#71: Weight Loss and Travel

Do you have so many places you wanna travel and do on your bucket list, but feel like you just can’t because your weight is literally weighing you down. Well, this episode is for you. I’m Dara Tomasson and this is Love Yourself Thin, episode 71, Weight Loss and Travel. 

All right, so I have been doing some traveling lately and I have been thinking about airplanes and weight and all the things. And in fact, I just had a client share with me that she was on a plane and she looked across the aisle from where she was and there was a woman there who was quite overweight and very uncomfortable, and my client just shared how after losing 71 pounds, what a difference traveling on airplanes has been for her.

And she just expressed her gratitude for the work that she did. In fact, she was reflecting on two years ago that she hired me and just what a huge life shift everything has been for her because she has learned these tools. And she just talked about how the seatbelt felt so much better, she had so much more space. She wasn’t encumbered by her like spreading out and taking up more space and getting in other people’s way. She was just so much more comfortable being able to go through the aisle, lift her suitcase, all of the things. 

And so I’ve been wanting to do this episode for a while now, and I’ve been thinking a lot about it. So let’s go into this episode. There are some worksheets here for you that I want you to kind of reflect on, how much of your life is being restricted by your weight and with your travel? Like on a scale of 1 to 10, how much freedom do you believe that you have? And so this episode, my purpose is to talk about why you are limiting yourself. Because I’m not just talking about airplane travel, obviously flights is a big thing. Because I had another client that shared with me whenever she would fly, she wouldn’t eat for two days. And she wouldn’t drink for like a day, the day before she flew. And she always had to fly first class because she didn’t fit in the other one. And so it really limited how much she could fly because she couldn’t always afford to fly first class. And it was such an ordeal to not eat for two days and not drink for a day before because she literally couldn’t fit in the washrooms in the airplane and so being in that level of fear was super uncomfortable.

 One of the flights I was on recently, I was sitting beside someone who was quite overweight. In fact, she was so overweight that she came onto my seat and it was really uncomfortable for her. It was obviously not very comfortable for me. I’m six feet tall, so even though I’m not really wide, I do have really long legs and my knees hit the seat in front of me, and so I do take up space and it was really uncomfortable. And so I did have a conversation with the airline about what their policies are about people being overweight. So people who are overweight like the person I was sitting beside who had difficulty with the seatbelt and needed a seatbelt extender, they are able to have two seats. This is through Delta when I spoke to them, but if the plane was full, they would have to wait for a plane that wasn’t full so that they could have the two seats. 

There are a lot of restrictions and even in the bathrooms, even being six feet tall going in a airplane bathroom, some of them I could barely fit. I was hunched over, my knees were basically hitting the door. And it was really uncomfortable.

And of course I’m hyper aware of this because of the work that I do with the clients that I have. And so as I’ve been thinking about travel and this episode is being aired November 30th, and so of course you are wanting to have Christmas travel. Maybe you wanted to do some things for Thanksgiving for all my American client friends out there. And the reality is if you are a certain size, and if you can’t afford to do the first class or if you’re not comfortable with that, then you just aren’t able to do it. It’s just not a part of it. 

Another part of this travel episode that I wanna talk about is, what about the kinds of vacations that you go on? Are you able to do those kind of vacations, are you able to go hiking? Are you able to go on boats if you wanted, if you wanna do canoeing? Are you able to do the kind of shopping or tours that you wanted to go on? I’m doing like quilt festival in Houston. I went to that in November.

Like, are you able to have the stamina, to have the adventures, like to be able to walk to all the different shops and to be able to see all the different vendors at quilt shows, for example? Are you able to go on the buses where they have, would have tours of going to different places? Are you able to go on family vacations and keep up with the grandkids or being able to go on cruise ships and all of those kinds of things. 

