walk you through and it’s going to relate to the weight loss science of our hormones for balancing them.

But before we get into this podcast, I want to just shout out one of my clients, and one of the things be just because I want to shout out this client because all of you listening right now want to have change in your life. And these women that I’m shouting out, they were just like you before they learned the love yourself thin process. And I’m so happy to be sharing that with you.

So this client she has lost just over 20 pounds and she said in the matter of one day, both her husband and one of her good friends both noticed that she was just happier and she thought it was so interesting that they made this comment. And when I asked her about it, she realized that when she has applied the tool of the 50 50, she just is happier. She doesn’t, she doesn’t get triggered as often and she doesn’t feel so, um, on edge and that has just changed everything. And so I’m just so proud of her and I just know that because she is balancing her hormones with her thoughts, which we are gonna talk about today, she has been able to do that.

All right, So let’s start with this podcast. So for some of you believe in God the don’t, but the Bible has many references telling us to be more like a child. So when I was at the park with my five little kids, people would often stop me and marvel at how fun my life was to be able to play and explore with my kids, and sometimes I had a hard time accepting that because, you know, having five kids and making sure they’re all safe and dressed and having that kind of responsibility, um, it was a responsibility, it was a job, but I was very good at knowing that they would grow up and that they, that I only had this time with them and I am so proud of myself because we did do a lot of plays and we went to the park a lot and I would ride on the swing with them because I knew that the importance of enjoying the moment.

I actually always told my kids the secret to happiness is being happy with what you have when you have it. And so the question I that came to me was, why are we as a, as a society, I mean, going to the grocery store, going anywhere, doing errands, we all just have this, this wonderful feeling for the most part, when we see children, children are so, we’re so attracted to them, they’re so magnetic and they have these lovely smiles and they’re so playful. Like why are we drawn to them? And I want you just to ask yourself that and just, just even just give yourself a minute to think about that.

And so I want to ask you, when did that sense of play leave? Or, or, or are you still having a sense of play? Do you, do you allow yourself time? Even today, I got a, an email from a lady who is in one of my, a master class that I teach, and, um, she said, you know, I realized, that in my job I felt really competent and I felt really, really good. I never really questioned myself, but in quilting she said it’s not been very much fun because all she’s really doing is recreating what other people have done, and she’s not giving herself permission to create her own quilts. She’s not giving herself permission to play with fabric and to make different designs.

She’s mostly just copying and pasting, and even though she does get some pleasure from the process, and she does know that at the end she’s gonna have this end result and she knows exactly what it’s gonna look like, but there’s something missing there. She’s not having that creative experience of playing with fabric and playing with colors and playing with design and shapes and putting different pieces together.

She’s not having that fulfillment because she’s not giving herself that opportunity to play. And so when I ask that question is when did that sense of play leave you? What was actually replaced by play? Was it fear of judgment or potential problems or having to have all problems figured out ahead of time so no room for error?

I have a procrastination class that I, a master class that I teach, and so many of the women say that they know they can’t do it a hundred percent, they’re not gonna do it. And today I shared with them, a story about one of my students when I was a school teacher, and it was during, uh, Thanksgiving and we were preparing for Thanksgiving and we had some raffia and every student got these strands of raffia and they had a list and I called it the Thankful list. And so they needed to write down all the things that they were thankful for. And as, as they were saying, the thing they were thankful for, they were doing a braid. So I taught them how to do a french braid. and the sweet girl, Shelby, she came up to me afterwards and she was, uh, during the activity and she said, You know, Mrs. Tomasson I can’t, I can’t do this activity. I have to leave it here at school. I can’t bring it home. And I said, Well, how come? And she said, Because it’s not gonna be perfect. And if it’s not perfect, my dad will just throw it in the garbage anyway. So I just would rather just either leave it here or not do it.

And I said, Well what would not be perfect about it? She said, Well, it just looks kind of messy and my dad expects things to be perfect, so I just can’t do it. And when I think about my clients, and I think about you listening, we can be 50, 65, 80, but still go back to being 10 and or five or whatever age that was where you had that realization that people can judge you. That if you don’t do it as they want it, then you could be criticized or you could be pointed out, and that’s uncomfortable.

So I want you to give yourself permission to, to kind of go inside and see where that was for you. Because the problem is, when you aren’t playing and when you’re not having that marvel and that joy and that celebration, then what occurs is that you aren’t having that same wonderful, happy life that you want to have. And that really we, we can have, it’s available to us.

