#93: Weight Loss and Doing Hard Things

Doing Hard things

Do you feel like losing weight has to be hard? Like if you’re not grinding it out then it’s not going to work because it felt too easy? In today’s episode I am teaching you all about the “easy button” when it comes to weight loss and how to start changing your mindset around doing hard things.

Today we talk all about how you can shift your mindset from thinking that life is just hard, to doing these hard things will help us grow and learn. So why don’t you start giving yourself the opportunity to do hard things? Pushing ourselves is loving ourselves. Let’s go!

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

  • Shifting your mindset on doing hard things

  • If you don’t even try, you are failing ahead of time

  • We learn most from our failures

Listen to the Full Episode:

Featured on the Show:

  • If you are ready to lose weight and change the way you think, sign up for the lifetime access membership for Love Yourself Thin! Doors are open and you can find all the information by clicking here.
  • Leave me a review in Apple

Full Episode Transcript:

Dara Tomasson Podcast

93. Weight Loss and Doing Hard Things

Do you think that weight loss has to be hard and if it’s not hard, if you’re not grinding it out, then it’s not gonna work cause that’s too easy? Well, today I’m gonna teach you about the easy button when it comes to weight loss. Are you ready? I’m Dara Tomasson and this is episode 93 weight Loss and Hard Things.

Hello. Do you remember those commercials with the easy button with Staples? It was quite the joke. And there’s a lot of white elephant gifts that were given of the easy button, and I think that there is such an interesting cultural shift that happens with thinking about doing hard things and having things having to be hard and if it’s worthwhile and if it wasn’t a struggle or a strain then you didn’t do it right. And so today I’m gonna talk about the, like a historical perspective on why diets and weight loss has been such a struggle for so many of us. I’m going to debunk some myths about actually, how do you lose weight and keep it off. And I’m going to share some personal stories of mine and from my clients and friends to help illustrate what I am saying here. I’m also gonna talk about how do you bridge the gap from feeling like everything you do has to be hard and you have to grind it out, and you have to sacrifice and suffer to getting to a place where you just love yourself and you’ll have so much success. So I love outlining what to expect in the podcast. And also I wanna remind you that we have handouts for each one of them. And so if that helps you to break things down and understand the concepts even more, please go and get that printed off and you can learn so much.

All right, so doing hard things. Now, before I start, I’m just gonna share a quick win, and this one is a really fun one. My client has gone, she’s been in the membership for over a year, and she’s gone to a few retreats in that time and always struggled and fell back a little bit. And this time she met with all of her retreat buddies and they made a plan on what they’re going to eat, and they did it. So they didn’t gain weight, they didn’t overeat, they had more energy to do the retreat and to get projects done. So really excited for her, and it was really fun to celebrate that.

All right. So when you believe it is hard, how are you going to prepare yourself? So if you were told that tax season is terrible and being an adult and having to get your taxes in it’s hard and difficult and takes a lot of work and effort, is that what you were told? Because if you were, what is your attitude going to be about taxes and how much are you going to stress out about it? How much are you gonna complain about it? How much are you gonna walk around the house thinking that everything is so terrible and you make it really hard and takes a lot of time and stress?

So if you were told that being pregnant was awful and you’re gonna feel sick all the time and you’re gonna be bloated, how is that gonna be for you? If you were told that toddlers, ugh, they’re the worst. Terrible twos, good luck, hope you survive. So how are you gonna prepare for that experience? What are the thoughts that you’re going to allow and what thoughts aren’t you going to allow? Would you ever even allow yourself to believe that toddlers could be amazing and so much fun and like a real blast?

