The Livy Method Podcast - How to Utilize the Information with Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer - Spring/Summer 2024

Episode Date: April 30, 2024

Gina chats with best-selling author and learning expert Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer about how to utilize all of the information at the beginning of The Program. You can find the full video hosted at:https://www.facebook.com/groups/livymethodspringsummer2024Topics covered:How can we make sure we’re going to be successful with this process?Try this deep breathing/grounding exerciseHow to tackle overwhelmHow to make this process a priority and make space for yourselfReplacing priority with proportionHow to start unearthing your diet history and experiencesHow daily practice can build trustHow to simplify the information and where to startHow to use habit stacking to build a strong routineWhat does showing ourselves grace and being kind to ourselves mean?The services that Dr. Deena offers and where to find herawakenedlearning.ca@awakenedlearning To learn more about the Livy Method, visit www.ginalivy.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm Gina Livy and welcome to the Livy Method podcast. This is where you'll have access to all of the live streams from my 91 day weight loss program. With a combination of daily lives, guest expert interviews and member stories, there is something new almost every day. Miss the morning live? Want to re-listen to one of our amazing guest experts? Well, this is the place. This podcast is hosted on Acast, but it's available on all podcast platforms, including the one you're listening to right now, Spotify, Apple,

and Amazon Music. You're going to have this ability to now reframe. Allow yourself time throughout the day to stress the fuck out. The thoughts and the feelings and the behavior cycle can start changing. Trying to lose your weight in a healthy, sustainable way where you can move on with your life and never have to worry about weight loss again. There's so many working parts to that. It is so incredibly difficult for so many reasons. And of course, we are making it our mission to help make this process as easy as possible for you. And that is where my amazing

guest comes in. Dr. Dina Karashefer is the author of Feel Good Learning. She is a strategist. She knows the program inside and out. She's actually done the program herself, which bonus, how amazing for us. She's here to talk about all the feels that you have and all the feels that you are having and all the feels that you are going to have throughout this entire process, but more so how to set yourself up for success and keep showing up regardless. This, I guarantee you, if you are new to the program is not going to be the segment that you think it is. Yeah. We're going to talk about the group and the app and the book and whatever, but it's going to be so much bigger than that. Hello. Welcome Dr. Dina Kara Schaefer. Oh, hi. It's so nice to see you, Dina, and it's so nice to be here in community.

And I'm really going to try to live up to that intro. It's always good to be back. It feels like such a kind and genuine place to be, where we're all wrestling with something, each a little different, but in so many ways overlapped. And so to be in warm and kind community is a really good way. It's a really good way to start the day. Yeah. Isn't that so true? We're all just waking up each day, trying to get through life, do our best. And now on top of all of that, accomplish this really huge goal for a lot of people. Some people have been trying to lose their way what feels like their entire lives. And of course, we want to make this a really safe place to do that and to have discussions around it.

So you know where we're at. We are a week in. So we have people who started during prep week last week. They feel like they're crushing it. They feel amazing. We have people who feel like they're just trying to get their shit together. We have people who just started. We have people who feel like they've already failed. We have, you know, there's all sorts of feelings. So where do we start with that? We've started this diet or we've

signed up for it. And now we're like, okay, like nine days in, how can we make sure we're not only going to stick around, but we're going to be successful? Oh, what a beautiful question. I mean, I kind of want us all to start right now, right here, like feet on the floor and the steady ground underneath and the deep breath in our bellies because overwhelm is in the body like let's use that first so to just actually settle and take a moment because it is a really big project it's a really big journey that we're on together and if we're like trying to do all of it all in one go heal the past goal set for the future did i pack all the right things oh i like i'm already overwhelmed so like settling into the body that we haven't failed anything we haven't failed anything and it's really okay in fact who wouldn't be a bit disoriented and unsure and doubtful who

wouldn't be skeptical gina yeah right yeah right finally and forever yeah right that's what they all say why are you different yeah there's so much that we're bringing i listened to your podcast yesterday i can't ever really watch the lives just the nature of the architecture of my life, but I always catch them via the recording afterwards. I was listening, I was commuting up to work. And you were talking about the baggage that people carry, right? What's coming with us as we, you know, build a new house, as we start this new adventure, as we're on this new trip. And these are heavy bags we're carrying around. These are full of all kinds of hurts and harms that are not ours, that we inherited, that were imposed.

