Unlock Self-Love While Releasing Weight: Your Transformation Awaits!
“Unlock Self-Love While Releasing Weight” is not just a workshop; it’s a profound exploration into the connection between self-love and your weight release journey.
This workshop is not about quick fixes; it’s about cultivating the loving mindset and tools that support your well-being for long-term weight loss. Join us as we create a supportive community where self-love becomes the cornerstone of your weight release journey. Your transformation awaits—unlock the power of self-love and let it guide you towards a healthier, happier you!
Session #1:
Shaping a Positive Self-Loving Story
Audio of the Example Positive Self-Loving Story
Notes for Session #1
What is self-love?
- According to the Oxford dictionary it is “Regard for one’s own well-being and happiness.”
- Webster’s dictionary states self-love is “An appreciation of one’s own worth or virtue.”
If self-love is about being able to appreciate your own worth and value and having high regard for your own well-being and happiness, then…
Body love means that you value and have high regard for your body’s best interests.
For the sake of this course, we are going to examine self-love and body-love from that definition.
Your brain is used to the way you think and feel about yourself.
Just like you have a relationship with food, you have a relationship with how you feel and think about yourself and your body.
You’ve spent your entire life collecting words and phrases about your body. All these words and phrases get collected to create your self-concept.
All the wonderful things you feel about yourself, the thoughts that are helpful and kind, are great. It’s the things about your body and yourself that aren’t so kind that we want to dive in and change.
First, know that all of these are OPINIONS:
- What your family thinks
- What your friends think
- What the media thinks about self-love and body-love.
Your opinion of yourself may be a conglomeration of what other people and media think!
You may have never questioned some of your personal beliefs about yourself because they just seem true – but they have all just been based on opinions.
When it comes to self-love and body-love you get to CREATE, DECIDE and CHOOSE how you want to feel about yourself.
But how ?
- Decide the story you want to tell yourself about your health and your body.
- Become aware of the words and phrases you’ve collected along the way that are negatively impacting your self concept. They are all opinions.
- Become your own valentine by realigning yourself to the new story you want to tell about your body and yourself.
Decide on Your Story –
Take some time now to write a quick paragraph of the story you want to tell about yourself highlighting your strength, resilience, and cleverness. If you desire, also weave in aspects of your body.
Here is a model: Example Positive Self-Loving Story
Action Steps for Session 1:
NOVICE LEVEL –
Listen to this workshop. read the Example Positive Self-Loving Story. Then write your own Positive Story.
INTERMEDIATE LEVEL-
Do the assignment above. Add some Self-Loving and Body-Positive Thoughts. Read 3-5 times a week.
ADVANCED LEVEL –
Do the assignments above. Add an action step to help you align more closely with your positive story that you can do within 24 hours.
Report to your accountability group or on our private Facebook page to let everyone know how you are doing.
Session #2:
How Feeling Emotions Honors Your Body
Notes for Session #2
One of the most essential aspects to self-love is learning to feel and be with what is going on inside of you instead of denying feelings, pushing them away and choosing to numb out with food.
What is your relationship with your feelings?
In ThinWithin Life, you have a unique possibility to practice opening to your emotions with the skills and tools I give you to BE with them.
Where are you in terms of feeling your feelings? If you gauge your start point, you can monitor progress
Have you gotten better at sitting with your feelings? How often do you use food to stifle your feelings? Come up with a percentage so you can have that as a starting point this month.
The more you can feel your feelings, the more you release the emotional eating.
After my extensive research, I realized that 95-97% of the time naturally thin people eat just with hunger. It is not connected to food.
A feeling is often a response to a thought. Because thoughts, ideas, and judgments can pass so quickly in our brain, you may not even realize what the thought is but the feeling lingers.
Feelings are Positive, Neutral, or Negative. All feelings are acceptable. They are just vibrations as thoughts that are internalized.
It’s all in the interpretation of the thoughts.
Are you afraid you’ll be overwhelmed by your feelings? Know that feelings typically last for only 60-120 seconds.
You can sit with them, experience the discomfort for a short period, and let them pass like clouds in the sky.
One of the most self-loving things to do is to start becoming comfortable feeling what is really going on inside your mind and body.
If 60 seconds feels too difficult, start with less. Even 5 seconds of begin with emotions is a gateway to become more comfortable with the emotions.
Become aware of what the feeling is.
Let your brain know ~
It can sit with negative feelings. There’s no need to numb out. It’s alright.
A feeling is one word. Multiple words are usually a thought. Get down to the ONE WORD that expresses your feelings.
Allow the thoughts and sit with this emotion for 90 seconds or scale up your ability to be with your feelings instead of numbing them out.
