Ep #50: Why Exercise Isn’t Necessary for Weight Loss

Are you convinced weight loss is far too complicated that you will never have success, you have tried so many different approaches, but you still gain the weight back, weight loss feels like a constant battle that even when you have quit trying to be successful you still feel down and out, have a physical problem that deters you from doing any exercise? Well, this episode is for you as I’m showing you the essential, necessary, and nice to-do’s of permanent weight loss.

I am Dara Tomasson, and this is Weight Loss for Quilters, episode 50, Why Exercise Isn’t Necessary for Weight Loss.

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.

Yes, it’s true, you do not need to have physical exercise to lose weight. This is very controversial but I’m telling you something that is so life changing for you because it was for me. I wanted to create a weight loss protocol that did not depend on physical exercise because I knew I couldn’t do it all the time. I knew I couldn’t rely on me showing up to do cardio or any of that. I just knew I couldn’t do it and I knew I didn’t want to. And I didn’t want to put myself in that position. So, if any of you are feeling the same way this episode is so for you.

And as I’ve been thinking about this episode and planning it for you for months, I keep going back to this talk that I heard back in April of 2020, it was a women’s conference. It has a religious slant on it but the concept, I actually wrote this out on a piece of cardstock and have taped it on every wall that we’ve lived in since 2020. And this concept is so powerful, and I want to share it with weight loss in mind and how I have been able to create this weight loss for myself and kept this weight off for years. But have implemented it in my Love Yourself Thin lifetime membership.

So back in 2020 I heard a talk on prioritizing yourself and life goals at a women’s conference. And I see women in my program struggle with learning to prioritize themselves as one of the greatest obstacles of losing weight and keeping it off. We are constantly being bombarded with so many different expectations of what a happy, healthy life should look like. We are living in a Pinterest, Instagram world and it’s really easy to get overwhelmed.

This podcast episode will walk you through the essentials, the necessary and the nice to-do’s for permanent weight loss. Now, don’t forget that I have a super handy guide attached that you can download for free that will help you learn these concepts. But before I want to get started I just wanted to share this testimonial and the link is there in the podcast and it’s about Claudia and how you’re never too old to change.

And one of the things that I love about Claudia is back in December of 2020 she and I had a conversation about working together. And it kind of freaked her out about spending money on herself. And I know a lot of you are in the same boat. And she went to all of my popup groups or master courses that I taught in 2021 and she just loved them. And then when I offered my lifetime membership it did take her a little bit of time, she said took her three weeks to decide. And she says in her testimonial it is the best $2,000 she’s ever spent.

The reason I’m bringing this up, I mean go and watch the testimonial, it is so wonderful to hear all the wonderful things that she said. But what’s so relevant to this podcast is that you’re never too old to change. And she’s 70 years old and she said before meeting me and before learning about this idea of thinking about your thinking, and creating your own results, she just thought her life was going to be what it is. It is what it is, I can’t change it, I’ve already gone this far and she’s making goals again.

She has all sorts of dreams, and she is making them happen. She actually just shared on today’s call that she went to her high school reunion, and she had so much fun because she wasn’t stressing out about what other people think of her, and other people’s judgments of her because she’s not judging herself, so she doesn’t allow potential of other people judging her. And she just has so much freedom.

Now, prioritizing yourself is hard because there are so many expectations on you. And we can go into where did these expectations come from? What are the stories in your head? And what’s really keeping you from living the life that you want to live? And one of the examples and I loved this when I heard it back in 2020, those of you are just getting to know me, I have five children. My husband worked a lot, he was gone a lot and so pretty much running the household was a full-time job. And of course, having five kids I had some in school, some not.

And she gave this example of her father-in-law, he worked shift work, he worked in a mine. And so, he could either workdays, afternoons, or evenings. And one of the problems that a lot of women have in general is that we expect ourselves to be on all the time, that we should be 100% doing everything day, afternoon, evenings. And one of the problems with that is that we can only do what we can do, we’re human.

