Taryn Mason

Imagine you’re starting a new diet and exercise program. Let’s pick on the Paleo diet and running for the purpose of today’s message.

You’ve done your research, you’ve seen the delicious food photos on Instagram, and you’re excited to begin eating Paleo on Monday. The runners you see on the road everyday are in incredible shape so running has to be key. You’re excited to begin your new running routine on Monday.

You buy all your food, you prep a few meals, and you have easy snack and dessert options on hand. Your new running shoes with great feedback and ratings are laced and ready for action. You’ve got this. This is going to be the time everything changes. You’re so excited and ready; it has to be the time.

Life is running smoothly. You’re following the eating plan. Your shoes are seeing some use. All is well. Continue reading →

I hear so many women talk about falling off the wagon or getting off track. So many of us smart women think that we have to be either all in or all out. Either we’re eating perfectly clean and ‘on track’ or we say f@&* it, I messed up that meal, I might as well go all out! Making it harder and harder to get back ‘on the wagon’. Sound familiar?

Well, I’m here to offer you an alternative view that will hopefully help you on your journey towards Soulful Weight Loss and a life you love. Continue reading →

Tuesday afternoons are reserved for solo climbing followed by dedicated writing time at the cutest coffee shop neighboring the climbing gym.  Climbing is such a soul-fueling activity for me.  There’s something about the mind body connection combined with overcoming a little fear while getting a total body workout that creates a direct conduit for my soul to flood my body.  I recently overheard a divinely amazing conversation mid-way up the wall and I knew I had to write about it as a way to share another layer of my own soulful weight loss journey, and a bit of my weird.

This priceless exchange occurred between two 10 year old girls climbing next to me. Continue reading →

It was a gorgeous Friday in Minnesota so I decided to take myself out to lunch to a cute little organic restaurant on the Mississippi River across from downtown Minneapolis.  Gorgeous views, delicious food, and a soulful atmosphere to write a love letter to you.  This particular establishment has sweet potato waffle fries that were calling my name for days.  Today I took delight in their deliciousness while I sat down to write an article. Continue reading →

If weight loss is ultimately what you want, letting go of having a goal weight, and the scale, is paramount to permanent, feel-good -non-dieting, non-restrictive – weight loss. But letting go of this goal weight can be a challenge. I know this first hand.

Using a target goal weight as motivation will not inspire the actions necessary to achieve weight loss as a side effect of a joyful, soul fueled life. Think about what happens when you’re feeling really good about your progress and you step on the scale and do not see what you want to see. You feel discouraged and negative. Is this more likely to cause a knee jerk reaction like restriction and deprivation from the negatively charged shame? Or send yourself some self love through a nice hot bath or a nutrient loaded green smoothie? My guess from experience is the former. Continue reading →

Why data is not the solution.
Plus what is…

I was one of the first to purchase a Bodybugg (pre-Fitbit) when they first came out.  I was so excited to try out this tool – to know exactly how many calories I burned and to finally put an end to my dieting days for good.  This little device that left chafe marks on my bicep and a lump in my shirts was going to be the answer to my prayers of a permanent weight loss solution.  It was going to be the thing that helped me know when I was enough.  Failure was no longer an option, I had DATA!

Except it became something that day after day confirmed that I wasn’t enough.  I couldn’t burn enough calories.  My fat calorie ratio was all wrong. The fat remained on my stomach.   What was wrong with me, I had data!? Continue reading →

What do you really WANT?
How do you want to FEEL?

It’s a lifestyle change, not a diet.  I want to be healthy, not lose weight.  It’s superficial to want to lose weight.

…record scratch…  What?!  Continue reading →

I am SO ready for Spring! How about you?  It’s the perfect time for fresh beginnings, new life, and renewed energy!  And please, no more snow, please (are you listening Minnesota?).

With this new beginning, I am committed to sharing more of my story with you with (weeklyish) tips on how I found freedom from yo-yo weight and body image issues as well as that general feeling of not enough and all the fun stuff that comes with it – love/hate relationship with food, chronic dieting, and over-exercising (a toxic combo that led me straight to low energy and hypothyroidism) and pretty severe perfectionism (work in progress).

Oh, and a general dislike of any photo of me ever taken. Well, before age 8 I was a total ham!  And social media?  I had my friends trained to not tag me in photos that I hadn’t approved of and carefully chose my profile photos.  Can you relate? Continue reading →

I feel like there is so much misunderstanding around the word fear and I feel compelled to get some things off my mind today.  I wrote about fear in one of my first posts and I’m still figuring it all out myself but the further I get into my own transformation and learning, the more fascinated I get.

Let’s take a look at the definition and synonyms of fear as presented by Google…

fear
fi(ə)r/
noun
noun: fear; plural noun: fears
1. 
an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat. “drivers are threatening to quit their jobs in fear after a cabby’s murder”

Even reading the definition causes my stomach to churn and I can feel the stress hormones release!  ‘An unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that something is dangerous…’.  Belief is the key. There are times when fear and adrenaline keep us safe, this is true.  For example, if you are being chased down a dark dirt road, your shoe is caught in the train tracks and a train is fast approaching, or wild horses are on the loose.  Well first, make sure you aren’t on the set of a Clint Eastwood movie but then yes! Feel the fear and let the adrenaline give you a burst needed to save your life! The problems arise when the same feelings, emotions, and chemical stress reactions that keep us safe in dangerous situations occur with any belief that something will cause pain or a threat.  Our bodies can’t tell the difference between what’s a real fear keeping us from danger and one that our brains made up to keep us ‘safe’.

