Eating Got You Down? Put the Fun Back in Food
A couple of months ago, I was working with a wonderful young woman named Allison. She came to me and just started blurting out all this information. Sometimes people use me like confessional, She said, it was my birthday and my friend was in town visiting. So we celebrated and went out to eat, I had a couple of drinks and since my diet wasn’t good those days, I fell off the wagon.
But I know I need to be stricter with myself. I will be stricter with myself.
Does this sound like fun? NO WAY. Do you think this kind of attitude leads to lasting healthy eating habits? Would you want to eat healthy if you had this attitude?
NO way would I ever.
This episode is adapted from a webinar I gave in the spring called Put the Fun Back in Food. It’s time we did that and I hope that you’ll see that making food fun is the key to eating healthy and making it a way of life.
Read the Transcript Here
Hi friends, it's Andrea here with another episode of adventures and feeding my family. 00:05 A couple months ago, Andrea Heyman 00:06 I was working with a wonderful young woman named Alison. She came to me and just started blurting out all this information. I think it's kind of funny. Sometimes people use me like they're confessional and kind of admit to everything that they think that they haven't been doing well. So she started out and she said, It was my birthday, and my friend was in town visiting. So we celebrated and we went out to eat. I had a couple of drinks. And since then my diet wasn't good. Those days, so I really fell off the wagon. But I know I need to be stricter with myself and and i will be stricter with myself. Oh my goodness, does this sound like fun? 00:47 No it? Do you think this kind of attitude leads to lasting healthy eating habits? No way. Would you want to eat healthy if you had this attitude? No way, I wouldn't either. This episode is adapted from a webinar I gave in the spring called put the fun back in food. It's timely did that. And I hope that you'll see that making food fun is the key to eating healthy and making it a way of life. I've been doing these fun webinars and most recently, last week, I had the detox your diet webinar. I enjoyed hanging out with the lovely ladies that joined. And now we're moving into a group coaching series called the diet detox 10 weeks to lasting weight loss. This is kind of the culmination of a couple of other groups that have offered recently. And you know, I've taken really diligent notes and learned from all of you folks, what worked, what didn't work, what they wanted more of. And these 10 weeks is the new and improved version of my group coaching. And it's really jam packed with everything that you need to know, to revamp traditional diet mindset. And I'm also going to give you the tools to address emotional eating, update your mindset, eat more mindfully, and address those deep seated beliefs that keep you stuck. And really, really wondering if you can actually lose weight for good. The link to sign up and get more information will be in the show notes. And I really hope you can join. Because this is really a life changing group. And it sounds really silly like that sounds lofty that I'm using the word life changing. But it honestly really is. And I am here to support everyone who joins and sign up and I cannot wait for it because I think this is such important work for us as moms, so that we don't pass down our food, junk food struggles to our kids. adventures and feeding my family is a weekly podcast discussing the challenges and fun around feeding your family healthy meals. I'm Andrea Heyman, and I've been a registered dietician for over 25 years. So I know the importance of good nutrition. But I'm also a mom of three so I understand the challenges and humor 03:27 that comes along with Andrea Heyman 03:28 trying to make this happen. In this podcast, I'll share my tips, tricks and menus, but also share the stories and food prep failures that come along the way to interview guests. We'll discuss family food traditions, how to strengthen bonds around the family table, as well as their favorite family recipes. There isn't one right way to feed your family. But there are countless stories, you can take bits and pieces and learn from all of them. If you are ready to put the fun back in food, it's likely that you were here for one of three reasons. My guess is that you might be fed up with trying different diet plans, and you're feeling frustrated when you're unsuccessful meeting those goals. Or you might have had a lot of times where you've felt nervous and anxious around food for lots of years. You just don't know which foods are the right foods for you to eat. And that really comes from our diet culture giving us so many mixed messages. And you also might be here you might want to put fun back in food because you don't want your kids to have the same hang ups around food that you do. You know that you need to change your perspective. It is definitely time to put the fun back in food. And I'm going to give you three approaches. So that You can make that super achievable, and just super doable because it is not hard. And I'm tired of us making it so hard for ourselves. I've been a dietician for 25 years. And as my practice has grown and developed and kind of shifted, I have really become to call myself an anti diet nutrition coach. Because I want to empower everyone to achieve food freedom, we have been duped by the diet culture that has led us to believe really all the wrong things. And I want you to imagine feeling clarity on what steps you need to take in order to feel confident with your food choices, no longer feel anxious about what you're eating, so that you can be a good role model and achieve that food freedom. Changing your approach to food is really the key to achieving this. And really, what's fascinating is that when we do we experience the improved health, we have more fun with food. And typically folks lose weight, and are able to keep it off. And it all happens from changing the approach that we typically take. And it happens in an easy, natural, more organic way. So let's talk about a few things. First of all, why is food become unfun? How we can change our mindset, why food rules are completely ineffective, and then how we can trust ourselves again, we have been bombarded by the media, but social media, by emails by friends, magazine articles, TV shows, with so much clutter, confusion, stress in different messages from all of these different sources. And it really has resulted in chaos in the mind, we've become so confused by all the nutrition messages that are out there, that you don't know what food choices to