Stop Obsessing Over Everything You Eat [Ep. 87]

This is the Eat Well, Think Well, Live Well podcast. I'm Lisa Salsbury. And this is episode 87. Stop obsessing over everything you eat. 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, thanks for tuning in today. It is warming up here yesterday being the first day of spring. So where I live in Northern California. It follows the seasons pretty closely. So we've got all the blossoms going and had lots of rain the past couple of months. So it's really green here. I'm wearing a cute jumpsuit today at short sleeve. And it's reminded me of a post I put up on Instagram ages go. And I said, I never regret the ridiculously large amount of water. I drink. Until I wear a jumpsuit. Seriously, the amount of work to go to the bathroom, especially today, since I'm also wearing a little sweater over the top of the jumpsuit. So yeah, nothing like getting completely undressed, like I'm a toddler to use the bathroom. But I'm still drain on. I'm about to 80 ounces today and it's about three o'clock when I'm recording. Incidentally. I do like to front-load my day with water, because if I'm trying to catch up in the evening, then I find I wake up in the night to have to use the bathroom. And if there's anything, I hate more than going to the bathroom on days when I'm wearing a jumpsuit, it's having to get up in the night to use the bathroom. So I'm pretty careful about that. Anyway, just a side note there today. I actually want to talk to you about a topic that was requested in my content survey that went out at the beginning of this year. I asked this question, what's your number one, weight loss or health-related headache. You wish you could snap your fingers and make, go away. And this answer caught my eye today. She said to stop obsessing over everything. I eat I E. Is it the healthiest? Is it what I should eat right now? Will this cause me to feel sick and so on. This is actually near and dear to my heart because the first freebie like free ebook I wrote was called drop the obsession and the weight in it. I discuss three strategies for helping you drop the obsession with counting and calculating all the food that you were eating and still be able to lose some weight. So I'll put the link to that original ebook in the show notes, just for fun. Today, but also I want to just address her specific concerns. My obsession. Was more about counting and calculating. I was coming off of macro county back then. And so it was kind of helping people transition from that. But this sounds a little bit different to me. I don't have a lot of information about this listener, but I think. That part of what she's obsessing about. When we think about obsessing over everything we eat. A lot of it likely has to do. With all the diets we've done in the past and getting confused. Because some, we did war low fat, and then maybe you tried keto, which is very high, fat. And then some cut out sugar completely altogether, no sugar, no flour. And then if you count macros, it's like, well, if you can make it fit, you can eat it. So you did mental gymnastics and a crazy game of tetras, trying to make sure that that serving size of nine Cadbury mini eggs fit in today. And it's all very overwhelming. You're likely obsessed with what you are eating because there's so much contradicting information in your brain. And that is overwhelming. And then every time you go to pick something up, you're like, I don't even know if this is healthy. How do we figure it out? How can we decide what to eat without obsessing over it? I made a list. I think I've got seven strategies here. To help you answer this question. So number one. I want you to drop the idea that every food you eat has to be the healthiest choice. You know how I know that nine Cadbury mini eggs is a serving size according to the package. It's because I bought some. And I ate some last week. They happened to be my favorite of all of the seasonal candies, like all Halloween or Christmas or any other holiday candies, Cadbury mini eggs are my favorite. Aside from some of like the homemade candies, I may get Christmas. I'm talking about like purchased candies. Don't try to fool me by the way, with those newer dark chocolate ones that came out a couple of years ago. No, I liked the original milk chocolate., I also consider myself. A generally healthy person. Not every food that I put in my mouth is the healthiest food. Sometimes I eat foods that I like for pleasure. So that's number one, drop the idea that every food you eat has to be the healthiest choice. There is. I'm not saying eat cabaret, mini eggs every day for lunch. But all foods can fit in to your lifestyle. I definitely eat. Many eggs, as long as the majority of my food is from a whole food source. I don't worry about that extra bit. That is. Not so much. Okay. Number two. I also don't subscribe to the idea that food needs to be just fuel. If you caught my episode last week with Molly's Emek, we talked about how our teacher and the life coach school was very clear on the fact that food should just be fuel and not pleasure at all. That just doesn't work for me or Molly. We both feel like food can and should be enjoyed. We don't need to eat unseasoned, cardboard tasting food. If food is just eaten for fuel, then we wouldn't bother seasoning it or serving it with a complementary side dish or even eating a variety of food. But food can be both pleasurable and eaten in the amount that is pleasurable in the body. I've said this a lot of times, but the pleasure of the entire eating and food experience. Actually decreases. The farther over your fullness cues that you get. Typically, you begin to think more about how bad your body feels and less about how good the food is. The more you overeat, the higher, the chances are