And I have this lovely quote by Mary Oliver and she said, “Tell me what is it you plan to do with your one wild, and precious life?” And that is such a beautiful quote. And I, I love thinking about that. In fact, I remember listening to a class with Jodi Moore and she said, How did you grow up? Did you grow up thinking that life was to be endured and you needed to like go through it and you had to just kind of plow your way through? Or were you taught that life was a wonderful adventure and that you get to just be part of the ride and you get to just experience all these things.

And when she said that, it really blew my mind. And I thought of when I used to walk down my driveway. So when we lived in Ottawa, we lived on a farm and we had this amazing long driveway and um but there was sometimes amazing storms and that wind would just be whipping. And my mom couldn’t drive us because she actually drove a school bus at that time. And so it was up to us to get to the bus in time and we had to go and we had to just hunker down. Right? We just had to put on our took and our coats, and our scarves and bundle up, and we just had to put our head down and just walk until we saw the road, basically. And that was hard, but also could be an amazing adventure.

So how are you approaching your life? How are you allowing yourself to enjoy this life? Or are you focusing more on all the things you have to do and the things that are required, and you are looking at those things as a hardship?

So I’m gonna give you a few examples just to kind of illustrate what I’m talking about. So in, so raising five kids, as you can imagine, there’s a lot of laundry, there’s a lot of groceries, there’s a lot of cleaning, there’s a lot of everything. But there’s also a lot of fun and there’s a lot of play and all of that, but regardless, there is a lot of cleaning and there’s a lot of laundry, and there’s a lot of grocery shopping and food making and food cleaning, and so I get to decide what kind of mom do I want to be in those operations?

Do I want to feel resentment and anger and bitterness, or do I want to go through doing laundry saying, Isn’t it amazing that I have five humans that I can clothe and take care of? Isn’t it incredible that I can be with them and to create, to help shape their lives and to be a part of this part of their life? Isn’t that great? That I can put the clothes in the dryer even though they’ve sat there for a while and warm them up for four minutes and then have warm laundry to fold. Isn’t that amazing? I don’t have to like take them off. I don’t have to like hang them up to dry all over the house or clothes line. Nothing wrong with clothes lines, but the convenience of a dryer and I have a dryer that works so well .Isn’t that amazing? Like I can actually be in awe of that.

Same thing with food. One of my favorite memories of Covid was we would do Greek night and we would do Mexican night, and I had all my kids in the kitchen and I’m like, Okay, we’re doing it. You’re learning. We’re having, we’re having cooking class here, and we experimented with the Instapot making yogurt and all these, these experiences. Because either way, the laundry has to get done, the dishes have to be finished, the food needs to be made and bought. And I can decide, one of my favorite things with buying food is guessing how much the bill is gonna be. And sometimes we even ask the people at Costco or wherever we’re shopping and say, How much do you think it’s gonna be? And they love it. They think it’s really fun and it’s a fun game. And so we make it fun and so this is what I’m talking about. The groceries have to be bought, but why not make them fun?

Why not make the process fun? If you want, if that’s what you wanna do. And I say to my kids that I don’t wanna do it. And I said, that’s fine. You don’t have to want to do anything. You get to choose how you want to be around that. Okay. So having said that, I want to go back to the very first principle of love yourself thin.

So the first principle, of love yourself thin, is weight loss science is simple. And so weight loss science boils down to balancing three hormones. But of course, if you go bigger, it does expand to all the hormones in our life, in our bodies. And so when we’re balancing those hormones, then we have this ability to have this permanent weight loss.

Okay, so we’ve got leptin, which tells us when we’re full and we have ghrelin that tells us when we’re hungry and when our hormones are balanced, then they will work properly. And then we have insulin. Now insulin is the fat storage hormone. So it is the main way that our body stores fat. So it converts glucose to fat and transport energy to our body. When we introduce cortisol into the mix, cortisol is the hormone that affects the ability for our body to have balanced leptin, ghrelin and insulin because it’s our stress hormone.

So it’s the hormone that if we are feeling threatened or in danger in any way, it will increase. So if we see some scary guy following us, we have a thought that releases the hormone of cortisol and it will make our heart beat faster. It will make our eyesight better, it will actually help us hear better so that we are really aware of what’s going on. So we’re looking around everywhere and we’re able to be able to move quickly.

So if we are always in a state of higher stress, then we are always having extra, extra cortisol and that creates an imbalance for our leptin, our ghrelin and insulin to work properly. And so now we are gaining weight and we don’t even really realize it. So this can happen with people who are actually very much like me, where I felt like I was eating really well. I felt like I was doing a good job, but I was constantly under stress. Sleep also impacts this. There’s there’s other things. So when that’s happening, we’re not having the same quality of life.