What about marriages? What were the stories that you heard about marriages were you told it was hard? That they don’t listen. You have to do everything yourself. It’s so stressful. Or were you told it was wonderful and full of adventure and all the things. So when you expect that something’s going to be hard and difficult and awful, what do you bring with you to defend yourself or to protect yourself or to buoy yourself up? So a lot of people think that chocolate bars, chips, pop, cake, patisserie, all of those things, they’re the consolation prizes for the hard things. Now the problem with the consolation prize, and in fact, I still have struggles sometimes, especially, I’ll give you a little example this morning. So it’s my son’s birthday and my husband booked orthodontist appointments for them at eight o’clock in the morning and he wasn’t able to take them. So I am now wanting to make a special breakfast for my son for his birthday, but now we’re rushing off to this orthodontist appointment and then turns out that they had a cancellation. So my one son was able to get braces right then and there and he wasn’t gonna be there for like two hours. And I had today’s podcast day, so there was this, this inner dilemma inside where I’m a little bit ticked off because I’m now having to do all of this and then I’m paying all this money for these braces and there’s a dollar ramma right beside the orthodontist place and I thought, you know, this might be a good time for some licorice all sorts. This might just take off the edge, and it’s so interesting how ingrained this consolation prize idea is because I’m thinking in my head, okay, I have so many things to do today. I’ve got a birthday cake, I’ve got podcasts, I’ve got coaching calls, I’ve got all these things. I have driving today, I have one son has a tryout, one son has a practice, and then two sons have a dance that they’re going to, and then we’re having like nine kids sleep over here tonight. We have kids staying where my mom lives, and I have all the painting stuff there. So my brain just starts focusing on all the hard things that need to happen today. I thought, oh yeah, maybe some licorice all sorts, this might qualify. And I just started to laugh to myself and I thought, oh, that’s so interesting. Just some old habits. What would licorice all sorts do? They would just make me feel bloated. They would give me a headache. That’s not a consolation prize.

Okay. So, but what needs to happen is we can’t go from everything is wonderful and great to this attitude about doing hard things. So I have this tool and it’s this process of bridging the gap. So it’s taking you from where you’re at and it’s helping you build that muscle. When I was in university, I had a professor, she spoke about this gentleman, his name is Nom Chomsky. And Nom Chomsky talks about I plus one. I went to university to become a school teacher. So this was this concept that we needed to really embrace of the process of learning is you can’t just all of a sudden go in and say, okay, we’re gonna do. we’ve gone from adding to long division. They’re step by step by step, but the trick is to meet people from where they’re at and then push them just a little bit to help them to grow. And one of the problems that I see in a lot of my clients is that they do not have realistic expectations for themselves. They’re shoulding on theirselves a lot should ing like S H O U L D I N G on themselves. So there’s this perfectionist flavor that’s coming and people pleasing all over the place. So they’re not prioritizing themselves. They don’t really have a great relationship with themselves, but they have all these unrealistic expectations of what they should be able to do in a day and what their body should look like. And there’s no acceptance of reality. There’s no acceptance of like who they really are. And so they’re just in this constant battle.

So I have a client that I was just coaching last week and she talked about doing her taxes and she needed to do her taxes and she had everything there on the table, but they’re waiting for one more piece of paper in order for her to complete them. But the interesting thing was, instead of her saying, oh, I’m so organized, I have everything I need, I’m so good at filing everything and I know how to do taxes really well. And so whenever I get that form, I’ll just be able to do it and I’ll be able to do it for my mom too, and I’ll be able to do it for this person. And it, I’m just so good at doing that, and it’s just come easy for me now that I’ve done it for so many years. She actually, every time she walks past her dining room table, she’s super negative. Like, don’t forget, you gotta do your taxes. Taxes are coming. You don’t wanna miss the deadline. You better not forget that those taxes need to be done. And so every time she walks past her dining room table, she has this negative finger wagging like, you better get that done. This is ridiculous. You better not miss your date, kind of attitude because she feels like it has to be this negative, horrible thing. She has to be unkind to herself so that she will finish it on time.

Interesting. That’s actually optional. So she could decide, Hey, look at me. I have everything organized. I have everything to go, and as soon as I get that paper, I can just do the taxes. No big deal. Because I always get them done. They always get done. Sometimes maybe I mail them at the very last minute, but they always get done and I know what to do. So she’s just keeping some old patterns, behavior patterns of thinking that she has to be mean to herself to get something done. I was talking to a friend yesterday. She’s a fellow coach and she homeschools her kids and her grandkids, and she is a personal trainer and she does all sorts of things and she’s constantly just going from one thing to the next to the next. And yesterday she realized that she’s actually addicted to that busyness. She’s addicted to that adrenaline of like, I gotta get this done, I gotta get this done, I gotta get this done. It’s like this constant like voice in her head of saying, did you get this done? Did you get that? What about this? What about that? How are you gonna get this? And it’s like she’s addicted to that adrenaline of being busy and having so many things to do. Just like this client of mine who has the same issue.

