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Ep. 223: LETTING GO of Weight

In today’s episode of the Fitness Matters podcast, we’re talking about how “letting go” is the key to achieving your WEIGHT LOSS goals.

Have you ever wondered🤔 what may be stopping you from getting where you want to go with your weight?  And would you be surprised to hear that you have the sharpest tool⛏️ in the shed available to you right now that will allow you to CREATE THE FUTURE YOU WANT?

In today’s episode of the Fitness Matters podcast, we’re talking about how “letting go” is the key to achieving your WEIGHT LOSS goals. Plus I’m sharing the ONE THING that will get you anywhere you want to go – with WEIGHT LOSS or anything else🤗!

Are you ready?  Let’s GO! 

February Book Club
Pahla B’s Book Club pick for February is “Live the Best Story of Your Life,” by Bob Litwin. First-time Chirp Audiobooks users can get $5 off any purchase by using the code PAHLA5 – this link will take you directly there AND apply the discount: https://bit.ly/BestStory5Off
(And previous Chirp users can snag this title at just $3.99 for a limited time!)
Canadian friends: this book is available on Chirp in Canada too!
REGISTER for this month’s LIVE Book Club event on Sunday, February 27th here: https://bit.ly/FEBBookClubReg

Enjoying the podcast?  SHARE it with your friends!  💛

Letting Go Of Weight (full transcript)

You’re listening to The Fitness Matters Podcast with Pahla B. And this is episode number 223, “Letting Go of Weight.”

Welcome to The Fitness Matters Podcast where every week we talk about the fitness matters that matter to you. I’m Pahla B, YouTuber, certified life and weight loss coach, soon to be author, and your best middle-aged fitness friend. Are you ready to talk about the fitness mindset that matters to you? Me too. Let’s go.

Hello, hello, my friends. How are you today? I am so excited about this topic as I always am, because have you ever thought about that – about how I create a podcast? I don’t just have a list of topics and come to them humdrum like, “Gee, I guess, I’ll talk about this.” I very frequently have a list of topics, and then on the day of recording, I’m like, “Nope, I got something else I want to talk about.” This is actually one of those times. I had a whole podcast that will probably still come to light at some point, but I was listening to a podcast yesterday, and it’s wildly unrelated. It’s how to make money as a life coach by Stacey Boehman. And it was not related to weight loss. It was not related to really anything, but she said something in just this certain way that my brain was like, “I’ve got to talk about this.” So, that’s what we’re talking about today.

But hey, before we get going, let me tell you really quickly about this month’s book club.  I’m really excited. This is – especially as compared to last month, “How Emotions are Made” – this book, “How to Live the Best Story of Your Life” by Bob Litwin, is simple to read, very easy to digest. I think if you have ever listened to this podcast ever, you’re going to find almost all of the ideas incredibly familiar – really, really imminently readable and/or listenable. I’m actually listening via Chirp audio books, who is in partnership with the Pahla B Wellness Over 50 Book Club.

And if you are a brand new Chirp user, you can get $5 off of your first purchase in the US or Canada with the code, Pahla5, that’s P-A-H-L-A, and the number five. If you are not a new user, you can still pick up this book for really cheap. It’s 3.99 this month. And that’s what Chirp does. They put books, like big popular books, on limited time discounts, which is so phenomenal because you don’t have to have any kind of subscription or any kind of ongoing relationship with them. And you can get books. They’re really cheap. I know it’s not their tagline, but I’ll tell you what. I’m going to make it our tagline here that Chirp is cheap.

And in the description box or the show notes, wherever you watch or listen, there’s always a way to get to it. I have a link for you that takes you directly to this month’s book and already applies the $5 off discount. I also have the link for you to sign up for this month’s live book club. It’s going to be Sunday, February 27th, at 7:00 AM Pacific time. And it’s via Zoom. We’re all together. We’re hanging out. So you need to sign up to register so that . . .  I’m only letting in the people who actually want to be there as opposed to, I don’t know how you would find some random Zoom link and join, but apparently this is a thing that happens. So, I am protecting against that. There you go.

Hey, let’s talk about losing, not even losing, let’s talk about “letting go” of weight. And I used that phrase really, really specifically, because I think that this visual might be the key to unlocking something for you. That’s what we do here on the podcast. Again, I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about how and why I do this podcast. It is my job and I take it very seriously to teach you things. And it’s my job as a professional teacher to come up with concepts and thought models and visuals and analogies and metaphors that can help you understand what I’m talking about. Because here’s the thing. I actually say the same thing almost every time. Truly, if I were to just say in simple words, “Here’s what you do; here’s why this works,” it would be the same message every single time. But it’s my job to creatively construct a different way of talking about it, a different way of coming at it so that it helps. For me, the way I think about it is that it helps break down some of the outer shell.

My brain doesn’t want to accept a new idea. And yet, when I come at it with a different kind of question or a different way of looking at it, or a different visual or some kind of other analogy, or just even using different words for the same concept, my brain will take it in differently. It’s like erosion. It’s like scraping off that layer every time we come at it until underneath is exposed this beautiful diamond of your brain. Because frankly, that is what’s in there.

You have the sharpest tool in the shed in your head. Your brain can take you anywhere you want to go. But here’s what’s happening currently: you are hanging on to your weight. I know I’ve already encountered some resistance when I said that. “No, Pahla, I really want to let this go. I really want to lose weight. I hate having this extra weight. I hate that this is what my life is, that this is what my body is. I’ve got to get rid of it.” That, my friends, could be even part of the problem – that story that you are telling yourself about hating the weight, needing to get rid of it.

Have you ever thought about how passionately you talk – even in your own head, not necessarily to other people – but how passionately you talk about your body, your weight, your habits? That passion, that emotion, is you holding on. If you’ve ever thought about the difference between holding on and letting go, I want you to use your hand right now to grip something. Do you feel that tension? Do you feel that strength, that resistance, that power? And when you open up your hand and let go, it feels very . . .  the word that’s coming to me is “calm.” You might think of it kind of differently. Let your body be the guide to whatever word you use here. For me, it feels easy. That is the difference between clinging – hanging on to these things that we’re going to talk about today – or letting go. Right now, you are clinging, hanging on to your weight metaphorically. And when you let go, it will feel the same way it feels when you open up your grip: calm, easy, gentle, relaxed, whatever word comes best to you.