And in previous episodes you hear me talk about our battery being like our battery on our phones. We can only have one charge per day, that’s it. We do have a limited amount of time, there’s 24 hours in a day. And so, if you are trying to run faster than you have strength and you’re trying to do too many things, you wear yourself out and you fall into overwhelm and overwhelm just leads to inaction. And so, she talked about the swing shift. And when everyone comes home, they’re hungry, they’re tired, they’re needy and they’re less lovable.

But this is the time when you are the most teachable and grateful. So, I just want you to take a minute and ask yourself when are you the most hungry, the most tired, the most needy, the less lovable? Is it at the end of the day when you didn’t get as many things done on your checklist as you wanted and so you’re feeling really frustrated with yourself? So, is that when you turn to the nuts, or the popcorn, or maybe the ice-cream?

Or is it the midafternoon when you had all sorts of expectations in the morning to get all these things done and then all of a sudden you realize you’ve been on your phone, you’ve been scrolling FaceTime and now you’re not going to get that time back? And so, you’re so frustrated with yourself that you think, you know what? Today’s a write-off, I’m just going to go in the car. I’m just going to do something I want to do, and you go to Wendy’s and get a frosty, you might go to the quilt shop and spend some more time and money.

Whatever that is, what is your time when you need the most? And so why is this happening for you? Where do you need to start prioritizing your time and your energy? And probably the best indicator is to look at what are your biggest pitfalls for weight loss? It’s such a good question. And I definitely find that when I ask my clients and myself, where do I fall short? It’s just so much more helpful for me to start planning.

And so even as a mom when I was on all the time it felt, I knew that Sunday mornings were really tricky for me because at one point it was a good 45 minute to an hour drive to go to church one way. And my kids were really little then and my husband, he was only able to come to church half the time with us. So, what I would do is I would, on Saturdays I would lay out the kids clothes. I would pack a church bag of different activities and I’d change it up, even put out cereal bowls and the cereal ahead of time and have it all ready.

I would even have the church bags in the car, everything I needed would be packed because I knew that my focus on Sunday morning was just to get the kids in the car. And I did always like to put some make-up on and look really nice for church. And so, I was proactive in that way. So, I gave you that example just to kind of illustrate that because I know that when you listen to this podcast I’m introducing concepts or ideas of doing things in a different way that when I say them it makes sense. You’re like, “That makes so much sense, that seems so practical.”

But because we’ve been hiding so long from using food to hide, I like to use examples so that you can recognize, yeah, that’s what she’s talking about. Yeah, I know that because a lot of what we’re doing is really subconscious, and unintentional, and so I’m always trying to bring that back for you, that intention.

And one of the examples she gave in this talk was about a 90 year old lady. And she was her friend’s mother, and she was so frustrated because she couldn’t make the afghans like she used to do, and she loved making them. She loved giving them. She loved knowing that even though she couldn’t do everything that she used to be able to do, she could still provide warmth and love to people with these afghans And so, one day she just said, “I’m just so frustrated that I can’t do that.”

And her daughter said, “You know what, mom? You can’t make the entire Afghan, but you can still crochet a square.” And she said, “You just crochet the squares, and I will stitch them together.” So, I want to teach you how to become self-reliant. And the story about the blanket, it’s like right now you don’t feel very comfortable with weight loss. You feel very trapped.

And when you think about it, as you delay figuring out about weight loss, as you delay really finding a sustainable, lovable, achievable, obtainable way of losing weight, what you’re actually doing is you’re not able to walk with that new grandbaby. You’re not able to do the evening shifts. You’re not able to take the grandkids, or your kids, or the neighbor kids, or you’re not able to go and do the things you want to do. You’re not able to go on the kinds of vacations that you want to go on.

You are limiting your physical self which of course has emotional repercussions. So, because when you are limited physically you increase your feelings of hopelessness, and your mental strength. So, your mental trust is diminished. And then the more that that happens the more you become a burden on others.

