Ep #24: A More Beautiful Question to Weightloss

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I’ve been reflecting on the essential changes I’ve made in my life to cultivate health instead of struggle. I realize now that it was an awareness and understanding of my thoughts and feelings that allowed me create a healthy mindset for losing weight and healthy eating. The challenge and obstacles to wellness and my right sized body are gone.

I found an effective strategy for crafting a healthy mindset in asking the right questions. A more beautiful question removes struggle from your mindset. If you’re stuck in your weight loss journey then you may not be asking yourself the right questions. In this episode, I share how you can use questions to get unstuck and move towards your right sized body. 

If you like what you heard today, please go to Apple Podcasts and leave a review.  The more reviews we receive, the more women will learn about the podcast and learn from these lessons. If you know someone who is struggling with food, send them a link to the podcast and maybe they can find something here they haven’t heard before!

Listen to the Full Episode:

What You’ll Learn in this Episode:

  • The difference between empowering and disempowering questions
  • How your brain (and mindset) responds to questions
  • The value of asking the right types of questions
  • The 3 important questions you should ask yourself every morning

Featured on the Show:·

Full Episode Transcript:

You are listening to It’s Never Too Late to Lose Weight, a podcast with Pat Beaupre Becker, Episode 24

You are listening to It's Never Too Late to Lose Weight, a podcast with Pat Beaupre Becker, Episode 24.

Welcome to It's Never Too Late to Lose Weight, a podcast for women approaching 60 who have been successful at everything but reaching their weight loss goals. Tune in each week for tools and strategies to help you lose weight, create a strong body, and support a healthy mind. Here's your host, certified weight and life coach, Pat Beaupre Becker.

Hello, my dears. Or maybe I should say, hello, y'all. I just came back from coach training at The Life Coach School in Dallas, Texas, which is actually a fantastic place. I was a co-instructor to a group of men and women. They were, I believe, like from age 21 all the way to 68. These are folks who want to create a life of healing and giving back to the world. Oh, my God, I'm so inspired. Some of these folks are going to be weight coaches like myself. Some are going to be coaches for men who have a diagnosis of cancer and their partner. Some will help you declutter your brain and your house. But the thing that is so amazing is that really we're all just a bunch of hot messes but willing to feel the discomfort of growing beyond their comfort zone. Just really, really amazing. So inspiring.

So, I've been thinking about some of the essential changes that I've made in my life as I continue to live in what's my natural weight. As I no longer struggle with what to eat and how much to eat, when to eat, blah, blah, blah, blah.

My first aha moment really was becoming aware of my brain, right? Becoming aware that my brain can change, but also understanding how each thought that I have in every single moment create a feeling that then drives me to take an action, whether that's action or inaction it doesn't matter, but understanding that it's these thoughts that make me feel a certain way and then I do something has been the biggest change in my life.

Of course, I teach about this in all of my past podcasts and I really recommend you listen to the episodes to see how to apply it to your weight loss challenges.

One of my favorite strategies and tactics for my success in changing my life after years of being stuck is the tool of asking powerful questions. In one my favorite books, A More Beautiful Question, author Warren Berger, he says that, "A beautiful question is an ambitious yet actionable question that can begin to shift the way we perceive or think about something. That might serve as a catalyst to bring about change."

He also says that a good question is like a lever used to pry open the stuck lid on a paint can. That described me, right? Does that describe you?

Do you feel stuck? Are you trying to figure out how you can possibly eat healthy foods? You want to, but you just can't seem to do it. Are you stuck not loving your body but looking at it and feeling disgust? Maybe you're just stuck and stressed. Where you have all these emotions and you just don't want to feel them so you decide to eat.

The solution is to ask yourself really good questions.

So, I want to propose that are two ways you can look at a question. One way would be disempowering, and the other way would be empowering.

I like to think of it, the disempowering question is kind of like an interrogator. The questions do not lead you anywhere, offer no insight, and really are a dead end. Imagine, there's a single light bulb in your face and you're sitting in a spare, cold room. This is one of the advantages of the interrogator, right, to make you feel uncomfortable. There's always an assumption of guilt and you feel like they are trying to trick you, to catch you in a lie. These disempowering questions are negative and judgmental, and the thoughts that they create reveal fear, resentment, and victimhood.

