The Foundation for Lasting Weight Loss, Part II
Inside Out Weight Loss
Renee Stephens
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Episode 81 - The Foundation for Lasting Weight Loss, Part II

Learn how a server with a 7 hour shift can manage her meals. And how to easily change the thoughts that create our unwanted behaviors, by changing our limiting beliefs. But beware of the avalanche of positive side effects!

Transcript

Transcript

Renee Stephens: Welcome to Inside Out Weight Loss. I’m your host Renee Stephens, and together we’re accessing and adjusting the control panel of you mind/body/spirit system, bringing ease and joy to your weight loss journey and fullness to the rest of your life. A special welcome to new listeners to. Inside Out Weight Loss is not your typical diet podcast. We talk little about what you should do. You probably know that all too well by now. Instead it’s about getting you to do what you already know that you should, but from a different place. It’s about rediscovering your body’s inner wisdom so that you actually not only want to eat well and exercise, you genuinely prefer it. Imagine that. Listen to today’s episode, and I encourage you to go back to the beginning and listen from the prologue forward, where you’ll hear some of the foundational steps so important to this journey. Now we’ll start as we always do by dropping inside and becoming more fully present with ourselves. In day to day life it’s so common for our thoughts to be going so quickly and we’re busy thinking about this and that and what we will do and what we won’t do and what we should do and what we shouldn’t do and what we did do and what we wish we hadn’t done and oh my god, and on and on and on and on. We do so much of that in our daily lives, and it’s really nice, in fact it’s actually important to take those few moment to begin with a breath perhaps, to settle down inside of ourselves, to become present within ourselves, to become present within our bodies. When was the last time you really noticed how it feels to be in your body? What if it was the most relaxing place to be?

Renee Stephens: So go ahead and take that moment. Notice your breath. It’s there supporting you. Notice that you have a body. Last episode we talked about having a body, having thoughts, having emotions, having feelings. All of these things are things that we have but we ourselves are not our thoughts. We’re not our feelings, our emotions or our body. We can change different parts out on our body and still be us. I think that’s so important to notice that we have thoughts, we have feelings, but we are not our thoughts and feelings. We have a body that may be overweight, it may be slim, it may be fit, it may be flabby. And yet we are not our body, because when our body changes we’re still us. We are not our fat body or our slim body. We are something that transcends both of those, that is greater than and more than the size and shape of our body. We are an awareness perhaps that can be either fit or flabby or fat or thin. We have the potential to be all or any of those things. And so therefore the essence of us, the essence of you is neither fat nor thin. The essence of you therefore is something that can be fat or thin. So perhaps the essence of you is that awareness or that potential to be different things. And then you think, “Yes, but I’m the one who has this sort of eyes” or “has this sort of markings” or “this kind of hair color.” Then you think well your hair color will probably change as you get older, it often does. Eventually most people go gray. Except of course for Ronal Reagan, but the rest of us. And the way we look will change quite a bit. The size of our body, if you look at a photo of a child and that same person at 50 or 60 or 70 or 80, they’ll look very, very different. Everything is different; you’re height changes throughout your life. And as Deepak Chopra pointed out in his book Ageless Body, Timeless Mind – or is it Timeless Mind, Ageless Body – something like that. Anyway it’s a great book… That our cells are constantly changing and every seven years we have a complete change out of all our cells so that none of the cells that we have today are the same as those that we had eight years ago. So in fact everything changes. So how, therefore, could we be our bodies. We must be something that has a body, something whose cells change out every seven years.

Renee Stephens: And as you become aware that perhaps you are an awareness, a being that can have all of these things, you begin to understand the place where unconditional acceptance lives. We accept ourselves as someone who can be fat or thin, fit or flabby, smart or stupid, quick or slow. Doesn’t really matter. We have those potentials. But we are not those things. And therefore how could we possibly judge ourselves for those things. I know, it’s a bit of a leap, isn’t it? But you have to consider that circumstances and events and thoughts all affect the actions that we take and the potentials that we realize. And if you then take that small step, that small nudge, to say, well I’m always doing the best that I can in any given moment given the circumstances, and if I do something that isn’t so smart, I made a mistake but I was doing my best at the time. Maybe later on I got more information that showed me that that wasn’t so hot. Boy I have a bunch of those and some are pretty big. Well that’s okay. We find out later and we learn from our experiences. But just a little food for thought, that perhaps what if you acknowledge that you are this awareness beneath body, mind, thoughts and you unconditionally accepted that. Just a thought as we go even deeper into this episode and set our intent for what we’d like to get out of today’s episode of Inside Out Weight Loss.