that you're also going to feel not great in your brain.'cause your old mean, girl self is going to start attacking you for yet. Again, overeating. You'll never get this right. Yada yada, yada. You know what she sounds like, right. So, if we want max pleasure out of food, we make an eat food. We enjoy in the amount that works well in our body. This is far more important than making sure it's the absolute healthiest choice. We just, we want to drop that idea. Okay. Number three, no food or meal that we eat can supply all the nutrients that we want. I think there's a lot of pressure that this person feels to have the healthiest meal, but if you were to Google, like super foods or nutritious foods, and what have you, you'll find a variety of things listed. But we can't eat all those foods in one sitting or in one meal. I just don't want to eat blueberries on top of salmon with a side of walnuts and cruciferous vegetables and lagoons. Like it's too much. You can't eat all the things at every meal. Each meal is going to have some foods that supplies some of the nutrients that you need. And then you'll get hopefully different ones at the next meal. So if this meal, your protein choice is fish great. But then next meal, it will be eggs or cottage, cheese, or chicken. And that's great too. Just because those foods might not be on the Harvard school of medicine, top 10 healthy food list. Doesn't mean you shouldn't eat them. We need a variety of foods in our diet. All right. Number four, aim to eat foods from whole food sources, 80 to 90% of the time. What I mean by that is hopefully we are choosing foods that are not ultra processed. On that frequency. So it's not that you have to make homemade food on that frequency on that 80 to 90% of the time, there are plenty of foods that are ready to go that aren't ultra processed foods. Bagged salads, meal delivery kits, even just an order of fajitas at your favorite Mexican restaurant. Would not be ultra processed that starts with chicken, bell, peppers, onions, and some seasoning. Ultra processed foods are going to be more like chips, crackers, granola bars, cold cereal. Things in packages that have a lot of preservatives and food dyes, artificial flavorings, stuff like that. I don't want to be part of the scare tactics of telling you to stay out of the center of the grocery store. I love the center of the grocery store. It's where I buy canned tomatoes and beans and rice and oatmeal. It's where you find seasonings and spices and salsa, all the stuff that's going to make your food pleasurable, which is what we want. Right. The more, you can buy foods that are convenient, like canned beans over dried beans. Frozen vegetables and precooked brown rice. The more likely you are to include those things in your diet. So don't shy away from those things, thinking that they are processed. All food that gets cooked or frozen. That's processed. You just want to be cautious about the foods I mentioned that are truly ultra processed. And I think, you know how to tell the difference. You have probably seen the headlines about the study published in the British medical journal. That found that people who consume high amounts of these foods, the ultra processed ones. Have an increased risk of anxiety, depression, obesity, metabolic syndrome, certain cancers, including colorectal cancer and premature death. That's a big, scary list, but it also shows that there could be a threshold effect. Meaning people who consume small amounts under a certain threshold are not at increased risk. They didn't define clearly how much is quote unquote. Okay. Where this threshold lands, because it may vary from person to person. And it probably depends on other lifestyle habits. But this goes back to my idea of 80 to 90% of the time. We want to be eating foods that are from a whole food type source. So. We don't need to be super afraid of ultra processed foods, as long as they are not making up 50 to 60% of our diet, which is where Americans are about right now. Okay. Number five, let bio individuality reign Supreme here. Part of what is healthy for you? Is what works in your body. Not only that, but there is also some amount of beliefs that go into this as well, such as religious beliefs that prohibit some foods and therefore. Go into our beliefs about what is healthy for your body. So there's so much bio-individuality. So for example, I don't eat. Um, bananas because they make me nauseous. But I don't shy away from recommending them to my clients. You figure out if bananas or dairy or pasta works for you. You try it and see how it feels. So. Bio-individuality not only encompasses our allergies and adverse effects, but also things that give us energy and our food preferences. What you like matters. If you don't like particular foods. And you don't want to learn to like them, like save vegetables. For example, we can figure that out. We can figure out. Vegetables that do work for you, some vegetables or fruits that you do. Like I have a couple of clients and their list of fruits and vegetables that they like is very, very short. We work with that. And then if they're willing to try, we figure out ways to try new things, but your preferences do matter. Okay. I want to talk specifically now to this person that commented. And I, I sure hope she's listening, but I also know that a lot of you listening probably feel this same way. When she said what I should eat right now. And is it going to make me sick later? so that it's kind of twofold. That the right now thing is what I want to talk about first, when you're making your food decision in the moment. All of that food chatter that I talked about at the very beginning from all of the years of dieting will be loud. You're often being influenced by your lower brain. When you are standing