Now, here’s the thing about today. Today is probably one of the most open-ended podcasts that I have ever recorded. And I was thinking about why that is, because no matter how many examples I came up with, I realized that there were still dozens, hundreds, thousands more. This is probably one of the most individual things that we have ever talked about. And therefore, I’m intentionally going to leave it very open-ended for you to explore on your own. Yes, you have homework. I’m already going to just spoil that one for you. There’s almost always homework, but today I’m telling you straight up, right up front, there’s going to be homework for you to really explore with this one.

I came up with three categories of ways in which we cling to our weight. And you will very likely, well, I’m going to suggest that you’re probably going to recognize yourself in at least one of them. And yes, there is overlap, and there’s more to it. So I’ve got these three broad categories. And this is not an exhaustive list.

So the one thing that I was thinking that we all do, and let me just be so, so, so clear. Sometimes I think when you hear yourself in the podcast, you’re like, “Oh my gosh, that’s me.” And then you recognize that you automatically pile on some judgment or embarrassment or shame on top of it because you think that you are the only one. And let me be incredibly clear today, that the reason I am even recording this podcast is because I am describing myself. These three categories of clinging to something are absolutely a description of me clinging to old ways, old habits, old thoughts, old ideas, old feelings, old stories, old everything that I had to let go of to create the future that I want for myself.

So category number one is things to loosen your grip on. And I’ve really specifically given it three different emotions, but I promise there are others that would totally fit here. But for me, the emotions that I had to let go of in order to let go of weight and move to the body I want, the life that I want, I had to let go of anger, sadness and resentment. And actually when I was taking my notes, I put an “or” between those. But for me, it was “and.” It was all three of them and there are probably others, but these were the three emotions that I was able to come up with, right off the top of my head. They were right there on the surface as being obvious examples of things that I needed to let go of.

And I want to be really clear here that I am not saying that you should not feel these feelings. I am not saying that you, as you let go, that you are not going to feel anger, sadness, resentment, or whatever other feeling you come up with when you hear this segment. What I’m saying is that what I had to let go of was clinging to it.

Now, here’s the thing that’s really funny, especially if you have listened to this podcast for a while. I have talked about my relationship with the feeling of anger, how I had a lot of fear about it, lots of childhood stories about anger and what it means, and how it presents, and what happens to people who are in the path of it – all kinds of stories about anger that were not serving me.

And my relationship with anger was such that I did not allow myself to feel it fully. And by not allowing myself to feel it fully, what I was doing was stuffing it down and therefore feeling it partially pretty much all the time. Same with sadness. Even though, honestly, I felt like I had a great relationship with sadness. Boy, oh boy, I could feel sadness at the drop of a hat. Boom, here come the tears. But I was doing the same thing with sadness and with resentment. That I was feeling low grade, pretty much all the time – not all the time, like really, really all the time – but so frequently, so often. I found that I would ruminate on these topics. I would ruminate on the things that were happening that I thought created the feeling for me. What was creating the feeling, of course, was the continuation of those thoughts.

The thought creates the feeling every single time. This is the point in the podcast in which I’m going to send you over to listen to Episode 32, How to Change (https://getyourgoal.com/podcasts/32-how-to-change/), where we talk very clearly, and for the entire podcast, about how your thoughts always create your feelings, which always drive your actions, which therefore, of course, get you results.

So, in my mind, things outside of me were creating these feelings for me. I didn’t want to feel them because they’re uncomfortable. I mean, goodness, when I said the word anger or sadness or resentment, didn’t you feel your shoulder crunch up like, “I don’t really want to talk about that”? You probably have the same relationship with one of these three (or whatever is your go-to) that I did with sadness. I thought I had a great relationship. I thought I was capable of feeling it just all the time easily. I didn’t think that it was something that I was stuffing down. But when I allowed myself to feel it all the way through, here’s the shocking thing that happens, here’s what you’re going to let go of. You’re going to let go of stuffing it down, and you’re literally going to let it go by allowing it to come up and feeling it all the way through.

Here’s why we don’t want to do this. I mean, yes, you actually do want to do this, but why we think we don’t want to do it: it’s scary. It absolutely is. When we have uncomfortable feelings, it’s right there in their title. They’re uncomfortable. We would rather – and this is psychology 101 – we would rather seek pleasure and avoid pain. This is so completely . . .  I always like to say, this is super natural. Not like it’s above and beyond what is natural in the world, but it’s very natural. This is how we all behave. It is a learned skill to allow your feelings, your uncomfortable feelings to exist in your body. And yet, that uncomfortable feeling is also “super natural.” Big space between those two words. It’s not supernatural. It’s very natural that these feelings exist.

Your feelings are just chemistry. Your brain has a thought. That’s electricity. It’s an electrical impulse that sparks off this cascade of hormones, chemicals, probably other stuff that I don’t know that just reacts in your body. That is all that is happening. And yet, because it causes our heart to beat faster, sometimes it causes your throat to feel like it’s constricting or your mouth to get dry. It causes your skin to get clammy. For me, it’s more than clammy. I sweat a lot. Sometimes there’s like a vasomotor response with tears. And for me, lots of drooling, which is so funny. I don’t think I’ve talked about this, but I’ve noticed that there exists when I allow these feelings, a lot of snot and drool. It’s fascinating to me. And honestly, for me, that’s part of my resistance to it personally. It feels like there’s almost a loss of bodily control.

I mean, we teach ourselves not to drool. As babies, we drool a lot. And then we teach ourselves to close our mouth and pull in your tongue and look a certain way. By allowing those responses – the snot to flow, the tears to flow, the drool to flow – it feels like a loss of bodily control, and in that sense, almost a loss of dignity. That again adds to that fear, that resistance of wanting to feel these feelings.

But here is the best news that I can offer you in the world. All of your feelings are temporary. They come up, you allow your body to do its chemical thing. And then it dissipates every single time with every single emotion. Now, here’s what I’m going to tell you because you’re like, “No, that’s not true. I have felt the same sadness about X, Y, or Z.” Yes. When you have a thought again, you can create that feeling again. Absolutely. I’m not saying if you feel sadness once, you’re never going to feel sadness again. Of course, you’re going to feel sadness again. But it will also come up and dissipate.

