Ep #46: Weight Loss and Creating Your Own Failsafe Eating Plan

Don’t feel like you can be trusted at the grocery store, ordering at restaurants or potlucks? The idea of being responsible for selecting your own food seems ridiculous? Well, I created this episode for you.

I am Dara Tomasson, and this is Weight Loss for Quilters, episode 46, Weight Loss and Creating Your Own Failsafe Eating Plan.

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.

Having experts to tell us what to do is important. I rely on experts to teach me all sorts of concepts but ultimately I need to make what they teach me my own. If this wasn’t the case we would all be walking around as robots. So, for example, there are basic quilting rules such as using a quarter inch foot, pressing, and squaring up. There are colored guidelines when putting fabrics together and ultimately you get to make whatever quilt you want with whatever methods you choose. There is freedom in guidelines.

The same applies with weight loss. In fact, I have the five vital steps to permanent weight loss. And the more you understand these steps and apply them to you and your life, the greater success you will have. Your success will be inevitable as you continue learning, tweaking, and progressing. So, today’s episode I’m going to be sharing with you what an eating protocol is and learning how to gain confidence in producing a powerful protocol that will help you lose all the weight you want to lose and maintain that weight loss with ease.

So, there is a handout that will help you feel more confident moving forward and I invite you to print it off and use it. The more you invest in your brain the more success you’re going to have since your brain always has the final say in whatever you eat. Before we get into the podcast though I want to share with you what’s happened with this member of Love Yourself Thin who’s benefitted by allowing herself to go into her brain.

So, my client has really suffered with perfectionism her whole life. And perfectionism doesn’t affect every area of her life, but she definitely felt paralyzed in many areas. Weight loss had been a huge area for her. In a live coaching call I was coaching somebody else in the group and mentioned how people pleasing, perfectionism and procrastination are all forms of self-preservation. For an entire week she felt like she was walking on air as that information totally released the heavy burden she had carried a perfectionism.

She said that she had always looked at it as an identity trait. And when she realized it wasn’t she could actually change for real. Now, this client has continued to lose over 55 pounds over the last 18 months and now has transitioned into a new and exciting career at the age of 60 where she will be helping so many other women believe in themselves and make changes.

Alright, so I’m going to talk about this concept of a protocol and being responsible for yourself. So, I’m just going to review the five vital steps to permanent weight loss. The first one is weight loss science is simple. The second is, and we’ll talk about today, creating your own protocol and troubleshooting it. So ultimately you being responsible for the food that you choose to eat and then you can see if that food you’re choosing is working for you or not. And then you know how to adjust accordingly.

Number three of the five vital steps for permanent weight loss is being able to feel all of your emotions, not hide from them and learn from them. Okay, so I say emotions are the key to the universe because ultimately our emotions lead us to the fuel, they fuel all of our actions, and the actions are what we get our results from. If we’re hiding from our emotions then we’re doing actions that aren’t creating the results that we want and so we’re starting to live a life where we’re like, I don’t even know this life of mine, I don’t even recognize myself. Alright, so that’s number three.

Number four is that we take a 100% responsibility for ourselves. And so, today’s episode we’ll be touching on that one as well. And then number five is learning how to become more self-confident which will also be influenced in today’s episode.

So, the thing that’s going to surprise you the most and especially as you do the worksheet, you’re going to have so much awareness about yourself that you probably never realized. Because what I’m going to tell you right now is that you actually have your own eating protocol. And so, we’re going to talk about why of all the different eating plans, of all the different ways to approach food, all the different ways to think about your body, why are you doing what you’re doing now? So, I want you to keep that in your mind.

Now I’m going to go to do some examples just to show you what I’m talking about. So, for example, if you were to go to a lawyer’s office and say that you wanted to get a will, the lawyer would say, “Yeah, here you go, this is our process, this is our protocol. You give me your name, you give me your Visa card, this is how much it costs, this is what you need to do. I need to go through all these things.” The lawyer has the system in place that tells you how to get a will. They don’t say, “Well, how much money did you make last year and how old are you?” They don’t ask any of those things.

