How Do You Know if You're Eating Good Food or Bad Food? [Ep. 78]

This is the eight while think while. Well podcast. I'm Lisa Salsbury. This is episode 78. How do you know if you're eating good food or bad food? 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. hi everyone. I am coming off a three-day weekend with a three-day volleyball tournament. Plus a little, a little get together a party for my youngest daughter's 16th birthday. She actually turned 16 when we were in Texas for my son's wedding at the end of December. So we didn't get to do a party for her. It's like the birthday that just won't quit. I love it though. I, I love having groups of teenagers over and cooking them all kinds of food that they love. So foods we love is actually one of the things I want to talk about today. One thing I noticed that a lot of my followers and potential clients say is that they wish they didn't think about food so much. They feel kind of obsessed about what they should eat. Part of this is due to a lot of past diets they've been on and possibly even what I call past diet trauma, which is probably a bit of an aggressive label, but at the same time, Some of those diets we've been on. Just keep on punishing us in our brains over and over. Every time we pick up a piece of chocolate. If you have an old diet narrative, that sounds something like I shouldn't eat. This has a lot of fat, or it would be better if you were eating dark chocolate because that has less sugar. You hear these things, even if you have the chocolate planned and even if you know, with your upper brain, that you absolutely can eat it. That's a little bit of trauma. Trauma is according to the Google, the lasting emotional response that often results from living through a distressing event. Deeply restrictive diets can absolutely feel like distressing events. I don't want to diminish anyone's experience of trauma that included bodily or emotional harm from another person or major life experiences or things of that nature. But these microtraumas can accumulate over a time. One way that this happens is by the diets that we've been on, or sometimes it can be our parents or our besties or the internet. Labeling our foods. Good and bad. You've been on diets with food lists that are like, eat these things. Don't eat these. All these narratives contribute to our obsessively, thinking about food and wondering, is this a good food or is this a bad food? We constantly wonder if something is good for us specifically, if it's going to lead to weight loss or weight gain. And I think that's the basic definition we as chronic dieters give to quote good foods, we decided to say good food. If it will lead to weight loss. This is absurd. You can eat a vast variety of foods, way more variety than was ever included on those good and bad food lists and still lose weight. The problem with labeling our food is that when we label our food as good. Or bad. We as women inevitably become good or bad for eating that food. You are not bad for eating cake and you are not good for eating chicken. You are a woman. Eating food. This is a really important concept to consider, as you are trying to lose weight. The reason is that you will never hate yourself then I know because I tried and I'm guessing a lot of you have tried as well. If I just talk meanly enough to myself, I will be motivated to stop eating and get to the gym. Right. How is this the way that we always tried to do it? For some reason, we thought that if we criticized our thighs and our stomach enough, I wouldn't be tempted to eat the rest of the cookie dough in the fridge. And the thing is the more we label our food bad and then ourselves bad for eating it. The deeper we get into this hate and these narratives and we damage the relationship that we have with ourselves. Okay. So let's talk about foods that are actually bad. Not really bad, so much as these are the foods we want to skip in our regular nutrition. Number one. Foods that don't work in your body. What would that look like for you? Well, first of all, this is yet another plug for food journaling. You've not heard me say that in a while. Either planning ahead, like my clients do, or just writing down what you eat after the fact. Either way we want a record of what you are eating so we can actually start seeing some patterns in what you've eaten versus how you feel. My clients and I have discovered causes of heartburn, diarrhea, and joint pain by simply keeping track of the foods and the symptoms we reduce or eliminate foods that don't work well for them. All bodies are different. It's not the same for everyone. So some foods that are quote good for some people are actually bad for others in this context. An easy example here to think about is dairy. Dairy is controversial and the diet and health world. And I think it could be because lactose intolerance is actually quite common. So dairy doesn't actually work for a lot of folks. There's other reasons, some people claim it's inflammatory, all kinds of reasons, but if you just think about, Hey, this just doesn't work for all bodies. I actually found this on the U S department of health and human services. It's a lactose intolerance is a condition in which you have a digestive symptoms such as bloating, diarrhea, and gas. After you consume foods or drinks that contain Lactose. And lactose intolerance, digestive symptoms are caused by lactose malabsorption. Lactose malabsorption is a condition in which your small intestine cannot digest or break down all the lactose you eat or drink. While most infants can digest lactose many people begin to develop lactose malabsorption, a reduced ability to digest lactose. After infancy. Experts estimate that about 68% of the world's population have lactose malabsorption. Lactose malabsorption is more common in some parts of the world than in others in Africa and Asia. Most people have lactose malabsorption. And some regions such as Northern Europe, many people carry a gene that allows them to digest lactose after infancy and lactose malabsorption is less common. In the United States, about 36% of people have lactose malabsorption. Okay. That's a lot of information on lactose. But I think it's an important example for a few reasons. Number one, lactose intolerance can develop over your life. You may have been fine as a child, but as an adult find that you have trouble with milk products. It can be confusing if you don't know why you aren't feeling good. Again, keeping a food journal can give you a lot of information here. Because this is not the only food that can, this can happen with. So this is a food that you may have labeled good at one time in your life, but is bad now. See how that doesn't really make sense. It's not a bad food, but just a food that doesn't work in your body. So then we get to just call it a food. We're going to skip. So, yes. It's bad for you in this context, meaning it doesn't work for your body, but it's not bad for everyone. The other thing that stands out here is there is a genetic component. So it can also depend on where you or your ancestors came from. All bodies are different and therefore your own food journal is the most important nutritional study you will ever read. B O K with eliminating foods that don't work for your body. You don't have to label them as bad. You just are skipping those foods because