Easy Exercise Motivation Part VI
Inside Out Weight Loss
Renee Stephens
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Episode 66 - Easy Exercise Motivation Part VI

Do you use food as a substitute for rest? In this episode, learn how three women transformed their lives by adding high quality rest to their lives. Plus, hear how one woman went from over-booked supermom to regular exerciser by transforming her limiting beliefs about worthlessness.

Transcript

Transcript

Renee Stephens: A special welcome to new listeners to the show.  We in the Inside Out Weight Loss community are delighted that you found us.  You might take a moment to set your intent to get what you are hoping to get here.  Intense setting is a powerful way to program your subconscious mind to get what you want.  Jump right in today’s episode and I also encourage you to go back to the beginning and start there by listening to the prologue where you will hear my personal story.  Then progress to the critical foundational steps presented in the early episodes.  Take your time to digest each episode, each concept, each tool.  I hear from listeners that their love applying these tools not just to their weight loss journey but also to other areas of their lives.  Also note that you will get many times more out of Inside Out Weight Loss than you put in.  But you must put in to get out, do the homework, join the Yahoo Group, sign out for my personal email database, so you will hear of new programs as soon as they become available.  When you do, you will get a free manifesting meditation as well.  Now it’s time to become present with the current episode of Inside Out Weight Loss.  So let’s take a moment to drop inside and become present with ourselves, become present to the feeling of being in your body.  

Put your hands on your legs and feel that you have legs, put your hands on your arms and feel that you have arms, you have a body that works, that allows you to live and listen and breathe and function, and you can take it a step deeper by becoming aware of the feeling of being in your body.  Notice the feelings and sensations deep inside your body.  What does it feel like in your heart space, what does it feel in your belly, inside your belly, not the part of your belly that you may have a lot of emotions around, perhaps the outer part of your belly but actually the inner part of your belly, deep within your torso.  What are the sensations there?  Notice that all of your internal organs are working for you even while you are at rest, while you are exercising, while you are listening, there are so much activity within your body.  So let’s take a moment to be aware and appreciate all that’s going on beneath the surface.  The human body is so complex that even modern science doesn’t full understand it all and how it does what it does.  So as you take these moments to appreciate that your lungs allow you to breathe in clear, fresh air, that your heart pumps that oxygen throughout your body, that your stomach brings in nutrition and breaks it down so that it can utilized as energy.  Take a moment to appreciate the magnificence and the complexity of your body and as you do that, as you are marveling and appreciating your own body, I would like you to think now about someone that you love and that loves you.  Think of someone in your life, it could be from the past or the present.  I want you to choose someone where there is a big charge.  So perhaps, it’s someone from your childhood, a beloved grandmother or grandfather, perhaps it’s a child in your life now, your own child, a child of a friend or niece or nephew.  It could even be a pet from the past or present.  And of course, last but not least, it could be a spouse or a partner.  

The important thing is that it be someone that when you think of them, you really feel loving.  You feel lots and lots of love pouring out of you, overflowing from you and you know that that love is reciprocated.  And now I want you to think about that person or pet and notice what it feels like in your body to love them.  Take a moment to really be in your own love for that person.  How does it feel in your body?  Is it a static feeling or a moving feeling?  Is it contracting or expansive?  What is the experience of loving someone like?  What are the feelings of loving someone hugely, enormously, unboundedly, like in your physical body?  Is this feeling centered perhaps in your heart center or is it all over your body.  Simply notice how wonderful it feels to love someone.  I think sometimes we don’t pay attention to the fact that loving someone or something really feels great.  It feels so good, it’s an indulgence to love someone especially someone who loves you back because then your love can grow exponentially.  And now what I would like you to do is to gently float out of feeling your own love for that person or pet and now I want you to float into that other being.  Imagine being that grand parent or spouse or child or pet and feel your love as that being for you.  Feel what it feels like to love you, seeing through their eyes what their experience, their life, their desires.  Feel what it feels like to love you.  Notice how enjoyable it is.  Feel that love pouring out of you as this other being.  See yourself from the eyes of this other being.  What do you see?  Perhaps you see yourself in a brighter light.  Perhaps you look more luminous, perhaps there is a glow to you, when seeing from the eyes of love.  Just notice how you look from these eyes of someone who adores you, who absolutely loves you.  What do you see, do you notice those physical perceived flaws that you, when you are in your own body pay so much attention to or do you notice a sort of glow, a sort of wholeness to the being that you just adore?  

