#74: Weight Loss and Family Harmony and Drama

Dara Tomasson

Do you get worried about gaining weight over the holidays and all of the family drama and difficulty? Do you feel dread going into certain family situations? Do you wish you could find a way to fully enjoy the holidays without issues and drama?

Christmas is right around the corner, and in today’s episode, we’re talking about tools to deal with family drama and create harmony during the holidays. We’ll learn how to separate facts from emotions, how to take responsibility for ourselves (and not for others), and how to give our lives the LYT treatment with tools to think about our thinking.

 

Weight Loss for Quilters | Weight Loss and Self-Sabotage

 

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 only person you can control is yourself

  • Five tools to prevent family drama during the holidays
  • Five tools to prevent family drama during the holidays

  • The Five Pillars of Love Yourself Thin
  • The 90 Day Challenge within Love Yourself Thin

Listen to the Full Episode:

Featured on the Show:

Full Episode Transcript:

Dara Tomasson Podcast

74. Weight Loss and Family Harmony and Drama

Do you get so worried about gaining weight over the holidays and all of the family drama and difficulty? Well, don’t worry. I used to too, and now I don’t because I have these tools, which by the way, I’m gonna share in this podcast episode with you. All right. I’m Dara Tomasson and this is Love Yourself Thin, Weight Loss and Family Harmony and Drama, episode 74.

Okay, so Christmas is just around the corner. How you feeling? Are you ready? Is it so exciting? Are you using some of the tools that you’ve learned already? Because today’s episode, there are gonna be four tools that I’m gonna be talking about for you and so my purpose of the podcast is to teach you tools.

Now in my Love Yourself Thin program, which by the way, you need to join us because we’re starting our 90 day challenge in January coming up. But there’s gonna be lots of Christmas support, lots of family support, lots of help for you. The program helps you apply all these tools. But the podcast I share the tools because I want you to stop being so frustrated. And in fact, when you do apply these tools, you have the successes that I share every episode from ladies in my program. And the reason I do this, of course, is to show you that you don’t have to be a superhero. You don’t have to be a certain way. My clients are all amazing. You’re all amazing for listening to this, but they are just like you. But now they have the tools to help them to change and to no longer be afraid of weight loss.

And so I’m just gonna share a win with one of my clients because she went and visited one of her kids, and he’s a grown adult now, and he’s married and they’re making some life choices that she doesn’t really like. And she was really worried about spending time with them. And she said that she was feeling a lot of dread before she went. And so we did some coaching on it and I gave her some suggestions of tools and she had made a kind of a plan. And so today, the day that I’m recording this of course, I was asking her how that went. And one of the things that she was able to see when she opened up her mind was that they are on a path and that they are making their choices and the best thing that she can do in this time is to be the best version of her. The most loving mom, the most loving mother-in-law, the most loving grandma. And she can take them out for dinner and they can make their choices. And she doesn’t have to feel dread, she doesn’t have to feel despair, she doesn’t have to feel all those feelings. And she has a series of ways of thinking that help her so much. And I’m just so proud of her for making this happen for herself because we all want to feel love, we all want to feel harmony. And that is what this episode is all about.

So just reminder, I create a handout for every podcast I do, because I just love supporting you and helping you. So in this episode, there’s four tools that I want to review with you. So the first one is the math versus drama, and that is the very first podcast, it’s podcast number one. And so math versus drama is when you can take out the facts and then you’re able to see things objectively. So for example, if I took my client’s success I just shared with you.

So the fact is she has a son. The fact is she has a daughter-in-law. The fact is they are doing what they’re doing. Like if they go to church or they don’t go to church, they have tattoos or they don’t have tattoos. They drink alcohol, they don’t drink alcohol, like, whatever those are. I don’t even actually know what the thing is for her son. But when you can just say, this is who they are, this is what they’re doing, then you can just go into the math of it. You can just have the facts and then that gives you enough separation to decide ,what do I want to think of it? So that is the very first tool if we wanna have family harmony and if we don’t wanna have the drama and we just want to be focused on the love and the kind of experience you have.