There's a lot of healing to be done around all the messaging that has surrounded us, that's bombarded us for decades. The distrust, the disbelief we have, the disconnection with our bodies. So the starting place is like, can we just get back into our bodies, which is no easy feat. I don't say that lightly. There's trauma present. There's so much spirit injury present. But if we can just do that moment of feet on ground breath and belly okay i'm not doing all 91 days i'm not even doing this full week i'm doing this day it's doing this day i'm even i'm even just going to do this morning i'm going to be as present as

i can to the decisions i make the feelings feelings I have, the questions I wonder about this morning. So we tackle overwhelm by trying to use the body to invite, not calm, we don't have to be calm all the time, but as a way to support ourselves when we're feeling flustered and by not trying to take it all on all at once. I want to go through this again because the last couple of days, I know you've been listening, I've been telling people like, take a deep breath,

like take a minute. And you know, it's interesting and this is so relevant, I know to our returning members as well, not just our new members and myself. As you're describing like the feels and the baggage that you have bringing forward, I'm like, I'm thinking of my baggage of the last 22 groups and what worked, what didn't work,

what I need to do and how do I this and how do I that? And I'm like, I'm showing up like, and I, I have a normal routine, uh, before I get out of bed. Now, I ground myself. Mind you, I'm still sleeping, but I picture my feet on the ground, and I take some deep breaths, and I go through my day visualizing and being calm. And I set the tone usually to every time I sit in the seat, how do I want to show up today? Do I want to be motivating? Do I want to inform people? Do I want to be motivating? Do I want to inform people? Do I want to be understanding? Like what is the vibe I want to show up in my life? But in the, in the excitement of starting this process, I haven't been doing that. And even as

you're saying, ground yourself, take a deep breath. I'm like, I'm feeling uncomfortable with it. So can we actually all just experience this moment and do that? Like, can you take us through that deep breath? Because I think it's one thing to listen to it. And we don't have, we don't all have time to actually do that, but we're all listening now. So why don't we all, if you're sitting and even if you're not sitting, you're lying down, you can, you know, feel your feet on the ground and, you know, maybe take us through a couple of deep breaths and maybe what should be going in our mind to get us in the right frame mind. For sure. You know, so if we start with wherever the body's at, maybe you're standing. And so it's not a throwaway sentence, feel your feet on the floor. The reason we say that is because there's so much that feels frenetic and chaotic and frenzied but if we remember that well there's actually this physical steadiness and sturdiness underneath our

feet or if we're seated underneath our seat or if we're still lying in bed underneath the back side of our body there is a kind of steadiness amidst all of the swirl. That's why we do that. Okay, so I feel my feet. I'm not like floating off. I'm not free floating in air. Here's this gravity that's keeping me tethered to the ground. And why do we focus on the breath? It's because it's the simplest thing. It's here always. There's nothing to buy. There's nothing to do, there's just here this anchor, it's an anchor of attention. And why breath specifically? Because we could say pay attention to your wrist, pay attention to your chin. Well, the breath gives us really good information. If our breath is all the way high, high, high, high up, oh, we're not actually allowing for the like full cadence, the full expansion and contraction. So if we feel our feet on floor, whether we're sitting or standing,

and it's okay if when I say, can you feel your feet or feel your breath? If you don't yet, if there's a history of trauma or disconnection, we're just feeling whatever we can. And if it's feeling the absence of something, that's okay too. It's whatever you can notice. Maybe it's your palms on the tops of your thighs if you're sitting. Maybe it's the feeling of the fabric on your skin. It's any kind of tactile somatic in the body. Why?

Gets us out of our head a little bit. And so if you can, feet on floor, seat underneath you. Can you actually feel your breath go in through your nose? Can you feel down your throat? And we're going to, even if we can, a little bit past your chest. Can you breathe into the space in your belly? You might notice a little softening, a little expansion, and then we exhale bottom all the way out to the top. And so can we just do that a few times following the journey of the breath in through the nose, all the way down to the belly, and then from belly out through your nose now if this is making you feel anxious keep your eyes open we want you to feel safe always and if it's

feeling like oh my heart is fluttering let's try this inhale through the nose what if we exhale through the mouth like a sigh, another way of using the body to begin to mitigate some of that overwhelm. Inhale through the nose. Exhale with a sigh. We bring the kind of calmer parts of our nervous system by way of breath and body. We don't have to think our way through this. And so we can together kind of co-regulate for a moment. What does that do?