The next time you want to eat ask…
- Am I hungry? If not…
- What is the feeling I am experiencing? Anxious, Disappointed, Maybe t’s just a sensation like tightness in the throat or other part of your body.
- Am I willing to sit with it for up to 90 seconds? If not, that is okay. Maybe next time you will. No judgment.
When you get good at sitting with feelings, then you can really live the ThinWithin Life. Emotions are normal. Find a healthier way to deal with these feelings.
Action Steps for Session 2:
NOVICE LEVEL – If you aren’t ready to progress with a new action step stay where you are finding your point of growth.
Week 1 – Read the Example Positive Self-Loving Story. Then write your own Positive Story. If you are ready add some Self-Loving and Body-Positive Thoughts. Read 3-5 times a week.
INTERMEDIATE LEVEL-
Next time you are thinking about food but not hungry, identify the feeling you are experiencing. Then, at least once this week, ask yourself if you would be willing to sit with the emotion for 90 seconds (even 5 seconds is acceptable as a starting point). No judgment if you are unwilling. Try again next time until your brain becomes more comfortable with the idea.
ADVANCED LEVEL –
Do the practice above as many times as you can this week.
Report to your accountability group or on our private Facebook page to let everyone know how you are doing.
Session #3:
Loving Yourself through the Fatter Chatter
Notes for Session #3
Do you suffer from bouts of what I call “Fatter Chatter”? A swirling of negative thoughts that keep you from loving yourself.
Generally people react to thinking poorly about themselves and their bodies in one of three ways. One is a healthy reaction. The other two make the situation worse.
Common Reactions to “Fatter Chatter”:
1. UNHELPFUL: Your energy collapses in and you isolate
2. UNHELPFUL: Your energy grows and focusses outward. Either you get angry and defensive with yourself or others.
3. HELPFUL: You get honest and real. Knowing you are not always going to feel amazing about your body or yourself, you decide to spiral up your thoughts. Instead of participating further in the “Fatter Chatter,” make a plan to take a step toward your goal that feels doable or exciting in the moment.
What do you do? Which of the 3 is your habitual reaction to these “Fat Attacks”?
Mental “Fat Attacks” happen quickly and are usually unconscious so recognizing them entails working backward from the onslaught of negativity to the moment it began.
Strategy to understand the “Fat Attack”:
Did you step on the scale and get a number you didn’t like? Are your clothes fitting tighter due to salt intake or monthly hormones? Was someone’s comment about your body interpreted negatively? Maybe you started to judge yourself by someone else’s body.
Ask yourself what has actually changed in the past 72 hours. Usually, you’ll be able to come up with an answer that gets to the source of the problem.
When you have a “Fat Attack” it feels terrible. You might feel small or less significant. Maybe even broken. You might start to see mistakes in everything you do or that every single part of you is wrong.
Recognize an attack for what it is. Just thoughts.
It’s an opportunity to CHOOSE your thoughts even if you need to start small and ladder up to the next positive thought (Explanation of Ladder Thoughts). It’s a reminder to feed your brain positive information about your body and your efforts.
Only you can decide to restore yourself to the knowledge of your own goodness.
If you find yourself unusually hard on yourself, it may be useful to try some of these techniques to get you out of the frame of mind of a fat-attack:
Being lighter and thinner is a body size. A body size cannot give you love or pleasure. People give magical power to thinness and then believe they need the thinness to get the power back.
But the power was yours to begin with; the joy, the self-worth, and the other emotions that you crave are internal states. Not external!
What you really want has nothing to do with what you weigh on a scale.
Here are 5 ideas to get you out of a mental “fat attack”:
1. Realize your fatter chatter is a thought pattern. This mental chatter is a smokescreen for other feelings. Take time to think about what the underlying feeling is. Why are you feeling this way?
- Are you feeling guilty? Ashamed? Scared? Vulnerable? Lonely?
- WHY?
- Accurately identifying and solving these emotional conundrums is an important first step in tackling fat feelings.
2. Stop the fat-talk. When you find yourself talking to your partner or friend about feeling fat, STOP IT. If someone does it to you, refuse to play the game. Acknowledge your feelings, but don’t indulge.
Fatter-chatter is like scratching a mosquito bite. 10 seconds of pleasure for hours of irritation and pain that follows it.
3. Accentuate the positive. Instead of moaning about things you don’t like about your body, switch your focus to things that your body can do (actions) that make you feel kick-ass and strong.
4. Know your fatter chatter triggers. A trigger is simply the circumstance or event that prompted you to think or feel fat, unattractive, physically vulnerable, etc. Many triggers are unavoidable, but you can look for patterns and try to reduce your exposure to them.
