Accessing Past Diet Experiences to Help Decide What to Eat Now [Ep. 31]

Lisa: 0:00

Hi, welcome back to the eat. Well, think. Well live well podcast. This is episode 31, and we are going to take a look at your past diet experiences to see what we can learn instead of feeling guilt, regret, and shame for it, never working quote. We are going to figure out what actually did work. And see if it's still helpful for you today. Let's go. Welcome to Eat Well, Think Well, Live Well; the podcast for women who want to lose weight, but are tired of counting and calculating all the food. I'm your host, Lisa Salsbury. I'm a certified health and weight loss coach and life coach, and most importantly a recovered chronic dieter. I'll teach you to figure out why you are eating when you aren't hungry, instead of worrying so much about what you are eating. All right, welcome back. Today. I want you to think about times in your life that you have dieted. For most of you, you won't have to think that hard. And I'm talking mostly about those fad diets. We've done. If you listened last week, you know what I'm talking about? I dove into six characteristics of fad diets. And some alternatives to those methods as well. But even if you haven't been on a fat diet per se or something with a name, Statistics show that 56% of women tried a diet last year. And if you were a listener here, I'm assuming. That might include you. I'm just saying, chances are, you've spent some time in your life thinking you are losing weight or trying to eat healthy. Or something similar depending on what your brain called it. Then maybe you start listening to me and you think, oh, okay, I'll try this approach. I'll just try listening to my hunger and fullness cues and then processing cravings for foods. That come up outside of that seems simple enough, right? But is she going to tell me what to eat? How will, I know if what I choose is healthy or not. Will I be able to lose weight on the foods I'm choosing. Do you hear your brain offering up all of these thoughts? These are just going to keep you stuck, but your habit brain, that lower brain portion that just likes to keep the status quo. Does not like change. When you announced to your brain. That you no longer are going to have a donut every morning at the staff meeting your habit brain is like, what? No. This can't be, I must stop this madness. Right? So when you sit down to plan some meals or make a grocery list, or even look at a menu to make some decisions, That portion of your brain is going to jump in with, you know, you've never cooked anything healthy in your whole life. You never make the right choice at restaurants and nothing ever worked in the past. So how would you possibly know what to eat? And there's the lie. This happens to my clients all the time. I teach them about planning their meals. And that no foods are truly off limits. And then they are paralyzed. They're like, but what should I eat? I don't know what to choose. Have you been there? I want to remind you that, first of all, I don't know is always a lie. When our brain offers that we can just automatically know that's not true. We are vastly more capable and knowledgeable, especially about our own bodies. Than we ever give ourselves credit for. And if there is something that we truly don't have the knowledge about, like, I don't know how to build a rocket, like, so that's not a lie that I don't know how, but we could learn it. So thinking we don't know what to eat is not really true. Lack of knowledge is not really the problem. Second, I'll remind you that I do have a group coaching program coming up. So if you really have nutrition questions or concerns about what you are planning, that will be one of the things we will go over in that program. This group will be for you. If you are tired of the constant battle with your weight, and you just want someone to support you in trying to quote unquote, eat like a normal person. You are tired of looking for yet another weight loss plan or diet. You're tired of counting calories, counting macros, weighing your food, counting out almonds. You know, there's another way. But you don't want to sacrifice going out with friends or having fun or celebration dinners with your family. But, you know, something has to change about what you're doing now. So I want you in this group, if you are committed to making some changes with how you think about food and your body. I want you to come if you're committed. To try and a new way of thinking about how you eat and if you're ready to get really honest about your emotional eating. I want you to come. If you're ready to eat like a naturally thin person. So that link of course, is in the show notes. But until then, until you come into that group, I also want to remind you. Of some foods that you might be forgetting about to help make your planning. And losing weight easier. So chances are, you've tried dieting in the past. Like I said, in the beginning, chances are good that you even were successful at losing some weight at some point. Most of my clients