Oh, look, I have like more capacity to sit with all the information that Jean is presenting. Oh, I can see it for what it is. I'm not doing all of the forms of information. I'm doing some. I don't have to do podcast, Facebook, book, journaling. I can do some. And if that modality doesn't work, I can swap it up for another. Or if you're a turning member, try a new one or try to layer throughout the day. I think that's so important because one, doing that, it makes you be in the moment. It grounds you right where you are right now, not in where you want to be and where you're trying to get to and everything that's happened

in your past. It just brings you to right now, today, where you are at. And it also, deep breathing helps with stress. It calms down your vagus nerve. So it's very physically beneficial for you. And you're right. It also helps you to see, I think people have a lot of feels right now. They feel overwhelmed. They feel like they've failed. They feel like they've got a lot of baggage they're bringing forward. And that's not exactly the truth. And sometimes our brain gets wired in a more negative way, especially when it comes to

dieting. And so taking that deep breath, taking that moment, it does give you the capacity, but also the clarity, I think, as well. And we wanted to start by talking about making this process a priority. And it's interesting because the points that we have written down to talk about are making space for this when you have so much going on. So first is like just sitting, taking that deep breath and being in a calm space. The other was prioritizing yourself without being overwhelmed. And then the other was being uncomfortable with change. I know there are some people, and this is why you mentioned it, just stopping for a minute, focusing on their breathing,

cause them to be anxious because they're constantly in this frenetic state of like, this is how they function or they think, you know, how bad they want it has to equate with the amount of work that they're doing and the big feels that they have about it. So I'm glad we took a minute to do that because I think it's just going to set the tone for this conversation. So let's start do that. Um, because I think it's just going to set the tone for this conversation. So let's start with that. Making this process a priority is so difficult for people because they have a hard time just making space for themselves in their lives.

Yeah. So, you know, we can, I could talk priorities all day like that's my favorite thing in the whole world because it's so hard it's so hard we have demands uh we have obligations we have commitments from family from work from caregiving on both ends of our lives we have our own bodies and health and injuries and disabilities that require tending to there's so much that is coming at us where are we where are we with what we want and what we need and our ambitious goals and what we're all trying to do here and so sometimes the word priority is and this is why I love that you'd have a learning story i continue to be so touched you would invite me i'm a learning strategist we are all trying to learn or unlearn something here are we always in the background of our own lives that we are keeping

all the plates spinning for everyone else but ours is wobbly or crashing to the ground where are we can we step into the foreground of our own lives even if for a few minutes each day and many people might say well that like easy for you to say and not it's my life project too it's why i'm so determined to like keep immersing keep immersing and how do we prioritize so part of what makes prioritization difficult is we don't ever talk about how to do it. It's like we should just know how to do it. And so it comes with some amount of shame, some amount of unspoken, like there's like expectation that we just know how to do it. So we can think about it either by way of like blocking, blocking time that is just ours.

But if we're not so free in the choreography of our lives because we're doing so much tending and caregiving then we can also thinking about breaking up that time throughout the day sometimes we kind of misconflate prioritization with like i'm going to get the whole morning off well i don't know anybody right now who could have a whole morning off of anything like yeah we don't really what we don't want to do is go i'm going to get the whole morning off well I don't know anybody right now who could have a whole morning off of anything like yeah we don't really what we don't want to do is go I'm going to prioritize my something and take myself on a 10-day vacation lovely but what I think we're all after is spots where we're priorities in our own day every day most days so is it around protecting a little time in the morning is it around protecting a little walk after lunch is it around protecting a little time in the morning? Is it around protecting a little walk

after lunch? Is it around saying, look, hey kids, I absolutely adore you. I'm going to need 45 minutes to myself in the evening because I just, I got to get my thinking straight. I got to get settled in the body. I want to kind of reflect upon my day. So it does require some boundary setting in the way of a block or of a breaking up and sprinkling of time and in the way of communicating some kind of thoughtful boundaries. Boundaries are hard. This is one of the things I love about the Libby Method is, especially with the food plan, again, so multi-layered and there's a rhyme and a reason.