Now I’m going to share a story. This is just a current story that happened for me, and it’s been really interesting because I’ve been able to look at the bridging of my brain on how to take something that’s really hard. So imagine there’s a cliff, you’re on a cliff on one side, and it’s you’re the person that is addicted to busyness or addicted to like conflict and needing lots of conflict in your life. And you kind of go from one crisis to another, or one busyness thing to another, and you just are always in your head, you don’t sleep very well. You’ve got this reminder in your head too of saying like, you better not slack around because you might forget something and you’re just constantly on that. And this also might look like, what’s wrong with you? Why haven’t you lost that weight yet? Why are you such a failure? Why can’t you just stick to keto? Or why can’t you just do the points, you know, suffer through it? And so you have this really negative talk and you’re never, you’re actually not used to thinking about your body in a good way. You’re not used to thinking about yourself as successful because you are looking at everything that you do through the lens of not good enough because you keep gaining the weight back.

So I had this situation, I bought a house for my mom to live in, and in order to help with the mortgage on my side, I have a rental property. So there’s a suite, and then there’s the main house and so I was renting out the main, house, and my mom was living in the suite and so that was for about six or seven months. And then the main house people gave their months notice, and my mom had the opportunity to move upstairs. Now, during that month where they gave their notice they broke up, the couple broke up and the guy took off. And so I was concerned for the mom of the kids. And I knew she was really going through a really hard time. So I would offer, Hey, what can I do? How can I help you? How can I, you know, do you need help with getting the moving truck and need help finding a new place? And so it turns out, she did need help with the moving truck and she did need help with the storage unit. She didn’t have a place to move into. And so on the Thursday night before she needed to be out by one o’clock on the Friday I called at five o’clock. I said, Hey, where’s the truck? Do what you need me to come go get it? You know, we’re happy to help you. She had no moving trucks. She had no storage units, nothing, nothing had been organized. So I was able to, quickly go and they had one van left. They didn’t have a moving track, but they had a van. So, and it wasn’t where I found the storage units. It wasn’t far from the house.

So luckily I have three young men, three young sons who are strong and willing and so we just started loading up. We took several loads to the storage units and then the Friday morning we did the same thing. In fact, while the boys went to school and my husband and I worked, got some friends to help take out there was about four loads of garbage to take to the dump. And it was a really stressful time. It was really difficult and she hadn’t packed anything. And then she was going through what we packed because she was taking out things that were special to her. It was a really challenging experience because I felt like I had done everything that I needed to do to be preventative of being able to help her. But everyone is different.

And so the reason I’m telling this story is that in the past, I would’ve had the attitude of, this is really hard, this is really dumb. This is so like, how did I get myself into this and blame myself and be really hard on myself and not so respectful to the other people around. I would’ve played the martyr role. I would have lost my patience more. And it was really interesting as I was watching myself, I kept saying to myself, this doesn’t have to be hard. This is a difficult situation, but I don’t have to fall into those old traps. And I kept thinking of the tool that I teach in my program of the only person you can control is yourself. And you get to ask yourself, what kind of mom do I wanna be? What kind of wife do I wanna be? What kind of landlady do I wanna be? And for the most part, I did pretty good. There were a few moments where I thought, oh, okay, I might have… but it was very interesting to be able to watch myself go through a challenging experience like this and it didn’t have to be hard. Yeah, I didn’t get to bed till 10 o’clock on the Thursday night. I worked from eight in the morning till actually eight o’clock and then I had to go and get some more supplies because there was other people moving in the following day. And then Saturday was really busy cleaning and all the things. And it wasn’t the relaxing Saturday that I was hoping for, but the whole time I was able to use the tool of what kind of person do I wanna be in this situation? And it doesn’t have to be, I don’t have to grind it out. I don’t have to suffer, I don’t have to feel deprived or I don’t have to feel like I’m a victim. And it was such a huge shift for me.

