169 Behind the Scenes - Mindful Shape Shift

A more personal inside look into the changes happening behind the scenes of Mindful Shape and why. And if you've been struggling with releasing weight and food noise for too long, I share the missing and often overlooked piece that you MUST know to unlock the body you want.

• Shape Shift Program LEARN MORE
• Instagram: @mindful_shape
• Free Self Coaching Resources
• Interested in getting coached by me? Go to my website mindfulshape.com

Transcript

This transcript was auto-generated, please forgive any weirdness.

 Hi, and welcome to the Mindful Shape Podcast. My name is Paula Parker. Now, if this is your first episode that you've ever listened to, I just wanna let you know it's gonna be a little bit different than my normal format. Not that there's one format, but I tend to do more of a teaching style, and this is gonna be a little different because

This is a behind the scenes episode. I wanna take you backstage because I imagine like within mindful shape, there's the outfacing, there's this podcast, there's all my workshops and my teaching and the website and all of that. But then you can imagine like almost like a play.

There's what's presented. And then there's what's going on backstage and oftentimes there's a lot more going on behind the scenes, lots more people working, lots more things happening than we just see on the outside. And so I thought this would be a really cool opportunity to just, you know.

Share, open that curtain up and share behind the scenes of what's going on within Mindful Shape. Because I started this podcast back in 2018, I think that was the first episode, and it's 2026 as I record this, and that's eight years. So I've been doing this long enough to see that. Things evolve, right? My clients evolve.

I have evolved, my process has evolved, and everything changes. And I wanna take you along that transformational journey as I go through it myself.

Now I typically write an outline or some sort of notes before a podcast episode, and this is no different, but I did this in a journal style entry. So if you hear pages turning, that's what's going on. 'cause I didn't type it on the computer. I find that for me personally, if I really want to have my heart involved.

Along with my mind, it's just easier for me to do pen to paper. So if you hear pages turning, that's what's going on.

So this is not going to be, um, a super structured or organized episode here. I'm gonna be jumping around a little bit, but one thing that I think will be very useful for you as a listener to hear for those of you who are struggling with food noise, with trying to lose weight and then gaining weight and then losing weight again

Let's say it's been going on for a while. Let's say just for a time period, let's say it's been going on longer than one year. So you've been at this trying to get fit or trying to get the body that you want and felt like you've been struggling for over a year. I wanna tell you something that's going to really, I think, accelerate your progress.

It's all an illusion. Okay? So all of this food noise, all of the weight loss stuff, trying to release weight, releasing some, and then gaining it back and going up and down and dieting and trying this diet and that diet, all of it, getting on the scale, not wanting to get on the scale, all of that is just one thing, and that's a useful distraction.

So there's nothing wrong with you or your body. Now, some bodies, you know, I've worked with so many clients now I know that some bodies release weight quickly, and clients will tell me, listen, I know if I follow this protocol, my body releases weight. Other clients, we have different constitutions, and even though we're following our protocol, we hit more plateaus.

Our body releases weight at a slower pace. That I think is just genetics. Not to say we can't change that depending on who you listen to, but our bodies are different and we need to respect that. But your body's not broken, right? So there's a way in that which you can eat where you are at a natural weight, , I mean, for some of us, we're, we're never gonna reach, nor are we inclined to be up on stage in a bikini.

That's just like, not, not what we're interested in. Right? So that's not who I'm talking about here, but if you find yourself turning to food to relax as any form of escape, if food is taking up more of your mental space and your energy than you would like, and you're spinning your wheels.

You must understand, I think, on a visceral level that this is not what it seems to be food issues or that you just don't understand, like you're confused or you are missing something. Anything like that.

But simply it's a distraction. It's a distraction from pain. So we have pain as human beings. We all experience pain, and then what we do is we try to escape that pain and we turn to food, we turn to it as a distraction, and that creates suffering. So that instead of having to deal with that original pain, you can then attend to the suffering, the pain about the pain.

I almost think of it as like a, a layer cake of pain, right? And it's like we have this base layer because we are humans and that's what we are here to experience, the full range of human emotion. We're not equipped to do that, or we're not skilled at doing that. We've never been taught how to do that and, or that's never been role modeled to us.

Then we will layer up. And we will create suffering. Some people will stay there forever, so they will just keep hopping to a different diet or another useful distraction like shopping, or they create relationship drama, or there's some sort of chaos or drama that's always in their life, and there's no judgment here.

Because my personal belief is that for some of us, that's what we came here to do. It's like that's our playground and that's what we came here to do in this lifetime, and it's. Not for us to heal within this lifetime, but I do think it's possible for us to heal it within this lifetime.