Feel that expansive energy and notice now as you float out of this other person or pet and I want you to see yourself and this other being that adores you, that loves you and that you love and if you could imagine seeing the love physically, if it looked like something like a light or a color or some sort of energy field, what would it look like?  Would it be static, would it be flowing, would there be two fields that meet and merge in the middle or would they go all the way directly into each other’s hearts, expanding, nourishing, bringing health, well-being and vitality.  You could even imagine what it would be like to be in that field to be the intersection of that person’s love for you and your love for that person.  What would it be like to be in love, in that magical field of love between the two of you?  Notice how from this prospective you feel about yourself.  What kinds of things do you want to do for yourself?  Good things, nurturing things, nourishing things, just a wild guess.  And now float back into yourself, so much more aware of this field of love, just between you and this other person.  And you can think about the other people in your life that you love and love you.  

Perhaps, there are other fields equal to this field.  Perhaps that’s something that you can cultivate and grow this powerful energy of love.  So, as you bring yourself back to the present moment, imagining what it would be like to be in this field of love now and far into the future that’s always with you and simply expands as you bring more people that you love into your life adding to those that you have loved from the past and present.  And by now, I imagine you’ve already sunk rather deeply into this episode.  But no matter where you are, as you are in this field of love you can imagine sending it out to the other listeners of the show across space and time and even to those who are still struggling, who haven’t yet discovered the show, who haven’t yet ended their own weight struggle, whatever way that will happen.  Send them your love, expand your own field of loving energy to reach them and feel theirs as it comes back to you, expanding for all.  And you may ask, especially if you’re new to this show, what is she going on about?  How does this have anything to do with weight loss?  And if you are a veteran listener, you’ll probably know the answer, the foundation to lasting, joyful, easy weight loss and exercise motivation is unconditional self-acceptance, which looks and feels suspiciously like love.  It’s actually time for us to take a break now to support our sponsors.  

You’re listening to Inside Out Weight Loss on Personal Life Media.

Renee Stephens: We’re back now.  This is Renee Stephens and before the break, we snug in a guided journey just when you weren’t expecting it on feeling and being love because we’re building the foundation here, of good feelings about ourselves so that we want to treat ourselves wonderfully, exquisitely, magnificently by doing healthy health-enhancing exercise and eating well, getting enough rest and all those other great things that are really all about taking terrific care of ourselves.  In the last episode, we talked more about laziness and I want us to take few more moments to talk about the good side of laziness.  I am on a bit of a mission to de-jeopardize which is clearly not a word, word laziness.  In other words, take the stigma away by talking about the good side, then you’re thinking, say, what?  How on earth could laziness be good?  Well, I’m here to tell you that laziness can actually help you get moving and while you’re at it, could even end night-time noshing.  Today, I want to share with you some client stories to illustrate how these three women have transformed their behavior by transforming their laziness.  I had one client who was a very intermittent exerciser and most of the time she didn’t exercise at all.  She did nothing and we were actually talking about her night-time noshing on the sofa.  And I said OK, well; you know, how would you like to be or what would you like to do instead?  What would be a better way for the evening to go?  And she said, “Oh gosh, well, what I really should be doing is getting up and tidying up the house and organizing things and doing one of my projects that I’m working on or maybe going out into the garden or going here and doing that.”  And as she was describing all of this, I thought, gosh, that’s a lot.  And I said well, how would you like to feel? And she said, “oh! excited”, I want to be excited in the evening and really up and you know, like I am when I’m really high and up and have a zest for life.  And I thought gosh; you know, evening time, lying on the sofa, would I want to be excited and really up at that time?  And I know that this woman has a very full life working full time and going to school.  I’ve quite a few clients like that as a matter of fact.  So I asked her, I said, well, when do you get your downtime?  And she said, “Downtime?  There is no time for that” laughing.  And I said; you know, it seems to me like you’re up and ready to go a lot of the time and my guess, if I were in your shoes, I’d really want some quality downtime at the end of the day.  No wonder you want to sit there and have any excuse that you can to stay down and what excuse works well, food and eating works.  At least it occupies the mind so we, for a few moment stop shooting ourselves and it slows us down as the blood flow and the energy goes to digestion.  You see, food can be a substitute for rest.  I’ll say that again, food we often use as a substitute for actual rest.  I’ll tell you about another client.  Her issue was drinking too much wine in the evenings.  And I asked her the same question.  I said, well, how would you like your evenings to go instead?  And she said, oh well, I’d like to be doing this and tidying up and moving about and talking to friends and doing this and doing that, and again I had this feeling of exhaustion when I listen to her.  And I asked her the same question, what about your downtime?  What is the wine doing for you?  And in fact, for her, it was serving the same purpose as food for this other client which was, it was an excuse to slow down, to chill out, to vegetate.  Are you getting the theme here?  We are in a go-go, do-do-do culture.  