It makes you focus. Take time at breakfast. Take time at morning snack, at lunch, in the afternoon, in the afternoon again, at dinner. And this is why I love setting intentions in the morning. Brings the process to the forefront of your mind. You're declaring, I'm still focused on this. I am making space for this. And at the end of day, those end of day reflections, like how did I do at that? Focusing on what did I do really well? What do I need to work on? So the living method, I don't want to say all consuming, but you have no choice but to prioritize yourself and take the time because these are the things that you're going to need to do in order to make that change. I think there's also that we're still dealing with that underlying selfishness. We are taught that prioritizing yourself is selfish, but if you're not going

to do it, who's going to do it for you? And if you don't take care of yourself, someone else is going to have to take care of you as well. But I think that still lingers a bit that, and to your point, there's big fields that come with taking the time for yourself. I had someone who's like, well, I can't, I can't do this because I have to make my meals for the family and I can't make separate meals for myself. And I'm like, Hmm, well, first of all, you don't have to be making separate meals for yourself, but like, well, where do you fit into your life? And how are you expecting to make this big change and reach this goal? If you're not doing the things that you need to do to make the change

and accomplish the goal. One word that might be helpful, see how it lands kind of community here is proportion. So if we think, if we overthink the word prioritization, it's like, well, then I go for who's going first, like we're ranking importance, we're ranking this, like, what's a priority, what's second, what's third, that doesn't fit with someone's way of thinking, or if it doesn't land well, what you were just describing of like, well, I can't, I can't make my own meal, or I can't, I can't. The word proportion just reminds us perhaps that we get to be in our own day too. So if we think about the proportion of time spent on all of the people in our lives,

is there a kind of equitable place? Are we taking up an equitable space in that because we need to be in our own lives too and so portion helps me think wait a minute I'm like a I have a disproportionate presence in my own life here and like but my kids play you know they're like they balloon and take so much of it it's important it's beautiful their priority but I need my I need to occupy a little bit of space too in my own life. I get to be in my own life too. That was just like a, I felt that in my soul. I get to be in my own life too. And to your point about vacations, like I feel like I need to sometimes go to an island by myself.

And but then I'm just going to come back and the feels are going to come back. My life is going to come back. And to your point, if you're feeling like you need that, that is a message for you that you need to start making space in your life. And it doesn't have to be all or nothing. Right. It can like like even like the food plan, like you don't have to make fancy recipes you can just keep it so super simple right there's there's ways of doing the program that you can fit it into where you are at in your life right and there's different degrees in which you can follow okay let's talk about diet history because i man some people are not going to make it because they have such big feels about their

past. They believe that if they lose their weight, they're not going to maintain it. They believe that this is just, they can't eat more and lose weight. They believe that their body hates them and, you know, or for whatever reason, their health issues, it's going to be impossible for them. And I understand why. I understand why, but let's talk about how your diet history factors in, in terms of doing the things you need to do, unlearning, learning, and learning the new things that you're going to need to learn or to lose your weight in a healthy, sustainable way. Our histories, our histories are in us. And so whether we acknowledge them or not, they're there. And so I wonder around, you know, look, there are going to be some things that some of us have gone through that are too

big and too ouchy to hold on our own. And so it's so important if you feel that way like I can't possibly look at that I cannot go there I cannot unpack that that's where a therapeutic ally is so helpful and so important but if you feel like it is within your wheelhouse and your capacity but it's like a oh that's uncomfortable oh look how hard I've tried, look how many years I've spent doing this. What did you say yesterday on the podcast? It's like 17 years for the same five to 10. Like there was some remarkable, oh gosh, that's me. I'm in that. I'm no different. I'm no different, not even a tiny bit. So our histories are there. And I feel like you are providing an opportunity for us to shine a spotlight, like bring some fresh air to it, bring light to it.

We don't have to feel so ashamed. In the safe and kind community that you and your team have created, we can do some of that unearthing. We can do some of that airing out and go, oh my goodness, look at what I started when I was 12. Oh goodness, look what the messaging was. Oh, that hurt so much when that person said that. Oh, I can't believe that I did that. Okay. So maybe in this 91 days, we share a little of that. We reflect a little bit on that. We lighten the load a little. We unburden that a little bit. So we don't have to keep carrying it with us. We don't have to feel so like, oh, if only people knew what I'd done,

if only people know what I've tried. We all have. We all have. That's why we're here. We're here to try to learn a new way of being in relationship with food, with portions, with movement, with taking care of ourselves, with rest. We're trying to heal a relationship with our body and our body's cues. Is that hunger? Is that boredom? Oh, am I actually hungry for more? Am I anxious? Oh, do I need another? I'm exhausted. That's what what that turns out that's what that cue was you know you're you are inviting us to take like the most heartfelt look inward and so when when people bring forward right even within the first few days all kinds of this isn't meeting my expectations or I'm'm already angry, I'm already failing.

