99. Weight Loss and Happily Ever After

Do you ever believe that you’re going to live happily ever after and have you given up? Well, I’m here to show you how you don’t ever have to give up on the happily ever after. I’m Dara Tomasson, and this is Love Yourself Thin, episode 99, Weight Loss and Happily Ever After. All right, how many of you feel like you’re living in the happily ever after right now? How many of you want to live in the happily ever after? How many of you have given up on the happily ever after? How many of you even know what Happily Ever After would look like? How many of you actually have happily ever after right now and don’t even realize you’re living it? Oh my goodness. So many questions. I have a client recently that said to me, you ask so many questions, and it is true. I do believe the more questions you ask, the more transformation you’re gonna have. Honestly, curiosity, as you know, is one of my most favorite emotions for success for weight loss for anything you wanna do for creating any goal you want. The more you can be curious, the more success you’re gonna have. All right, so today’s episode, I’m gonna talk about how you can create your own happily ever after. I’m gonna go step by step, and by the end you’re going to know what you’re happily ever after is gonna look like and how you can overcome. The pitfalls of what we fall into so that the happily ever after doesn’t happen. All right, but before we do, we’re going to do a little client win cuz I’m all about the wins. Ladies, it’s so important. Now this win is very simple but very profound. And it is one of my clients. She came to me. It’s about a year now that she’s been in the program and she’s really struggled with her job and she just really wasn’t liking her job, and she was feeling like ungrateful because she was glad to have the job, but it just didn’t feel very fulfilling. And she felt like no matter what she did, she wasn’t getting the results that she wanted. And so it felt like she was really, really stuck. And so she’s been working through it and she got the new job and so that’s been a real bonus. And she, you know, she’s losing weight and she’s improving her relationships. But one of the problems is that, there are people in the company that knew her in the previous job and so, but she’s becoming this new version of herself as she stepped up into this new role, and the big win here is that she now is able to have enough perspective to say, oh, I’m just falling into some old habits. I’m falling into looking at myself through their eyes as well. And I’m judging myself like they’re kind of judging me, but that is all optional, and I love that she’s in that space now because now it doesn’t seem scary. It doesn’t feel like she’s bad, that she’s done anything wrong. She just has some thought errors and thought patterns that don’t serve her, and so she can just change. So such a good win. All right, so let’s talk about today’s episode. Now, when you think about Happily Ever After, I want you to now tell me, and you can put this on pause for a minute. Or just pretend we’re having a conversation. You can just tell me cuz I like, I really do wanna know what is your picture perfect life? So if you were to be the movie director of your own happily ever after, what would that look like? And I’m talking details, would you be married? What would your husband be like? Would you have children? What would your children would be like? Where would you live? What’s the location? What kind of house would you live in? What kind of things would you be doing at three o’clock in the afternoon on a Wednesday? What would your Saturday night look like? What would Sunday morning look like? What would your body look like? What would your schedule be? Would you be traveling? How often would you travel? Would you be having dinners with family or friends? Would you be cooking? Would you not be cooking? Would you be on airplanes having different travel experiences? Would you be doing charity work? Like what would that look like? What is your happily ever after? Now I, And imagine that a lot of us don’t even know what that would look like, and I’m not talking about making a vision board. If you want to, great. I’ve actually never made a vision board, but I do spend a lot of time imagining and picturing what my future life looks like. And then, you know what happens? My future life happens. I grow into that life, and then I go to the next one and I figure out my next version of that life. It’s one of my favorite things. And we talk about our brains. If we can think in a new way, we’re gonna create new results. Now let’s go through a little exercise here. So I want you to make a list of all the stories you love to hear and you’ve kept track of. So I have done this a lot. I have thought about the people that I’m really attracted to, like who are you attracted to? Who you like are magnetized to? So I had a friend and her parents were one of those people where people just came in and out all the time. There’s just people in, people out. They would no problem, you know, five more people for dinner, no big deal. Just throw this in. And they would go running together and they did races together. And I just thought, this is an amazing family. And then I realized, what about the family do I like? Oh, and they had a vacation place in a place called Waterton and they had lots of bunk beds and people could just come and go. So it wasn’t necessarily that I had to have their house. It wasn’t necessarily that I had to go on races and run with my family all the time. It was, what was it about them that magnetized