If you are in the thinking of life is hard, you have to grind it out, it’s really difficult. I want you to think that you could shift that to doing hard things helps me grow, or I’m really good at doing hard things. And then you could go to, does it actually have to be hard? Or do I want to think of it as it’s an opportunity for growth and then you can go to, growth is amazing, and then you can go to, you’re actually stronger than you think. You can handle a lot of stress. It’s really awesome to see you changing and evolving and growing, and then it can go to evolution is awesome. I love becoming this more authentic me. I love being more honest with myself. I love watching myself not be a victim anymore. I love watching myself progressing. This is pretty awesome. Pushing myself, is loving myself. When I give myself opportunities for growth, I’m allowing myself to grow in a way that’s really exciting.

So right now I’m in the phase of my life where we have a lot of basketball and I have three sons that live at home still. And they’ve been trying out for the club team, the travel team. So it’s a big deal. We talk a lot about progression and my sons spent a lot of time at basketball practice and then they spend a lot of time in our garage dribbling, they spend a lot of time doing pushups and they spend a lot of time at, we have access to our church gym practicing. Now can you imagine if I said to them, oh, you don’t have to push yourself. No, you’re fine. You’re fine just how you are. No, it is exciting to watch them progress. It’s exciting for me to watch them grow. It just like when I took piano lessons, I’m so glad my mom didn’t say, oh, Dara, how many times are you gonna fail on that song? Just quit while you’re ahead. No, no. My mom would never say that. She was excited. She was thrilled that I just kept at it. Like, keep going, Dara, keep practicing. You’re going to get it. The more that you figure this out, the more beautiful that song is gonna be.

So my question for you is why not give yourself opportunities to do hard things? Why not encourage yourself to work through challenges and wherever I do research on, you know, weight loss strategies, one of them is to be in a community, a supportive community that helps you to progress and grow. And I do feel very grateful and honored to have built the kind of community that we have in Love Yourself Thin. And if you are feeling this pull to practice the piano per se, or allow yourself to do hard things, then I invite you to join us and to give yourself that challenge. There are far too many women that fail ahead of time. That means that they don’t even try.

I gave this example, I don’t know if I gave it in the podcast or not, but there was a, I was listening to a talk from someone in my church and he gave this example of a farmer who was sitting on a stoop and someone said, oh, look at the, your fields. You have so many beautiful fields. And the farmer said, yeah, yeah. And they said, well, what’s in that field? And the farmer said, oh, I didn’t plant the seeds because I was worried about this one disease that’s coming around. Oh, so now nothing’s growing in it. And then he did the same thing for this other field. What’s gonna grow there? He said, oh, I didn’t bother planting those seeds because I was worried about these birds that come around every year. And then the third field and the farmer again, oh, I didn’t plant anything. I was worried that there could be this problem. I don’t wanna live that life. I don’t wanna fail ahead of time. So now the farmer has a hundred percent guaranteed that he’s not going to have any crops. He’s not going to have any increase. And if you are sitting, watching TV and scrolling and snacking, you’re never going to have the opportunity for true growth and development. Because failing, we learn from our failures.

All right. I love sharing this podcast with you, and I encourage you to share with me what are some of those obstacles that you are really struggling with, and what would it mean in your life if you could overcome them. I wanna hear all of these things. I love helping you all. I do have some spots on my calendar that I can help coach you for free. I can give you some free advice and then we can have a conversation if Love Yourself Thin is the right fit. And I know that you might be thinking, this sounds really scary to meet with Dara but I have been told by many women in my program that they actually really have enjoyed these conversations and they’ve really helped them.

And in fact, I’ll just share, so this tenant of mine, despite all of the challenges and difficulties at the end on Sunday when I delivered the final, I filled up my van with the rest of the stuff and she said to me, you know, Dara, you were very respectful and you told me the truth. You took the time to tell me the truth, but you didn’t say it with malice. You didn’t say it with anger. You said it because you were concerned and you spent that time to do that. To spend that time with me. You respected me enough and so I want to encourage you to respect yourself and to give yourself the opportunity for growth and to allow yourself to have some discomfort and to do those hard things. All right, you have an amazing week. Bye-bye.

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