How To Avoid The Shame Spiral and Make Peace With Your Body| 155

How can we avoid going down the SHAME spiral time and time again? How can you avoid throwing it all into the fuck it bucket and ultimately giving up? How can you move through uncertainty and come out on the other side of shit’s creek a better feeling person? By getting out of our own way, stop making things so complicated, and by MAKING PEACE with your body that is how! And Eva Rodriguez has been here, like many of us women, and has come out the other side. She is now on the other side helping women make peace with their bodies and start reaching their goals through healing, even in uncertain times.

Eva Rodriguez is a certified Life & Weight Loss Coach who helps busy, high-achieving women struggling with their weight to finally feel confident in their curves. Having been there and done that with countless weight loss struggles, Eva knows what it’s like to try your best and not see results, and is now on a mission to encourage and empower her fellow boss ladies by helping them ditch the fads and uncomplicate weight loss. As the host of the Podcast, Uncomplicating Weight Loss, Eva simplifies weight loss and mindset concepts into simple, actionable steps so that her listeners can hit their weight loss goals without any complicated rules and restrictions.

Eva’s story is so inspiring, and I felt so drawn to her after reading about what she had gone through. I resonated with it so much because I know SOO many of you women listening can resonate with it as well. And the same goes for how she got out of the place she was in. She had to make it simple, and she had to get out of her own FUCK IT spiral! I think a lot of us can relate to this… yeah??

There is so much uncertainty around us. From the last 2 years that we all went through, to our everyday lives. Life is unpredictable, life is uncertain, and uncertainty can look like many different things. For Eva, she entered into this journey after a time of grief and loss, and sadness. And what she learned from that healing journey after suffering so many losses, was that when things are uncertain, it throws off EVERYTHING else in your life.

With life gets uncertain, the first thing to go is our health and wellbeing. Life gets crazy, the shit hits the fan and, you go into survival mode. EVERYBODY else’s needs come before yours. When you do take a moment to think, what about me… It’s like we don’t even know who we are! While grieving Eva forgot about herself and what she needed. She forgot about the pain she was in and ignored it as a way to cope and pushed everything down.

When you are in this time of uncertainty and thousands of questions … you don’t know if you are coming or going. You go into survival mode and try to just get to the next day. But this shuts down your body and the way it is supposed to optimally work. When you are in survival mode, you don’t think about the consequences. You forget what you need. And a big thing that goes out the window is how we eat and what you need to do to take care of ourselves and our bodies.

“I became so disconnected from myself. So disconnected from what I needed. I ended up just eating whenever I had time which killed my metabolism, purposely staying busy because I didn’t want to deal with the pain as it hurts too much. Stuffing that pain away and just trying to stay strong for my son. But then… I realized that in order for me to change my life, change my health, and just to get back to me… who is Eva, and what do I need? I had to find peace. I had to find what makes me feel at peace. I wasn’t even looking for happiness… I just wanted peace. I wanted to feel like the world was not spinning around me!” – Eva Rodriguez

So, in order for Eva to move past this time in her life of not taking care of her, she had to start to learn how to do the small things. It was the little things, one small step at a time, slowly adding to that and knowing where she was going with what she was adding. She had to start to put herself first. She had to wake up every morning and put herself first then take care of those around her. And this didn’t mean she neglected anyone else, this just meant she had to acknowledge her needs first before all others.

“If you bypass yourself, you will never be able to show up and be that wonderful person you were meant to be.”

When did you get to the point when you are like shit, I am moving, but I am just moving. I am walking in a circle, creating this flow and staying in the same spot and not getting anywhere?

So many of us do that because what I have learned is that sometimes you think that emotions are so unbearable that we can’t deal with them, so I won’t. We put it in a box, so it disappears… But it doesn’t. Until you take it out of the box and sit with them, you will not FEEL those feelings!

My turning point when it came to dealing with those feelings that were so uncomfortable was when I started learning about the mindset and how important it is for us to deal with the things we don’t want to deal with and actually SIT with them and sitting with the discomfort. I have experienced heartbreak and in the most painful of ways losing someone I love so dearly. Lost my son’s father, then losing my mother, and going through my own journey. I have experienced extreme heartache and IT DIDN’T kill me. Therefore, no other emotion can.