could reference a time that they've lost weight. But they don't want to be as restrictive as they were then. Or they don't want to follow the specific rules that they did then, which is fine. But just like I tell you that your food journal is the most important nutritional study you will ever read. You can also learn a lot from the nutritional study. That is your past diets. If you had a food journal from one of those past diets that worked for you, what would it say? And this is where I want you to drop the guilt and shame that is telling you that that didn't work for you. There are things that did work for you, and that's what we want to access. So I want you to think of a time that you were losing weight and you actually felt good. Where you're like, wow. I have some energy. I'm feeling successful at losing weight and you felt like it was going pretty well. Think back, maybe it was decades ago, maybe just a few years ago. What were you eating? Now don't worry. I'm not suggesting that you need to go back to that diet or eat all of those same exact menus, especially if you consider it a fad diet. But we want to think about the kinds of foods. You were eating, not necessarily the amount, especially if it was super low calorie. And not really like, was it high protein or high car, but literally what, what were you eating? What was on your plate? Did you eat a lot of eggs for breakfast? Did you have a favorite pancake recipe that filled you up in the morning? Did you keep bag salads on hand for lunches? Did you purchase rotisserie chicken or pre-packaged pre-cooked meats for protein? Did you make freezer meals or do meal prep? Here's what I've noticed in my dieting life. When I go off of a diet. Regardless of how good my body may have felt on the food I was eating during that time. I don't want anything to do with it anymore. It feels like. Diet food to me. So I stopped eating it. And this happened to me in extreme for a while when I gave up dieting several years ago. I used to love a sweet potato bowl for breakfast, but I stopped making that. I used to eat a lot of vegetable soups. I would make one day and eat all week for lunch. I used to eat homemade protein bites and cauliflower rice. I stopped eating a lot of that stuff because it felt like diet food to me, even though. I actually love cauliflower rice. I don't pretend it's actually rice. I just liked the way cauliflower tastes when it's chopped up tiny like that. I don't know why I just do. But you know what? That's okay. It's okay. That I stopped eating all of that stuff. And if you did, that's fine. In fact, I think that was good for me to let all of that go for a while. But lately I'm noticing, you know, when I have the most energy, it's when I prioritize. Protein and vegetables. If you look at most of those items, I listed. On the things that I used to eat, a lot of it is whole food type items. It's not like I'm thinking, wow, I really miss those chemical Laden protein bars that I used to eat. No, because those tasted like a very bad candy bar and made my stomach hurt. So I want you to think of a time like this for yourself. Think of some of those foods that you were eating. And I want you to ask yourself these four questions. Number one. What foods were you eating when you lost weight in the past, like the specific foods that you might've written down in that food journal? So I already really covered this, but this is the basis of, of getting to these questions. First. We have to know what are the foods. Really think about what you really liked to eat when you are losing weight or. Just all the things that you are eating, even if you aren't like, oh yeah, that was the best thing I've ever eaten. You might want to write down like the types of things that you are eating. Okay. So after we get that part, then number two. Is do those foods still work for your body? So, this is like, if you are allergic or sensitive to any of those foods now, or you have always been, but you didn't pay attention back, then do the ingredients still work for you? Um, an example I'm thinking of is actually those protein bars. I just mentioned, I used to eat those to meet my macro goals and they do not work for my body. I mean, they, they really didn't work for me back then, but because I'm more in tune with my body. Now I know that it's a lot of those extra additives and different ones that would add Tons of extra fiber or just different sweeteners. They mess with my digestion. But I can be honest about it now. And I say, you know what? Those just don't work for me. Or maybe you used to eat a lot of whey protein, which you like, but now you are too lactose intolerant to manage that. I'm. I'm lactose intolerant, but I can manage. Some way protein on occasion. Our bodies do change over time. So foods don't always agree with our systems as we age, the same way they did in earlier years. in fact that reminds me my 21 year old son. So not old, I'm not talking about like being older. He was just telling me that he can't believe how much candy he used to eat in high school. And