Done with Dieting Episode #125: What Can You Accomplish in 6 Months?

 Today’s podcast is one that you’re not going to want to miss. Because in this podcast, I am talking about what I’ve been doing over the past six months. I’m doing a six month goal check in, and I’m letting you know all of the details of what’s been happening.

Stay tuned.

You are listening to the done with dieting podcast. The podcast for women who are experiencing perimenopause and menopause symptoms and want to feel better – like they did before their body started changing.

I am your host, Elizabeth Sherman, Master Certified health, and life coach for women in menopause and peri menopause. I’ve helped thousands of women manage their symptoms, get off the diet roller coaster, and change their relationship with food, exercise, and stop fighting with their bodies. And I do it through a feminist lens – which means exploring how we are socialized as young women has a huge impact on our current relationship with food & exercise, our bodies, health, and ourselves.

What’s different about this podcast is that we’re exploring your health from all sides, not just food and exercise. We also address the mindset shifts that will make you happier and lead to better health.

My goal in this podcast is to illustrate that the reason diets don’t work long term is because your health doesn’t exist in a silo. Your health and your weight are a symptom of the OTHER parts of your life and how you show up. I want to help you to feel good and live the life you desire from a 360 degree approach: body, mind, and soul.

Welcome. Let’s get started.

Hey everyone, welcome to our podcast today, episode number 125. And if you have been listening to the podcast for any period of time, you know that in episode 100, I talked about my future goals. And today, what we’re doing is I am going to be updating you on what’s been happening.

What happened is in episode 100, I decided that for many of us, we have goals in life, right? And when we have goals, we sometimes keep them to ourselves. Keeping your goals to yourself can be a form of self-care because sometimes we don’t want to invite other people into our goals because people tend to give us their opinions. And if their opinions are negative like, oh, you’ll never be able to do that, or you shouldn’t do that, or I think that’s a bad idea. It can feel very defeating.

However, one of the best strategies that you can use when you do have goals, when you do have something amazing that you want to do in life. One of the best strategies is to inform other people around you. So that you can feel like your feet are held to the fire.

In episode 100, I laid out what’s going to happen in the next six months, one year, two years, three years, four years, five years, and then 10 years. And after I put that episode out, it was really scary. Because I didn’t know how it was going to be received and the amount of support that I got from everyone in who listens, everyone in my community was just over the top.

So, I love hearing from you and I love receiving messages from you. If you have anything that you want to share with me, if you have questions, I am just going to plug that right now. Feel free to write in to hello@elizabethsherman.com, and I can answer your questions and I’m always doing listener Q & A episodes as well.

That being said, what we’re doing today is I’m doing a catch up. So, what you’re going to hear next is the excerpt of my six month goal from episode 100.

Episode number 125, the version of me who exists in six months. What am I doing? How am I thinking? How am I feeling? In this episode today, we’re going to be talking a lot about business. However, I want you to be aware that there are also a lot of personal transformation that’s going on.

The version of me who exists in six months from now, so it’s going to be July of 2023, episode number 125. What milestones have I accomplished within the past six months?

Wow, that is a really good question. I don’t know. The version of me who exists in six months is probably pretty close to the version of me who exists today.

Now, over the past year, I’ve been working a lot on getting rid of my people pleasing tendencies. And I don’t think that that work is ever going to be done. I think that that’s just part of I don’t want to say my personality, but it’s how I was raised as a woman and it’s just part of our culture.

So, I think that challenging myself to go against people pleasing is always going to be a struggle for me.

I imagine that the version of me in six months is going to be working on that. What I’ve recently started working on and I assume that the six month version of me is also going to be working on is really having my own back and loving myself through judgment, through failures, and really being able to hold space for myself even when things don’t work out.

Now, I imagine that the version of me in six months is going to be struggling a lot with asking. So, asking people to do things that makes me feel really uncomfortable. I have some big dreams that you’re going to find out about in the rest of this podcast.

In the next six months, I’m actually going to be laying the foundation of that. And part of that is reaching out to people, making connections, networking, and asking for things that it makes me feel really uncomfortable to do.

Now, as far as my business goes, hopefully at this point you will have learned that I’m marketing a retreat. So, I have two different retreat ideas. One is a one on one retreat idea where you would come to Mexico. We would spend time together and really do a VIP intensive of your health.

And then, the other retreat is probably going to be more of a regular thing where I host events and that would happen once or twice a year, and it’s going to be small groups.

So, hopefully, if I’m doing everything right, I have started marketing my retreat. We have a date, and we have everything that’s falling into place about that.

Now, one of the questions that I’m going to ask myself in each of these little vignettes is how do I feel? And to tell you the truth, I feel scared. I have a ton of self-doubt. Is anyone going to want a retreat? Is anyone going to want to spend time with me? What’s happening in the world? Yeah, I have a ton of self-doubt.

However, the other thing that I have is I have conviction. And I also have a lot of belief that what I’m doing is the right path. I feel very strong in alignment that what I’m doing within my business is what women want and what women need.

And so, the version of me in six months is working on self-love, self-acceptance, having my own back regardless of what’s happening around me. So, being able to have a failure and have things not go exactly as planned and yet not talk bad to myself about what’s happening.