Here’s – it’s wildly unrelated, but it’s something that I’ve been saying to myself that feels really helpful. So, I’m offering it to you as a helpful thought.

Longtime listeners will understand my longtime issues and ongoing issues with keeping my house clean. I don’t love to clean my house, but I love to have a clean house. And one of the things that stops me from cleaning my house – and this is so ironic – but it’s the thought of, “Well, it’s just going to get dirty again anyway.” It’s a really unhelpful thought, by the way, to think that there’s no point in doing whatever it is that you’re doing. And that’s a global thing that I’m telling you. This is just good life advice. When you think that there’s no point, you won’t do whatever it is that you also simultaneously want to do, because you want that thing. You want that result. You want that feeling of having that result in your life.

But here’s what I remind myself of as I am vacuuming: it feels so good when my house is clean because it’s temporary. The only way we know what something is, is by contrast to what it isn’t. Again, that is general life advice.

The reason sadness feels so sad is because we know what happiness is. The reason anger feels so angry is because we know what calm feels like. The reason resentment feels so resentful is because we know what gratitude feels like. The reason things feel the way they feel is because they’re temporary and because there’s a flip to that coin.

Reminding myself of the temporariness of every single one of my feelings and knowing that any feeling, no matter how uncomfortable it is, has an opposite that I am also capable of feeling – reminding myself of those really basic principles – is what helps me let go of the resistance to feeling them. Letting go of resistance to your emotions will allow you to let go of weight.

We all have different ways of dealing with different emotions, but I’m going to hand you this idea that lots of us, for lots of reasons, stuff down our emotions with a couple of different things. We stuff down our emotions quite literally with food, frequently lots of us.

We also – and here I am raising my hand – stuff down emotions with overexercise. I also stuff down my emotions by playing on my phone. I stuff down my emotions by sitting on the couch and watching TV – by avoiding, resisting, trying not to feel them. I do other things that have caused other results in my life. I mean, for me, it’s not always about my weight. I imagine that as I’m saying this, you can picture other results you have created for yourself and your life from this stuffing down. One of our more obvious ones is weight gain, but it’s not the only byproduct of the stuffing down.

When you allow, when you let go of that resistance to feeling, your feelings will also let go. They will come up, and they will release. They will dissipate. And then you can move forward. You will find yourself not doing the behaviors that have created weight gain in your life when you allow your feelings.

The second category is letting go of the idea of yourself as a certain person or a certain type of person, really specifically. This one for me was a little trickier to hear. I laid these out for you in the order in which I discovered them for myself. Your journey through letting go is going to be your own journey. And that’s why I’m offering this podcast to you open-ended. Here is where you can explore for yourself. For me, I didn’t really think that I had these preconceived notions of myself. We all do, though. This is also psychology 101. This is how your brain works. It categorizes things. And thank goodness for it.

Truly, if you had a brain that did not categorize things, you would be incapable. You’d be immobile. There would be way too much sensory input for you to do anything. Your brain puts things in categories, including you, that just make sense so that it can tune out all of the inputs and just continue dropping things into buckets. It’s much easier to categorize things and then move forward from there. That’s why your brain does this. It’s very difficult to notice your own categories because your brain operates this way so automatically. Until you start exploring on purpose, you truly might not know how much you have pigeonholed yourself.

And I say this again with love: you don’t pigeonhole yourself on purpose. You didn’t wake up one day and say, “I’m going to limit myself.” This is just how your brain works. It’s completely normal, completely okay. It’s supernatural. And you can overcome it by recognizing it.

I used to call myself a person who didn’t finish things. And I never, ever – until I became aware of it – said those words out loud, or even heard them like that in my head. I simply didn’t finish things and felt like, “Yeah, of course not.” When I started exploring what that was and what that meant to me, and rubbed up against the friction of wanting to be able to finish something, really specifically my first marathon – oh my gosh, how many years ago was that? 13 years ago – that was when I noticed it for myself like, oh my gosh, I think of myself as somebody who can’t finish things, somebody who doesn’t finish things.

I had very unknowingly pigeonholed myself as the girl who quits. Who knew? Well, I didn’t until I did, because I thought of myself that way. I had quit everything. It felt like, “Well of course, obviously, I quit this because I’m the girl who quits.” But as soon as I didn’t want to be that person anymore, it felt very uncomfortable. And that’s when I noticed it, that discomfort that you feel when you want something for yourself. There’s a type of person that you think you are, that you are not going to be anymore when you have the thing that you want.

In order to finish my career, to get to success, I had to let go of being the type of person who quit. I had to keep moving forward, no matter what.

With regard to weight loss, really specifically, some of the types of people that I hear you categorizing yourself as are, “Well, I just, I love food so much. I’m a foodie. I could never eat the same thing every day. I love to cook. I love a lot of variety.” These sentences all absolutely sound factual, truthful, believable. And they are. And they’re not in and of themselves unhelpful.

I’m not telling you, by the way, I’m not telling you that you can’t be a foodie. I’m not telling you that you can’t love to eat. I’m not telling you that you can’t love to cook. In fact, I do love to eat. I do love to cook. I don’t think I’m a foodie. I’m way too picky to consider myself a foodie, but I enjoy cooking. And boy do I enjoy eating. I’m not saying that you have to let go of those stories about yourself. I’m saying that you need to let go of their consequences.

You can be a person who loves to cook and counts calories. You can be a person who loves to eat and eats in portions that make sense for your goals. You can be anybody, anytime, any way you want to. Let me just blanket lay that out there. In order to be that person though, you have to recognize the person that you think you are right now and let go of how that is holding you back.

Now for me personally, I did actually have to let go of being the person who quits. I had to let go of being a procrastinator. Those were two things that I truly do not think about myself anymore.

In the case of you discovering the type of person that you think you are now versus the type of person who has your goal, you might find that it’s not diametrically opposed. It doesn’t have to be a complete letting go of that story about yourself, but it might be a loosening of the reins. It might be letting go of, well, of the parenthetical that you’re not hearing. When you say, “I’m a foodie.” Parenthetical, I’m holding parenthesis with my hands that you can’t see, because this is a podcast, but the parenthetical is there. And that means “I eat too much.” And/or that means “I have a hard time counting calories.” And/or that means that “losing weight is difficult for me.” There’s a parenthetical that you have to let go of – that you are going to want to let go of – that’s going to feel really good to let go of. And simultaneously, you can retain the parts of yourself that feel good and helpful and are not blocking you from the thing that you want.