It's so important to understand this because when you see it as merely a distraction, it's like you see through it. You see through the illusion. You won't be as caught up in all of that food noise, in the diet noise, in the tying your worthiness to your body, all of that. It's not going to feel as heavy.

It's not gonna feel like such a drag, but you'll now be able to go to work. On it in a new way with a new perspective. You'll be looking at two things, what's causing that original pain and how you might be creating or adding to the suffering, the pain about pain.

And then number two, you can learn how to approach that pain in a way that serves you.

A couple of things that have really shifted for me in the last couple of years. One is the elephant in the room, which is weight loss drugs, right? GLP ones. The industry has completely changed. So if you want to get excess weight off you as fast as humanly possible, this is the way to go.

You want a booster. And many of us, I mean, I don't know if there's anybody out here now, maybe there is, but most of us know that that is just a booster like that. We are still going to have to do the inner work. We're going to have to make some changes because there were reasons why we were overeating in the first place.

So I think most of some, I could be wrong about that, but at least in my world, everyone knows that, right? So we need to deal with these underlying root reasons. But in terms of. Releasing weight, we can get help. We can take those drugs and they can, you know, I think of it as a booster. It really is a booster.

It gives us a headstart. And if that's available, many people are going to jump on that. Right. It totally makes sense. So that has changed things in my world and I feel. Much more of, um, almost like a responsibility is maybe the right word

to get the message out there to really reach people who either don't wanna do that. Or maybe can't do it physically or who will need support in the identity change that comes from external changes happening at potentially a faster rate than internal changes so that there's support there, right? So I see my work shifting in that area, but truly internal changes are what interests me the most and always have been so like anybody that comes to work with me.

That's the first thing that they say. They always understand that this is an internal issue. And yes, there might be something in terms of understanding some more strategy, but really they get that this is a mental, emotional issue and that's what they wanna solve. They wanna change who they are. So this has always been a pattern, and now for me, it's really, I feel a calling to double down on that.

So nothing there has changed. And so for me personally, I think of this as identity work. It's like, why are we not doing what we know we need to do? And there is that part that's the motivational triad, which is, yeah, this is how our brains are wired. We seek pleasure, avoid pain, and our brain will exert the least amount of effort, which oftentimes means thinking new thoughts.

So there is that, which is nice to know. And. There might be some deeper reasons, like this is a useful distraction,

and so it requires more of what I think of as who we are becoming, not necessarily focused on what we are doing, but more of a personal growth, a change. A changing of what may now seem unchangeable. So I always think like your current identity might think that a strategy or something and achieving a result is impossible, but a different version of you, a different identity.

Even the version who's already achieved it doesn't, it just has a totally different perspective. It just knows that yes, that's totally possible. Okay.

I've always been and will continue to be focused on the roots of things.

And me personally, I want to feel strong in my body. I want to have a healthy relationship with my body. I wanna be fit. I also wanna wear all the clothes that I want, and

i'm just gonna go about it from the ground up rather than all the strategy stuff. So it's like, for me personally, I could really pick any strategy that could be counting macros, doing calorie deficit, copying somebody else's meal plan or a fasting protocol. But if the method isn't interesting to me, if it's flat, like I know I could do it, I know I could say, okay, this is what I'm gonna do for 30 days or whatever, and I could follow through on that.

If it doesn't have that aliveness to it, then it's going to be ineffective. It's like, I think of it as like moving deck chairs on the Titanic. It's like, it's like, what's the point? You know? So

I like to keep things super, super simple. Eat only when you're hungry. Eat healthy food and eat until you feel satiated. Drink lots of water and. For me, it's moving my body in a way that makes a difference, but also that I feel is in tune with my rhythms, my natural rhythms, and what I like doing and what is fun and interesting to me.

So the tactics and the strategy is important. I'm not saying that it's not important, like we need that to make changes.

But what I just described is something that I could literally do until I'm 105 years old, right? I could move my body in a way that serves me. I could eat in a way that serves me. All of that.

And if I want to look differently than I do now, I'm going to have to be more precise on that strategy. And that's where it gets really interesting because if there's anything that gets in the way of what I just described. That strategy, then that means there's a gap between who I am now and who I want to be.

If I have zero resistance, if I can just go and do that strategy, then great. Then it truly is just a number of days on the calendar. And or more refinement, more precision of, you know, eating only when I'm hungry, stopping it enough, choosing foods that serve me, moving my body, drinking water, all of that kind of stuff.