That's not actually about Gina, and that's not actually about the Livy Method. What a beautiful, even if it's hard, a beautiful opportunity to go, where is that coming from? Whose voice is that? Oh my gosh, is that my grandmother's voice? Was that the stern word of an uncle? Is that a, where's that? Is that like the Weight Watchers commercial that I saw? Where is that coming from? So a chance to identify, a chance to create some space between each one of us and some real longstanding beliefs. And I don't know about trust i take trust really seriously and all of our trust has been tinkered around with so for me an easier way point in is just open-heartedness i'm gonna bring open-heartedness to this one day i'm gonna see how this one day goes i'm gonna bring

an open-heartedness to these three months i going to be honest and values aligned and wide awake, eyes wide open with my choices for these three months and see what happens. See if trust gets a little bit reestablished. I literally, you can't see my paper, but I wrote trust at the top. And it's, gosh, it's so deep when deep. The diet industry, what you've been taught, what you've been told. And I love doctors, but reinforce, just go lose weight, try that program. So many people put their trust, their time, their energy into doing these diets that they were told by the experts that this is what works. And not only did it not work, but man, it did a number on people's not just physical health, but their mental health. And now people are in a situation where it's hard for them to lose weight. Their metabolism

has been just destroyed. They don't have that trust. So, you know, I get like, trust me, I listen, Tony and I were just talking last night. I love that. I, I get to work in a business and offer a program that I can feel really good about. It is really helping people. It's teaching people to be in tune to them, to their body's needs. It's teaching people to prioritize themselves. It's teaching people how to eat healthy. It's a, it's a, it's a lot of things. I know that, you know that, but how do we get someone who's coming in and they just, they don't trust that. I love the openheartedness, but if I've been burned before, I don't know. So how do we really, like, how do I go from not trusting to being able to trust? Can we just go over that a little bit more?

Yeah. And you know, I wonder, I don't think there's a recipe. I don't think that there's a prescription or formula. I think a big part of what you are offering here is practice I am going to practice today and you know I don't even know if I would go so far as to say as if like like do it as if you trust maybe like if that works for some people some people really like that twist I'm going to do today as if I trusted it worked I don't know if that changes anything, if somebody has some real deep skepticism. But what I would say is, what are we really talking about? We're talking about, here's a snack. And here's some water. And I'm going to practice those things today. I'm going to practice doing the sequence that that Gina has laid out for me. I'm going to I'm

really going to just do one foot in front of the other, whether I trust it or not, I am going to kind of offer a little bit of surrender, a little bit of, we'll see a little bit of a, um, an approach of an experiment. We'll experiment. I don't mean with sass. We'll see Gina. I mean, we'll see, we'll see. And then by the end of this day, how do I feel? How's my digestion? How's my mood? How's my hunger? How's my, I don't know, kind of like, how am I calibrating? How am I revving? How have I been speaking with people? What's my internal dialogue? I'm going to do a kind of like quick scan do I feel worse do I feel worse for having had the water if I do I feel worse for moving gently do I feel worse for participating in community or setting a morning reflection and then just kind of doing a like gauge how the day went not with any judgment but like oh that's interesting or oh that kind of went well or I feel pretty good about that or oh, oh, that food didn't, that particular portion or food

didn't sit so well, actually. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to do this day as it's laid out, and then I'm going to gather a day's worth of data. How do I feel? What's my body telling me? And then tomorrow I'm going to do the same. And how interesting and how beautiful is it that we all have an app? You don't have to use the app, right? None of it's an imposition. There's an app where you could track, oh, it looks like when I drink four liters of water. So the very same days where at the end of the day, I say, I feel pretty good. Look at the days where I have hours of sleep. I feel pretty emotionally stable on those days. Ooh, when I eat salty food, I wind like we're just gathering data. We're gathering data, but the foods that feel good,

the amount of rest that feels good, the amount of water that feels good, the kinds of movement that feel good, our participation in community that feels good. And so I don't have to trust something that's 91 days from now or 91 days minus nine. I am just going to do this day, gather a little bit of data, and I'm going to keep repeating. I'm going to practice that rhythm. What happens after a week? What happens by week six? What happens by week 10? It's a very slow data gathering. If we're talking about rebuilding trust, reestablishing trust, that you could really help, that this particular method and approach could really be helpful. I was just reading a member comment here talking about since most people joined due to referral, which is true, 95% of our members who are new members know someone who's done the program. And that's that living proof. But at the same time, it's one thing to see it. The diet industry has showed you proof before. And yes, it should be more meaningful