It's not possible to get unstuck when you're feeling fear, resentment, and like a victim.

How many times have you asked yourself, "What's wrong with me? Why am I so stupid? Why am I so fat and miserable, and ugly?" These are disempowering questions.

The thing about your brain is that when it's working, it will take up the mission to find the answers to the questions you pose it no matter what the question is. When you ask disempowering questions, you're acting like your own interrogator. Also, your own judge and jury because I want to ask you, are you believing that you deserve to suffer for your crimes against humanity? I know it's dramatic but sometimes we have no love for ourselves. We are so brutal to our own selves.

Now, empowering questions offer a different way of seeing our lives, and they provide for new possibilities.

They assume innocence and are driven by curiosity. You might say there's actually no assumption, right? There's just an openness. They open the space for appreciation, compassion, inquiry, discovery, and insight.

Now you can imagine or I like to imagine like you're sitting in this classroom and this fun scientist walks in. You can say Bill Nye, the science guy, I love Albert Einstein, I could think about him. He's very curious about what you're thinking and how your brain might solve a problem. His questions are positive, open-minded, thought-provoking, and proactive because the goal is not to capture you but it's to stimulate possibilities.

So, you can use these questions to be empowered, to find a way out of being stuck in your weight loss struggle. Because empowering questions, you know what they do? They empower us. They help us to discover our own answers from our insights and turn over creative solution making and give us responsibility for our lives.

When was the last time you asked yourself, "How can I honor my body today? How can I add more veggies to my plate? Why am I so amazing? What am I really hungry for? How can I add more fun to my day? How can I make this work? How is this situation perfect for me? Or how can I find the courage to face this day without overeating?"

I really want you to consider asking yourself empowering questions and noticing how often you're asking yourself those interrogating, disempowering questions.

I want to ask you to start your day everyday with these three questions.

How do I want to feel today?

What would I like to learn today?

How can I be more loving toward myself?

I used to have a practice with a friend of mine and we would call each other. We did this every, I think we did this everyday for a couple of weeks. So, we basically called, spoke to each other on the phone and we each had a question. Now, we weren't really looking for an answer. We weren't asking the other person to answer the question, but more to help us sit and allow this empowering inquiry to just kind of sit in the air. In the end, we would always end up hysterically laughing. There would be some kind of answer that would come to us but it was always totally different than the original question. It was really fun.

So, living from questions and being willing not to know exactly how something is going to happen, right, but allowing that how to do something to be revealed little by little. How do you want to feel today? Maybe today you want to feel confident. Maybe today you want to feel determined. Asking yourself how can you be more determined, what actions can you take to be determined, and what would you have to think in order to have that feeling?

In summary, you can act as the harsh interrogator or the open, curious scientist.

Whatever choice you make will give you different results. One will open your mind to possibilities and the other will condemn you to disempowerment and disappointment. I imagine those are very familiar for you.

So, take up the practice of asking open-minded, empowering, and loving questions every single day.

Now, let's talk about my favorite things. Well, again, it's not a thing. My favorite experience right now is actually summer, just being in the summer. I can be outside all day long. I love the feeling of the sun, the music, summer music, right? Playing in my garden. People are going on vacations. Everyone's a little bit lighter. The kids are playing. Smells of cut grass. For me, I live in the perfect place for enjoying summer. Now, you may not have summer as your favorite season, but I want you to ask yourself today, what is perfect about today? What is perfect about the season you are in today? Because if you're not in my atmosphere, it may not be summer. But whatever atmosphere, whatever season you are in, what can you find that is just perfect about it?

So, thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of It's Never Too Late to Lose Weight. Tune in next week when it's gonna get a little more personal where I'm going to talk about losing weight throughout the decades and landing in my 60s. All right, you guys, have a great week. Bye-bye.

Thanks for listening to this episode of It's Never Too Late to Lose Weight. If you liked what you heard and want more, head over to never2late, that's number 2, .info/guide to download your quick start guide to jumpstart your weight loss plan and begin creating an amazing life you love.