how, now that gives him a stomach hate to eat candy like that. So, Obviously candy is not the foods we were eating when we were feeling good and losing weight. But yeah, you know, our bodies do change and what they can tolerate changes over time. So we want to make sure that the foods are still well tolerated by our bodies. Okay. Question number three is, do they taste good? Do these foods still taste good to you? This is critical because again, we have eaten a lot of diet food in the past. Simply because it was on the plan. Not because we thought it tasted good. In fact, some people think that if it tastes good, then. You shouldn't be eating it. Right. I've heard people say like, well, it's it's diet food. So of course it tastes bad. We want food to taste good. Okay. There's no ifs, ands or buts about it. My food needs to taste good. I don't particularly care for Robin vegetables. For example, like carrot and celery sticks. So that just doesn't really taste good to me. It's something I did eat in the past, but I don't include that now. I also don't really like cottage cheese, but I forced that down on particular diets. The first one I did that had cottage cheese as a required food was, um, the one I started way back in high school. So. Ask yourself, if you actually like the food or if you were just eating it because it was listed on the diet plan. All right. Question number four. Is, does it line up with your current nutrition goals? So, this is important because you may have lost weight on a diet that cuts out entire macronutrients, but that doesn't currently line up with your nutrition goals right now. And I'm just going to tell you that it doesn't because. I want you to include all macronutrients. So we want to make sure that whatever the foods are are lining up with your current nutrition goals. You might also be currently more focused on vegetables then you once were, or maybe in the past, you were a vegetarian and now you feel better eating as an omnivore. So these would be examples of current nutritional goals that we want to make sure that your food is lining up with. So what foods are you left with after going through this process? So I want you to write those down. Now, if you listen to my diet history episode, you know, that the diet, that was the straw that broke the camel's back for me was macro county. That really pushed me over the edge on my anxiety and obsession with the needing to count and weigh everything. I once yelled at my daughter for eating grapes out of a bowl that I had already counted and, and put it into my app. So yeah, it was a problem. I was a problem, but macro counting was one of the highest protein diets I've ever been on. I really struggled to meet the protein goal because I just didn't typically eat like that. So when I was healing from that, I really swung the other way. I still ate protein about the same at dinner time, as I usually make a meat-based meal for dinner. But I wasn't really focusing on it for breakfast or lunch. And since I was also getting in touch with my hunger, I was finding, I didn't need all the snacks anymore. So I wasn't eating those high protein snacks either. So my protein intake dropped dramatically. I wasn't calculating it anymore, but I knew from all the years of tracking that it was lower. I could tell just by what I was eating. So recently I started to realize that I missed some of those higher protein meals. I missed the yummy egg and veggie dishes I would make, I missed having a good amount of protein at lunch. And part of this is because I'm learning more about the thermal effect of food. I've actually had several guests lately. some interviews that haven't been published yet where we've been talking about this. I think it's really important to sustain yourself and to. Help balance your blood sugar so that you can go several hours in between meals. We've talked about, several episodes ago with the naturopath, Dr. Chelsea, about the benefit for your gut of going three to four hours in between each meal. And that's a very difficult to do if you're not eating a balanced macronutrient meal that is higher in protein, fiber, and fat. So I started to realize that some of the way I was eating, wasn't lining up with my current nutritional goals. So now that I know I'll never be on a diet again, I can start to examine the actual foods that I used to eat and decide if I want to include them. Not because I'm dieting, but because I want to feel great in my body, maintain my weight and have great gut health. Right. So the last several weeks I've been including a rotisserie chicken with my Costco run. I cut it all up. When I get home and I have pre cooked protein. That's ready to add to my lunch. It's so quick and easy, and it doesn't feel like diet food anymore. It just feels like food that I like and that I want to eat because I feel better with protein at. Lunchtime. In the past, I really would have only had protein like that on hand for lunches. If I was dieting. So now I have the freedom to choose foods. I like to eat when I was on a diet. But I don't