Ep #55: Accepting What Is

55. Accepting What Is

Are you convinced that if you just accept your current body you will never lose weight and you’ll just keep gaining and gaining? Well, this episode is for you because I am going to share with you how the sooner you can accept exactly how your body is, the more success you’re gonna have at being comfortable and at ease in that body. Are you ready? I’m Dara Tomasson, and this is Weight Loss for Quilters. Episode 55, Accepting What Is.

Did you know you could lose weight and keep it off for good, after 25 years of hiding behind my quilts, I have finally cracked the code for permanent weight loss, and I’ve lost 50 pounds without exercise or counting calories. I’m Dara Tomasson, professional quilter turned weight and life coach, where I help quilters just like you, create a life they love by losing weight and keeping it off for good. Let’s jump into today’s episode.

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Alright, so this episode has beginning of August, we are in the Love Yourself Thin program, we are working on all of the episodes in the same week as of when they come out. So, if you want more help with these episodes, all you need to do is just sign up for Love Yourself Thin, and you will be able to get so much support. And in fact, the more that you can understand how to accept what is, the more weight you are going to lose and just by default. I promise. All right? So in this episode, I’m going to share some stories on how accepting what is, is the way to change, and then I’m going to have some questions for you to do a little bit of diagnosis to see where do you fall on that, and you will see that quiz in the handout that is just available to you in the… If you just click on the link on the podcast, you will be able to get an email with the handout, and so you’ll be able to do that quiz and then I’m gonna share with you… We’re gonna dive a little bit deeper into your body story and get some information, and then I’m gonna share with you how when you accept how you are, that is what’s gonna create change.

Alright, so that is the outline for today’s podcast. It is such a huge shift, it’s exactly opposite of what diets are telling us, and so I’m really interested in hearing your feedback on this podcast afterwards. I always love to hear from my listeners. Alright, so let’s just dive into this topic, but before we do, I have some celebrations, and so this celebration actually comes from one of my clients who joined back in… I believe in April. No, May. March, sorry. She joined in March, and she has always felt like she was overweight, ever since she was little she was the chubby one in the family, and so even when she got married and had her kids, she just always felt like that’s her story. Well, she has lost 22 pounds and then she’s doing really well, she was on momentum, she even did some traveling, had a portable scale and was using all the tools, and then she had a series of… Went on a vacation with one grandchild, went to an anniversary, went to a university graduation, she was doing all these different things and felt really overwhelmed and wasn’t coming to class for about a month, and I… On the group I was asking her, so what’s going on?

And she’s like, “Everything is terrible, I’m off my protocol.” And she’s actually only gained seven pounds back and it was actually more than a month, it was like six weeks. So overall, she had lost 22 pounds and then she just put only seven pounds back on… That is a huge celebration. And one of the biggest celebrations is that she came to class, she did not give up on herself, and I have the hashtag out there “quilters not quitters.” And so when you quit, you actually stop progression, you seal the deal that you can’t be successful, but when you fail, you just keep… The more you fail, the more success you’re gonna have because the more you realize that didn’t work, that didn’t work, this didn’t work. Oh, what can I learn from this one? And that means you’re always progressing because you’re always learning what works and what didn’t work, and you’re able to decide what are you gonna do better next time. So that is such a fun celebration. Alright, so let’s go into the bulk of the podcast now, where I tell you about how accepting ourselves as we are is exactly the way to lose weight and to feel good.

Now, in the handout, I’m just gonna read the questions. So I want you to decide, one is not at all, five is totally you. So when I ask the questions, I want you to rank one being not all, five being, yeah, that is totally me. Dara, you’re speaking to me. So number one, I think of food during the day, outside of meal times. Number two, I find myself in the kitchen during the day, outside of mealtimes. And when I say in the kitchen, you’re like snacking, you’re putting food in your mouth, you’re rummaging through the pantry, you’re opening the fridge, you’re standing in front of the fridge. Number three, I often pick up food when I’m doing errands. So you’re like, I’m just gonna stop at the Starbucks, I just need this little pick me up, or I need a deli bar or whatever it is. Number four, I look forward to parties and events for the food. Number five, I avoid mirrors and looking at myself. Number six, I hate getting dressed in the morning. Number seven, I hate shopping for clothes.