because it's a friend or someone that you know. But then there's that trust in yourself that you are going to be able to do it. How many times have you done a diet and you're like, I can do this, and you did. You starved, you deprived, you did whatever you needed to do, and you lost that weight, and then you gained it all back again, right? And that's not your fault. That was just the way those diets were designed. So there's different, to their point, there's different types of trust. You can trust your friend, which is why you signed up, but you might not trust diets. You might not trust, you know, people telling you what to do on your diet. You might not trust yourself to do the things or not do the things or whatever. So that's a big issue. We're going to get deeper into that. I want to bring it back to, you know, how to structurally set yourself up for

success. Like we're going to talk about building a routine, figuring out what works for you, you know, tips for remembering all of it. Now I did outline, I think there's a lot going on. How do we focus in on the fact that really what people need to do is read the guidelines and make changes with the food plan and then just keep showing up. Really? There is a lot of information. A lot of it is extra information to help people have a deeper level of understanding, but how can we, so how can we make this book and say, this diet is so easy to follow? How do we, how do we make this book and say this diet is so easy to follow? How do we make it as easy as possible for us to follow?

I love that so much. So one is please don't read the whole book all at once. Unless you're the 1% here who are like, but I've already read it three times. I'm all the way in. Great. That's so good. That's so good. Actually, I'm just not talking.

I love you, but I'm not talking to you right now. I'm talking to everybody else who's like, I bought it and I have not, I've not, I'm not past page three. I cannot. Well, you can read the whole book, but you still have to take a day by day approach. I'm having a hard time here because I want to so bad. And I just, and look another day went by and I haven't read another day went by. Okay. So first is we don't ever do the whole of something all at once. We don't do

the whole thing. So if we're talking about one chapter, which is one week, we're going to do this one week. So some people love to read head grade if that's you, but if we're talking about feeling immobilized, like I can't really start, I'm worried that the days are going to pass me by. Yeah. This is where once we do like, right, feet on floor breath, planfulness can really help. So we need to begin to create some kind of new habits, some kind of new routine to reduce the like cognitive load like how much thinking and decision making because we're already tired we're already exhausted we're already burnt out could it be that every sunday at 5 p.m or just after dinner where maybe your

partner or roommate or family does the dishes, you are going to take 15 minutes and go, what is the week ahead hold for me? I'm not saying you read the whole chapter. I mean, I'm going to get a lay of the land. I'm going to get up my agenda. I'm going to actually pop in where I'm going to do the reading. I'm going to take 50 pages. It's not going to be 50, but if 50 pages, I'm going to divide that by five available days. Okay. I'm going to take 50 pages, it's not going to be 50, but if 50 pages, I'm going to divide that by five available days, I'm going to read 10 pages for each of those days. That's how I'm going to get through this. So if I read 10 pages in one day, maybe two pages at a time, or I'm going to do a I'm going to wake up 15 minutes early in the morning. I'm going to read through those 10 pages.

I'm going to not just abstractly think I'll fit it in somehow and then be disappointed by the end when it didn't happen. I'm going to very planfully look ahead. What's in my week? And then I'm going to on purpose, marry the task 10 pages a day and put it into my actual schedule. I don't have to walk around going, oh, I've got to do this. I've got to do this. I've got to do this.

It's too hard to hold. It's too exhausting. So let's decide where it's going to go. And if that's too much, if you're like, I can't even, no problem. Then what we do, and i'm sure it's going to come up again but a very beautiful strategy is habit stacking and all that all that invites us to do is look at something that's already a habit what is an already lived sequence that you do in your day is there something that you do in the you know four things in the morning

when you get up so gina you were describing that you sort of visualize your day you spend a moment grounding before you get out of bed what is your morning sequence or your lunchtime sequence or you're getting ready to leave the workday sequence or you're right before bed so it doesn't matter time of day doesn't matter but if you have an already established pattern of two or three things in a row that always happen day after day, it's just how you wake up or it's how you have lunch, then that might be where you also read five pages of Gina every day, or that's where you might do a 15 minute walk. I'm going to listen to a podcast of Gina's. Can you fit in the new desired behavior, reading the book, listening to the app, doing my tracking, whatever the thing is that appeals, checking the post of the day. And I'm going to put it before, in the middle, or after

an already established habit sequence. And that's called habit stacking. And it reduces the decision making. Where is this going to go? When am I going to do this? Oh, no, five days have gone by. I still haven't read this week. Oh, my new pattern is going to be that every lunch when I unpack my lunch and I eat the right, you know, the according to the food plan that you've laid out for us, right before I pack it all up, I'm going to read three pages of G and I'm going to listen. I'm going to read the post. I'm going to pop in a comment or question, and then I'll pack up my lunch and then I'm done. And that's going to be my new sequence. Yeah. Well, this is why I like the make a routine of watching the check-in video, either go into the Facebook support group, open up your app, right? Watch the check-in video,

right? And if you don't have time to review the post, you can save those for reviewing the post later. You set your intention. I love the habit of setting an intention. Bring it to the forefront of your mind. End of day reflection. This could be like you said, you have dinner, you do the dishes. Now you take 10 minutes to go for a walk. It doesn't have to be an hour.