One of the questions that I’m going to be asking at the end of each of these goals is who do I have to become in order to make this goal happen? Because the person that we are right now, the reason that we don’t have the results is because we don’t have the skills, and abilities, and the feeling, and the belief in order to actually do it. Otherwise, we would already have it.

So, who do I need to become in six months in order to start marketing my retreat and to grow my business as I’m planning? And the answer to that is I need to be someone who’s shedding the judgements and beliefs that I think other people are having towards me. I need to shed the self-doubt and I need to be someone who trusts her instincts and is able to have her own back and is able to love herself in spite of any failures that might occur.

Yeah. And I think that’s about it. As far as my impact goes, I’m still trying to get in front of as many women as possible. So, if you would, I’m going to plug my podcast here. If you would, leave a rating and review that will help get this podcast into the hands of other women who are looking for this information. So that they too can be free from dieting and be free from that inner critic that they have in their heads.

So, that was six months. And I’m going to reiterate, I would love for you to leave a rating and review because what that does is it allows other women who are just like you. Who needs this information. Who need information on menopause. Who need information on aging and longevity. And how to improve their health without dieting. Those women need to hear this information.

So, your ratings and reviews are going to be so super important for other women who need this information to be able to find it. Thank you if you’ve already done that. And if you haven’t, again, I would love for you to do that.

Now, it’s six months later and it has been so incredibly amazing. The questions that I pose to myself are, what am I doing? How am I thinking? How am I feeling? And let’s start with the feeling. Because feeling, I am so incredibly inspired by all of the women that I have met.

What we’re doing here is far beyond just becoming healthier. What we’re doing here is we’re actually creating a movement. And so, it’s so inspiring to me because a couple milestones that I’ve accomplished within the past six months is I’ve really grown the podcast. I’ve gone on so many more podcast episodes. The Feel Good Sisterhood, my group coaching program is growing. I’ve just recently opened up a second call.

So, women who are in the Feel Good Sisterhood, you have access to two different calls per week. Depending on your schedule, you can come to one, you can come to both, or you can just catch the replays. And it’s completely open. I love how I’m doing this.

And I am also just about to embark on remodeling the insides of the Feel Good Sisterhood, so that all of the information is so much more digestible. It’s been a program that I’ve had going on for two years now, and it’s just time for a little bit of a facelift. So, I am in the process of doing that.

The Done with Dieting podcast is actually getting more focused. And so, instead of just talking about weight loss, and feeling better, and getting off diets, I’m also expanding into aging and longevity, and menopause. And all of the struggles, all of the things that women who are in midlife are facing. Because women who are in midlife are really in this special place.

And there’s no other demographic who’s going through everything that women in midlife are going through. Like seriously, we can talk for sure about menopause. But there’s also your kids are growing up, many of you, you’re becoming empty nesters because your kids are going away to college. And some of your kids are getting married and you’re starting into this phase of life where you’re starting to have grandchildren as well.

And at the same time that your family is growing up and some of you are in what’s called the sandwich generation, which means that you are taking care of kids, but your parents are also starting to need your help as well.

So, there’s this huge change that’s happening within the family dynamic for women who are in midlife. And at the same time, the stress doesn’t actually go down. I think about all of my clients who are in their fifties, who are approaching 60, who are approaching 50. Who have such, I don’t want to say complicated, but really stressful lives. But we don’t see our lives as being stressful.

We are carrying what’s called the invisible workload of running the household. Meaning that we are doing all of the social duties, we are doing all of the project management within the household that needs to get done. And we’re telling everyone and communicating and becoming this hub of information for all of our children, and all of our parents. We become this communicator of everything that needs to get done.

And so, what’s going on in our brains, our brains just don’t shut off anymore. And all of our schedules and everything that needs to get done is like this finely tuned machine. It’s almost like Jenga or Tetris where all of the parts fit in together. And if something even gets out of place, then everything kind of starts to crumble.

And so, we have so much stress that’s going on in our lives. And add on top of that the fact that we are progressing in our careers as well. And so, our organizations, our work life organizations are relying on us even more. And when I think about how much we have going on in our lives, and you put like the 20 or 30 year old version of ourselves into our lives today. We would never be able to get it done, right?

We don’t think that we are under stress. But we are under an immense amount of stress. And I think that for many of you who are like, I’m not stressed, but I have all of this stuff going on, I’m completely busy. What I think you’re going to find out is that when you do retire, when you do move on into the next stage of life, you’re going to look back at this part of your life and be like, how the heck did I get all of this done?

And so, right now for women in midlife, we have so many demands. And the demands on us are not just mental but we have a changing body. So, there are so many physical changes going on with us as well.

Now, most of us will look at the physical changes and resent our bodies because society teaches us that what we need to do is we need to stay young. That youth is what is coveted.

But the truth is that that’s just not an option for us. And if you’ve ever seen a woman who’s had like too much plastic surgery done, or who isn’t wearing what one would call age appropriate clothes, which granted we can have a discussion on what age appropriate is.