Number eight, I don’t spend a lot of time in the morning getting dressed or done up. Number nine, I will go shopping for nice clothes when I lose weight. And the last question is, I spend time taking care of others more than myself. So if you do the tally, if you scored 30 or higher, you’re not actually accepting yourself as you are, and when this happens, you’re avoiding your reality, which is really disconnecting. You do not have a relationship with yourself, which means that you rely on outside validation for your worth, which is conditional love, alright? Now, just to go with the hand out, I want you to write down your current reality, so your current reality is how much you weigh right now, and then I want you to think about how long have you weighed that amount? And when did you start gaining weight? And why do you think you started to gain that weight, what actually started happening in your life for you to put more food in your mouth than your body required?

So why is your body having to store all this extra food. Now, another question is, what were you told about your body? What’s the role with the [0:07:21.9] ____ J’avo body? What were the messages you got about women and bodies and eating all of that? What were the messages your family and friends had about your bodies? So when did you become aware of your body? When did you start maybe speaking un-kindly about your body or kindly about it? When did you start noticing those things? How were you taught to manage your feelings? What were you told about being sad? What were you told to do when you celebrated? What were you told to do when you were disappointed? And how have these patterns affected you and your weight? Now, Dr. Joe Dispenza, he said that your personal reality is your personality, so if you want to change your life, your personality, you need to change your personal reality, and what that is is what you do every day. So let’s go back to this notion of accepting what is.

So when you eat chocolate, you feel good, that is the way it goes. When you take a Tylenol, it will relieve some of the pain. When you get to a ferry… So I live on Vancouver Island, maybe 40% of the time the ferry is late. That’s just the way it is. Those ferries, they break. They have the mechanical, right? Yes. Your car requires gas and… Or if you have an electric car, but that’s just what it is, it’s like, this is my car. It needs gas and it actually needs oil, and it needs maintenance, and if something breaks if you don’t fix it, it won’t work. That is just how a car works. Another accepting what is. We have our own water, and we have a well, and if we let the water run too long, then the well dries up. That’s just the way it is. And you can’t change it or fix it. I have this funny story about my mother-in-law, so I’ve been married for about 21 years, and every time she calls, she always introduces herself, she always announces who she is, and it used to really bother me.

I used to think, “Oh, doesn’t she realize that I know who she is,” and then I realized, “Oh, that’s just her way of… Her phone etiquette.” It’s just the way she is. So now I accept it. So here’s another story about accepting what is. So I have four sons and one daughter, and I thought that when you told them to clean their room enough times, they would just automatically change their behavior and always have their room clean, but apparently it’s not true. Apparently, you still need to tell them to clean their rooms, and some of my kids, I don’t need to tell them to clean their rooms. So I have my first son and my third child, I hardly have to tell them to clean their rooms, but the other kids I do have to tell them. And so the other thing that really accepting what is, is I think when there’s dirty dishes, you just clean them and then you dry them and then you put them away, clean dry dishes. We say clean dry dishes at our house all the time. So what happens is, that is me accepting what is.

I have children, and sometimes I have to tell them to clean their rooms, and other kids I have to tell them every day and clean dry dishes. And when I accept it, then now I’m actually not wasting any energy in fighting like, “I’m such a bad Mom. What’s wrong with me? I’m not doing this right. If I was a better mom, we would have clean dry dishes put away.” No, it’s just accepting. Okay. I thought it required me to tell them 1272 times to clean their rooms, but apparently I need to tell them more than that. Okay, so now I’m not arguing with reality. I’m just saying, Oh, there we are once again, or the shoes in front of the door. So when I tell these examples, it makes sense, you’re like, “Okay, I can see what’s happening.” And now I wanna focus on accepting your body exactly how it is. So when you look at… And we just started this new thing in Love Yourself Thin, where we have Weigh in Wednesdays. And I’ll be talking more about Weigh in Wednesdays over the podcast. But one of the things that it does is it… And today is actually prompt where our activity today was, what is your current weight?

So then they share it, and then what is your current protocol, because just like what Joe Dispenza said was your personal reality is your personality. So what you do every day creates the results of your day, and so what you’re eating, how much you’re drinking, how much you’re snacking, how much you’re sleeping, all of those things impact the amount of gravity you have on your body. So when you accept, “Oh, this is how much I weigh.” And then you start understanding, “This is why I weigh this amount.” And it was interesting because the activity we did today on our call was I said, “Okay, so what are all the obstacles… ” because I like to use two pounds a week as my healthy meter of weight loss, so if you’re not losing two pounds a week, you need to see what in your protocol is not working, and then we can switch it up. So today, we worked on what are all the obstacles, and one of them was water. Making sure you’re getting enough water, and so we strategized on how we can get more water every day, and it was really wonderful ’cause we had all these ladies.