me? Was it that they were welcoming? That they were accepting of lots of different people, that they were really hospitable, that they made people feel welcome, like what was it? So I’m gonna give some more examples. So my friend told me about growing up and there was a family at church that they went to, and he had a dentist’s office. And the dentist’s office had a huge basement. And so what happened is all the parents would take all their Christmas presents, So all the shopping that they would do, and they wouldn’t take them to their own house because they were worried the kids would find them. So they would all take them to this basement, and then they would get together and they would wrap presents together. And so they’d have all these different tables and you know, the Smiths would be wrapping over there and the Ellisons would be wrapping over there and the Thompsons and everyone was just wrapping presents and it was like this party, and I loved it. Another story that I loved was when people talk about family texting threads, they’re like, yeah, our family texting thread. My sister said this, and my brother-in-law responded this way. Oh man, there’s something about that I just like, Ooh, that sounds amazing. There’s other families that have annual family reunions and they even have t-shirts and they rent buses and they do that. And I’m like, Ooh, that sounds amazing. Also I have a friend who plays games, board games with her husband, and I’m like, Ugh, that makes me so jealous. That’s so awesome. Right? I want you to think about those stories. I want you to think about the stories that people tell that you think, Ugh, I want that. I, that is, that’s what I want. That would make my life happily ever after. So that’s what I want you to do. I want you to write down what are all those stories, and then what about those stories are so attractive to you. So community when they wrap their presents all together, I love that feeling of community. I love that feeling of tradition. I love that feeling of getting together. Like this, this, to me feels so fun and just unique and interesting and exciting. People reaching out to each other, people loving each other, people connecting with each other. That to me is really exciting. Okay, so then I would look for opportunities of how can I build community? How can I have fun with other people? How can I provide an opportunity for fun traditions that would be supportive and loving and kind so I don’t have to compare myself to them. I can just notice that in my brain what makes me excited, what lights me up is this idea of community, of having fun and getting together. So the family texting threads, oh, I just love that even though we aren’t living in a commune together, and we see each other all the time. I love the idea that we can live wherever we live and we’re still connected. We still feel like we’re a part of each other’s lives. We feel like we are unified, that we have that kind of love and that connection with each other. Annual family reunions. Feeling again, what do I love about it? I love that they have t-shirts. I love that they feel connected. I love that they feel a part of something. I love that there is something they can look forward to, that they have unity, that they are supporting each other, that they love each other no matter what. And then the playing games with the husband. I love that they are just having those connections. Now you can hear a theme from me, community, connection, love, unity, all of those things. That is what’s gonna create my happily ever after. It doesn’t have to be fancy vacations. It doesn’t have to be new cars or fancy houses. That’s not what exactly a happily ever after has to look like for me. My happily ever after is that connection, that love, that commitment, that fun and adventure. That’s what I’m looking for. But if you aren’t able to really look deeper into what makes me happy, what makes me fulfilled, then you’re always gonna be focusing on lack and you’re always gonna be focusing on this external thing needs to happen in order for me to be happy. Now, I’ve shared this before and I will share it again, but I talk about what my dad calls the plateau effect and it’s the, I’ll be happy when… problem. And I remember it was in my first year of university and I was really struggling and my dad was able to come to the university and he had a conversation with one of my professors. And we spent the day together and one of the things he said to me was, we have to be really careful about thinking that once you achieve this one thing, then everything will be happy. And he gave the example of course, of when you, and you learn to drive, you think, then I’ll be happy. But then you, when you’ve driven, you realize, oh, I guess life isn’t all amazing all of a sudden. Yes, you have some perks because you can drive, but doesn’t mean that everything’s amazing. So then you think, okay, when I finish high school, then life will be amazing. But again, you finish high school and yeah, that’s one milestone and that feels great, but that doesn’t mean that everything’s amazing. And then you start tricking yourself to thinking, oh, when I get a university degree or when I get an education, then I’ll be happy. Or then of course when I get a job and I’m making money, then I’ll be happy. And so most of us, a lot of us live our whole lives, and for a lot of you who are listening to this podcast, you’re in that retirement phase where you’re realizing, I have lived my whole life thinking when I get to this stage, then everything will be happy. And the sad part about that is that in order to