Renee Stephens: Today I’d like to share with you a voice message that came in from a listener. We’d been talking about creating a solid foundation for weight loss, about creating deep roots that will bear the sort of fruit that we want. And last episode I mentioned that when I get questions it almost always comes back to the question of creating that solid foundation. So this a great example of that. Here’s the question:

Kristine: My name is Kristine. My question really is she starts off with the goal of having three meals a week, three meals a day, and I’m a server so I usually work lunch, so I can eat at like eight in the morning when I’m getting ready to go to work, but by the time I get there I have to skip lunch and I don’t get to eat until I get home at like three or three thirty and that makes it really hard. And I do sometimes try to pack a snack, but sometimes it’s just not enough and I’m starving and there’s fries sitting around and it’s just really hard. And I guess I just wanted to know what she might say to that.

Renee Stephens: Thanks for asking Kristine. There’s some interesting things I noticed in your message. First you say that it’s hard. You’re working from 8am to 3pm in a straight through shift it sounds like. And naturally if you don’t eat during all of that time you’re very, very hungry at the end of the shift, perhaps even too hungry, and it sounds like you’re snacking on some things like French fries that you’d rather be avoiding. And indeed 8 to 3 is a long time to go without eating. In fact it sounds like you think that it’s so long that at some level you think it’s like a week for three meals rather than a day because you made that little slip earlier in the message. So I get that you’re thinking long. And I get that you’re really, really hungry and that it’s hard. But you also mentioned packing a snack, that sometimes you do that but it’s hard to pack a snack or something like you don’t often pack a snack. So it sounds like you get a break or two breaks. I’ve never worked in the restaurant industry so I can’t speak from experience, but I know by law we’re required to get a certain amount of breaks. And given you say that you suggest that if you were to pack a snack you’d be able to eat one, that tells me that it’s possible to do that, it’s possible to bring a healthy snack with you, and it would be possible therefore to eat that healthy snack. Perhaps in the same ‘grab as you can’ way that you might grab a French fry. But you’re not doing it. Why? Because you perceive it as hard. And that you perceive it as hard tells me that your foundation is not there. That in fact there is a part of you that is not on board with the program of being slim, fit and healthy. Now I’m taking a wild guess here, but my wild guess about you Kristine is that you do not have self care as a priority. That putting yourself first is really not something that you are accustomed to doing, it’s not where you normally put yourself. Because if you did you would make it happen, it would be a priority for you to have something that you want to snack on, something healthy and satisfying, you’d have it with you, or you’d find something at the restaurant that you work at that was healthy that you could snack on. You’d find a way. I know it, because when we have priorities we make them happen. The other hint I have is that you are a server, and in the service business, people who tend to go into the service business often are very good at putting other people first. That’s how the do well. Or that’s the perception of how they do well. Because I think that you might discover that if you put yourself first that you could be an even better server if that’s what you want. If that’s not what you want, well that’s a slightly larger shift, but again, putting yourself first will put you in a position to pursue whatever it is. The next question to ask yourself Kristine is, “What’s stopping me…”, if this is true what I’m suggesting, you say, “Well what’s stopping me from putting myself first?” Ask yourself that question. And what might bubble up is some kind of belief about maybe not deserving it. Again, just a guess. How do you change that belief? You could do some EFT tapping around it. You could go on the guided journey available on my site, Sabotage Self Sabotage. You could write about it. You could listen to the series on belief change, all sorts of things that you could do. So I hope that helps Kristine put you on your way to putting yourself first and prioritizing healthy food at reasonable intervals.

Renee Stephens: Now we’re past our time for our break so we better take one now. You’re listening to Inside Out Weight Loss on Personal Life Media. This is your host Renee Stephens. We’ll be right back.