make, that conflicting diet culture messages produce a lot of anxiety about what we really should eat. And our brain is so darn cluttered, you really don't even know where to start to meet the health goals. So once we accept that traditional diet culture is really not our friend and not on our side. And except that it doesn't have to be hard work, we can bring that joy, and fun back into eating while taking all that anxiety and stress out of the situation. And we do this by three different approaches that I'll tell you about today. And I'm going to give you some simple exercises to get you started. So first is mindset. We'll talk about food rules, and then we'll talk about trusting yourself trusting your body. So what thoughts are running through your mind around food? Some common examples are, it doesn't matter how much I try, I can never lose weight. Another common one is eating healthy is so much work. Why should they even bother? And then there are so many others too. Does anyone want to eat healthy when they have these kinds of mindsets and thoughts running it through their brain? Absolutely no. I want you to remember that whatever your thoughts are, leads to feelings, those feelings drive what our actions are going to be, which ends up forming our results. We have over 60,000 thoughts in a day. And 95% of those are subconscious. Only 5% of those are conscious. So our focus should really change what those subconscious thoughts are. And if we have those kind of negative subconscious thoughts, that is really what is going to be driving our attitudes about food and what we eat and the food choices that we make. So consciously changing our thoughts about food can affect our mindset and help put that fun back in food. So I suggest reframing our typical mindset so that it is more positive, something believable, so that if your conscious thoughts, they will eventually trickle down to your subconscious thoughts. And that is one way that we drive those healthier eating habits and get the results that we're really looking for. It all starts with the thoughts and the mindset. let's shift gears and think about food rules that we have. Because we've all had them at some point. Common food rules are typically fall into a couple of categories. So you should limit the amount of carbs you eat every day. Or I won't eat after 7pm. Or I should only eat between 10 and six. In fact, a few episodes ago, so maybe four or five episodes ago, look back in the podcast, and there's another episode totally on food rules and why they don't serve us. Well. Basically, once you give yourself one of these food rules, what do you think about if you tell yourself, I'm not going to eat carbs, you only think about carbs all day. And it makes it very, very difficult to change your habits when you are completely focused on the thing that you don't want to do. And that is absolutely no fun. Because we are putting much more focus on food and adding a lot of stress and anxiety to our day. So the first step that I challenge you to do is to identify the food rules you have. Ask yourself, Why? Why do you have this good rule? Once you answer that question, I want you to ask yourself, why again, take out a piece of paper and just ask yourself why? I want you to ask yourself why? and answer that question, why seven times, it is usually at the sixth or seventh time, where you get some magic about kind of those deep rooted thoughts of why you need to be doing this good role. And in this process, when I did this type of work, I will admit that a lot of feelings come up. They can be upsetting, they can also be empowering, I want you to sit with these feelings without judgment. And forgive yourself for having these failings so that you can move on. But really identifying them and giving yourself awareness is how we kind of liberate ourselves from food rules, and move forward. One so that food can be more fun. And so that you can actually empower yourself to have the eating habits that are going to result in the results that you really want. And finally, we want to be able to trust our bodies. When we are babies, we are innately able to understand our hunger, and no one we are hungry, no one we are full. Babies will turn their heads away when they're being fed once they're full. And they know when to kind of turn off the eating. But as we age, and we're exposed to additional socialization, we are taught to really ignore these innate hunger cues in that live within each of us. We lose the ability to trust ourselves and understand when we actually are hungry. And when we actually are full. I suggest evaluating your hunger using a hunger scale. So if there are 10 points on the hunger scale, one is that you're super super hungry, like you've never been so hungry, you've you're starting to get dizzy and a little 10 on that hunger scale is the opposite. You're so full, you might have to sit down, lay down on the couch, maybe unbutton the top button of your pants because your stomach is so uncomfortable. Those are the extremes of the hunger scale. And we want to live more in the middle of that range. So somewhere between a four and a six, or maybe even a three and an eight have that hunger scale. Using this hunger scale to evaluate where you fall consistently if you can do it every day at least once a day. Even better than that is to do it. Every time you eat, or every time you're reaching for food. determine where you are on that hunger scale so that you can begin to understand your triggers your food triggers and how you are approaching food. This also gives us so much more awareness and how we understand our hunger cues. This scale, there will be a link that you can get in the show notes. And the hunger scale will be fully written out for you so that you can use that as our resource. But this is one of the best tools, trust me one of the best tools to bring more mindfulness, more awareness, and really begin to trust yourself and your hunger. And this is one of the most fantastic empowering ways to make us, I guess, take that anxiety and stress out of beating ourselves so that you can put that fun back in food. You do all three of those exercises and really dedicate 10 minutes a day, to running through them consistently. I promise you, you will transform the way you approach and feel about food. So I really, really encourage you to to do this. You can put that fun back in food. I really hope you liked this episode, please share it with a friend rate and review the podcast. That's how we get the word out. And we share our mission that we are here together helping one another combat traditional diets and food culture that are not serving us well. Until next time, take care