The next tool is emotional adulthood. And emotional adulthood is you taking full responsibility for yourself. And the other part of that piece of emotional adulthood is that your relationship with people are always your thoughts about that person. So for example, I could say to you, you are my most beautiful podcast listener. And I can say that to you and then you of course have your thoughts about what I say. So even if I’m convinced from the bottom of my heart, I’m like, no, no, really, you truly are my most beautiful podcast listener. If you don’t believe that, it’s not gonna mean anything to you.

So our relationships are always our thoughts about other people. And so even right now you have a relationship with me, right? Every Wednesday you come and you listen, or maybe you just found me and you’ve binge listened, like whatever that is, you have a relationship with me, but I don’t even know you yet. And how is that possible? It’s because that’s how relationships always are. So one of the things that gives so much relief to my clients, like, after their parents have died and they have all these regrets and they feel really bad about it. I say, well, guess what? Your relationship with your parents has always been your thoughts about them. So you still have a relationship with your parents even when they’re passed, even when they’re deceased.

So if you wanna change your relationship with them, perfect, let’s do that. Let’s change that relationship. And it’s easy to do because your relationship is always your thoughts about the things that they did. That’s why we can change our past. because we can change the way we think about things. Okay?

The third tool is I want you to stay in your own lane. So analogy for this is when you’re driving down the highway and there’s like an accident or there’s something, and you start rubber necking, right? You start looking, if you keep driving and you’re looking in in that direction, what happens? Exactly. You start to go wherever you are looking. You will go off the curb, you will have an accident, you’ll run into another car. And so it’s the same thing with if you are trying to control other people. If you are trying to change other people’s opinions, that’s you not staying in your own lane and you are gonna crash and burn. So that is a tool that I would love you to remember when it talks about family harmony, but don’t worry, I’ve got you. I’m gonna help teach you how you can do that better.

And then the fourth tool would be boundaries. So when you have boundaries with people. So for example our yard, we have like one and a half acres or so, and we have pins in our property line. And we have amazing growth of berries and blackberries and they are vicious. So we were getting rid of some of them and I had to go to the neighbors because I wasn’t quite sure of our fence line. And so I was able to talk to the neighbor and he was able to show me where those boundaries are, because we didn’t wanna impede on his yard.

So that’s what a boundary is. It’s like knowing this is where I live, this is my property, this is what I’m in charge of. And so having appropriate boundaries is going to really help. So for example, if you have a family dinner and someone brings cigarettes to your house. And they were gonna light a cigarette, you’d say, actually I don’t want people to smoke in my house, because I don’t like that smell. So that would be a boundary that you would enforce and say, yeah, that’s not gonna happen in my house. So being able to have boundaries and enforcing them, that is gonna help you have family harmony.

And then the fifth tool is having a manual for people. Now we have a manual for ourselves. And when I think about a manual, I think of like my sewing machine, right? And I think of how to turn it on, how to use the different functions. So the manual is the way that I can operate that machine and I can use it in the best way possible. So one of the problems we have with family dynamics and having family harmony versus drama… okay, I’m gonna, this is just a silly example, but if you come to my house, you have to wear clothes, it’s really silly. Like I am not comfortable feeding people if you come to my house naked, like it’s not gonna happen. Right? So that’s like a manual that I have and like that is just a rule, an operating rule for me.

There’s other manuals that we have. For example, like at Christmas some people have manuals of bringing presents. Some people have a manual of, like, when I go to dinner at someone’s house, I just bring food with me. That’s just part of that. Or I help with the dishes. We all have operating manuals and the thing is, we’re all super unique and different and isn’t that a beautiful thing? So everyone is different, but if your manuals clash, like if you expect a certain thing and that person doesn’t do it, let’s give the example of, okay, this is a classic; being on time. So are you all laughing when I’m saying this? Yeah. Right. So some families, they regard punctuality as the pillar of politeness. They see that if you are not on time, that is like a blight that is the worst thing you can do. It is so inappropriate. It’s so rude. It is the biggest insult you can give.

Other families, if you just show up, we don’t care when you come as long as you come. We just love you and accept you, right? So everyone is super different. Every family is different, even within families like a husband and wife, they can have different manuals. So when I share these five tools and I have podcasts on them, I want you to review them in your head. I want you to have this new awareness because when you have this new awareness, guess what’s gonna happen? You’re gonna be more patient, you’re gonna be more loving, you’re gonna be more kind. You’re going to be more appreciative. You’re going to be more generous, right? This is what’s gonna happen.