Renee Stephens: We’re back now. As you know we’ve been talking about creating a solid foundation for lasting weight loss, and last episode I suggested that you track the thoughts that you have, the thoughts that go on in your mind right before you engage in a behavior that you don’t like so much, a behavior that you want to change. Have you got your thoughts? Were you able to slow down enough to identify them? So lets say you did. Lets say you’re a sofa snacker, an after dinner or evening sofa snacker. And you slowed down and you found your thoughts and there was something in there like, “Ooh, wouldn’t that be so good? Wouldn’t some ice cream, wouldn’t some crackers, wouldn’t some crunchy whatever it is be so good right now?” That’s a thought that would get me off of the sofa from my repose, from my relaxed laziness and into the kitchen to go grab something because I’m thinking it would be so good, and more than likely – you may not even be aware of this – there’s some kind of sexy looking image of whatever it is, the object of your desire in your mind. It’s probably close up and bright and sparkly image, looks really good, ‘cause lets face it, you have to dress it up if it’s something that’s going to make you feel lousy all night through up until tomorrow morning wouldn’t you? Because if you looked at it in the way that it makes you feel over time, it would probably be small and far away, the image that is, of whatever that former object of your desire was, it would be small and gray and far away and kind of yucky. And if you saw it that way, your thought would be something like, “Ugh, it’s really not worth the effort.” So those might be your thoughts. Thoughts lead to behaviors, thoughts lead to actions, thoughts create actions. Change your thoughts, change your actions. So now the question becomes, “Well how do I change my thoughts? I’ve tried to change my thoughts but the old ones keep coming back. There’s a part of me that just thinks that eating until I’m passed full is a great idea. It thinks stuffing in a few extra mouthfuls of ice cream or crackers or whatever when I’ve already had a good meal is something that’s going to make me feel good. It just keeps on coming back no matter what I do. It’s like it’s calling my name, the siren song, and I wish I were strapped down to the sofa so I wouldn’t respond to it.” Because indeed some thoughts in fact are easy to change but some are kind of sticky. Now what makes a thought sticky? What makes it keep coming back? And you may recall from earlier episodes, there’s something called beliefs, beliefs that make thoughts sticky. In other words, a belief is kind of like a category, or even we could call it a guideline, for thoughts. How do we know what thoughts to come up with? Well we have our beliefs and our beliefs generate thoughts. And beliefs of course are things that we hold to be true, often in spite of evidence to the contrary. So if we have a belief, for example in the example of Katherine, the caller who we talked about earlier, maybe possibly, I don’t know, she has a belief that she’s not worth taking great care of. And because she has this belief it seems like hard work to take care of herself. Hard work, why? Because the perceived reward seems smaller than the perceived effort. In other words, the perceived effort seems like a big deal and the reward seems very small. Now she could simply change things around, so that the reward of eating something healthy and nutritious sometime during her shift, actually taking a break if she can – which by law I believe she has to be able to – and having a healthy and fulfilling snack, the reward of that would be feeling really good, having nice stable energy, feeling energized at the end of the day. And she would see that reward as big and bold and bright and up close and right there. And the perceived effort would see very, very small in comparison if she believed that she was worth taking great care of. So the belief determines the type of thoughts that you have. Again, a few things can be changed at the thought level, but typically we want to go even deeper to the belief level. What is causing the thoughts? It’s the beliefs. So we want to identify our limiting beliefs, beliefs that we have that are limiting our potential or making things difficult for us. And certainly one of the most common limiting beliefs for people who struggle with their weight is that, “I’m not worth it. I don’t deserve it.”

Renee Stephens:  So you know the next thing I’m going to suggest, maybe you did this during the belief series that we did earlier in the show. But I’d like you to for every time that you have one of these behaviors, think about what might be an underlying limiting belief that you hold about yourself. And we’ll just go through some of the biggies right now and you can see, just check in at a gut level. Do you get a match on that one? Does this resonate with you or not? The beliefs are “I don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve to lose weight. I don’t deserve to be attractive. I don’t deserve to be successful. I’m not worth it. I’m not worthy of it. I haven’t earned it.” Here’s another category of common limiting beliefs: “It’s not safe to be slim. It’s more comfortable to be overweight. It’s risky to be slim. I’ll lose my friends if I’m slim.” Here’s another one: “I’m not capable of it. It’s too hard for me. There’s something wrong with me. I can’t do it.” So just check in with some of those common ones and see if any of them resonate with you, because those beliefs will want to change. And be patient with yourself; sometimes beliefs reveal themselves all at once and sometimes they reveal themselves over time. We hold them at different levels. Perfectly okay. Just be aware of them. Be excited when you find them; gosh, I am so excited when I find a limiting belief because I think, “Wow, great. Now I can change it.” And off I go. I encourage you to go back to the series on belief changes to learn a series of tools that will allow you to do that. EFT is also a powerful tool for making belief changes. As I mentioned my Sabotage Self Sabotage guided journey is as well. So there you have it. Go through, find your limiting beliefs, write them down, listen to the older podcasts on belief change, and lets get changing. Ooh, did I mention one of the great things about changing beliefs? Changing beliefs, if you have a belief like, “I’m not worth it”, imagine what it’ll be like at a truly deep level that you are worth treating yourself well. Imagine how many different areas of your life will be better for it, because that’s the coolest thing. Beliefs don’t just affect our eating behavior. Those limiting beliefs, those biggies that I mentioned, a few others as well, can have affects all through our lives, so when we change them we get benefits that ripple throughout our lives. It’s so beautiful to feel and see and hear how wonderful it is at the deepest level to know that indeed you are worth it because, just because you are this awareness, this beautiful divine awareness. This consciousness full of potential and possibilities that you can create in any moment at any age of your life. God, I love that. Ooh baby, it is so worth it.

Renee Stephens: Okay, so that brings us to the end of our show today. Thank you for being present. If you’d like to get up to the minute news about when the latest episode of Inside Out Weight Loss goes live, now you can. Go to www.personallifemedia.com/signup. Believe me, you deserve it. If you’re interested in the journey that I mentioned, Sabotage Self Sabotage, I sell my guided journeys on my site. There’s a link available at the blog, personallifemedia.com/renee, r-e-n-e-e. That will take you to my site where you can purchase that guided journey. This is your host Renee Stephens and I am on a mission to eradicate the weight struggle from the planet, enabling you to develop and share your abundant souls gifts. Join me as we evolve the world by evolving ourselves. Take good care.