The next one, when I was running a long arm business and someone came to my house to give me their quilt, I had a process. I had a series of questions I asked them. We went through thread choices, design choices, what was the purpose of the quilt, what is your budget, all of that. I had a very systematic process of intaking a quilt. When I was a schoolteacher there was a note on the board, the students came in, their backpacks, they got their planners, it was a very systematic approach. This is what we do, and they just knew this was the habit, this was the pattern.

Driving, those of you who drive, this is what I do, I put the key in, I check my mirrors. At the beginning this was not automatic, this felt very clunky. And when I was a schoolteacher, a long armer, or at the lawyer’s office, at first they had a bit of a learning curve. They didn’t have these nice systems in place. They didn’t know because they had to evaluate, they had to experiment, they had to be willing to fail. So even with driving, some of us might have gone in the ditch, I don’t know. But it took some time to learn and now you can do all sorts of things.

You can drive, you can change the station, you can sing to music, you are able to do a lot more because it’s very habitual, so you don’t have to have the same brain juice, the same brain power to drive anymore and the same thing with our quilting. So, when you think about these habits or these, I call them protocols because it is a system. And I actually like calling them a protocol because it makes me the driver of my own life. It makes me feel empowered. I am in charge of my life, which I am telling you, you actually are in charge of your life.

For those of you who struggle and try to control everyone else, I do have a master course coming up, it’s going to help you with that. But when we are trying to control everyone else it’s because we don’t know how to control ourselves and that’s the only person. So, what kind of wife do I want to be? What kind of daughter do I want to be, what kind of employee?

That is what you have control over and that’s why a lot of you ladies listening to this podcast have problems with food because food is one of your ways of feeling like you have control. I totally understand and it’s okay. And I’m so glad you’re here. This podcast is going to help you so much. I’m so glad you’re here.

So, for example, when you’re sad, what do you do? Do you get the ice-cream? Do you get the potato chips? Do you get the bowl of chocolate chips? Do you go in the car and go to Dairy Queen? What is your sad protocol? Do you start shopping online? Do you start scrolling on Facebook? Is that what you do when you’re sad or do you just sit with being sad and then you move on with your life? When you’re mad at a family member or you have a conflict with someone, what is your protocol? Do you shame yourself? Do you say, “I knew I wasn’t good enough?”

Do you blame, if my mother was better, and she would have been a better example, I wouldn’t be having all these problems? What is your protocol? What do you do in order to solve for that? And if you aren’t aware it’s probably because you’re doing chocolate, or potato chips, or whatever it is. When you feel like you have been wronged, what is your protocol? So, if someone was rude to you at the bank, do you go to Dairy Queen and get a Blizzard, or a Peanut Buster Parfait? That’s what I used to get, that’s what I used to do.

You shut down your thinking but you’re going to shame or blame and then you go to the kitchen and get food, or the drive-thru, or buying fabric. So, what needs to happen is you need to stop the old protocols and you can also call them habits. You’re like yeah, this sounds like habits, yes. But do you see what I’m saying when I call it a protocol, that feels very empowering? You’re like, no, I am the master of my own life. I am no longer going to delegate anything to anyone else. I’m not going to blame my mom anymore.

I’m not going to hide behind food anymore. I’m not going to people please anymore. I’m going to just allow myself to be the master of my own life. That is very empowering. And so, we need to stop these old habits and recognize, accept, that’s what I do, I had no idea. I got in a fight with my husband once and I was going to Wendy’s to get a frosty at 10 o’clock in the morning. And I didn’t even realize that that’s what I used to do. And I stopped myself, I pulled over on the side of the road. I’ve told you this story several times. But it was such an eye opener.

I put my hand on my chest and I said, “This is just part of being a human.” And I didn’t need to get the frosty. I just allowed myself to be annoyed with my husband. And then I gave myself permission to be a human and then I went back on the road and went on with my day. So, this is what I’m talking about, and this is why I teach in my program that we need to create our very own eating process because you are your own brain. Although it would be fun to have me come to your house and say, “Eat this, eat that, don’t eat this,” for maybe an hour.

