The Lies We Tell Ourselves About Weight Loss [Ep. 55]

This is the eat well think? Well live well podcast. I'm Lisa Salsbury, and this is episode 55. The lies we tell ourselves about weight loss. 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. Thanks for joining me today. Before I get into the topic today, I want to tell you about a limited time offer. I am making to you listeners on the podcast. I am opening up 10 spots on my calendar in the next four weeks. And actually we're a week into this project. And four spots down. So there's actually only six spots left, but this is a food planning session I am offering you. So I know you're probably thinking. That losing weight doesn't work for you and that you wish you could, but you just can't figure out what to eat. And what works for your body. You're not sure, like maybe what diet plan to follow and how that might fit in with the thought work I teach. So I am setting aside four 10 of you. And like I said, I already have four booked. To jump on a call with me and get your meals planned in order to get you started, I just want to get you out of confusion. So come to this free food planning session, it's a one-on-one session, just you and me. So it's totally personal for exactly what you need. You'll leave, knowing exactly what to eat to start losing weight. So just so we're clear, this is not a webinar. This is a session just for you. So make sure that you're in a place where you can take notes and really think through what we're going to talk about. I know the intro to my podcast says, I'm going to teach you to figure out why you were eating when you aren't hungry, instead of worrying so much about what you are eating. So this session might sound like it's a little counter intuitive to what I teach, but what I have been finding lately, With clients and women that are messaging me on Instagram. Is that they're just getting stuck in the wet first. What should I eat? Why. Am I hungry for this food at lunch, and then we can dial in, oh, okay. We're not setting ourselves up for the day for breakfast. So we, we just need to dial in that. What. we're four, we're even ready to figure out the emotional eating piece. So we're just dialing in what foods you want on your plan. I also will be gifting you the workbook for my jumpstart, your weight loss sessions that I used to do. So those were 90 minute sessions and ran 2 25. So you'll be getting a link to that in the email reminder. So be sure to download that and have that ready. When you are, uh, coming to the session. So we'll use you some of those worksheets during the call and then some you can do on your own. So go and schedule right away. it probably looks like by the way that there are more than six times available, but what's going to happen is that When 10 get booked, then the calendar will turn off like there's limits on the calendar. So that only a certain amount can be booked. Per week and then a total amount. So, It does probably look like there's more available, but don't wait to get yours on the calendar. And I'll be honest if at the end of the call, I think you're a good fit for my coaching program. I will let you know, but the call is free for you Either way. All right, let's get to today's topic. I got to thinking about how last week I discussed with Jody Moore. That I don't know is always a lie. If you miss that episode, it is really great. Jody and I talked about. Several of the lessons I have learned from her over the years as she has been my life coach, I started with her one-on-one when she was a brand new coach. So you can go back and listen to that episode for the full discussion. On that one on why I don't know is always a lie, but it made me realize, and I got to thinking that there are several other lies that we tell ourselves in. Weight loss. And we don't mean to be lying to ourselves. It's just like when we say, I don't know, we don't really. recognize that as a lie. And these really are just a subtle thoughts. Sometimes you may not even realize you're having them, but I hear them. In my clients, when they're telling me a story, I hear them. You might be having these just periodically, but a lot of them are coming on a regular basis. So I have five. That I've recognized today, but I think I might have to do a part two of this episode because there are so many, but I didn't want it to be like an hour long. So. The first one is telling yourself that more of what you're eating is going to be more enjoyable. This is going to be fun. I should eat more. Right? So this one is sneaky because we usually identify emotional eating as like crying face down in a pint of ice cream or eating an entire bag of chips or cookies at the end of a long day. But I find that the most common emotional eat for my clients is eating past physical hunger or fullness cues that they have had enough. And the lie comes in. That if you keep eating, you'll increase the fun. Increase the pleasure increase the enjoyment. But the truth is that more of that food? Is not going to increase the pleasure of it. There's a point of diminishing returns that we often cross when we overeat. We are eating something enjoyable and delicious. And we get to the point of having enough. And if you stop there, you actually get the peak enjoyment because you've enjoyed the flavor and the textures or whatever else you like about the food. And you get the enjoyment of it, feeling good in your body of being able to get up and move around, go for a walk, do the things that you need to maybe go back to your desk, not feel sluggish, all of the perks that come with not overeating and feeling great in your body. Once you overeat that food, you start to decrease the enjoyment because you