But the reason behind, why am I trying to look younger? Why am I trying to look like I’m still 40, when I am 50? Who said that being the age that we are is bad?

For sure, what we want to start doing is we want to start looking at our shifting purpose. We want to look at our shifting priorities. Again, our body is changing. We are aging, our work is changing. So many women in this age group are starting to think about retirement. We’re starting to think about the next chapter.

And so, this is actually where my focus has been changing where before I was really focused on health, but from a diet standpoint and very singularly focused. But now what I want to do is I want to use health as a more holistic approach using health to combat aging, using health to feel better in as we age as a woman in midlife.

When I think about who I want to be in the future, so many women that I know do not want to be 60 or 70, and still binging on chocolate. They don’t want to be over drinking at parties. They don’t want to have hangovers of food or alcohol. Behavior that was tolerated when we were younger is no longer considered cute.

When we think about the next stage in life, we want to be able to travel, we want to be able to enjoy retirement, we want to be strong and independent. No one wants to be sitting in a nursing home. Right?

When I talk to my clients, the word that keeps coming up is vibrant, vibrancy. And so, who do you want to be in this next chapter of your life? What does she look like? What does she feel like? How does she act? What does she think about? What are her daily behaviors? Are her boundaries different than yours?

So, really think about that 75 year old version of yourself. It’s going to be you at some point in the future. And if you don’t want to be 75, well, you know what? It’s better than the alternative. What are her habits and how are they different than yours? What about her feeling?

And so, when you think about this version of yourself in the future who is 75 years old, and you think about her drinking habits, her eating habits, her activity habits. What is she doing as far as travel goes or is she married? How is she interacting with her family? Where does she live? How are you going to get there?

If she is very different than you, if she’s not thinking about the inner critic in her head when she has some ice cream and you are, how are we going to get you there? Because if we don’t change something, that version of you is going to be there too.

So, this is my mission. This is my mission in life is how do we become a group of women who have Sisterhood with one another, who have our own backs, who do not judge ourselves and other women. Who are really confident in being who we are so that we don’t gossip, so that we don’t judge others and judge life as being bad, so that we can live the life that we ultimately want to live.

I’m working on this myself. I’m working on not judging the judgment that I do have. Understanding, where is that judgment coming from? I’m working on having my own back. Which means being kind to myself as a number one priority. I’m still working on people pleasing.

And I think that that’s going to be a lifelong thing. I think it’s something that is just, I don’t want to say that it’s part of my personality. But I want other people to be happy. I don’t want to disappoint others. But I also don’t want to disappoint myself because I would rather disappoint someone else than disappoint myself.

And so, having that confidence and having the version of myself, who is important is actually a number one priority. Because when I think about my deathbed and I think about spending time thinking about my body, thinking about my weight. I don’t want to be thinking about all of those things anymore.

When I think about the life that I’ve lived at the end of my life, I want to think about how I was kind to myself and to others. How I refused to judge and what I was able to accomplish in life because I was so not focused on those things. Like when we are able to stop thinking about food and our bodies from a diet mentality, we are going to be able to create amazing things.

One thing that I have to talk about is that I am hosting my first ever retreat. I talked about this in the check-in, and I just wanted to come back to it because it has been something that I’ve been wanting to do for years. And so, I’m actually doing it. It’s going to be so amazing. It will be at the end of July, and I didn’t even publicly market it.

So, if you’re like, wait a minute, I didn’t hear about this, I wanted to come. Just be aware that yeah, you didn’t miss anything because I sent a private email to all of my current and former clients. They were the only ones who got invited because they all raised their hands and said, Hey, I want to go.

And so, I didn’t have to market it publicly at all. That was just so exciting. Everyone signed up, and it’s full, and it’s just going to be a dream come true. So, it’ll be here in Puerto Morelos, Mexico. It’s going to be in my house, and I could not be happier. We will have 10 women who are going to be here, and we are going to be working on this exact stuff that I’m talking about right now.

So, getting rid of and shedding the good girl mentality. Understanding how we want to show up in this world, changing our beliefs from the younger version of ourselves, and accepting aging as something that is beautiful and being able to cultivate the habits and behaviors that we want to create in this next phase of our life.

So, I hope you enjoyed listening to this episode, and I really want you to reflect back on what is it that’s possible for you over the next six months. You can do anything that you want to. I really want to inspire you and show what is possible. I want to be an example of what’s possible. You don’t have to do what I’m doing in order to be the next version of yourself.

But whatever it is that’s important to you, I’m going to invite you to set a goal and then check in with yourself in six months. And just keep it on top of mind. And if you need support with that, of course, I’m going to invite you to work with me either privately or through the Feel Good Sisterhood. Both are just amazing opportunities to become that next version of yourself.

So, that’s all I have for you today. Have an amazing day, everyone. And I will talk to you next week. Bye-bye.

Hey, thanks for listening!

If the show resonates with you and you have a friend, mother, sister, or anyone else who you think would benefit, I’d love for you to share the podcast with them. You can leave me a rating and review in Apple podcasts which helps me create an amazing experience for you. And it helps other women who are done with dieting and want to get off the diet roller coaster to find it as well.

See you next week.