Part 3: Losing Weight and Increasing Connection

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Related Episodes:

• Part 1: Losing Weight and Gaining Money
• Part 2: Losing Weight and Saving Time
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Full Episode Transcript:

Part 3: Losing Weight and Increasing Connection

Hey there, welcome to the podcast. We are now on part three of the three-part series on losing weight. Part one was losing weight and gaining money, so fun. Part two was on losing weight and saving time, even more fun. And part three, today’s episode is on losing weight and increasing connection.

I saved this one for last because this one I think really adds the most to your life. Of course, besides adding extra time to your life as I discussed in Part 2. Without time, it is certainly difficult to enjoy that time more, so in a way, increasing connection and saving time are very intertwined.

So, what I mean by losing weight and increasing connection is your connection with other people, nature, and even yourself. I’m going to explain each of these and help you to really see how much more of those benefits of weight loss really branch off from those more obvious ones. The obvious ones like better physical health, more physical ability or stamina, and improved emotional health.

Alright, so some of the things that happen with losing weight, especially when it’s done by changing your eating habits, are increased energy, improved self-confidence, self-love and self-esteem, increased ability to talk kindly to yourself and less negative self-talk. Just to name a few.

But these things all help with your connection that you have to other people, yourself, nature, God or whomever or whatever you believe in. That’s because your relationship with other people, yourself, nature, God, et cetera all has to do with how you were thinking and feeling.

Did you know that you can improve any relationship with any person just by improving how you think and feel? Incredible right? So, imagine if you’re just feeling better about yourself overall, happier, more energetic, more passionate about things, how that would just sort of radiate off of you. Imagine how that affects the person that you live with, or the people you live with. Imagine how it affects your relationship with yourself.

So, just in case you’re not sure why losing weight will help with improved self-talk and self-confidence and self-love and all the things that I mentioned earlier, I’ll explain.

I want to be clear that if you are trying to lose weight and you end up losing the weight, it’s not the number on the scale or how you look in the mirror that ends up improving self-confidence and self-love. But along with working on the eating house specifically, my clients that are trying to lose weight, we’re oftentimes working on improved self-talk and improved self-love and confidence before they even have the weight loss results that they are working toward.

That’s because it’s very important to start feeling better sooner. Why wait until you have the result. And I think it’s very important to start helping you become aware that you can feel better about yourself and have an improved relationship with yourself regardless of your weight.

Regardless of how you fit in your clothes. Regardless of how you feel that you look in the mirror. Because let’s face it, most of us are no longer in our 20s. So, if your self-love, confidence and even self-value or worthiness are dependent upon how we look, it’s all just going to go downhill right?

The other thing too is that when you increase the self-confidence, self-love even self-belief and improve the inner dialogue or self-talk, that helps you to feel better. Meaning, feel better emotions that help you to be able to do the actions needed to lose the weight that you want to lose.

So, if deep down you’re having thoughts like “I don’t think I can do this”, “I’m not worthy of having all the things that I want”, “I’m still going to be ugly,” you’re not going to feel those energizing feelings like motivation, drive, even excitement to do the things to get the results you want.

Also, if you’re feeling crummy, you’re going to be much more likely to say, “Screw it, I’m just going to eat the package of cookies.” And that’s just going to set you back.

Whereas, if you are increasing your awareness of the negative inner talk and intentionally thinking of some positive things about yourself and your capabilities, you’re going to start noticing that you’re feeling better. You’re feeling more capable. You were feeling like those results are yours.

Then, it’s going to start to become more habit for you to think better thoughts about yourself. You’re going to start walking by that mirror and looking in it instead of looking away. Then you’ll start smiling when you look in it. Then you’ll start looking forward to looking in the mirror. How fun is that?

And when you’re feeling increased self-love and self-confidence, what do you think happens with you and your significant other? They notice this and they love this. Trust me. Your significant other just wants to see you happy and for you to be healthy. You’re on the same team. They may even want to start changing their eating habits too.

You’ll even potentially find yourself having more desire to be intimate with your significant other. You won’t feel as self-conscious. Heck, maybe you’ll even buy that lingerie that you never thought you’d wear in a million years.

Or if you don’t have a significant other right now, you will probably be noticing that you’re surer of yourself and more excited to go out and date. More confidence to go out there and date. And when you’re feeling better about yourself, you’re going to be attracting the type of person that you want to attract.

You’re going to feel worthy of the person that you really want to be attracting. When you’re starting to think and feel better about yourself before you even have those weight loss results.

And can you imagine how it’ll be with your children, if you have children in the house, or adult children. You’ll be able to do more with them. And when you’re doing activities with them, you won’t feel as though you’re holding them back. You won’t be worried ahead of time that you won’t be able to go for a three-mile walk with them.

And your friends, you’ll probably feel better around them too. Maybe find yourself wanting to do more activities with them, not being fearful of them judging you while you’re eating. Not worrying about overdoing it at a party.