You don't have to wait. But 10 minutes, go for a walk. Then take that 10 minutes, download and listen to the podcast. Or it could be your nighttime routine. So many people struggling with feeling hungry after dinner or the routine that they used to, okay, let me go do my skincare routine and then, you know, come lie in bed and watch TV. Well, go do your skincare routine. Come lie in bed, read 15 minutes, read for 15 minutes or, you know, listen to like 50.

You don't have to listen to even my, even my lives every day that, you know, I'm trying to keep them to a half hour, I always fail, I end up going 45 minutes, I can't help myself. But that's, it's not for you to have to listen to 45 minutes, I enjoy talking about this, you know, I want to answer as many people's questions as possible. But you don't have to listen to the whole 45 minutes. You can listen to five minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes. So it's all about doing really what works, works for you and establishing those routines because routines are going to, to, to build new habits. And a big part of this process is working through old habits while you are creating those new habits. So love that. Okay. let's get into I know, lastly, you want to talk about being kind to yourself. So it's one thing to to, to create the routine to prioritize yourself.

But let's talk about the vibe. I describe it as the vibe that you are showing up with for yourself. Right? And like one day, we're super proud. And the next day, we hate ourselves. And we're berating ourselves. And with this process, there's some deep there's some deep unpacking that people are going to have to do or it really highlights what you're not doing when you know what you need to do. And how do we show ourselves grace and be kind to ourselves? What the fuck does that mean? I love it. I love it so much. You know, we're all here to lose weight or feel in a way the healthiest possibly in our own skin. But there's always at least one or two undercurrents that are the real project. I'm convinced of it. I'm convinced of it. And so when you talk about the vibe we bring,

and if someone is feeling already so angry or so disappointed, or that their expectations aren't met, then I think that's the project for them my project you know do you know what my project and it's only getting clearer now and you'd be like Dini you've been here for a bit I know I know my actual project here is not around the 10 pounds it's around peace of mind I don't want to go to bed one more night berating myself for something that I ate early in the day I don't want to ever experience that again that's my finally and forever and so I really embrace your invitation around intention What is the actual purpose for you here? What is the actual, and if project is

the wrong word, the journey, the experience, the arc, but what is the point? In addition to pounds, what is the point? What is the opportunity to learn or unlearn, to do or to undo, to heal up. And so when you ask about vibe, you know, is it for somebody, patience, which is so difficult? How do we accept going slowly when it's been a lifetime of accumulation of habits that aren't in service, coping that isn't really helpful coping, running on empty. And so fueling with food, but running on empty. And so I see each one of each time we show up with that vibe. If we take a moment ago, what's the spirit underneath it? So for me, you know, when we talk about vibe, I always think about, I say it every time, like my very good

friend talked about how she has, she can tell it's either the angry football coach is real loud and incessant, berates her. And if she can turn that, modify, like sublimate that voice into the kindest, kindest grandparent, like hands on cheeks being like, oh, oh, you're doing such a good job as a person, just being a person, you know, it's so hard. And so I do wonder about the inner voice, that relentless critic. Is that actually the project? Is that actually the opportunity to do that kind of like, oh, gosh, I'm so unkind to myself. Where did that voice come from? You know? Yeah. And it's the diet industry, right? Like if you're not losing weight, you are eating too much. You're not exercising enough. You know, you like, you're not good enough. Like there's, that's that again, that deep like history of dieting that makes you feel like you have to berate yourself. You have to go harder. You have to, you have to starve even more, deprive even more. Like you're not doing

enough. And this is reinforced to this day when people want to talk about healthy ways to lose weight. Well, it's calories in versus calories out, which is like, you're not doing what you need to do. You gained your weight back. Like you, you didn't follow this. You didn't do that. And so that it's that berating. I need to punish myself. If I eat pizza tonight, I have to punish myself and starve myself the next day. I have to will myself, force myself, berate myself, get my fuck. I got to fucking do this. You know, that energy rather than holy shit, you know, like, look what I've been through. I need to cut myself some slack. I am doing the best that I can. Yeah. Look what I've been through.