We’re all about getting things done, setting goals, accomplishing them, checking things off of our to-do list and that’s how we value our worth.  The value of actual downtime seems to be very, very low, its not part of the good old American work ethic.  But, you know, we’re not machines.  And in fact even machines need to be taken off line from time to time for maintenance.  It’s interesting to think about athletes, professional athletes and how they train.  If you look at any major sport, there will be a season and an off season.  There is a basketball season and there is an off season.  There is a baseball season and an off season. Top athletes know and more importantly their coaches know that rest is an integral part of their training regime.  You don’t get enough rest, you don’t compete at the top of your game.  Why?  Because when you break down muscles, they need time to rebuild stronger.  The actual getting stronger piece happens during the rest time.  So if you find yourself making an excuse for downtime by having that extra drink of wine or whatever it is or eating that extra snack, maybe its time to think about having higher quality downtime, maybe its time to have officially sanctioned downtime everyday.  Some people use meditation for that which is a great way of having downtime, because you are actually doing absolutely nothing apart from repeating a mantra or noticing your breath or whatever technique that you might use.  It’s a great way as long as it doesn’t become another task on your to-do list.  And believe me I know because I have approached it that way.  So what happened with each of these clients?  With both of them, we talked about how they could create sanctioned high quality downtime in their lives and as they did that, they were able to find time for exercise, for eating better.  They had renewed energy because they gave themselves that rest after a long and busy day.  And what I find is that if I have high quality downtime, I need less than I would if had low quality time.  So, for example, watching TV for me is low quality downtime.  

I don’t feel specially renewed from it.  But meditation for me, is high quality downtime, because I find it incredibly renewing, spiritual practices can be high quality downtime.  Prayer, for example, can be very high quality downtime, being in nature, another way of getting high quality downtime.  How will you know if it’s high quality?  When you think about it, you will feel renewed.  You will find the thought renewing and appealing.  So there you have it.  Increase your motivation by having high quality downtime.  Who knew?  Now, there is one more client I want to tell you about, sort of a case study of one of my clients who was a non-exerciser or extremely intermittent exerciser and we went into what is it that was stopping her from exercising.  And the first issue that came up was a pretty darn big one.  And really, deeply inside, she felt that she didn’t deserve to treat herself well.  She didn’t deserve to take time for herself.  Throughout her childhood that was the message that she got that she wasn’t worthy.  Her father wasn’t around most of her childhood and as children will do, they naturally assume that that’s their fault.  So, she assumed it was her fault that there was something inherently wrong with her and that’s why her father wasn’t there.  If you don’t feel worthy, it will be a constant struggle for you to take great care of yourself by doing things like exercising, eating well and getting sufficient rest, why?  Because you’re out of alignment, part of you is saying I’m not worth it.  I need to treat myself poorly because I’m just not worth it.  Now, the question is, if you have this issue, which is actually a very common issue for people who struggle with their weight, how the heck do you address it?  This is actually an excellent issue to use EFT tapping or saying things like even though I’m not worthy, I still love and accept myself.  Even though I’m not worthy, I still choose to take great care of myself.  Even though I’m not worthy, I still choose to easily be naturally slender.  