So, this podcast, I’m going to walk through the essentials, the necessaries, and the nice things to do when it comes to permanent weight loss because when you learn these essentials, necessaries, and nice to-do’s, you’re going to be able to see how the five vital steps go into these categories. And then that’s going to help you prioritize yourself and what you can do.

So essential is the things that must be taken care of to ensure that you use the weight you already have and not add any more weight. Necessary is things you have to do to learn how to become self-reliant with creating a weight loss protocol that feels simple, doable, and sustainable for the rest of your life. And what I’m teaching you now, especially in this podcast is to start really learning what is the most essential. And I’m telling you, you do not have to make a weight loss protocol first.

You have to do the essential first then comes the necessary, then, and I want to emphasize this, you can do the nice to-do’s, they are not a prerequisite, they do not have to happen. You do not have to exercise to lose weight, I promise. Is it nice to do? Course. But the way that I teach weight loss is telling you, you do not have to count a single calorie. You do not need to track a single step. And this is where the handout comes in really handy. I’ve written it all down for you, so you don’t have to stop, and pause and write it down. It’s all there.

So, knowing your thoughts is the most essential. And so, you need to learn the difference between a thought and a circumstance. That was probably the most important crucial element to me being able to lose the weight when I realized the difference between a thought and a circumstance. The circumstance is the number on the scale. That’s just a fact, you cannot change it. It is the amount of gravity your body has. But you get to choose what you want to think about that which leads me to the next part of when you choose that thought, it’s always a choice.

Thoughts can come and you can just like the speech bubbles on a cartoon, you can decide to keep it or to leave it. But every thought that we have has an emotion attached to it. So, if I said, “I’m going to be late,” my emotion is going to be panic, my heart’s going to beat kind of quickly. I’m going to start sweating a little bit. My eyes actually are going to go wider, that is a physical reaction. So, this is the natural human condition and so now you start to realize why these things are happening. You see how your thoughts create your feelings.

And then the third essential is you articulate the feeling you are having. This is not as easy as it sounds. It is challenging to find the feeling. Am I sad? Am I mad? Am I frustrated? Am I disappointed? Am I annoyed? We really have to work that through. I love the analogy of finding that perfect pair of jeans, sometimes you need to try on eight, 10, 12 jeans before you find the ones that work. And it’s worth it.

So, when I say, articulating the feeling, so I will go into the source, I will look at all the different emotions. I will look in the dictionary. Okay, so does this one articulate how I’m feeling? Okay, let me read the definition. Does that make sense? Okay. So that’s key. And then fourth, observing your actions that are coming from a thought. So, the actions are fueled by your feelings and those feelings came from your thoughts. So, it’s the chain reaction of what’s going on. We need to link what’s happening.

So, you have a circumstance and then we have a thought. So that thought is linked to it. That thought then creates an emotion. So, I use emotion and feelings interchangeably. And whatever that emotion is, that is the fuel that creates your actions. So now you’re observing the actions that are coming from that thought, that of course was fueled by your feelings. And then you’re going to take full responsibility for your results. And then you’re going to see your ability to look at your unintentional and your intentional thoughts.

So just like I was saying, 95% of our thoughts are subconscious, they’re unintentional, they’re just coming. And then we have 5% that are intentional. When you get that essential you will then start to lose weight permanently, I promise you. And you’re like, “Wait a minute, Dara, you haven’t even talked about food. You haven’t talked about anything of that.” I know, because the more that you can do the essentials, that you can just realize, okay, I have a thought, that thought comes from my feelings. My feelings are created by that thought.

And then my actions are all fueled by that feeling. And that’s how I get my results. We get our results from our actions. And then we can take full responsibility for that, that alone will help you lose weight totally. Then we have the necessary. The necessary are things we have to do to learn how to become self-reliant with creating a weight loss protocol that feels simple, doable, and sustainable. This is where the weight loss science is simple comes in. And then we create our food protocol. We troubleshoot that food protocol which comes from the evaluation.