So I have a question for you. What are the stresses that you have in you life? And how are those stresses affecting your quality of life? And what would change in your life if you were able to reduce stress or cut out even that by half?

Okay, so in this episode, I want you to give yourself a date. I want you to take yourself on a date, and I’ve mentioned this in the past and I’ve, I, I truly mean it ,because when you go on a date by yourself, and you give yourself permission to think about these things and to write these things down and to look at these things. What it’s saying is you are worth looking at, you’re worth solving problems for. You are worth it. And the the issue with weight loss. In so many ways is that you’re wanting someone to tell you what to do and when to do it, but when you don’t have trust in yourself, and if you’re not balancing those hormones because you’re not managing your thinking, you’re never gonna get there.

It’s like the proverbial messy house, and if you turn the lights off, you still have to live in your house, but now you’re tripping everywhere. And weight loss brings up a lot of our ugly side that we don’t wanna deal with. Weight loss brings on and in our body the way we, our identity, the way we look at ourselves, that brings on shame, which is another way of looking at shame comes from embarrassment and from judgment and fear of judgment. So if we aren’t able to look at what’s really going on, we are not able to make permanent change.

Another thing that just I realize, and I’m gonna have another future podcast episode on, is about jealousy and indulgent emotions. And jealousy really is a side effect of being sad or being dissatisfied with our life. So there’s so much going on in our brains, and if we keep hiding from it with stress and with not playing and with not creating our own joy, we’re just gonna keep ourselves stuck. And I was thinking about this today when I think about a cork in a bottle. So when they bottle anything in order for the liquid inside the bottle to stay bubbly. It has to steal properly or, So it doesn’t mold, It doesn’t, doesn’t go bad. But the thing is with the cork, is it in order for it to seal properly, it has to have a really tight seal and it has to keep that pressure inside of it. But to get the cork out, you need to use a cork screw and that cork screw, then it penetrates through the cork and it digs deep enough that you can grab that momentum. You can get that strength to pull that, that cork out of the bottle and it releases all the pressure.

And so my invitation to you is to use the tools that I have in this podcast as a cork screw and apply that pressure and, and dig deeper. And when you can do that into your brain, you can have resolution. And as I have invited you in the podcast, I do have four spots available every week to coach people for free to help you reduce that pressure that you have on yourself from all these different subconscious thoughts that you’re not even aware of. And I want you to take advantage of that because when you can, learn to reduce your own pressure, when you can learn to really look at things as they are and see what thoughts are keeping you stuck, you don’t have to be stuck anymore.

So just like I give all these testimonials from my clients, that is a hundred percent possible for you too. I’m the mom of five kids who lost 50 pounds without counting calories or exercising or tracking one step and have kept that weight off for so long with so much ease because I’m always getting to the root of the problem and I’m always investing in myself. And when I invest in myself and I learn to really fine tune my thinking and to take ownership for myself, everyone around me benefits. My husband, benefits my kids benefit, and my like neighbors and and friends, but not only am I doing that for them now, but I’m actually changing generations as I invest and improve myself. It is not selfish of me to do this work. It is one of the most kind and legacy leaving things that I can do for myself, and I want that for you too.

And so I invite you to come on those free coaching calls. I also invite you to invest in yourself and love yourself thin. It is lifetime support, lifetime access and you say well Dara you can only live for so long. I get it. But love yourself thin is going to live way past me. In fact, I just heard a little antidote. So Walt Disney had this vision of Disneyland, and he was so committed to this vision of it that he went to 300 people, 300 investors to get money so he could build this, this vision that he had. And now of course, Disney, it’s huge, it’s bigger than huge. And when women learn to love themselves unconditionally and to accept themselves exactly where they’re at, they are going to change. And so this is much bigger than me and I just feel so honored to be able to have created it and to help women to make these changes.

So I invite you to, to come and join us. It would be so wonderful to have you. We welcome you with open arms. I welcome you with open arms, and I know a hundred percent that you can totally make these changes for yourself. It’s inevitable. These tools will help you. The only thing that won’t make it inevitable is if you don’t even try.

All right. It’s been so fun spending this time with you. Go and play. Go play. Have fun. Be like a child. Be in wonder because remember, your worth is already set. You don’t have to lose weight to be worthy. You don’t have to lose weight to deserve or to earn anything. It’s just a matter of what’s gonna be more fun in life. So just like the quote by Mary Oliver, “What do you plan to do with this one and precious wildlife?” Let’s go. Let’s do it. We got this. All right. Take care. Bye bye.