they don't work for you. If you love the taste of them, but not the way you feel when you eat them. Hello, that's ice cream for me. You may need to get some help, like coaching on how to work with those cravings. Our lower brain doesn't seem to bother to remember that ice cream feels terrible in the stomach. It just remembers how much dopamine it created when it hit the taste buds. This is tough to manage with willpower alone. In fact, almost impossible. You'll need some tools and help with this Many of which I've given you and other episodes of the podcast, but you may also want to consider some coaching for that. Okay. The second category of foods that you want to skip. Our foods that are stale or have mold. Okay. Obviously that's dumb, like who eats foods with mold, but in all seriousness, still things can really be an issue. How many times do we elect over baked? Good. That has dry. And really just not that good, but you eat it because it's there or you don't want it to go to waste or you hardly ever get this thing. Foods that are not tasty to you because they are a day or several days old can be labeled as bad or foods you want to skip. I think we have a tendency to worry more about wasting food here than if the food is actually enjoyable. I think we prioritize the money that we've spent on that food rather than if we really enjoy it. I do this with leftovers for lunch. Oh, No one really liked the soup I made. So I guess I'll eat it for lunch. Like, no, I don't have to do that. And neither do you. All right. The third category of food that we can skip are foods. You don't like, again, this feels obvious, but have you ever eaten something because everyone else likes it. I tried sushi several times before I just decided this is not a food for me. I will order teriyaki chicken. Other foods. Everyone seems to like that. I'm just really so, so on. Pumpkin pie, avocado toast, goat, cheese gnocchi. Do not like gnocchi people. I tried it in Rome. I still don't like it. I just feel fine. Skipping these foods. I don't necessarily label them as bad. But if it's a struggle to skip these foods, because you don't like them, but feel pressured by others to eat them. Then go ahead and label them as bad foods for you. I just want you to start getting comfortable with the idea that the only bad foods out there. Our foods that don't work for you, foods that have actually gone bad. And foods you don't like. The list of good foods. On the other hand, again, I'm putting all those, that, all of that in air quotes, good foods. It's endless the list I wrote for an old social media post included these foods on the good list. Apples cake, green beans tacos. Potatoes peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Salmon, coconut oil, French toast, butter. Foods you like to eat foods you enjoy with others. Foods from your heritage foods, your mom makes foods that keep you satisfied foods that give you energy. I hope you see where I'm going here. I want you just to get honest with yourself about foods that don't work for your body and your tastes, and then choose foods that you actually like. If we go back to the beginning and go with the definition that good foods are foods that lead to weight loss. Then remember the food that lead to weight loss, our foods, we don't overeat. That's it. All foods can be an option for you. If you listen to your body and your hunger scale, you absolutely can include foods. You've previously labeled as bad. Because you thought you might gain weight if you eat them. You just are learning, hopefully with me as you've listened to this podcast, that your hunger scale reigns Supreme. You absolutely can eat foods from your heritage that you used to love, that someone told you aren't healthy. Just eat them and the amount that works in your body with your hunger scale. If you wait to eat until you are hungry and then eat foods, you like just until you are a positive three or feeling that enough feeling. Remember, this is well before the full feeling. You will be able to lose weight. One last thing. It is easier to go longer in between meals. When your meals consist of good proteins, fiber, and healthy fats. These are the components that help your blood sugar feel stable and keep you at that neutral, not hungry, but also not full feeling for the longest amount of time. I challenge you to see. What you can add to some of your favorite good meals to meet these categories. Rather than telling yourself that that food is bad or something you need to skip because it doesn't meet those requirements. Or maybe you even notice that when you eat it, you feel hungry again in an hour. Look for ways to add to the meal. If you love a bowl of packaged ramen. But maybe. It doesn't sustain you for very long. Add some chicken or sauteed vegetables on top. If you really want something sweet instead of several cookies, crumble up one cookie on top of a Greek yogurt and add some berries. If you love cheese enchiladas, but find it's just too heavy feeling after you've eaten, eat half and then supplement your meal with a green salad or some fruit. Look for ways to add to the thing you want to include to balance it out. So you have some protein, fiber, and fat at each meal. I think a lot of times we can alleviate the gross feelings in the body that some meals give us by simply cutting back on the quantity. Whether that's just the quantity of a specific item like that cheese enchilada or the quantity of the whole meal. A few months ago, I was being interviewed on a podcast and he said, I have a burrito bowl at this restaurant. And the ingredients like singly are good ingredients. Like you got the rice and the protein and the vegetables. But when I combine all of them, I feel like crap for the next few hours. So even though I love that meal, I'm very calculated about when I eat that meal because of how it makes me feel. And then I said, let me ask you this. Do you feel bad because of the ingredients? Or because of the quantity. And he was like, whoa. Yeah, it's probably just the quantity. So as a bonus category of foods, we want to skip it's those second helpings, the clean your plate bites. The, I don't want to waste it bites all the excess food that is pushing us way past enough and into that very full feeling. Many foods are good, meaning they work for you. Until you overeat them and then they become foods. We want to skip next time. Getting really good at feeling your hunger scale and getting in tune with your body. And that way is really at the core of my coaching. If this sounds good to you and something you'd like to be better at being able to include all the foods that you like and still lose weight. Be sure to check out my group program. The best way right now is just to get on the wait list. There is a link for that in the show notes, more information is coming out this week, actually tomorrow, I think by email. So get on that list. If you want to be the first to hear about it. The next round of group coaching will be starting February 7th. Let me know if you have any questions about it. And until then you can always schedule a free strategy call with me to see if group coaching or my one-on-one program, which I still will be doing is right for you. Link for that again, of course is also in the show notes. As always. Thanks for listening to the eat. Well think, well live well podcast.