They’ve all had different experiences and they were sharing how they are able to see what kind of water they’re drinking, and even knowing if you drink too much black tea, it’s not the same as water and that will impact your weight loss, so we got into even some of those nitty-gritty things, okay. So when you learn to not be afraid of accepting yourself as you are, then you can see what your patterns of behavior are. So I think that the fear of accepting yourself as you are will just have you laying on the couch eating chips or ice cream, and eating terribly all day. So what is the problem with that? If you accept yourself exactly as you are, you don’t have to be rebellious anymore, you don’t have to be the good student, you don’t have to be anybody else. You can just be yourself. Do you think that you would just lay on the couch all day eating chips and ice cream, or do you think you would just sit down and realize, “Oh, why do I weigh 229 pounds? Why am I here?”

And then you’re just more open, so this is kind of a charged topic, this next thing I’m gonna bring up, is intuitive eating, and there’s lots of different people. Lots of people have different thoughts and opinions about it, but when you think about when you were a baby or a small kid, before we give kids too much sugar and flour, we created an imbalance with refined flour and sugar, kids actually knew when they were full. Even brand new babies, they just knew, they would just drink and they were like, “Yep.” They turned their head, I’m done, I’m good. And even little kids would know, I really want some steak or I really want some chicken, or I really want some broccoli, I’m really craving some carrots. So when… Before they get all imbalanced with the sugar and flour, they really do get the sense of knowing like my body needs this thing. And so what happens is if we are… So when you have that balance of listening to your body and you’re not all clogged up, you haven’t clogged up the system with flour and sugar, then you can just… You can know, “Oh, I really feel like I want some nuts right now or some protein.”

A really nice green salad would go a long way. So when you are full of the flour and sugar… I think of this as a shaky foundation. It’s really hard to trust your body when you are on this unstable ground, and so one of the things that I recommend to my clients is when they first come to Love Yourself Thin is to have no sugar and flour for six weeks. Not only does that allow our brains to be really clear, “Oh, all I have to do is just eat no flour and sugar.” That’s pretty simple, but it’s also giving our body a break, it’s starting to clean out those clogs, it’s starting to clean out all that flour and sugar residue, it gets you aware of… You turn to chocolate. And so many of us do that subconsciously, and so now when we’re consciously deciding not to eat that chocolate or the ice cream or whatever that is, then we have to stop and pause and say, “Oh, I really wanna eat this thing.” And then we ask the next question, “Why? Why do I wanna eat this thing?” And then it has so much more power over you, okay.

So that’s my podcast for you today, pretty simple. And I really wanna keep this message really clear, and I really want you to spend some time with the worksheet, but I want you just to have this concept in your brain of when you accept yourself exactly as you are, when you completely come to this level of, “This is my body. I created this body.” We didn’t create the height. I am six feet tall, that was out of my control, but what I do have control of is I’m a six-foot woman, I have size 12 feet, I weigh 100 and whatever pounds, I have this color of hair, I have this eye shape of eyes, I have this nose, I have whatever that is. The more you can just accept… I’m not ever going to be able to shop in the Petite section, that’s just my reality. That’s my personality, it’s my personal reality. Right? I’m not gonna have those cute little shoes, so when I accept that when I go to shoe stores, that 95% of shoe stores don’t have size 12 feet. I’m no longer going to be angry, mad, bitter or upset.

I just am allowed to say, “Okay, so I can… I have choices, I can wear men’s shoes, or I can order women shoes, or I could pay a shoe smith to make me shoes.” Like I can then just accept, this is my reality, and that I can be so much more empowered. And that is what I want for you. So if this podcast is resonating with you, if this topic is really speaking to you, by the way, you don’t have to be a quilter to join my program, we have many ladies in my program who are losing lots of weight who are not quilters, and they love the program and they feel so welcome, but the more that you can accept exactly how you are, you’re no longer needing to rebel. You’re no longer needing to worry about being the good student, of following the diet, you just get to accept who you are, how you got there, and now you can start finding your own voice and you can move forward in such a more peaceful and calm way.

And now you’re not needing to turn to the ice cream or to the chocolate or to any of that food for any sort of dopamine hit and false pleasure, because you no longer require that. That is how you lose the weight. Alright, so thank you for joining me for episode 55. And again, if you want to go deeper into this and you wanna take this further, join Love Yourself Thin where you will get the entire road map of how to lose all the weight you want to lose and keep it off with all the support you will ever need, so you never have to worry about putting that weight back on again. Alright, take care everyone. Bye-bye.

Thanks for listening to Weight Loss for Quilters. If you want more info, please visit daratomasson.com. See you next week.

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Thanks for listening to Weight Loss for Quilters. If you want more info, please visit daratomasson.com. See you next week.