So that’s definitely something that I wanted to talk about and the way that I’ve approached it in this podcast is I want you to think about why you are the weight that you are. And when I talk to people who are considering to come to the Love Yourself Thin membership, there’s often a theme of, you know, I know what to do, but I just haven’t been able to do it. And I know I talk about this and I refer to it as, we don’t have a knowledge problem, we have a thinking problem. And the fact is we all know that sugar is bad for us. We all know that flour is bad for us. We all know that overeating is bad for us, but why do we still do it? And so we all know that it’s fun to go on vacations and we all know that it’d be fun to just go on an airplane and we all know that it’s super amazing that there’s this option. We all know these things, but why is it so hard to change?

So I’ve got some questions here and I’ll just read through them because I think it’s really helpful and I do encourage you to go back and print off the worksheet and to go through it. So the question is why are you the weight that you are now? So I have some of the reasons why you weigh what you weigh, potentially and why you haven’t been able to change.

So one is you spin a confusion of why you weigh what you weigh. So many people just stay confused. And confusion is an indulgent emotion. It’s not a true emotion. It doesn’t help you to make the change that you want. So do you just stay confused? So 1 to 10. One being not so much, 10 being, yeah I don’t know why I’m overweight. Like you really, truly believe you don’t have the answer. 

The second one is, do you blame your DNA? Do you sit and say, well, I can’t lose weight because of my mom or my genes? Like, is that you? 

The third one is, do you blame menopause? Do you say, well, I can’t lose weight because menopause. And menopause, you’re outta luck. Do you believe that? 

The fourth one is, do you look to your past to predict your future? Do you say, you know what? I just haven’t been able to keep the weight off. I take it off, but I can’t keep it off. And its just not me and that defines you. Is that you? Would you say 10 to that? 

The next one is you don’t feel smart enough. You’re like well, I guess I’m just not smart enough. And I gotta tell you, I actually was like, well, I guess I’m just not smart enough to figure this out. I guess I just can’t be trusted to know this information. I guess I just am not that person. I guess I just missed that assignment. I was kind of convinced that I just wasn’t smart enough to figure that out. And that’s a lie.

Another question I have is you feel overwhelmed with everything going on. So you just feel like, you know what, there’s just too much going on, like this whole covid thing and retirement, the grandkids like, there’s just too much. I just can’t keep up. Like I just can’t be this person. Do you believe that? 

What about this one? You don’t feel like you’re worth the effort. There’s a lot of women out there that think you know what… I’m a waste of time. Obviously I’m not smart enough. I haven’t figured it out. I’m wasting my resources. I should just use this for what energy I do have, I should do it for other people. Do you believe that’s you? 

And then this one, the last one, do you feel trapped and you don’t know how to get unstuck, so you just stay there? It’s kind of similar to the confusion one. So what I wanna say is when you don’t give yourself an opportunity to grow, you won’t. When you don’t learn new tools and you don’t apply those tools, you’ll stay the same. 

And I wanted to share that one of the tools that I don’t know if you’ve ever even thought about, but it’s this idea of going to your future self. And I have to tell you when I heard my client share that story with me about her going on an airplane and seeing that woman who was clearly overweight and uncomfortable in her body, and when my client shared that she’s so grateful to her past self for investing the money and time and effort into these tools, I thought, I’ve gotta share this on a podcast. I’ve gotta, I’ve gotta share this tool with you all. I mean, that’s why I do this podcast. I make this podcast for you because I see your pain. I see your struggle. I see how much you want so badly to be that person who can go and do whatever, and this is my way of helping you ahead of time.

So this is what I want you to do. I want you to think about us going in a time machine. Okay? Two years from now and I say Hey, we’re gonna have this retreat. It’s gonna be amazing, but you gotta get on an airplane. You gotta come. And so we go in this time machine, it’s two years from now and you’re packing your clothes and you’re finished, your bags are packed. You’re in an airplane and you’re walking down the aisle in the airplane and you have lost 70 pounds. And you look around, you can walk down the aisle in the airplane so easily, and I want you to picture this. This is like real like we went, it was a time machine. You have learned these tools, you’ve been applying these tools, and now you’ve lost 70 pounds. And you’re able to put your suitcase up above and you sit in your seat, no problem, you’re on your 15 b, that was your seat, and you sit down, you click that seatbelt on, and you look around and you think, wow, I did it. I lost 70 pounds. Look how easy that was for me. 