And on the one hand, this doubling down on the inner work may not be for some, for anyone who has Googled mindful weight loss or mindful eating, and this podcast came up well. This is going to be a little bit of a stretch. It's gonna be a little bit outside of that because we're going a bit deeper here.

But for those of you for whom you're ready to double down. Like me, you're want it to be less mundane. You embrace the mundane parts, but there's just something that's a little bit more richer about this identity shift of becoming the person that you wanna be. Then you are invited along on this journey as I continue to evolve this podcast, evolve my programs and my offerings, and even the work that I'm doing on myself.

Because I'm on my own leading edge here too. What I'm doing with my clients now is very different than what I was doing say five years ago. We aren't talking about food protocols per se. What we are talking about is recognizing when the distraction with a capital D is resurfacing and why we are talking about how to transmute.

Negative emotion, what that emotional shape shifting process is and how to do it. We're talking about how. We stretch what you think you're capable of by doing different practices, regulating your nervous system, which isn't being calm all the time. By the way, sometimes we think regulating your nervous system is just being calm the whole time, but it's not that it's being authentic.

It's knowing how to process your emotions and doing fun work, like trying on alter ego, stepping into your future identity, all those kinds of things, exploring. Doing some shadow work, exploring the fears you have around. What would it look like if you actually did reach your goal of being in your dream body, of releasing the weight, being that version of yourself who says no to dessert?

Will people be jealous of you? Will you not fit in anymore? Will people tell you that you shouldn't lose too much weight or that you look older, or that you look too thin or that you look ill? All of that stuff, like are you willing. To take a look at all of that stuff because that, I think, is when we can be aware of that, that we understand that is in our subconscious, then we can make peace with it.

We know what to do with it and we can shift it. Otherwise, it's. Likely gonna be showing up in subtle ways that we just label as self-sabotage and then we get so frustrated with ourselves 'cause we don't understand why we are doing what we are doing or why we are not doing the things that we know we should be doing.

Of course, should, in quotation marks.

And this is all very meta because as I follow my own aliveness, as I incorporate this into mindful shape, I'm personally undergoing a bit of a metamorphosis too. So I'm very much in this process, and I know strategy. I know protocols. I know weight loss and fasting protocols and mindset. I can feel often that pull of the old, the predictable and the familiar, and I am personally getting support to track these kinds of changes, to navigate where I'm going, which is a little bit unknown right now, and the uncertainty of it all so that I can become more aware and I can balance or.

You know, shore up against that inevitable pull of going back to what is safe and what is familiar. And that's honestly the behind the scenes. Pull up the curtain reason for shapeshift, my group program, because I've never taught it before, so for the most part it is new territory. But the concepts, the natural integration I've been doing with my private clients over the last, I would say six months to a year, has been the most transformative of anything else I've done. So the clients have been getting results like I've never seen before, and they are reflecting.

The changes, the internal changes that are impacting more broadly into their lives, which I find so fascinating so it's not just weight loss, it's like personal relationships. It's how you're showing up within your family. It's how you are relating to your work, all of those things.

So this is my invitation to you

if you wanna make a leap in really any area of your life, you wanna change yourself in some way,

and if you are here and you've been following me for a while, it might be refining that relationship you have with your body and food or it might not. It might be that one layer of the cake down, that pain layer down. It's like the suffering. You wanna remove all of the suffering, the top layers of food and noise and weight loss, but then there's a deeper layer that needs healing.

It might be identity work so you stop people pleasing, you speak up in your relationship. You set and hold personal boundaries, you set a fair price for your work, or it might be you following through on something creative like a book or a project that you've been procrastinating on. All of this is changeable and things we can work through in Shape Shift

So I wanna. Extend the invitation. If it's weight loss, if it's getting stronger, if it's your relationship with food that you wanna heal, you were invited. If it's not, if it's you just wanna make a change in your life in some way, then this program is also going to be geared towards that. Because truly at its core, it's inner change

It's what lights you up, what's getting in the way, and how can we close the gap?

So thank you for hearing me out in my rambling on this episode. If you wanna learn more about Shape Shift, you can go to Mindful Shape slash Shape Shift You can also click the link in this podcast description, or you can find me on Instagram at mindful underscore shape, and

you can click the link in bio and then you can explore my work there. We're gonna be shifting, we're gonna be evolving. Doesn't necessarily mean I'm not going to be. Sharing what I think is helpful in the realm of food and body and all of that, but it's really going to be moving in the direction of whatever personal change you wanna make, anything that feels unchangeable, how can we change it and do it from a place of connecting to yourself, understanding yourself better from a place of kindness and compassion, and making it interesting.

All right, I'll talk to you again soon. Bye.