That feels like it to me. Look what I've been through that's so powerful this isn't a boot camp everyone we have to turn the living method into another form of a boot camp this isn't a 21 extreme day do only eat this one food group only like do 400 minutes of cardio and hit and Tabata's all combined. This is the opposite. It's the opposite. What would happen if, what would happen if I was just real calm and kind about this meal? Yeah. Calm and kind about this way of moving and taking up space with my body today. Yeah. You'd start to feel good. And then you would start doing more things that make you feel good and you would feel worthy. You'd feel worthy of taking time, worried, worthy of making good choices, worthy and indulging and feeling really great in your life.

And you'd be more patient with yourself and more understanding of yourself. And you would love yourself a greater sense of love for yourself when you're not so critical and harsh with yourself yeah and to like take care of this one body in this short precious life right because as you said at the outset no one's going to do it for us no one's until until we get to a point where we have to but in this moment when we can how do we take care of ourselves so lovingly? Well, I know just saying that is not an easy thing for so many people. So we are going to continue this conversation. Did I not tell y'all this would not be the conversation you thought,

you thought Dr. Dino would be like, take out your highlighters and make your notes and whatever. I don't know why I'm talking like that. You can do that too. You can do that too. You can do that. Get up the sticky notes. It's all welcome. It's all welcome.

That was my teacher voice, I guess. I don't know why I talk like that. I promise I will never, ever talk in that voice ever. Okay, you're going to be back. We're going to have so many amazing conversations like how do we keep it going how do we make change how do we do like we're gonna talk about all of it let's talk about being a teacher though because one of the things that you do outside of joining us is that you do offer services right now end of school year with kids you know know, you, you offer a lot of support. So, um, beyond just,

just for our purposes today, do you want to just give us a little bit of what you offer and then how people can find you? Cause I know people are like, how do I, how do I reach her? How do I? You're so lovely. You're so lovely. You support every single person you encounter. So thank you for asking. Um, and it's really a gift every time to be here, Gina, because nobody knows what a learning strategist is. Those are boring words put together. Like, what's a learning strategist? I agree. So what I do, right, like what I do is the how, how to manage your time, how to prioritize, how to be productive and non-toxic, non-punishing ways, how to remember stuff, how to, and this is the, where you're

asking, how to take tests and how to write towards final capstones, the things that we do in school that are expected, but sometimes not taught. And so I, with my business awakened learning, that's what I do from say grade six, but certainly through high school and lots of university and college students students as well as I find this so touching mature students who come back and they're like I'm on my third career I want to be a psychotherapist and so supporting the whole range of what it means to be a learner when they're facing tasks and they don't really know how I've got ADHD and struggling to get something done they're being asked to do something. They're like, my teacher didn't really, I have no idea how to do this. I'm up all night. I'm so stressed.

So that's what me and my team do. We, we reveal the how, and we teach people how to do learning in sustainable, successful ways, trying to create a revolution in, um, in learning. So thank you. And everyone, everyone learns different. So, uh, awaken learning.ca. Um, I do want to talk about that learning piece real quick before we go, because we actually had Dr. Dina join us before the start of this program. So there is actually a segment that we did that is stored in the welcome guide. If you have access to the Facebook support group, it is not a podcast if you're listening, unfortunately, but if you have access to the Facebook support group, it's in there. And we talked about the resources. We talked about the Facebook group and the app

and the book and trying to figure out, you know, what works for you and how to process and retain the information. So if you're looking for a little bit more on that kind of logistical part, we have that conversation. It is stored in the welcome guide, I believe, at the Facebook support group. AwakenLearning.ca is where also people can go over. No, so AwakenLearning on Instagram is where people can find you over there sharing tips. And AwakenLearning.ca is your website where people can reach out. Dr. Dina Karraschafer, it's always a pleasure. And I'm honestly so grateful. And I absolutely am in love with the conversations that we have each time.

There's just so much to learn. There's, there's something new. There's like, Oh, just like there's so many glimmers and good tidbits. And I appreciate you bringing that to us today. Thank you again. And to everyone listening and who is joining us live. Um, thank you so much. We have a bit of a different format. Um, with Facebook, We've had to change a few things. So unfortunately, we're unable to kind of highlight your comments, which we always love doing. But I've been keeping an eye on the comments. And we are very grateful that you joined us today.

So thank you, everyone. Thank you, Dr. Dina. Thank you, everybody, so much. What an honor.