5. Work on self-acceptance skills. Every. Single. Day. Self-acceptance isn’t about pretending you’re flawless. Self-acceptance is about recognizing that it’s normal to like certain aspects of yourself and your body more than other aspects.
Self-acceptance is about recognizing that it’s normal to like certain aspects of yourself and your body more than other aspects.
State-Changing Ideas to reduce your fatter chatter
- Listen to music. Something that is mellow and calming.
- Take a nap
- Take a bath
- Take a walk
- Take a few minute break
- Become mindful by spending 3 minutes looking at one object in great detail. Use a timer.
- Go outside (if it’s too cold or going outside is not an option, look out the window)
- Wear an outfit that makes you feel attractive, something that may feel nice against your skin or that has colors that relax you.
- Give yourself a hug and accept it
- Give a hug to someone safe and receive theirs in return
- Meditate
- Take a few deep breaths
Action Steps for Session 3:
NOVICE LEVEL – If you aren’t ready to progress with a new action step stay where you are finding your point of growth.
Week 1 – Read the Example Positive Self-Loving Story. Then write your own Positive Story. If you are ready add some Self-Loving and Body-Positive Thoughts. Read 3-5 times a week.
Week 2 – Next time you are thinking about food but not hungry, identify the feeling you are experiencing. Then, at least once this week, ask yourself if you would be willing to sit with the emotion for 90 seconds (even 5 seconds is acceptable as a starting point). No judgment if you are unwilling. Try again next time until your brain becomes more comfortable with the idea.
INTERMEDIATE LEVEL-
Listen to this workshop. Decide what your habitual reaction to the negative “Fatter Chatter” is. If it is not helpful and you get stuck in it, review the last 72 hours to find the starting point. Then, seeing the logical beginning of the spiral down in your thoughts, build yourself back up. Use Ladder Thoughts if you need the support or take a State Change step mentioned in the notes above.
ADVANCED LEVEL –
Do the assignment above and take 2 self-loving breaks a day, like while brushing your teeth, and feed your mind proof of how well you are doing. Recount all the little ThinWithin things you accomplished to make it a successful day. Your brain needs reminders because it is usually looking for problems to solve, not celebrations. You have to teach it to celebrate.
Report to your accountability group or on our private Facebook page to let everyone know how you are doing.
Session #4:
Transforming Your Thoughts Through Psychological Flexibility
Notes for Session #4
Psychological flexibility is the ability to make the NEXT BEST decision even when you don’t want to or it feels hard.
Transformation is not about perfection; it’s about reaching for the next best thing instead of giving up.
Do you find yourself thinking that your thoughts and actions have to be perfect in order for you to see results? That’s diet mentality. Everyone who has lost weight here at ThinWithin Life has not been “perfect.”
Let go of perfection. Put less pressure on yourself!
Is the rigidity creating negative critical thoughts? Perfectionism is unrealistic and can lead to binges or giving up.
Get in the habit of reaching for your next best thought and or decision with this thought pattern.
When I think…
It makes me feel…
Instead, I want to remind myself…
Which makes me feel…
As a result, I want to…
Open up the You Matter Worksheet to follow all the steps necessary to make the transformation of negative thoughts a reality by becoming more psychologically flexible.
What is a loving place to be for yourself? Flexible!
The power of getting good at being flexible is moving from defeated to excited, ashamed to proud, stuck to inspired
Action Steps for Session 4:
NOVICE LEVEL – If you aren’t ready to progress with a new action step, stay where you are finding your point of growth.
Week 1 – Read the Example Positive Self-Loving Story. Then write your own Positive Story. If you are ready add some Self-Loving and Body-Positive Thoughts. Read 3-5 times a week.
Week 2 – Next time you are thinking about food but not hungry, identify the feeling you are experiencing. Then, at least once this week, ask yourself if you would be willing to sit with the emotion for 90 seconds (even 5 seconds is acceptable as a starting point). No judgment if you are unwilling. Try again next time until your brain becomes more comfortable with the idea.
Week 3 – Decide what your habitual reaction to the negative “Fatter Chatter” is. If it is not helpful and you get stuck in it, review the last 72 hours to find the starting point. Then, seeing the logical beginning of the spiral down in your thoughts, build yourself back up. Use Ladder Thoughts if you need the support or take a State Change step mentioned in the notes above.
INTERMEDIATE LEVEL-
Listen to this workshop. Complete the You Matter Worksheet. Take at least one thought, rework it with sentence starters, and read it 3-5 days this week to create more psychological flexibility.
ADVANCED LEVEL –
Do the assignment above for at least 2 thoughts.
Report to your accountability group or on our private Facebook page to let everyone know how you are doing.
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