start to get digestive distress in some way, whether that's too full of a tummy or bloating, heartburn, just pain because your stomach is so full, you might have trouble sleeping or even wake up the next morning. Still not feeling great in your body. Add that to the idea that you are unlikely to be kind to yourself in this moment, you are likely punching yourself in the face with your thoughts. Saying things like you always do this. When are you going to learn to stop? And you're never going to lose weight, all of those kinds of thoughts that Contribute to you feeling bad about yourself and talking to yourself in a way that you would never speak to another woman out loud. Now you've turned an enjoyable food experience into an experience that's loaded with stomach pain and shame and guilt. See how more and more and more of that food doesn't actually increase the enjoyment of the experience. What if you just ate to satisfied. And you've got to remember that delicious meal without having any guilt about it without having any digestive distress. Wouldn't that be amazing? Obviously we can choose not to have guilt about overeating. I'm just telling you what typically happens. If we're not actively working on our thoughts. But I give this thought to my clients all the time. More of this food is not going to actually make this experience better. And of course, I'm talking about more being over and above your positive three on the hunger scale, more than your body needs in that moment. But we are using that thought when you are in the decision point. Of should I stop here when I feel like I've had enough? Or should I keep eating? That's when the light comes in, that more will make the experience of this food better. All right. Line number two. It's just a one. Again, this is a sneaky one because this lie is when your brain tells you so that you continue eating past fullness. Or it's something that comes in when your brain wants to eat something that's not on your plan, something you haven't written down. I first noticed this one with a client a few years back, that it kept coming up for her. During our sessions. So we decided to count up. The quote, it's just one meals that she had throughout the week or snacks. Or, you know, cookies, all the things that she was saying. Well, it was just one. so whether that was a particular meal at a restaurant or a cookie after lunch or a soda. And it turned out to be more meals than not that she found herself saying it's just one. Or sometimes it was, I don't do this often, which is kind of a separate one, but usually it was, it's just one. She realized that it was her brain, just trying to keep her eating and keep from experiencing any disappointment. Or any cravings. So she wasn't having the opportunity to process any cravings and learn how to feel those, because she consistently said, well, it's just one. And this is why it's just one is usually a lie. Your food journal is going to tell the tale. It's going to really come in handy here with the actual data. You know, I love a food journal. I love a 24 hour plan, but if you, even if you're not planning ahead writing down what you are eating is so, so valuable. It's just such valuable data. I always like to remind you that your own food journal is the most important nutritional study you will ever read. But when you keep an accurate food journal, you can use that as data and really look at how many times. You probably used this thought, like, if you see a lot of a single cookie here, a single candy here, a single bag of chips here. Like every time that you've been like, well, it's just one, it's just one soda. And. You can get really clear on how often this is happening to you. When you are planning one item, like you have one serving of cake planned tonight for dinner. That's not the same as eating off your plan and using the lie. It's just one. So, I'm not saying we can't ever eat these things, right. It's just that when the lie comes in wanting due to eat off plan, So that client and I turned this thought on its head by sort of changing the tone. Do you ever hear that tone in your thoughts? You can hear that. It's not just how we speak out loud. So when her brain offered the it's just one, like, come on. It's just one. Right. She said yes. It is just one. And so I won't miss it. This really helped her get on top of that thought. That lie, her brain was offering by answering it directly and saying you're right. It is only one. And so it's no big deal to skip it. All right. Number three, closely related to the it's just one thought is. I hardly ever get this food. Or this is a special occasion. Again, I want you to get really, really honest with yourselves and your calendar on this one. I find that. We use this so often that it isn't actually a special occasion. I had a client that used the special occasion lie. Every time they went out to eat. So we got really honest with her food journal and looked at her schedule and realized she was going out. At least one or two times per week, almost always a date night. And then usually at least one other time, that, that week for like fast food. There is nothing wrong with this plan. That is completely fine. I don't think you need to eat every meal at home. But is it really a special occasion to be at a restaurant if you're doing it twice a week? Define for yourself. What a special occasion is. Is it that something that comes around once or twice a year? Or once or twice a week, see the difference. She was really surprised when she realized this lie coming up for her, because she was like, oh yeah, no, it's not really a special occasion. And she didn't want to have that thought anymore. This just really helped her chains, how