Holly Toscanini: Hey there, I have a question for you. Have you ever had the experience of knowing your patterns, like really knowing them and still finding yourself doing the thing you're trying to stop doing anyway? I mean, you've read the books, you've done the therapy or the coaching or all the journaling. You can name exactly what you're doing and why you're doing it. I mean, you're a self-aware woman. and you're still waiting, still waiting to speak up, still waiting to take the trip or waiting to make the change you've been circling for what feels like years now. And it's not because you haven't done the work. It's because underneath all of that self-awareness, there's a whole operating system still running quietly in the background. And it's a set of rules you absorbed so early and followed so consistently that they don't feel like rules anymore. They just feel like you. So today we're going to look at five of these rules. I'm calling this episode, Good Girl Rehab. And I want to be clear upfront, rehab isn't about dismantling who you are. It's about getting honest about which rules are still running your life without your conscious permission, and then deciding one at a time, which ones you're actually done with. Are you ready? All right, here we go. Welcome back to How to Lose the Weight. I'm Holly Toscanini and this episode is a follow-up to episode 81 called From Good Girl to Rule Breaker. But today we're going to go a little deeper and a little more specific because I find that vague inspiration, well, it only takes us so far. What actually moves the needle is having precise language for what's happening. So that's what we're going to do today. For each of these five rules, I'm going to tell you how it shows up what it's costing you and give you at least one small experiment you could try this week to overcome that rule. Not an overhaul, not a new identity, just one honest move on repeat. And at the end, I'll tell you about the unweighting audit, a quick way to figure out which stage of the unweighting journey you're in right now so you know exactly what to focus on next. Okay, Good Girl Rehab is officially open. But. Before we get into the specific rules, I want to say something important about why these rules are so hard to catch. See, these rules weren't forced on you. They were rewarded. I mean, you got praised for being agreeable. You got called so mature for keeping the peace. You learned that making yourself smaller made things easier and easier meant safer and safer felt like love. So these aren't bad habits you picked up carelessly. They were smart adaptations. They helped you navigate your family, your school and your early relationships. And in a lot of cases, they genuinely kept things from falling apart. problem is that you're still using a set of rules that were written for a version of you that no longer exists in circumstances that no longer apply. And underneath all five of these rules, if you trace them back far enough, there's the same core belief. I can't fully live as myself until everybody around me is comfortable with it. And that's the trap. That's the thing we're in rehab for. Okay, so rule number one, don't make anyone uncomfortable. This is probably the rule with the longest, broadest reach. And it's behind the over-explaining, the self-editing, the softening, the apology at the beginning of the sentence that didn't need one. In midlife, it looks like this. You bite your tongue in a meeting because the energy in the room feels a little too fragile. Or you avoid a conversation with a family member because it's just not worth it. Or you watch someone get credit for your idea and say nothing because you didn't want to seem petty. You keep the piece and then you pay for it later, usually in resentment, usually when you're alone, and usually late at night. And here's the part I really want you to hear. This is not a character flaw. It's a strategy, a very well-trained, heavily reinforced strategy that probably served you at some point. But the cost of it now is your voice. It's your visibility. And over time, it's going to be your self-respect because there is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from editing yourself constantly and a particular kind of grief that comes from never quite being fully seen. So the experiment for rule one is simple and it's also genuinely hard. hard. This week, let someone experience some mild discomfort without rushing in to smooth it over. That might mean saying, you know, that didn't work for me and stopping there. It might mean saying, I see it differently without building a whole case for why. Might be just a no, a complete sentence. No reasoning attached. Your nervous system is going to want to feel the silence afterwards. I tell you, it's going to tell you that you've done something wrong and that you need to fix it immediately. that the other person's discomfort is somehow your responsibility. But it isn't. And sitting with that, even for 30 seconds, is the beginning of updating rule number one. Rule number two, don't want too much. This one is sneaky because it often disguises itself as gratitude. And it sounds like, I have so much to be grateful for. Who am I to want more? Or it might sound like other people have real problems. aren't that serious. Or, and this is the one that gets a lot of women, I'm not even sure what I want, so maybe I don't want anything in particular. Except that last one is almost never true. What is true is that you've learned to keep your desires so vague that they can't be judged or won't leaving you feel disappointed. Now you've learned to present them tentatively or not at all, right? Because somewhere along the way, wanting things for yourself Wanting things clearly and out loud felt like a liability. And in midlife, this shows up as settling for fine. Fine relationship, fine job, fine life, and feeling a kind of low-grade flatness that you just can't explain because on paper, everything looks great. That's not contentment. Contentment has warmth. What I'm describing is more like a hunger you've talked yourself out of feeling. Now the experiment here is just naming. This week, finish this sentence without minimizing it. What I want is fill in the blank. Not what I want someday, maybe if things were different, just what you want. Quietly and clearly, even if only to yourself. It might be more quiet in your house. You might want a relationship that feels mutual instead of one-sided. Maybe it's time to create something or to stop being the person who holds everything together that never gets held. You don't have to act on that today, but you do have to stop pretending you don't want it because pretending is its own kind of waiting and it's one of the lonelier ones. Rule number three, don't change the plan. This is the rule behind rigidity, behind staying in situations that you've outgrown because treating a changed mind like a moral failure is a problem. And it sounds like I already told people I was doing this or I invested so much. I just can't walk away now. or the midlife version, this is just what my life is. Here's what's happening underneath all that. Somewhere you absorb the idea that consistency equals integrity, that a good, reliable person follows through on what she said, stays the course, and never pivots. And that's true for some things, but it gets applied to everything, including situations where the information has changed, your values have shifted, or you're genuinely a different person than the one who made the original plan. Midlife gives you so much new information about your energy, about what actually matters to you, what you can sustain and what you're no longer willing to carry. And