have to be on that same diet to eat them. This is making sense. So when you go to plan your food or grocery shop and your brain is like, I don't know what to make or buy. I want you to think about foods that have actually worked for you in the past and led to some weight loss. And if they still meet your current goals after running them through these four questions, that's a great food to start, including again. Here's another tip about utilizing either past diets or other people's crazy diet obsessions. Think about what kinds of foods you are looking to include? And if you are trying to go for say a higher protein or meat-based meal, you can look up paleo recipes. If you are sensitive to dairy and looking to avoid it, you can look at whole 30 type recipes. If you are looking for more interesting ways to prepare vegetables, look for vegetarian recipes. There are all sorts of ways of eating out there that people write entire blogs and cookbooks about. And people are like gung ho about these ways of eating. I combined my favorite aspects of all the ways I've eaten and all the ways I've dieted to find the foods that actually work for me now and that I want to eat. And so I just use a combination of these things and I utilize those designations that people use on their blogs and in cookbooks in order to find those types of foods. So here's another example. My favorite breakfast sausage comes right out of myself, beach diet cookbook. It's something I started making way back when I did the south beach diet and I have continued to make it. I want to bake make up another batch right now, actually it's so delicious. I almost always have ground Turkey on hand and I keep a well-stocked spice drawer. So it's super easy to throw together. It originally called for sugar-free maple syrup, but I just use real maple syrup now. I also think store-bought mayonnaise is yucky because of the type of oil it's made with. So I make my own. I know that's getting a little neurotic, but my favorite recipe is actually a whole 31. It's the only whole 30 thing I do, but I like that recipe and I don't have to be doing a whole 30. To use their mayonnaise recipe. On the flip side, something I absolutely never include anymore. Is quote, healthy desserts. So I never eat sugar-free jello or pudding, like I used to on diets. In fact that was a sure sign. I was dieting again. If my family saw individual containers of sugar-free pudding made up in the fridge. But thinking through this process with some foods tells me that I actually want to include the regular way of making the dessert. Because I would list those things like, oh yeah, I would eat sugar-free jello and sugar-free pudding too. Keep my dessert cravings at bay. But then as I run it through the other three questions, like those things don't actually taste good for one. And I think the last time I healthified a dessert was when I made a recipe for paleo cookie dough with like almond flour, which made it grainy and maple sugar, which wasn't even enough. And it wasn't sweet enough. At sugar-free Stevia chocolate chips. I mean, the whole thing was gross. It did not satisfy my craving for the chocolate chip cookie. So I've learned that by including foods that work for me. And allowing all foods to fit. I just don't need to eat those sugar-free desserts that don't satisfy. And I don't need to try to increase fiber or protein on my chocolate cake. I just have a piece of cake and move on. So keep on keeping a food journal. So when you are incorporating some of these foods that you've eaten in the past, You can decide if they still work for you currently. So remember, I do love for you to plan your meals ahead just 24 hours. So one day at a time, the 24 hour practical plan. Is a great episode to refresh on that concept. It really keeps all our food decisions in the upper brain. So our lower habit brain doesn't just stay in charge. I'll put the link to that show in the show notes, if you'd like to pop over and listen to that episode. Don't forget to get on that list for my group program. Everyone that signs up early will get a special bonus for you and a friend. More fun to do it with a friend. Right. So be sure to let me know if you have any questions about that program or my one-on-one program as well. The link for that is of course, in the show notes. And I will be back with you next week. hey, thanks for listening today. If you're ready to get some personalized coaching from me, I'd encourage you to schedule a free strategy session. Visit www.wellwithlisa.as.me or it's easier just to find that link in the show notes. We'll talk about where you currently are with your weight loss goals. And I'll give you some actionable tools. You can start implementing right away. Before you go, make sure you subscribe to the podcast so you can receive new episodes, right when they're released. And if you're learning something new and enjoying the podcast, I'd love for you to leave me a five star rating and a review. Thanks again for joining me, Lisa Salisbury in this episode of Eat Well, Think Well, Live Well.