she was ordering. And we used the going out more as the break from dishes and break from cooking that she needed. And she started ordering food that tended to match more closely what she would make if she were at home. So things that would be typically on plan for her. She also realized she was ordering soda every time she went out because of it being that special occasion that her brain was telling her that special occasion thought, right. That was really interesting to her because she didn't consider herself a soda drinker because she didn't buy it to have it at home. She considered that she only ordered it when she was out. If it was a special occasion. But when she realized, oh, I'm actually drinking. Soda multiple times per week. She was like, I guess I am a soda drinker and this just gave her the opportunity to decide if she wanted to keep that. Or let that go, but it all stemmed from this lie of it been a special occasion. I noticed this one too, around special holidays. When you only maybe make that type of food at that time of year. So maybe it's pumpkin pie in the fall or fudge at Christmas time. But the truth is that those ingredients for those foods are available in the grocery store. You're round. We could make pumpkin pie for dessert this Sunday in August. If you want. I actually have a can of pumpkin left in my pantry. That's perfectly good, but I don't actually want it in August. Actually, I don't even want it in the fall cause I don't like pumpkin pie. So that's kind of a bad example for me, but maybe your, you know, like my crazy sister who could eat pumpkin pie year round, and she just likes the filling and makes it like a custard in a pan without the crust. But I seriously doubt she is ever like, oh, I can hardly, I hardly ever get this because she actually does make it whenever she wants, because that's the truth with this one, you could make most things year round. Even fruit desserts often can be made out of season with frozen fruit. I have definitely made a peach cobbler in the dead of winter with frozen peaches and it was delicious. So when you hear your brain offering you, oh, this is a special occasion. So we should definitely overeat this food. Because who knows when we will get it again. And by the way your brain doesn't actually say we should overeat it just as like keep eating. Right. You can counter that with actually any time I could get this any time I really wanted it. Rely on your ability to get the food that you want. When you actually want it. And then be honest to you really want fudge year-round. Or do you want one delectable piece? From your grandma's special recipe when you go and visit at Christmas time, that's when you really want it. So here's the other thing about this lie though? It's telling you that since you are at a special occasion, you should overeat, but do you really want to be uncomfortable in your body and have that digestive distress? I talked about earlier. If it's a special occasion. Do you want to be focused on your thoughts about having overeaten? If you are at your child's wedding? Or at your grandma's hundredth birthday party. If it really truly is a special occasion. Then don't we want to be as present as we can be and not have to worry about having to unbutton our pants. So really all around this lie of it's a special occasion. And so we should eat past fullness. It's just not true. All right. Number four. I love this one. I can't ever stop eating. I hear this one from clients. It's just, I just really, I never stop. I never stop eating. And I'm always like really. Are you eating right now? Like if this one is true for you and if you just heard me say, oh yeah, that's totally me. I never can stop eating. Are you eating right now? Maybe you are, maybe you're listening to this during lunch. But I know that's an exaggeration. To say like, well, obviously, like. At some point we stop, but these little lies are making a difference in your result line. I promise. And this one is a lie every single time. Well, you mean is I don't stop when I think that I should, or I don't stop at my physical enough. At that physical fullness. But it's just so disempowering to lie. About this and to say, I never stop eating. When we say we can't stop. The only way that would be true. Is if we were eating 24 hours a day. My daughter said this to me the other night as she was putting away leftovers. Which I thought was especially ironic because she wasn't even saying I can't stop until the food is gone. It was just more of a lie because there was still food available and she still at one point had decided to stop. So the truth here. Is that you are not stopping at your positive three or positive four on the hunger scale when things. Tastes so good. Or when one of those other lies come in about hardly ever get this or special occasion. But often this one comes in on a random taco Tuesday night because the chicken Tinga tacos you made were so delicious. And you're like, oh, I can't ever stop eating when I make tacos and all this guacamole. It's so good. And that's just not true. You do stop eating. Whether that's when the food has gone. Or you stop when you're overly full, but there is still food left. At some point you do stop eating. And even if you eat until the food is gone. You could make more food. There's there's always food available in this world. So get honest about when you stop. Is it when you're at a positive seven or eight on the hunger scale. Like I stopped when I'm actually just really uncomfortable. Okay. Then let's practice stopping when you're at a positive six, just bring it down. One, one notch, let yourself get somewhat full, but maybe not stuffed. Practice that for awhile. Notice at