Tapping is a very effective tool for addressing this issue.  Another thing that you can do is write about it in your journal.  Write about your present state, how feeling unworthy is affecting your life in all different ways.  Write about your present state and then on a separate sheet or a different side of the same sheet, write about all the ways that that doesn’t really make sense who decides if you’re worthy.  You question that belief.  How is anybody worthy?  How could anybody be more worthy than anybody else?  Questions like that and then you finally write about what it would be like if you were worthy.  Writing in this way will undermine, will loosen up that negative belief.  Now finally, there’s one more thing I wanted to talk about here because we’re running out of time.  With this particular client, after we addressed her worthiness issues and she was feeling worthy of treating well, the other thing that had to be addressed is that when she thought of exercising, she thought of the full blown workout and believe me, this woman has high standards for what a good workout is.  Its weights, its cardio, its stretching, it’s the full Monty, and really anything less was just not good enough.  Well, how did this work itself out in practice?  The way it worked itself out in practice is that when a co-worker suggested they go for a walk at lunch, she didn’t really feel like it because it wouldn’t even count as a workout, I mean, what’s a walk a few blocks around the office at lunch time compared to a full blown workout.  Well, it’s hardly worth it.  So she had what we call a chunk size problem.  What does that mean?  It means that what she thought of as an exercise chunk was too big, it was too big a hurdle.  So we talked about changing that so that all movement counted.  Walking for 20 minutes at lunch time around the office absolutely counted and doing 20 minutes if she couldn’t do an hour on the treadmill at night, if she couldn’t do the weights and the stretching but 20 minutes was great, it was better than nothing.  And she set a new goal for herself which was three workouts in that first week of 20 minutes or more in a day.  It could be 10 minutes at lunch and 10 minutes after work.  It could be five, five, five and five, it doesn’t matter.  Anything that she did, she was now going to count as exercise.  Now, what affect does this have?  Well, it made her feel like she was making progress.  If she did take the stairs instead of the elevator, if she did go for a walk at lunchtime, if she did do 20 minutes of an easy walk on the treadmill in the evening, it all counts.  And all of a sudden, her motivations started to increase because she was tracking this, she was writing it down and she’s feeling like, wow! I’m able to do this.  And before you know, she was working out four to five times a week.  What did she do?  She decreased her chunk size.  What now constitute a workout is much less than before which maybe it’s kind of intuitive but it completely changed her motivation because she was feeling really good about any contributing she made to her own fitness.  

So now, as I said, she’s a regular exerciser.  She feels worthy of it and she counts even small efforts as exercise.  I see we’re way overtime now but I really wanted to share with you that story because I think it’s so common, issues of worthiness, issues of wanting and expecting ourselves to work all the time, issues of thinking that it has to be the full super-duper deal in order to be worthwhile.  Now, we know the truth.  Everything counts and everyone is always worthy because really, worthiness isn't that meaningful or either all worthy or all equally unworthy and therefore, it doesn’t really matter.  That brings us to the end of out show today.  Thank you for being present.  Believe it or not, I still have more of my sleeve in the series on exercise motivation.  So, come back next week for the next episode of Inside Out Weight Loss, and easy exercise motivation.  Would you 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 and register for your free e-mail notifications that will tell you when a new episode is available.  You can choose daily updates or the weekly digest for information on all your favorite personallifemedia.com shows.  If you want to take your journey to the next level, consider purchasing the audio journeys for sale on my site at www.mindforbody.com.  This is your host Renee Stephens and I am on a mission to eradicate the weight struggle from the planet, enabling you to share your abundant soul’s gifts.  Join me as we evolved the world by evolving ourselves.  Take good care.

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