The third category . . .   and this one honestly is still hard for me to talk about because I’m still finding it in my life. Well, I’m still finding resistance to feeling feelings also. And I am still butting up against all three of these. I don’t know why this one is so hard. Well, I do. I know exactly why this one is so hard. This one felt the most comfortable. Giving this up, felt like letting go of my baby blanket. It felt like letting go of my childhood in so many ways. And that’s because this category is letting go of feeling sorry for yourself – helplessness, powerlessness, and blaming other people. For lots of us, this is our childhood. For lots of us, this is the only way that our parents looked at the world. For lots of us, this was the first story we heard. It was the overarching story of THE WAY THE WORLD WORDS in all caps.

For me personally, feeling sorry for myself was a story that I heard from both of my parents about their own view of their lives, which came from their parents, which came from their parents, I assume. I feel like learned helplessness, powerlessness, blaming other people and feeling sorry for yourself are so common and so pervasive and so hard to let go of. I vividly remember the moment when it was pointed out to me, even though I can’t remember the exact thing that I was saying in which it was pointed out to me. I’m going to tell you this story.

So my husband and I were out for a long run, training for something, several years ago at this point, because I have not run that long in a really long time. But we were out running and we’re many miles into the day, where your brain starts to go different places and your body is breaking down. Your brain is breaking down. You’re breaking down a lot of barriers. You’re letting go of a lot of things you cling to as a human being. And it’s one of the reasons why I love endurance running, just so you know. But we were talking about business and I said something. And if I had to guess, I would say it was something like, “This is hard for me because . . . ” Or, “This is harder for me than other people because . . . ” But I don’t know if I said it exactly like that.

And I was making some correlation to something that my dad had done or said when I was a kid or something about my dad’s world view. I was making this correlation between like, “Oh my gosh, this is what I have always seen from my childhood. And here’s how it’s showing up for me.” And my husband said, “Oh, you’re feeling sorry for yourself.” He blurted it out so bluntly. And it was not intended as anything other than just a really benign observation. But you can imagine, I mean, you might be feeling this right now. Do you feel a little defensive when I tell you that you feel sorry for yourself, that you have a little victimhood, or that you blame other people, or that you have this learned powerlessness or helplessness? Do you feel the same like, “But I really DO have it hard. But I really DO have a hard time. Things really ARE difficult for me.” Do you feel that clinging to your helplessness, to your feeling sorry for yourself, the way that I did?

If this feels really easy to you, I’m so happy for you. I’m so happy for you. Maybe you felt that clinginess about one of the other things, about letting go of anger or letting go of being a certain type of person.

For me, this is the one that I just wanted to hang onto. When my oldest son went to preschool;  he would’ve been like almost four, going to preschool. And he’d already been to preschool. He went to three-year-old preschool and enjoyed it and made friends and had a good time. And for whatever reason, you know how they always call it the terrible twos, my oldest had some terrible twos, but my youngest actually sailed through two. And then it was really squirrely when he turned three. And then it was completely fine at four, and then had a hard time again at five.

So my oldest had a hard time on the even years. My youngest had a harder time on the odd years. I don’t think that there is a milestone that everybody hits, but for whatever reason, my oldest just really, really, really had that separation anxiety at age four-ish. So, I remember taking him to preschool. And the schoolteacher, who was a friend of ours, my son had been to her house. He was friends with her kid. This was not some stranger in a strange land situation, but he just really struggled with it.

So my friend would come over and she would literally peel his fingers off of me and hold him. I mean hugged him, loved him, and helped him get involved in things. It was loving, but she literally had to peel him off of me for me to be able to walk out the door. And this is how I felt about letting go of feeling sorry for myself. It felt like the thing that I wanted to do more than anything in the world. And letting go of it has allowed me to see my own potential.

Here’s the thing that I want you to hear. Yes, things might be hard for you. Yes, certain situations might feel powerless or helpless, or like you are a victim, but that comes from your thoughts. I’m going to let that lay there because it’s hard to accept sometimes. And when you do, when you accept that you are not a victim, that you are not helpless, that you are not powerless, that you do not have to feel sorry for yourself, you will realize that you have more power than you can possibly imagine. Letting go of feeling sorry for yourself. And here’s part of why I think this is hard, because when you let go of feeling sorry for yourself or victimhood, or blaming, or being powerless, it means that you are opening your hands and grabbing onto the responsibility of your own destiny.

Now I said grabbing. What you’re actually doing is simply placing it in your hands. You get to keep your palms open for this one. It’s not grasping. You don’t have to grasp your power. It already exists inside of you. When you open up your palms and let go of feeling sorry for yourself, the power will simply come from inside of you and go shooting out of your fingers like lightning bolts. It’s huge. It’s huge. And it’s scary. And sometimes I still just want to grasp my fingers back together and hang on to feeling sorry for myself, because it’s so comforting and so much easier than having unlimited power.

I’m going to let that go for right now, honestly, because I don’t want to keep talking and water down that message. I just want you to understand how much power you have. And here’s where I’m leaving this open ended and giving you a teeny, tiny, practical thing to do. Write this stuff down. You knew I was going to say that, right? You knew there was going to be a list. You knew there was going to be journaling. You knew there was going to be finding your thoughts and deciding if they’re helpful, because that’s what we do. And it’s really helpful to maybe frame them in one of these three categories. What can I let go of feeling low grade all the time? What type of person do I think I am that’s stopping me from being the person that I want to be? How am I feeling sorry for myself in my life?

Asking yourself those questions will generate plenty of journaling for you, plenty of thoughts for you to simply look at with compassionate curiosity. Here’s where I’m going to refer you to the Compassionate Observer podcast (Episode 211 The Compassionate Observer https://getyourgoal.com/podcasts/211-compassionate-observer/). It’ll help you be in a place where you can simply see your thoughts for what they are without judgment.

And hopefully, hearing my stories and recognizing that these are all truly universal thoughts, can help you just take away that layer of judgment, take away that layer of shame, take away that layer of, “I’m the only one, and this is terrible of me to be having thoughts like this. And this means that I can never get anywhere.” It means nothing. It means you are a human being with a human brain that has human thoughts. And you can let things go, including your weight.