some point at every meal, when you do stop eating, what is happening in that moment? What are you thinking that makes you put your fork down? Now practice eating just until a positive five. And so on and so forth until you were practicing. Uh, stopping occasionally at that positive three or four. See what it feels like. Yes, you're going to be uncomfortable because it's going to feel weird at first, not to be overly staffed. But doing it gradually like this Can really help you get there because you will be stuck using willpower and gritting your teeth and feeling really restricted. If you go from overeating you know, if you're at a seven or eight feeling like it's very difficult to stop at every meal to. The next day, just eating too enough just to that positive three. So even though you've heard me talk about that, like, I want you to eat between the threes, wait until you're hungry at a negative three and then eat a meal to positive three. If you are consistently feeling like this as you, I just never can stop. And you're consistently eating to a 7, 8, 9. I want you to just bring it down to a six, seven. Just a little bit, just, just stop eating a little bit sooner. Not all the way to that. Positive three at first. so on this one, baby, step it down. That hunger scale, you will still feel better in your body at a positive six. Then add a positive eight. And so you will get some dopamine reward for that. You will get some motivation from that. Like, oh, I stopped at that positive six. I was full. But nothing bad happened. Maybe tomorrow I'll stop a couple bites earlier. Okay. And the last night I have for you is this one I've never been successful. In the past. So this is the trickiest of lies because it's a half-truth. You tell yourself you've never been successful in the past when what you mean is you've never succeeded at keeping the weight off. I would venture to guess that all of us have lost some weight at one time or another. I find most of my clients. And I would venture that. Most of you listeners have attempted weight loss in the past. There are studies that show women at my age have attempted between 40 and 60 diets, which counts each time you start over on a Monday air quotes, right? Um, statistics show that 56% of women have tried, tried a diet last year. So the thing is that you actually probably have lost weight, even if it was just a couple pounds, even if it was just for a couple of weeks. So it's likely not true that you've never lost weight. What might be true is that you haven't succeeded in keeping it off. So do you see how this is? Like a half-truth half-life. So, again, just getting honest is going to be what's helpful here, because if we can access those times that we have been able to lose weight. then we can approach this time. With knowledge and data. And instead of saying, I have no idea how to lose weight. If we look at our past diets and see which ones did I actually feel good on? Which one did I lose weight and also have energy. We want to avoid the ones that may be. We're cutting your intake so low that you felt sluggish and grouchy. It's also useful here to notice what you were eating on particular diets that you liked. And didn't like, I've told you before that, I still use certain recipes from diets. I was on without currently following that entire diet. Like I make a Turkey breakfast, sausage from an old south beach diet cookbook. I don't need to be on the south beach diet, which I'm not in order to like a breakfast food from that diet that worked well for me. When we get really honest with this one, it allows us to access ideas from our past that actually worked. If we shut it down with sane, I've never been successful. We won't think to look at anything we've done in the past. I promise you, there are some golden nuggets there in your diet history. And I also promise you you'll see some doozies of mistakes and you'll know what not to do this time, too. I have had every single client. That I have worked with. When we, we really work on, okay. What has worked for you in the past? They always are like, oh, you know what? I really loved. I really loved when I. XYZ fill on the blank. When I ate a salad every day for lunch, when I ate eggs for breakfast, when I started every morning with a bullet vote meal, when I used a meal delivery service, there's something that you have done that helped you lose weight in the past. Just one little thing. And I want you to be able to access this. And when you say I've never been successful in the past, You will shut down your ability to access that information. I actually did an entire episode on this particular topic. It's episode 31 accessing past diet experiences to help decide what to eat now. That's what it's called. So I'll put that link in the show notes. Okay. That's what I have for you today. Just beyond here, brain get really honest, especially when you hear thoughts that use words like always and never. Just be like really. Is that actually true? So obviously with each and every one of these, I recommended to get really honest about what's true. So if you hear other lies in your brain, Just try to get really honest and say, okay, what, what is actually the truth here? If you're wanting to get started on working on. Your thoughts about weight loss, as well as figuring out exactly what to eat. Honestly, the best way to do that this month is by snagging. One of those free food planning sessions with me, like I said, there's just six left out of the 10 that I had originally offered. So be sure to get that scheduled today, link of course, is in the show notes. Thanks again for listening today to the eat. Well think well live well podcast, and I'll talk to you next week.