All right, so when I talk about Love Yourself Thin, and it’s really cute, I had one of my clients the other day, she said, when l LYT-d it, I think actually she said, when I gave it the L Y T treatment. That’s what she said. It was so awesome. I loved it so much. And L Y T of course is love yourself thin. She’s like, when I was able to give it that treatment, I was able to see what was going on.

So the five pillars of love yourself thin one is weight loss science is simple. Two you create your own eating plan and learn to troubleshoot it. Three, you create the brain body connection, which basically is a fancy way of saying you feel your feelings finally. And then number four is to take responsibility for yourself. And then the fifth pillar is self-confidence. So when I shared these five tools of math versus drama, emotional adulthood, staying in your own lane, having boundaries, and being aware of your manual and other people’s manuals and respecting those, that is all part of taking responsibility for yourself. Okay?

All right, so now I’m gonna go to the worksheet for this episode and I want to share with you, I did a master course, it was basically on how do you learn to take control of yourself. And it was based on Melody Beattie’s book on codependency. It was super interesting to create that master course. And my master courses are available to purchase. But they’re all included once you register for Love Yourself Thin. So taking responsibility for yourself is a really challenging thing to do because, we were basically trained to be dependent on other people’s opinions of us, other people telling us if we’re good enough, other people, you know, reinforcing those things.

And so Melody Beattie wrote this book called Codependent No More, and it’s a fascinating read. She herself was an addict and then when she was able to go through AA and work through not becoming an addict anymore, well working through that so that she no longer was controlled by that substance. And then she married an addict. And so she was able to see those behaviors of that, you know, that codependency and codependency is just a way of saying when you depend on other people or like. People are co-dependent on shopping. Like that’s where they got their joy or on food or whatever. It’s like you aren’t able to create your own happiness and your own security, and so you’re always turning to other people. So co-dependency is being addicted to other people, having other people approve you and how dangerous that is.

So, In that master course, and in this podcast, I’m going to share with you that the only person that you can control is yourself. I mean, we have stewardship over children, so if you’re raising children right now, you do have some level of control. If you’re an employee, you do have some level of controlling other people in the fact of, Hey, when you know you do this thing, I’m not gonna pay you. Or if you don’t clean your room, you can’t watch this TV show. Like we can have some influence on that. But as far as like other adults, we can’t change them. We can create boundaries and say, Hey, you know, you just can’t come to my house whenever you want. If you wanna come over, you need to call and let me know. And then I’ll give you the yes or no if you can come over. Like that would be a healthy boundary. And then being willing to honor that boundary.

Okay. So in this exercise I want you to do for yourself to have more harmony and less drama in your Christmas and any family event or even during the day, I want you to answer these questions. What kind of mom do you want to be? So obviously if you’re not a mom, then that one does not apply to you. What kind of wife do you want to be? And if you’re not a wife, that doesn’t apply to you and that’s okay. What kind of daughter do you want to be? What kind of caregiver of your body do you want to be? What kind of hostess do you want to be, and what kind of human do you want to be? So this will be a really helpful exercise as you think about what do you want and what are you willing to do to have it.

But what I’ve found working with my clients is if they don’t even know what they want, then the problem is they don’t have anything to shoot for and then they feel like they’re just running on a treadmill. They never can get what they want because they don’t even know what they want. And so they’re kind of searching, but they don’t really know what they’re looking for, so they don’t really know when they’ve ever arrived. And it just feels like this really scary frightening kind of relationship.

So that is my episode for you today. I encourage you to go back to my previous podcasts about the math versus drama, and then boundaries and the manual. How do you have emotional adulthood? This is the deal. When you get support and help, applying these tools starts to become second nature. My clients just automatically start to do this on their own and they have these really healthy habits that they don’t have to put a lot of effort into. So that is possible for you too, and if you’re listening to this in real time, I wish you all the best at Christmas. I am so happy to have found the tools that I’ve had because my Christmas is so different than it ever has been these last five years or so that I have learned these tools. Yeah, my first Christmas kind of experimenting was 2018 and that was, it was just such a different experience for me.

All right. I always love hearing from you and I do appreciate you sharing my podcast with people around you, and I hope you all have an amazing day. Merry Christmas. Bye-bye.

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