ignoring that information in the name of consistency isn't loyalty. It's just staying loyal to an old version of yourself that may not even exist anymore. Now the experiment here is to revise one plan this week. It doesn't have to be big. It could be as small as canceling something you said you do that you really don't want to do. or telling somebody, you know, I've changed my mind about this without giving them a lengthy explanation, or I'm going to do this differently now because that's a full sentence. You don't need a trial. You don't need a defense. Changing course when you have better information isn't inconsistency. It's just being honest about where you actually are. Rule number four, don't rest until you've earned it. ⁓ This one, I have such a soft spot for this one because I see it everywhere. The women that I see who only lie down when their body forces them to, ⁓ who feel guilty moment they sit still, the ones who have been telling themselves they'll slow down ⁓ after this week about four years running. You know who you are. Rest as a reward is a deeply embedded cultural message, especially for women. You earn rest by finishing, by doing enough, by being productive enough that stopping doesn't feel like abandoning your responsibilities. But here's the thing. enough never actually arrives. There's always one more thing. That list is never complete and the week doesn't calm down. So rest keeps getting deferred and your nervous system keeps running hot and you keep wondering why you feel like you've got nothing left to give. See what this costs isn't just tiredness. It costs clarity, patience, and the ability to actually hear yourself, to access the quieter signals about what you want and what you need when everything is always loud and moving. This experiment is simple, but it may not be easy. I want you to rest before you think you've earned it. This week, take 10 minutes, set a timer if you need to, and just stop. Not productive rest, not a walk that's also exercise, just lying or sitting or staring out a window. And when the guilt shows up, and it will, you don't need to argue with it or talk yourself out of it. Just notice the feeling and name it for what it is, a learned response, not a moral truth, not a reflection of your worth. It's a habit and habits, unlike character, can change. Rule number five, don't outgrow your role. This is the one I think hits hardest for women in midlife. So I want to spend just a little more time here. Every one of us has a role, often several of them. Maybe the caretaker, the strong one, the peacemaker, the one who handles everything, the one who's always fine, the one who makes everything easier for everybody else. But those roles weren't assigned to us by strangers. They were built over decades in our most intimate relationships with people we love. And for a long time, they felt like belonging. Being needed made you feel like you mattered and being reliable felt like love. But somewhere along the way, and midlife is often when this becomes impossible to ignore, that role starts to feel like a costume that just no longer fits. You're still caretaking, but you're running on empty. You're still being the strong one, but you desperately want someone to ask how you're doing and actually mean it. You're still being easygoing, still not rocking the boat, and you're still slowly disappearing inside all of it. That rule didn't make you who you are. It's what you learn to do so that other people would be comfortable around you. And it worked, until it started costing more than it was giving. The experiment here. asks you to step out of your role in one small way this week. So if you're always the caretaker, ask for help with something specific. If you're always the one who holds everything together, let one thing be somebody else's problem this week. And if you're always fine, tell one person you're not. If you've been easy your whole life, express an actual preference out loud without apologizing for it. Saying, I'm doing things differently now still applies here. You don't need permission to outgrow what no longer fits you. You just need to be willing to feel a little unfamiliar to people who got comfortable with the old version of you. And yes, that's uncomfortable. We're to talk about that next. See, we have to be aware of the wobble, also known as the good girl hangover. If you break one of these rules, even in a small way, you're almost certainly got to feel something. I want to name it before it catches you off guard. It might feel like guilt, like you did something selfish, like you were too much or not enough, or like you need to go back and fix things. You might replay the moment on a loop wondering if you came across wrong. You might get the urge to text an explanation or walk back what you said or be extra nice to compensate. This is what I call the good girl hangover and it's completely normal and it does not mean you made a mistake. It means that you interrupted a very old pattern and your nervous system, which has been running that pattern for decades, is sending up a flare. It doesn't know yet that you survived saying no. It's just doing its job, which is to alert you whenever something changes. The thing that's going to feel the most tempting at this moment is to go back to your old ways, to smooth it over, to undo it, to make it seem like it never happened. And I want to gently but clearly say that's the good girl rule trying to reinstate itself. That discomfort you're feeling isn't a sign you were wrong. It's just newness. and newness is not the same as danger. The thing that actually helps us is staying with ourselves through that feeling, not arguing with the guilt, not white-knuckling it, just not acting on it, giving yourself maybe 10 minutes of, I'm gonna sit with this before I do anything. Every time you do that, every time you feel that little bit of a wobble and don't fold, something shifts. It's small, it's quiet. but it's real. And over time, those small moments add up to a woman who trusts herself in a way she never quite did before. And that's what good girl rehab is actually for. So here's what I want you to walk away with today. You're not stuck because something is fundamentally wrong with you. You're stuck because old rules are still running in the background and they're good at it. They've had decades of practice. The goal of this episode isn't to hand you a checklist of five things to fix by Friday. It's to give you a language for what's happening so you can start to catch it in real time. So pick one rule, just one. Pick the one that maybe made your chest tighten a little when I described it because that tightening is usually the one with the most pull in your life right now. And then try the experiment just once. Do it imperfectly if necessary. Let it be little awkward, it's okay. Remember, you're not in good girl rehab because there's something wrong with you. You're here because you're tired of waiting and ready to stop following rules that were never actually yours to begin with. Now, if you want help figuring out where you are in your unweighting journey right now, like specifically where, I created the Unweighting Audit. It'll tell you which stage of unweighting you're in and what your most useful next step is. So you're not just nodding along to podcasts, but actually taking action and moving. You're going to find the link in the show notes or in the description below if you're watching the video. My friends, you don't need a new you. you need fewer old rules telling the current you what she's allowed to do. So pick one rule to break this week, just one. And remember, there's nothing left to wait for. So until next time, bye for now.