in front of the refrigerator and trying to pick something for lunch, we want to make our food decisions with our higher brains. We want to think about making those decisions with our best thinking brains. This is the part of your brain that makes you human, because it's this part that can think about and make plans for your future. Making a 24 hour practical plan each morning. And just taking five to 10 minutes to use your best. First of the morning, thoughts to plan your food for the day can go a long way to calming this food chatter. When you were looking also at your whole day, you can also better see how you are getting healthy nutrients throughout the day and not having to worry about cramming them all in at one meal. Here's another great thing about having a plan. You can keep it for future use. You don't have to reinvent the wheel every day. When you find meals that work for you and don't make you sick and help you feel energized, make sure those get transferred to your go-to meals plan. That download is also in the show notes. If you don't know what I'm talking about. You'll want to grab that. Picking from your go-to meals is also a safe bet when you don't know what to eat. But you've got to do the experiments first to see what works. If you were having a lot of trouble with food, making you sick, I would strongly recommend you track that closely. This is actually how I discovered the bananas. Give me nausea. I was drinking these really green smoothies, like where you fill the blender with greens and then blend that down until it's liquid. And then fill it up again with more grains. And I put a banana in there as well, amongst other ingredients to make it palatable. And they were just making me so nauseous, but I was following this green smoothie, fad diet things. So I was determined to carry on. But it wasn't until a banana plane and had the same reaction that I realized, oh, it was the banana in this movie. That was the problem. If I hadn't been tracking the nausea and what I was eating at the same time. I wouldn't have figured it out. I don't think. So I like giving yourself a one to 10 score for the symptom you are tracking, whether it be nausea or gas or bloating or heartburn. Just jot that score down next to the meal that you ate, and then you have great data to look back on to see if you can find. A pattern. Lastly, this is a little bit more on the, is this going to make me sick part is I also find that a lot of these symptoms go away. When my clients stop overeating. I love those Cadbury mini eggs. I think I've already mentioned that. But if I eat too many. I definitely feel sick. Pay attention to your hunger scale and make sure that the quantity of food. Is not actually the problem. Last August. I was being interviewed by Brandon Eastman for his podcast. And he said, You know, I love these, these Mexican bulls. They're so good. They've got like rice and chicken and vegetables, but every time I eat them, Like I feel so sick. It's like the combination of ingredients that ends up being bad for me. And I was like, is it the combination of ingredients or is it the quantity that you're eating? And he was like, whoa. Because we want to blame it on these ingredients. We want to blame it on the restaurant. But we've got to pay attention. To the quantity and see if that is the part that isn't making us sick. Okay. I think I have already given you seven things, but I sort of have, have lost track. I have one more now. Here's my final thought. Trust yourself. We have spent so many years on different fad diets and trusting the meal plan in the book or the diet app to tell us exactly what to eat and how many calories and what we're still short on. And ignoring our bodies all together. What if you started to trust your own body? A lot of people say they wish they could just eat whatever they want. And that is not what I'm talking about. Trusting your body is not the same as eating, whatever your lower brain wants on a whim. I see the difference when people say, oh, I just wish I could eat whatever I want. What they mean is they wish they could eat all of those ultra processed foods, all of this high sugary. High-fat type items that are delicious. But feel terrible in their body. Most people, when they say I want to eat whatever I want, totally disregard how their bodies actually feel after they've eaten those things. If you really listened to your body when she said, oh, that's enough food or maybe you'll notice. Wow. I really do have less sugar cravings when I get adequate servings of fiber and protein. Then these become. The things you actually want to eat. And you stopped saying things like, I wish I could eat whatever I want. And you start trusting what your body is telling you, instead of punishing your body and criticizing and withholding food, because you don't have the exact right thing. Or because you think that you haven't exercised enough or for whatever reason. What have you trusted that your body is capable of helping you lose your weight? I saw this quote years ago. And it has remained one of my favorites and has been a guide to me on this journey from chronic fad diet or to feeling like me and my body are capable. And I said to my body, Softly. I want to be your friend. It took a long breath. And replied. I have been waiting. My whole life for this. That's by Nayyirah Waheed. I don't know if I'm saying that correctly and I don't actually know anything about that author. But I love it. And it has impacted me. Tri trusting yourself. Try trusting your body and letting go. Of that food chatter and the diet mentality. Try taking exquisite care of this body that you live in. Have a good week. My friends as always thanks for listening. And maybe even sharing. This episode of the Eat well think, well live well podcast.