So, the evaluation, it’s very simple, what went well? What didn’t go well? And what will I do different next time? Okay, so when you think of the five vital steps to permanent weight loss, weight loss science is simple, create and troubleshoot your own protocol. Feel all the feelings. Take responsibility for yourself and then your self-confidence will improve. So, do you notice how in the five vital steps, number three, feeling your feelings is right up there in essentials?

And then the next one, number four of taking responsibility, that’s in essentials. And then lastly that’s when you can add exercise. And if you want to be – some people love counting their calories, they think it’s a game. And you can fill your boots on that. I really don’t. Some of my clients love to do this. I myself will never do this. I never want to do it. It doesn’t interest me at all. It doesn’t feel sustainable. But that is something, if you like to do that, it’s nice to do and you can do it.

Lifting weights, and don’t get me wrong, the older we get the more we should lift weights. But we don’t actually have to lift weights. We could even just be when we’re in the kitchen and we’re carrying cans, I do this a lot. I’ll just carry the cans and I’ll do 10 or 12 reps, it sounds so fancy. But I literally just carry them up and down. When I’m bringing the flour or the rice, I’ll lift them up and down. I just put that as part of my everyday living. But those are nice to do, and your body will thank you and it will appreciate it.

I still don’t really know what macros and micros are. But if that’s something that your brain would like to do, then it’s no problem. So, as I’m concluding my podcast episode with you today I want you to ask yourself some questions and I’ll just make some final comments. How is your current weight shaping your current reality? So, if you are limiting yourself by your weight, if your life is being limited your reality is affected by that. So, are you living the life you want to be living? And then so interesting, why?

So, what is your explanation for why you are or are not living the best life? And I want you to know what both are because you always do get your own results. So, if you’re like, “I really love how I’m so close to my kids and my grandkids, and I’m interacting with them.” Okay, so that’s something you love, why? How did you get that? Because it’s not always so clear.

You have done something in the past or you’re continually doing something that’s creating a lot of happiness and joy. You created that with your thoughts. It started with your thoughts. And now on the flipside what are some of the things in your life that you’re not loving? You don’t love the results. Okay, so where does that come from? So, what is the swing shift for you? When are you the most tired? When are you the most vulnerable? And what are you doing to take care of yourself in those moments?

And then I wanted to ask, the other question is, as you’re getting older, are you allowing overwhelm to affect you? What would it be like to just start? And just like the story about the afghan, if you can’t make a whole afghan right now, if you can’t even come to Love Yourself Thin, if you can’t think about paying $2,000 for lifetime membership, what could you do? Could you commit to every podcast that comes out, you print off the sheet, you do the workbook?

What would it be like for you just 10/15 minutes every day to step on the scale, ask yourself what went well, what didn’t go well, what can I do better next time? There is a lot that you can do, just with all of my content on my website, on my master courses that I offer. This podcast is so powerful. What can you do now? Can you just crochet just a small square and then have other people help you? I just love that you’re here. I love that you’re listening to this podcast. I love that you are opening yourself up to the possibility of change, just like Claudia at 70 who is now dreaming again.

And I want you to know that when I share these testimonials one of the things that’s going to happen when you join the program and you see this, these women will have these great successes. They’ll lose 19 pounds and then something really hard happens in their life, and they don’t come to class for three weeks, they don’t come, they don’t show up as often. They get really overwhelmed with their life and they gain seven pounds back, but they know that weight loss is not this dark abyss that they can never come back from. They understand that.

They come back and they say, “You know what? I’m back and I learned so much. And I’m not giving up on myself.” You see that over, and over, and over again in the group. It is so incredible. And I love that you are listening to this podcast because that’s showing me the first step to starting to love and appreciate, and build your own self-confidence because self-confidence is all your thoughts about yourself.

Alright ladies, it has been such a pleasure to spend this time with you, and I love that you are sharing this with your friends, and I ask you to keep doing that. And you are worth it. And by the way, your worth is non-negotiable. It was already set. You can’t make yourself less worthy than you already are. You have an amazing day, and I will see you on the next episode. Bye bye.

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