My friends, I feel so good right now. I feel like I let go of a lot of thoughts that I’ve had rattling around in my brain, that I’ve wanted to share with you. And that feels amazing. I hope always that this was helpful for you. Thank you so, so much for listening. And I’ll talk to you again soon.

If you are getting a lot out of The Fitness Matters Podcast and you’re ready to take it to the next level, you are going to love the Get Your Goal Coaching and Accountability group. We take all the theory and knowledge here on the podcast and actually apply it in real life on your real weight loss and fitness goals. It’s hands on. It’s fun, and it works. Find out more at pahlabfitness.com/get-your-goal, and let’s get your goal.

Transcript

You're listening to The Fitness Matters Podcast with Pahla B. And this is episode number 223, "Letting Go of Weight.”

Welcome to The Fitness Matters Podcast where every week we talk about the fitness matters that matter to you. I'm Pahla B, YouTuber, certified life and weight loss coach, soon to be author, and your best middle-aged fitness friend. Are you ready to talk about the fitness mindset that matters to you? Me too. Let's go.

Hello, hello, my friends. How are you today? I am so excited about this topic as I always am, because have you ever thought about that – about how I create a podcast? I don't just have a list of topics and come to them humdrum like, "Gee, I guess, I'll talk about this." I very frequently have a list of topics, and then on the day of recording, I'm like, "Nope, I got something else I want to talk about." This is actually one of those times. I had a whole podcast that will probably still come to light at some point, but I was listening to a podcast yesterday, and it's wildly unrelated. It's how to make money as a life coach by Stacey Boehman. And it was not related to weight loss. It was not related to really anything, but she said something in just this certain way that my brain was like, "I’ve got to talk about this." So, that's what we're talking about today.

But hey, before we get going, let me tell you really quickly about this month's book club. I'm really excited. This is – especially as compared to last month, “How Emotions are Made” – this book, “How to Live the Best Story of Your Life” by Bob Litwin, is simple to read, very easy to digest. I think if you have ever listened to this podcast ever, you're going to find almost all of the ideas incredibly familiar – really, really imminently readable and/or listenable. I'm actually listening via Chirp audio books, who is in partnership with the Pahla B Wellness Over 50 Book Club.

And if you are a brand new Chirp user, you can get $5 off of your first purchase in the US or Canada with the code, Pahla5, that's P-A-H-L-A, and the number five. If you are not a new user, you can still pick up this book for really cheap. It's 3.99 this month. And that's what Chirp does. They put books, like big popular books, on limited time discounts, which is so phenomenal because you don't have to have any kind of subscription or any kind of ongoing relationship with them. And you can get books. They're really cheap. I know it's not their tagline, but I'll tell you what. I'm going to make it our tagline here that Chirp is cheap.

And in the description box or the show notes, wherever you watch or listen, there's always a way to get to it. I have a link for you that takes you directly to this month's book and already applies the $5 off discount. I also have the link for you to sign up for this month's live book club. It's going to be Sunday, February 27th, at 7:00 AM Pacific time. And it's via Zoom. We're all together. We're hanging out. So you need to sign up to register so that . . . I'm only letting in the people who actually want to be there as opposed to, I don't know how you would find some random Zoom link and join, but apparently this is a thing that happens. So, I am protecting against that. There you go.

Hey, let's talk about losing, not even losing, let's talk about “letting go” of weight. And I used that phrase really, really specifically, because I think that this visual might be the key to unlocking something for you. That's what we do here on the podcast. Again, I don't know if you've ever thought about how and why I do this podcast. It is my job and I take it very seriously to teach you things. And it's my job as a professional teacher to come up with concepts and thought models and visuals and analogies and metaphors that can help you understand what I'm talking about. Because here's the thing. I actually say the same thing almost every time. Truly, if I were to just say in simple words, “Here's what you do; here's why this works,” it would be the same message every single time. But it's my job to creatively construct a different way of talking about it, a different way of coming at it so that it helps. For me, the way I think about it is that it helps break down some of the outer shell.

My brain doesn't want to accept a new idea. And yet, when I come at it with a different kind of question or a different way of looking at it, or a different visual or some kind of other analogy, or just even using different words for the same concept, my brain will take it in differently. It's like erosion. It's like scraping off that layer every time we come at it until underneath is exposed this beautiful diamond of your brain. Because frankly, that is what's in there.

You have the sharpest tool in the shed in your head. Your brain can take you anywhere you want to go. But here's what's happening currently: you are hanging on to your weight. I know I've already encountered some resistance when I said that. "No, Pahla, I really want to let this go. I really want to lose weight. I hate having this extra weight. I hate that this is what my life is, that this is what my body is. I've got to get rid of it." That, my friends, could be even part of the problem – that story that you are telling yourself about hating the weight, needing to get rid of it.

Have you ever thought about how passionately you talk – even in your own head, not necessarily to other people – but how passionately you talk about your body, your weight, your habits? That passion, that emotion, is you holding on. If you've ever thought about the difference between holding on and letting go, I want you to use your hand right now to grip something. Do you feel that tension? Do you feel that strength, that resistance, that power? And when you open up your hand and let go, it feels very . . . the word that's coming to me is “calm.” You might think of it kind of differently. Let your body be the guide to whatever word you use here. For me, it feels easy. That is the difference between clinging – hanging on to these things that we're going to talk about today – or letting go. Right now, you are clinging, hanging on to your weight metaphorically. And when you let go, it will feel the same way it feels when you open up your grip: calm, easy, gentle, relaxed, whatever word comes best to you.

Now, here's the thing about today. Today is probably one of the most open-ended podcasts that I have ever recorded. And I was thinking about why that is, because no matter how many examples I came up with, I realized that there were still dozens, hundreds, thousands more. This is probably one of the most individual things that we have ever talked about. And therefore, I'm intentionally going to leave it very open-ended for you to explore on your own. Yes, you have homework. I'm already going to just spoil that one for you. There's almost always homework, but today I'm telling you straight up, right up front, there's going to be homework for you to really explore with this one.

I came up with three categories of ways in which we cling to our weight. And you will very likely, well, I'm going to suggest that you're probably going to recognize yourself in at least one of them. And yes, there is overlap, and there's more to it. So I've got these three broad categories. And this is not an exhaustive list.