Afterwards that would be really annoying, you’re like, “That Dara, she’s annoying, stop telling me what to do all the time.” And then we get rebellious. So that is why I’m teaching you how to be empowered for yourself because that is what permanent change will be. And I know that it feels scary to become your own authority, I know that feels scary.

But before you learned to quilt a quilt you didn’t know how to do it. Or before you learned to tie your shoes, you didn’t know how to do that and that was scary and then aren’t you glad you did it? Because now you have so much more freedom. You can tie any shoe, you can work on any quilt because you’ve got the foundation and it’s the same thing with weight loss.

So, there are two pitfalls that have been coming up in our coaching calls that I want to share. And one of them was so sneaky, actually they’re both super sneaky. And I’ve even caught myself falling in these traps. And so, I know this is going to be really helpful for you as I show you this idea. We’re not going to tell you some of the suggestions of protocols but to really go into it. That’s something we do in my program, but I do want to offer this to you of some pitfalls that are so sneaky that are going to help you to really see what thoughts are happening that you don’t even realize.

I will at the end of the episode say a few things of what just the basics of a protocol will be that will just get you started. And then the worksheet alone will just give you so much insight, I promise. Okay, so the two pitfalls for even believing it’s possible for you to create a protocol, which by the way you already have a protocol, you already have these habits, I’ll call them habits as well, they’re interchangeable, that aren’t serving you.

So, if you’re constantly going to the ice-cream, or the chocolate chips, or the potato chips, that’s a habit of you escaping your emotions and that’s what’s causing you to gain weight.

The first biggest pitfall and it just keeps coming with me and I’m able to recognize it quicker and quicker is this idea of being a victim. I know, so this is what a victim would sound like, it’s not my fault. I couldn’t possibly be responsible for that. I couldn’t take those matters in my own hands. This is just happening to me, I don’t have any power. So, if you are saying those things, you are actually putting yourself, or you say something like, “I couldn’t be that kind of person, I’m just not that kind of person.”

So, if these are the things that you’re saying you are now being a victim to your life, you’re not being empowered. And the problem with that is that when you’re being a victim, guess what? There’s a villain. And so, food has become the villain. And when food has become the villain, you are always going to be scared. You are going to be frightened. You are going to be cowering. You are going to not show up as your amazing, wonderful self. I noticed this as just an example that’s not with food.

When I’m around people who have a super masculine energy, it can be really triggering to me. A person with very masculine energy who’s telling me what to do feels really scary. I go back into being this five year old. And it’s so interesting because I’m six feet tall. But emotionally I can go back to being seven years old and feeling very small, and scared. And I don’t show up as my powerful self.

Just kind of like when I was sharing in a previous episode about when my aunt who’s 85 now, kept offering me food. I went back to being like the six year old who thinks it’s rude to say no to your aunt when she offers food. So, unless we can be more mindful, we kind of get trapped in our own brain. So, I’m just curious for you if that’s something that you fall into with victim mentality, that could take you away from feeling like you can be empowered around food.

And it’s just a really great way, kind of like when I talk about having a really tangled ball of wool. If you’re really frustrated and you’re coming trying to untangle it from impatience, and this is so annoying, you’re just going to be pulling tighter and tighter on that knot, all those knots, where what really is going to help you untangle that ball of wool is just being really curious, patient, having no agenda, just thinking, I wonder where this knot’s coming from, and we just loosen everything up and that’s what’s going to get us the most transformation.

Okay, the second pitfall that is so super sneaky that I didn’t even realize it was happening until my own coach brought this up for me in a way that was not food related. But as soon as she said it, I immediately understood what she meant. So, we can get entitled around food but entitled in a way that you don’t even realize that is how you can become entitled. So, for example, our human brain is always wanting to have a system. We want to be efficient.