So this is what I want you to do right now. I want you to tell me like we’re having a conversation right now. I’m sitting here obviously recording this podcast, but I think of you like you’re in my head, and I want you to say to your past self, your two years ago self, thank you so much. Thank you for learning these tools. Thank you for getting out of your comfort zone. Thank you for learning these tools and actually putting yourself in the room with other women that have done the same thing. Thank you for printing off these worksheets and doing this work. Thank you for this work. 

Because this is the truth, you can listen to this podcast and you can cobble together some of the tools, I mean, I’m giving you the ingredients. It’s like, imagine me going to the grocery store and saying, okay, I spent this money and time and effort going to the grocery store. And I said, okay, here you go. But you don’t have the recipes. And not only do you have the recipes, but you don’t have the process of what to do now. But I’m like, this is the thing, I’m teaching you these tools on this podcast, and I’m so happy to do it. It’s so much fun for me. So much fun.

And you can totally do it just like that lady I spoke to. She’s like, yeah, I’ve lost this weight listening to your podcast. I’m like, of course you did. Of course that happens. But the problem is she doesn’t have the whole recipe. She doesn’t have all the instructions. She doesn’t have it play by play. And when you get the recipe, that’s when things happen.

So when I share this podcast, I do it because I know how scary it is to invest in yourself and, you know, we grew up not wanting to talk about money. We grew up there’s an elephant in the room, but we didn’t talk about it. But this is where, I’m gonna just tell you something. I’m just gonna shout the elephant, I’m just gonna point it out right then and there. Right here. 

My program is $2,000. It is. And you pay me once and you never have to pay me again. And the reason you do that is so that you can finally value yourself. You can finally value, like I’m worth the effort. And learning how to do anything requires effort. So traveling requires effort. You have to pack your bags, you have to get a passport, you have to get itinerary. You have to pay for the ticket, you have to make the plan once you’re there. That requires effort and what I wanna tell you right now is that learning how to change your relationship with yourself, requires effort.

So learning how to apply those tools, like learning how, you know, you’ve got all the recipes, right? We have all the groceries, but being able to put them in the recipe and using them and changing, that requires skill, that requires effort, that requires assistance. And that is what Love Yourself Thin does. 

I do not want you to limit yourself anymore. So when you don’t apply the knowledge that you have and you don’t know how to apply it, you’ve tried and you’ve failed, it’s because you don’t have tools to manage your brain. When you learn how to manage your brain, when you learn to have tools, when you learn how to do that, you can change. A hundred percent, but it does require you to invest time and effort. And it does require you to be uncomfortable, but just like one of my clients, she loves to say, she’s like, yep, I walk past that bakery and I look at that cupcake and I say, do I want that cupcake or do I wanna feel comfortable in the airplane? Do I want that seat to fit me? That is like her go-to, and that’s what I want for you.

I love you so much, and I’m so glad you’re at this podcast, and I cannot wait to meet you, and I cannot wait to serve you and help you and love on you, and I can’t wait for you to join my membership and to love on these ladies. I’m just calling the elephant in the room here, because my goodness, getting that notice from my client today, I remember how nervous she was. She was 59 years old. She had done all the diets and spent all the money and felt so guilty. 

One more thing, she said to me, I knew there was a piece of the puzzle that was missing. And when I heard you, I knew what it was. It was like she needed to learn how to think about her thinking and when she’s done that, she has done so much and it was so fun. I actually celebrated her birthday with her and went out to dinner with her son and his husband, and they both have lost so much weight because of the influence that she’s had. 

So you can do it too. She is just an example of what’s possible. I’m an example of what’s possible and I just love just telling you how much I believe that you can totally do this. It is so much fun. All right. I can’t wait to hear about your travel plans and everything that you do, and of course, please reach out to me. I’m here to help you. Bye bye.