When our bodies are in a state of fear, we are not going to operate in a way that brings abundance, expansiveness, and allows us to reach our goals.  Living with fear and limiting beliefs will keep us small and potentially sick.  We think the fear is keeping us safe but we don’t need to stay safe in the same way we did when there were bandits on the loose or wild animals threatening to enter our caves.

Our limiting beliefs keep us in jobs that are not aligned with our core values because we are afraid of not being able to pay the bills.  Our limiting beliefs keep us from truly enjoying our meal because we think we have to limit our calories or believing that food can only be good or bad.  They keep us from talking to that cute guy in our yoga class because we are afraid of rejection or believe we aren’t good enough.  Our fear of not fitting in or belonging keeps us from being able to truly be ourselves and connect on a deeper level with the people who matter.  Our fear keeps that fat firmly planted on your bellies.

People throw the word fear around without really taking the time to think about what it means or keep fear based thoughts without ever questioning reality.  So much of what we fear is not actually real!  It’s a belief system we built up because one time an action gave us emotional pain that our minds and bodies want to avoid forever so it becomes ingrained in the way we operate and process decisions.  We don’t want to feel that pain again so we numb and block all feelings and build systems around it.

When I started my first career out of school I was so afraid of doing something wrong. I was timid around ‘important’ people and only wanted to do things that I knew people would like. The underlying fear was that I would be fired, not be able to get another job, and would be living on the streets.  This was not a rational fear and it kept me from truly delivering my own genius! The root cause was that I never felt like I was enough because I wasn’t living my own life.  I was not aligned with my soul, I was aligned with what others told me I was good at because to me that felt like the for sure thing, the safest thing.  My decisions were ruled by fear which is not a good place to be.

I can write about all of this because I am someone who has had 40 foot walls built around me for years.  I felt like I had to be perfect and do everything perfectly and it led me down a path of digestive issues and problems with food and my weight.  And ultimately it kept me from doing what I really I love to do: connect and help people heal.

I keep a notebook with me at all times now and as soon as a thought pops into my head that is keeping me small- that is limiting my potential- I write it down in the book.  I encourage you to do the same.  Where are there areas that you’d like to go for a goal but are help back by fear?  What is at the root of this fear and how could look at it differently?  Do you know 100% that it’s true?  Is having that belief supporting you in your goal?

Remember when doing work like this, come from a place of kindness and love for yourself.  There is a reason our minds have made up these systems to protect us and it’s not going to change overnight.  But there is so much beauty and joy on the other side of fear that I feel like it needs to be discussed.  I feel safer and more supported than I ever have moving forward through the fear and proving it wrong.

I love this quote from Bill Cosby – “Decide that you want it more than you’re afraid of it”.  Everything I want in life I want way more than I am afraid of it. Everything I’ve done for the last 6 years has been to slowly get out of my comfort zone and out of my own way so I can live the life I know I was meant to live. 

photo cred: Taryn Mason, Paris France July 2012

Will you join me?

If there is interest I can share a few examples of my own as well as the worksheet.  Leave a comment below or send me a private message on facebook or through the contact form. We all have limiting beliefs.  Fear and resistance will continue to make an appearance.  What we do with the information is our choice.

Lots of LOVE and belief breakthroughs!

I’m not even sure how it happened but it snuck up on me and I am now a bath convert who takes 5-7 baths a week, sometimes multiple times in a day.  They used to overwhelm me – having to clean the tub, fill up the water and get the temperature just right just to have it cool down too fast, feeling antsy, being aware that I’m in a tub etc – not exactly stress relief!

I decided to try again back in January when I started school to be a health coach and I have completely fallen in love with baths!  If you are anything like me, here are 4 ways to make them work for you.

1. Simplify the cleaning process by taking more baths. //  I keep a sponge and cup by the tub and just wipe it down quickly and rinse with hot water before filling with my bath water. Rinsing with hot water helps keep the water hotter for longer.  If you fill a cold tub, the water will cool down faster so start with a hotter tub.  Sounds simple but easy to overlook.  Also the more time I spend there, the less I think about the fact that I’m in a bath tub.

2. Add epsom salts and your favorite essential oil to make the bath functional. // This is the biggest reason why I’m addicted to baths.  I am very active and there were days this summer where I ran 10 miles then rock climbed all afternoon.  Or ran a half marathon and then hiked in the mountains for the next week.  Or went straight from yoga to the climbing gym. I never get sore and that’s in part due the epsom salts, they’re magical.  There are many other things you can add to baths to aid in detox, this is just a way in.

3. Visualize the stress melting away into the water. // This helps me relax and soak up the benefits of the hot water and epsom salts.  I feel lighter and calmer when I’m done.  I also find I get my best ideas in the bath just as my thoughts melt away leaving space for new ones to come in from the soul. I’m going to try using washable crayons that kids use so I don’t have to get out right after I get in, a tip I received from a friend.

4.  Keep them short.  Or long. //  The point is make them work for you.  I used to be closed off to baths because I thought it was going to be too long of a time commitment.  It doesn’t have to be to get the benefits.

Bonus tips:  Add your favorite candle, turn on your favorite pandora station, and use a dry brush on dry skin to prep the skin to reap the bath’s detox benefits.

Enjoy and let me know what benefits you see from taking baths!