So the one thing that I was thinking that we all do, and let me just be so, so, so clear. Sometimes I think when you hear yourself in the podcast, you're like, "Oh my gosh, that's me." And then you recognize that you automatically pile on some judgment or embarrassment or shame on top of it because you think that you are the only one. And let me be incredibly clear today, that the reason I am even recording this podcast is because I am describing myself. These three categories of clinging to something are absolutely a description of me clinging to old ways, old habits, old thoughts, old ideas, old feelings, old stories, old everything that I had to let go of to create the future that I want for myself.

So category number one is things to loosen your grip on. And I've really specifically given it three different emotions, but I promise there are others that would totally fit here. But for me, the emotions that I had to let go of in order to let go of weight and move to the body I want, the life that I want, I had to let go of anger, sadness and resentment. And actually when I was taking my notes, I put an “or” between those. But for me, it was “and.” It was all three of them and there are probably others, but these were the three emotions that I was able to come up with, right off the top of my head. They were right there on the surface as being obvious examples of things that I needed to let go of.

And I want to be really clear here that I am not saying that you should not feel these feelings. I am not saying that you, as you let go, that you are not going to feel anger, sadness, resentment, or whatever other feeling you come up with when you hear this segment. What I'm saying is that what I had to let go of was clinging to it.

Now, here's the thing that's really funny, especially if you have listened to this podcast for a while. I have talked about my relationship with the feeling of anger, how I had a lot of fear about it, lots of childhood stories about anger and what it means, and how it presents, and what happens to people who are in the path of it – all kinds of stories about anger that were not serving me.

And my relationship with anger was such that I did not allow myself to feel it fully. And by not allowing myself to feel it fully, what I was doing was stuffing it down and therefore feeling it partially pretty much all the time. Same with sadness. Even though, honestly, I felt like I had a great relationship with sadness. Boy, oh boy, I could feel sadness at the drop of a hat. Boom, here come the tears. But I was doing the same thing with sadness and with resentment. That I was feeling low grade, pretty much all the time – not all the time, like really, really all the time – but so frequently, so often. I found that I would ruminate on these topics. I would ruminate on the things that were happening that I thought created the feeling for me. What was creating the feeling, of course, was the continuation of those thoughts.

The thought creates the feeling every single time. This is the point in the podcast in which I'm going to send you over to listen to Episode 32, How to Change (https://pahlabfitness.com/how-to-change/), where we talk very clearly, and for the entire podcast, about how your thoughts always create your feelings, which always drive your actions, which therefore, of course, get you results.

So, in my mind, things outside of me were creating these feelings for me. I didn't want to feel them because they're uncomfortable. I mean, goodness, when I said the word anger or sadness or resentment, didn't you feel your shoulder crunch up like, "I don't really want to talk about that"? You probably have the same relationship with one of these three (or whatever is your go-to) that I did with sadness. I thought I had a great relationship. I thought I was capable of feeling it just all the time easily. I didn't think that it was something that I was stuffing down. But when I allowed myself to feel it all the way through, here's the shocking thing that happens, here's what you're going to let go of. You're going to let go of stuffing it down, and you're literally going to let it go by allowing it to come up and feeling it all the way through.

Here's why we don't want to do this. I mean, yes, you actually do want to do this, but why we think we don't want to do it: it's scary. It absolutely is. When we have uncomfortable feelings, it's right there in their title. They're uncomfortable. We would rather – and this is psychology 101 – we would rather seek pleasure and avoid pain. This is so completely . . . I always like to say, this is super natural. Not like it's above and beyond what is natural in the world, but it's very natural. This is how we all behave. It is a learned skill to allow your feelings, your uncomfortable feelings to exist in your body. And yet, that uncomfortable feeling is also “super natural.” Big space between those two words. It's not supernatural. It's very natural that these feelings exist.

Your feelings are just chemistry. Your brain has a thought. That's electricity. It's an electrical impulse that sparks off this cascade of hormones, chemicals, probably other stuff that I don't know that just reacts in your body. That is all that is happening. And yet, because it causes our heart to beat faster, sometimes it causes your throat to feel like it's constricting or your mouth to get dry. It causes your skin to get clammy. For me, it's more than clammy. I sweat a lot. Sometimes there's like a vasomotor response with tears. And for me, lots of drooling, which is so funny. I don't think I've talked about this, but I've noticed that there exists when I allow these feelings, a lot of snot and drool. It's fascinating to me. And honestly, for me, that's part of my resistance to it personally. It feels like there's almost a loss of bodily control.

I mean, we teach ourselves not to drool. As babies, we drool a lot. And then we teach ourselves to close our mouth and pull in your tongue and look a certain way. By allowing those responses – the snot to flow, the tears to flow, the drool to flow – it feels like a loss of bodily control, and in that sense, almost a loss of dignity. That again adds to that fear, that resistance of wanting to feel these feelings.

But here is the best news that I can offer you in the world. All of your feelings are temporary. They come up, you allow your body to do its chemical thing. And then it dissipates every single time with every single emotion. Now, here's what I'm going to tell you because you're like, "No, that's not true. I have felt the same sadness about X, Y, or Z." Yes. When you have a thought again, you can create that feeling again. Absolutely. I'm not saying if you feel sadness once, you're never going to feel sadness again. Of course, you're going to feel sadness again. But it will also come up and dissipate.

Here's – it's wildly unrelated, but it's something that I've been saying to myself that feels really helpful. So, I'm offering it to you as a helpful thought.

Longtime listeners will understand my longtime issues and ongoing issues with keeping my house clean. I don't love to clean my house, but I love to have a clean house. And one of the things that stops me from cleaning my house – and this is so ironic – but it's the thought of, “Well, it's just going to get dirty again anyway.” It's a really unhelpful thought, by the way, to think that there's no point in doing whatever it is that you're doing. And that's a global thing that I'm telling you. This is just good life advice. When you think that there's no point, you won't do whatever it is that you also simultaneously want to do, because you want that thing. You want that result. You want that feeling of having that result in your life.

But here's what I remind myself of as I am vacuuming: it feels so good when my house is clean because it's temporary. The only way we know what something is, is by contrast to what it isn't. Again, that is general life advice.

The reason sadness feels so sad is because we know what happiness is. The reason anger feels so angry is because we know what calm feels like. The reason resentment feels so resentful is because we know what gratitude feels like. The reason things feel the way they feel is because they're temporary and because there's a flip to that coin.