Also, a big thing with increasing connection at social events when you’ve lost weight from changing your eating habits is that you can focus more on the people rather than the food. You end up getting more fulfillment from the people you’re surrounded by and end up in conversation with.

You learn how to focus more on them then the food that’s at the social event. So, it’s an actual social event and not just a food event. And leaving a social event feeling like you had a really great conversation and felt connected to someone, provides much longer lasting pleasure than overdoing it at the dessert table.

An added benefit is that you won’t then feel bad afterwards. Physically, or mentally/emotionally.

You may also find that you’ll increase connection with community. If you’re out and doing more things because you have more energy or even self-confidence, you’ll be meeting new people or increasing your connection with some of the people that you already did know.

If church is a really important part of your life, then you might find yourself getting more passionate and more involved in church.

That brings me to losing weight and increasing connection with nature and even with God or whomever/whatever you believe in.

So, one of the big reasons that my career women want to lose weight is that they want to be able to go outside and enjoy nature more. Many of them want to be able to go on hikes or walk or run 5K races. And this is mainly for the purpose of just being able to be outside more.

If you’re feeling like you don’t have the energy or even the stamina to be outside, go for walks or hikes and enjoy nature as much as you’d really like to, losing weight especially by changing your eating habits, can really help with this.

Also, because you’re learning how to establish habits, this crosses over to movement or exercise habits. So maybe that looks like starting a habit of walking outside two times a week for a length of time that feels very doable for you, then increasing that to 3, then 4 times a week.

Also, when you are outside in nature, if you’re feeling better mentally and emotionally, you’re typically able to be more present with nature. And I just want to mention, this also goes along with your connection with other people. Being much more present, rather than having those constant negative thoughts going around in your head.

Just think about how much lighter you’ll feel. How much more focused you can be on what’s around you, or who’s in front of you. Maybe even going for walks with your significant other, your children, your friend. Or even just going for walks by yourself and enjoying just being with yourself.

That brings me to losing weight and increasing connection with yourself. This one is so incredibly important. Because really it kind of all stems from here.

When you can increase your connection with yourself, that just flows outward. That helps you increase your connection with others.

So, what I mean by increasing your connection with yourself is that you really start seeing more of the positive things about yourself and not just being focused on the negative and not being focused on maybe what your body looks like.

You start really liking and loving yourself even more than you currently do. Or if you don’t currently like or love yourself, you start learning how to like and love yourself naturally by the work that we do. And it feels really good. You start wanting to be around yourself more.

I’ll tell you something. When I was young, I didn’t like myself. I had no self-esteem, no real self-confidence, and definitely no self-love. This was no fault of anyone. It just was. But I decided that it wasn’t something I wanted to go the rest of my life with. So, I started little by little noticing some of the positive things.

Now, I didn’t have a coach to help me, so knowing what I know now, along with noticing some of those positive things, I would also notice the negative talk and really try to become aware of that.

That’s because, if you just poke focus on the positive self-talk, the negative self-talk can sit in the back of the closet so to speak. It can just be ignored, which means that it’s still there unfortunately. And you’re just sort of hiding it with the positive self-talk.

Now the positive self-talk is good, as long as it’s believable. But you really do need a mixture of the two. You need to start getting awareness of the negative self-talk, along with increasing some of the positive self-talk. That way, that negative self-talk starts to become less and less because you’re aware of it. And you’re aware of the situations that typically will trigger negative self-talk.

And that way, the negative self-talk isn’t just stuffed in the back of the closet. You can declutter that closet. And that’s going to feel so much better. So just imagine that relationship and that connection with yourself when you’re no longer talking unkindly to yourself constantly. Where you can feel like you like yourself and love yourself unconditionally.

Regardless of what you look like and regardless of the number on the scale. Because our bodies are just the vessels that enable us to experience the world.

Another thing that I wanted to mention with losing weight and increasing connection with yourself is that if you’re no longer having all of these thoughts about your eating habits and wanting to lose weight, you’re no longer spending all the time and energy caught in the pain of this. Therefore, you’re much better able to focus on your life and yourself.

You’re much more centered and present with yourself. You don’t have those constant nagging thoughts about your weight going through your head. You’re able to free yourself and think about other things that you really want to think about. Or you can just be with yourself without those painful thoughts Popping into your head.

So, I guess with the title of this episode losing weight and increasing connection, it’s much less the weight loss result and much more the process we go through to get those results. And of course, you’re going to think and feel differently about yourself after you have those results, but even more of how you think and feel about yourself is going to come before you even have those results. So good.

Why not start with all of that now? Why wait? That’s my philosophy at least. And like I said, when you think and feel better before you even have the weight loss results, it makes doing the actions that will get you those results a lot easier. There won’t be nearly as much friction there. It’ll feel much more natural.

Alright, so that’s what I have for you on losing weight and increasing connection. This was the last of that three-part series, so if you haven’t listened to parts one and two, go back and listen to those. I even get into some of the math of it, with both the money and the time. So fun. Thanks so much for listening, take care and I’ll talk with you soon.