And so just like with math, if you’re learning a new math concept it’s like just tell me the steps. Just say do this, do this, do this, do this. And when you can do those steps then you can get the result. With weight loss, that’s what I wanted and that’s what all of us want. We’re like, “Just tell me the steps and then I can produce it.” So, we work really hard, and we just memorize the steps, and we think, okay, we’re just going to get the result. Okay, so that’s fine, so we feel entitled to get the result.

The issues is that if we don’t understand why we’re doing it, we don’t understand what’s going on, then we don’t really understand the concept and then we don’t really learn and grow. So, I just think about division, long division. Just tell me the steps, just tell me what to do, and then I’ll feel entitled to be able to get that answer. And that is fine. You can do that. But when things get hard, when things get more complicated and something goes wrong, and you can’t follow those steps, you can’t solve the problem.

And so, with weight loss, we have been approaching weight loss in the same way. We know we invest in a program, we print off all the sheets, we go to the grocery store, we buy all the food that we’re supposed to. We make all the salads beforehand, or we make the freezer meals. And we have all these really great intentions. You’re like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, just tell me the steps, tell me the steps, tell me what to do. I’ll just do it.” Then our mother-in-law calls, and she has cancer. Or the trip that you’ve been planning has cancelled.

The quilt that you made, you put it in the washing machine, and it bled. And you don’t know how to do that. So, life happens but because you haven’t understood why you’re supposed to eat those foods or what’s going on, and because you don’t understand about your brain and all of that, you just immediately go back to the chocolate. And it was fascinating because I’m so embarrassed to admit this and I think I have shared this before on the podcast.

I didn’t really understand what I was doing with division until I started teaching long division. And I was like, “Oh.” Because I was so fixated on just tell me the steps. So, when there’s any problems I didn’t actually know how to solve it because I didn’t really understand the steps. So having said this, we can get entitled. And so, then weight loss is like you feel like you deserve it. And so of course how many of you on a Friday night or a Saturday is like, “I deserve it, I’ve worked hard all week.” You’re missing the whole point.

The whole point of eating is to nurture your body and to take care of your body, and to break pain from your body, to decrease inflammation from your body. The whole point of following that checklist is to just be a better steward of your body. And I have this, kind of another example, so I was a professional quilter for five years. People brought me their quilts and I would hit, I did a lot of ruler work because I love doing custom work. And sometimes I would hit my ruler on the needle bar, and I would break my timing.

And so, I’d have to call, and I’d have to get help, and it was so funny because I would think, oh, man, if I was a really good professional quilter I would never have tension problems. And I realized, oh my goodness, it’s like driving a car. We drive around thinking, I bought this car, it never should have any problems. No, of course the car is going to break down. Of course, the car is going to have issues. It’s wear and tear but there is this sneaky entitled thing, it’s like, I spent this much money on this car, it should never have any problems.

So, this entitlement is very, very sneaky and I want to offer to you that one of the reasons that dieting feels such garbage, I have a coach that once said that to me. She’s like, “What if it just feels like hot garbage?” And I was like, “Oh, okay.” But one of the reasons diet leaves such a bad taste in your mouth is because you’re like, “I worked so hard, and I didn’t get all the results.” So, the problem is you worked hard but working hard is actually not the way to permanent weight loss.

The way to permanent weight loss is by opening yourself up, being curious, being understanding, being compassionate, being kind, understanding why you keep turning to the frosting, and then solving for it. That’s what’s going to happen. So, it just wants you to say, “Do this, do that.” Kind of like IKEA furniture. Put the screw into this one, and do this one, and do this one and then voila, you have a piece of furniture.

It makes it seem so simple, but we always have a human brain coming along with us which will always mean that we’re going have doubt, and we’re going to have discouragement, and we’re going to have shame, and we’re going to have blame. And so, if we never learn how to deal with shame, and blame, and discouragement, we’re not going to have success, it will be impossible. I’m just laying it all out. So, I’m going to tell you what the protocol is.