Reminding myself of the temporariness of every single one of my feelings and knowing that any feeling, no matter how uncomfortable it is, has an opposite that I am also capable of feeling – reminding myself of those really basic principles – is what helps me let go of the resistance to feeling them. Letting go of resistance to your emotions will allow you to let go of weight.

We all have different ways of dealing with different emotions, but I'm going to hand you this idea that lots of us, for lots of reasons, stuff down our emotions with a couple of different things. We stuff down our emotions quite literally with food, frequently lots of us.

We also – and here I am raising my hand – stuff down emotions with overexercise. I also stuff down my emotions by playing on my phone. I stuff down my emotions by sitting on the couch and watching TV – by avoiding, resisting, trying not to feel them. I do other things that have caused other results in my life. I mean, for me, it's not always about my weight. I imagine that as I'm saying this, you can picture other results you have created for yourself and your life from this stuffing down. One of our more obvious ones is weight gain, but it's not the only byproduct of the stuffing down.

When you allow, when you let go of that resistance to feeling, your feelings will also let go. They will come up, and they will release. They will dissipate. And then you can move forward. You will find yourself not doing the behaviors that have created weight gain in your life when you allow your feelings.

The second category is letting go of the idea of yourself as a certain person or a certain type of person, really specifically. This one for me was a little trickier to hear. I laid these out for you in the order in which I discovered them for myself. Your journey through letting go is going to be your own journey. And that's why I'm offering this podcast to you open-ended. Here is where you can explore for yourself. For me, I didn't really think that I had these preconceived notions of myself. We all do, though. This is also psychology 101. This is how your brain works. It categorizes things. And thank goodness for it.

Truly, if you had a brain that did not categorize things, you would be incapable. You'd be immobile. There would be way too much sensory input for you to do anything. Your brain puts things in categories, including you, that just make sense so that it can tune out all of the inputs and just continue dropping things into buckets. It's much easier to categorize things and then move forward from there. That's why your brain does this. It's very difficult to notice your own categories because your brain operates this way so automatically. Until you start exploring on purpose, you truly might not know how much you have pigeonholed yourself.

And I say this again with love: you don't pigeonhole yourself on purpose. You didn't wake up one day and say, "I'm going to limit myself." This is just how your brain works. It's completely normal, completely okay. It's supernatural. And you can overcome it by recognizing it.

I used to call myself a person who didn't finish things. And I never, ever – until I became aware of it – said those words out loud, or even heard them like that in my head. I simply didn't finish things and felt like, "Yeah, of course not." When I started exploring what that was and what that meant to me, and rubbed up against the friction of wanting to be able to finish something, really specifically my first marathon – oh my gosh, how many years ago was that? 13 years ago – that was when I noticed it for myself like, oh my gosh, I think of myself as somebody who can't finish things, somebody who doesn't finish things.

I had very unknowingly pigeonholed myself as the girl who quits. Who knew? Well, I didn't until I did, because I thought of myself that way. I had quit everything. It felt like, “Well of course, obviously, I quit this because I'm the girl who quits.” But as soon as I didn't want to be that person anymore, it felt very uncomfortable. And that's when I noticed it, that discomfort that you feel when you want something for yourself. There's a type of person that you think you are, that you are not going to be anymore when you have the thing that you want.

In order to finish my career, to get to success, I had to let go of being the type of person who quit. I had to keep moving forward, no matter what.

With regard to weight loss, really specifically, some of the types of people that I hear you categorizing yourself as are, "Well, I just, I love food so much. I'm a foodie. I could never eat the same thing every day. I love to cook. I love a lot of variety." These sentences all absolutely sound factual, truthful, believable. And they are. And they're not in and of themselves unhelpful.

I'm not telling you, by the way, I'm not telling you that you can't be a foodie. I'm not telling you that you can't love to eat. I'm not telling you that you can't love to cook. In fact, I do love to eat. I do love to cook. I don't think I'm a foodie. I'm way too picky to consider myself a foodie, but I enjoy cooking. And boy do I enjoy eating. I'm not saying that you have to let go of those stories about yourself. I'm saying that you need to let go of their consequences.

You can be a person who loves to cook and counts calories. You can be a person who loves to eat and eats in portions that make sense for your goals. You can be anybody, anytime, any way you want to. Let me just blanket lay that out there. In order to be that person though, you have to recognize the person that you think you are right now and let go of how that is holding you back.

Now for me personally, I did actually have to let go of being the person who quits. I had to let go of being a procrastinator. Those were two things that I truly do not think about myself anymore.

In the case of you discovering the type of person that you think you are now versus the type of person who has your goal, you might find that it's not diametrically opposed. It doesn't have to be a complete letting go of that story about yourself, but it might be a loosening of the reins. It might be letting go of, well, of the parenthetical that you're not hearing. When you say, "I'm a foodie." Parenthetical, I'm holding parenthesis with my hands that you can't see, because this is a podcast, but the parenthetical is there. And that means “I eat too much.” And/or that means “I have a hard time counting calories.” And/or that means that “losing weight is difficult for me.” There's a parenthetical that you have to let go of – that you are going to want to let go of – that's going to feel really good to let go of. And simultaneously, you can retain the parts of yourself that feel good and helpful and are not blocking you from the thing that you want.

The third category . . . and this one honestly is still hard for me to talk about because I'm still finding it in my life. Well, I'm still finding resistance to feeling feelings also. And I am still butting up against all three of these. I don't know why this one is so hard. Well, I do. I know exactly why this one is so hard. This one felt the most comfortable. Giving this up, felt like letting go of my baby blanket. It felt like letting go of my childhood in so many ways. And that's because this category is letting go of feeling sorry for yourself – helplessness, powerlessness, and blaming other people. For lots of us, this is our childhood. For lots of us, this is the only way that our parents looked at the world. For lots of us, this was the first story we heard. It was the overarching story of THE WAY THE WORLD WORDS in all caps.

For me personally, feeling sorry for myself was a story that I heard from both of my parents about their own view of their lives, which came from their parents, which came from their parents, I assume. I feel like learned helplessness, powerlessness, blaming other people and feeling sorry for yourself are so common and so pervasive and so hard to let go of. I vividly remember the moment when it was pointed out to me, even though I can't remember the exact thing that I was saying in which it was pointed out to me. I'm going to tell you this story.