For humans, certainty is one thing we rely on. So even though I am going down the same path that is going to throw me into the same damn hole. IT’S CERTAIN. This goes for women who are following the same diet. THEY KNOW the outcome. And for many of us, we fall into the fuck it bucket because we don’t allow ourselves to feel. And we find comfort in these things that bring us negative results. Food, alcohol, drugs, chocolate, shopping, etc. You get that temporary pleasure, and it feels so much better than being sad. But we don’t think about the consequences until after the fact, then there are the same feelings and this ENTIRE spiral. And it falls into what I call, the fuck it bucket. Because nothing really matters! What we don’t realize is that at the moment we may feel temporary relief, but it’s only temporary.

The river of misery sucks, but when you get to the other side YOU HEAL, and you will be so much better. With the fuck it bucket you are swimming upstream, and you are tired and it’s hard and you don’t see the other side… YET. So you give up and you drift back to where we were. I see SOOOO much of this with the women I work with. They say it gets hard.. And they quit on themselves. But why?? Because it got hard. Because they didn’t believe…. And it really comes down to believing.. Believing in something bigger than you and your goals.

And it ALLLL comes down to mindset. We can tell our clients how to eat and how to work out, but if your mind is not there and you don’t believe there is a possibility, then they don’t believe in themselves. Just believe in the possibility that things can be different if YOU CHOOSE to do things differently. But remember.. things will not change, and your results will not change if you continue to think the same things and feel the same things. You have to think differently.

Weight loss is not and does not need to be complicated. We just make it as such because your brain saying it’s supposed to be hard. But it doesn’t have to be. It’s a choice. It’s the thoughts that you choose, and you can choose to make it as hard as you want to make it. Or you can choose to simplify it, get out of your own way, and TRUST in yourself.

Women, you are stronger than you will ever know, you are smarter than you will ever know, and you are more capable than you give yourself credit for. You just have to trust yourselves!

I was escaping my feelings. I was covering them up with food, alcohol, shopping, etc. But at the end of the night when I took away all the things, I had to look in the mirror and say who are you? That is when the cracks started to show. I am a woman with a broken heart, I am a mother, I am an entrepreneur, I am a businesswoman, I am a daughter, and I am a lot of things. But I am a woman with a broken heart, and I need to heal it and food will not do it. It has to come from me.

You will not heal from anything if you are just escaping it or bypassing it or buffering through it. It is just going to keep popping up and will derail your process if not taken care of or acknowledged. If we are ignoring things or bypassing things with food or anything giving you negative results, at the end of the day do they work? You deserve the best life you want to have. You can achieve it as well. But it’s getting to that point of feeling things.
It requires DISCOMFORT to get out of the fuck it bucket. But the other side is something we never thought we could get to. And trust me… you can!

How do you know if you want better?

Take a peek at what is happening in front of you right now.
Assess that situation.
Where am I?
I need to get there but I don’t have a path. How can I find that path?
Ask yourself.. Do I want better?
Believe in your goal
Do you believe that YOU can get there?
If I am thinking I am not worthy of it, it’s not for me, etc. Then I am just going to sit in that circle, in that pool of misery inviting other people over.

Sit down and think about these things ladies.. Get your brain fired up and thinking! Ask yourself. How can I make this easier? What can I do today to be more productive? What can I do to lose more weight? To get closer to my goal?? To eat better? Your brain will start to offer you suggestions if you ask it the right types of questions.

But if you ask it the wrong type of questions, it will continue to keep you in that spiral of everything that is wrong with you. So let’s get it uncomfortable and fired up!

What is one thing that makes you feel magical?

Being my son’s mother makes me feel magical. He is amazing. He is 10 and things are changing in his life, and I look at him like that mom. You used to be so small and now you are so big! I am so proud of him. I feel magical because he is such a magical kid. People always say he is such a good kid and I just say I GOT LUCKY to have such an amazing little boy who is so sweet and looks after me. It is tough raising a little boy when you are alone, and in general but doing it alone has been tough, but I wouldn’t change it for the world.

Be sure to follow Eva on Instagram and take her free fit quiz she has for everyone through the links below!

LINKS

Facebook Page:

https://www.facebook.com/kimbarnesjeffersoncoach

Facebook Group:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/fitgirlmagic/

Website:

https://kimbarnesjefferson.com/

Podcast:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fit-girl-magic-healthy-living-for-women-over-40/i d1476883661

Stress-Free Summer:

https://www.fitgirlmagic.com/stressfreesummer22_eb/