So, the protocol is basically laying a foundation for reducing the amount of your body’s insulin and balance your leptin and ghrelin because remember, weight loss is only about balancing those three hormones. Isn’t that fabulous? And it’s also how the body deals with stored fat. So that, when we talk about the first vital step of weight loss, permanent weight loss is weight loss science is simple.

That is as simple as weight loss is. Calories are consumed, they give you energy, your body requires energy, it only needs so much energy a day. And if you put more energy in your body than your body requires it will store it in fat. So just like oil, it will store it in jerrycans. So, we are walking around with all these stored fat cans, or energy resources.

So, with the protocol, what I want my clients to do is to learn how to focus on the frequency of eating, the quantities of the food that you eat, the type of food that you eat, so how is that food affecting my insulin? And how much are you using? Because your main fuel source is now going to be your own body fat. So that is the basics of protocol. So, when you can really dial that in you’re going to collect a lot of good data, you’re going to become a scientist and figure out, okay, this is how I’m going to balance my hormones, and this is what’s going to happen.

Other points of data that you can collect are how much water do I drink, how much is that affecting me? What about sleep, I mean when I started sleeping again I lost 10 pounds in a week and a half, it was amazing. Am I snacking? Why am I snacking? What am I doing with all this? My body doesn’t need snacking so what is my body needing? What about you’re processing your urges and then having mental clarity, and then reconnecting your brain and your body connection.

So, these are all of the factors that I teach the ladies in the membership of how they can when they go through all of those basics, and they have that foundation just like with quilting. You need to quarter and seam, you need to square up your blocks. Then you can create whatever you want. So, I have women in my program who have lost 70 and 80 pounds. I don’t know what their protocol is. I don’t know what they eat. I don’t know when they eat. It doesn’t matter, I don’t need to. All I need to do is teach them the tools so that they can be really productive.

It’s like me thinking I have to make all the quilts in the world, and I have to quilt all the quilts in the world. No, I teach you how to do free motion quilting. You have my books, YouTube channel, whatever. You can learn the foundation and then you can create whatever free motion quilting design you desire. You get to have your own spin, your own unique voice, it’s a beautiful thing. So just like my clients, they are all unique and different. So, they make their own plan, and they troubleshoot it.

And my goal is to get each one of my clients in the memberships, responsible for themselves. Isn’t that so much better? You don’t want to be sitting beside me all the time having me tell you what to eat, when to eat, what not to eat. And frankly, who am I to say? I’m not your body, I’m six feet tall. But when you use the tools then you’ll know. And then what happens now is you become completely independent with food.

So, I love that my goal is when you learn this process you learn to be 100% responsible for your goals and you can have any type of body you want. It is so beautiful. So, mastering your own eating plan to get to your ideal weight and staying there is the Love Yourself Thin promise. It’s so much fun. And in order to help you break up with food, it pretty much is an addiction, you’ve created a really strong desire, your brain has emphasized the desire to eat it over, and over, and over again.

And so, I’m going to teach you how to break up with food. Is that fun? And learn how to create your own joy. You don’t have to rely on anybody for your joy. So, I have an invite for you in the show notes, so you can join my master course that I’m teaching June 13^th to 17^th. So, if you’re listening to this after the fact, you can buy all of my master courses on my website. But all of my master courses are available for free in my lifetime membership.

There is going to be a quiz included and we’ll show you where your weak spots are around food and why you’ve created the dependency on food to crate your joy. So, I encourage you to take that, it’s actually a 100 questions. It’s pretty intense but I really want you to get a bigger, broader picture of what’s actually going on.

And in the master course I’m going to give you practical doable steps to break free from your dependency on food being one of your main sources of joy, which by the way is false pleasure. So, it’s not even real joy and it actually has a negative aftereffect afterwards so even builds more dissatisfaction in your life. And I’m really happy to help you to stop this vicious cycle of food addiction and learn how to create your own joy independently. So, make sure you print off the handout and the invitation’s in the show notes.

It’s so much fun hearing from all of you and I love you sharing this podcast with others, it really helps so many people. Alright, you have an amazing day, bye bye.

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