have a balanced, happy life, we will always have happy and sad. And that means that nothing actually has gone wrong. It’s the example that Brooke Castillo shared recently about problems. We solved the problem of cars. Cars solved a lot of problems. They solved a ton of problems, but then they created a whole bunch of new problems. So even with retirement, you solved one problem. You had more time during the day. You had money in the bank from what you’ve been saving. But then you have new problems of, you have to get new routines and then you have to decide on how you’re gonna spend your time. And then maybe you might start having some health problems and maybe limited with your age because maybe you can’t travel as much because travel insurance is more when you get older. I don’t know. Like, there’s lots of different complexities. So in this episode, I really want to help you to see what does happily ever after, look like for you in your specific life, in your specific experience in this moment. So I want you to do that exercise and then I’m gonna leave you with one more exercise. I want you to now write down everything in your life that is amazing. I want you to write down everything that you are so totally amazed at. And one of the things that I heard Geneen Roth say once that was so good, she was with her brother and they were in their, I don’t know, fifties or sixties, I can’t even remember, but she said they were talking to each other and they said, these are the good old days. We are building the good old days right now because five years from now, two years from now, even six months from now, we’ll say, Hey, remember when we were on that trip? Hey, remember when we were doing that thing? And so that has really stuck with me. And I almost daily will say to myself, I’m doing some pretty awesome stuff right now that I’m gonna think back about this and be like, really happy that I did this. So I’m recording this on Good Friday and I have a son that’s not at home and then a daughter that’s not at home. So there’s the three boys and I wanted to create an wonderful, amazing Easter. Because I want to look back and say, yeah, that was amazing. That was a great Easter. And I ended up being able to cook a Turkey and cook a ham, and I was able to get the boys up early before church, and they all helped me peel potatoes and we made ice cream cake for my son cause it was his birthday and they all helped in the creation of it. My husband had actually done the groceries for all of this, which was amazing. And we were able to have just a variety of different people come and then, part of it was these two little girls, they wanted to go in the hot tub, and this is such a fun memory. They borrowed my daughter’s bathing suits who’s 18 and one girl is three and the other one is seven, almost seven. So how adorable these girls wearing my daughter’s bathing suit, we FaceTime my daughter and she was so excited that they were wearing her bathing suit. And then we hung out in the hot tub for a while, and then the one, the little three year old would leave the hot tub and then she’d got dressed, and then she’d come back and she’d wanna go back in the hot tub. So then she’d get undressed and she’d put her bathing suit on. Then she’d come back in and I tell you, I am making my own happily ever after. And so I just put that in my heart. And are there some parts of that day that are make me sad? Yes. I didn’t have all my kids with me, but with what I had, I love what I did. Now the last thing I’m gonna share is I’m gonna tie this together with weight loss. So one of the biggest lies and the biggest frustrations is that we think in order to have our happily ever after, we have to have lost the weight. We have to wait until we’ve lost weight to be happy. The opposite is true. We need to start living a life that feels awesome. And the more we live a life that feels awesome and the more we are contributing and the more that we can laugh about the bathing suit and the, and then I played hide and seek with a three-year-old. And then we put eggs all over the house, even though everyone knew it, we were pretending we were sneaking around and, it was just such a fun little memory and I was so playful and I had so much fun and I thought, before I was thin, I didn’t let myself have that kind of fun because I thought, well, I’m just frumpy and I’m just such a loser and there’s something wrong with me. And I was so in my own way that I wasn’t able to create the life that I wanted. But this is the thing that once you live a life that feels really fun and playful, then you’re not needing to go to the food. I had planned for the ice cream cake and I had planned for some chocolate treats, and then it was enough. I didn’t eat anymore. I didn’t overeat. I didn’t over-indulge because I’m creating my own happily ever after, and I’m telling you, the more that you do this work, weight loss is a side effect, it will just happen. Thank you so much for joining me. Thank you so much for spending your time with me. It means so much to me as I’m recording these podcasts and I’m thinking about them and planning them and making the worksheets. I think, how can I help women no longer be suffering unnecessary suffering? No. I want you to live happily ever after. I teach you how to be happily ever after. And this podcast was so helpful, please go and do the work. Please go and write the list of all the stories you love to hear, and then ask yourself, why do I love these stories? And then the next step is, how can I create these for me? All right. Thank you so much for joining me. You have an amazing week. Bye-bye.