So my husband and I were out for a long run, training for something, several years ago at this point, because I have not run that long in a really long time. But we were out running and we're many miles into the day, where your brain starts to go different places and your body is breaking down. Your brain is breaking down. You're breaking down a lot of barriers. You're letting go of a lot of things you cling to as a human being. And it's one of the reasons why I love endurance running, just so you know. But we were talking about business and I said something. And if I had to guess, I would say it was something like, "This is hard for me because . . . " Or, "This is harder for me than other people because . . . " But I don't know if I said it exactly like that.

And I was making some correlation to something that my dad had done or said when I was a kid or something about my dad's world view. I was making this correlation between like, "Oh my gosh, this is what I have always seen from my childhood. And here's how it's showing up for me." And my husband said, "Oh, you're feeling sorry for yourself." He blurted it out so bluntly. And it was not intended as anything other than just a really benign observation. But you can imagine, I mean, you might be feeling this right now. Do you feel a little defensive when I tell you that you feel sorry for yourself, that you have a little victimhood, or that you blame other people, or that you have this learned powerlessness or helplessness? Do you feel the same like, "But I really DO have it hard. But I really DO have a hard time. Things really ARE difficult for me." Do you feel that clinging to your helplessness, to your feeling sorry for yourself, the way that I did?

If this feels really easy to you, I'm so happy for you. I'm so happy for you. Maybe you felt that clinginess about one of the other things, about letting go of anger or letting go of being a certain type of person.

For me, this is the one that I just wanted to hang onto. When my oldest son went to preschool; he would've been like almost four, going to preschool. And he'd already been to preschool. He went to three-year-old preschool and enjoyed it and made friends and had a good time. And for whatever reason, you know how they always call it the terrible twos, my oldest had some terrible twos, but my youngest actually sailed through two. And then it was really squirrely when he turned three. And then it was completely fine at four, and then had a hard time again at five.

So my oldest had a hard time on the even years. My youngest had a harder time on the odd years. I don't think that there is a milestone that everybody hits, but for whatever reason, my oldest just really, really, really had that separation anxiety at age four-ish. So, I remember taking him to preschool. And the schoolteacher, who was a friend of ours, my son had been to her house. He was friends with her kid. This was not some stranger in a strange land situation, but he just really struggled with it.

So my friend would come over and she would literally peel his fingers off of me and hold him. I mean hugged him, loved him, and helped him get involved in things. It was loving, but she literally had to peel him off of me for me to be able to walk out the door. And this is how I felt about letting go of feeling sorry for myself. It felt like the thing that I wanted to do more than anything in the world. And letting go of it has allowed me to see my own potential.

Here's the thing that I want you to hear. Yes, things might be hard for you. Yes, certain situations might feel powerless or helpless, or like you are a victim, but that comes from your thoughts. I'm going to let that lay there because it's hard to accept sometimes. And when you do, when you accept that you are not a victim, that you are not helpless, that you are not powerless, that you do not have to feel sorry for yourself, you will realize that you have more power than you can possibly imagine. Letting go of feeling sorry for yourself. And here's part of why I think this is hard, because when you let go of feeling sorry for yourself or victimhood, or blaming, or being powerless, it means that you are opening your hands and grabbing onto the responsibility of your own destiny.

Now I said grabbing. What you're actually doing is simply placing it in your hands. You get to keep your palms open for this one. It's not grasping. You don't have to grasp your power. It already exists inside of you. When you open up your palms and let go of feeling sorry for yourself, the power will simply come from inside of you and go shooting out of your fingers like lightning bolts. It's huge. It's huge. And it's scary. And sometimes I still just want to grasp my fingers back together and hang on to feeling sorry for myself, because it's so comforting and so much easier than having unlimited power.

I'm going to let that go for right now, honestly, because I don't want to keep talking and water down that message. I just want you to understand how much power you have. And here's where I'm leaving this open ended and giving you a teeny, tiny, practical thing to do. Write this stuff down. You knew I was going to say that, right? You knew there was going to be a list. You knew there was going to be journaling. You knew there was going to be finding your thoughts and deciding if they're helpful, because that's what we do. And it's really helpful to maybe frame them in one of these three categories. What can I let go of feeling low grade all the time? What type of person do I think I am that's stopping me from being the person that I want to be? How am I feeling sorry for myself in my life?

Asking yourself those questions will generate plenty of journaling for you, plenty of thoughts for you to simply look at with compassionate curiosity. Here's where I'm going to refer you to the Compassionate Observer podcast (Episode 211 The Compassionate Observer https://pahlabfitness.com/ep-211-the-compassionate-observer/). It'll help you be in a place where you can simply see your thoughts for what they are without judgment.

And hopefully, hearing my stories and recognizing that these are all truly universal thoughts, can help you just take away that layer of judgment, take away that layer of shame, take away that layer of, "I'm the only one, and this is terrible of me to be having thoughts like this. And this means that I can never get anywhere.” It means nothing. It means you are a human being with a human brain that has human thoughts. And you can let things go, including your weight.

My friends, I feel so good right now. I feel like I let go of a lot of thoughts that I've had rattling around in my brain, that I've wanted to share with you. And that feels amazing. I hope always that this was helpful for you. Thank you so, so much for listening. And I'll talk to you again soon.

If you are getting a lot out of The Fitness Matters Podcast and you're ready to take it to the next level, you are going to love the Get Your Goal Coaching and Accountability group. We take all the theory and knowledge here on the podcast and actually apply it in real life on your real weight loss and fitness goals. It's hands on. It's fun, and it works. Find out more at pahlabfitness.com/get-your-goal, and let's get your goal.

Listen to the full episode here, and be sure to leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts.

Originally aired February 13, 2022
In today’s episode of the Fitness Matters podcast, we’re talking about how “letting go” is the key to achieving your WEIGHT LOSS goals.
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Meet Your Host

Mindset expert and certified life coach Pahla B knows a thing or two about changing your mind to change your weight and your life. She’s the creator of The 5-0 Method, Amazon-best selling author of the book “Mind Over Menopause,” and former yo-yo dieter who has cracked the code on lifelong weight maintenance. Join Pahla B each week for the personal insights, transformative mindset shifts, and science-backed body advice that can help you lose all the weight you want and keep it off forever.