049. Weight Loss and Food Psychology: Breaking Free from Processed Foods

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Hey there. Okay, I have a question for you. Do you think obesity is a choice? That question sent me down a rabbit hole that I am still exploring and is partially why I'm here today. Today's episode is an interview with my friend Julie. She wanted to dig in a little bit to why I do what I do and how I became a neurodietitian. Then we had a great conversation about staying on track during the holidays. So before you dig into Christmas dinner and write off these next two weeks of the year, take a listen to this episode and decide now how you want January to feel.

Thank you. This is so exciting. I'm really excited to dive into our conversation today.

Yeah, it was definitely a long time in the making. So I got interested in nutrition probably when I was in high school. I think one of the biggest things was that my aunt has Lyme disease and so just have her having her being around us, I learned so much about how our healthcare industry is a sick care industry. You know, they do not have our best intentions in mind. Obviously we all know that they profit off of us being sick. And so that's not necessarily the best place to look for. Yes, an avenue to build your health. But then. So when I was in college, and I was thinking about this earlier today when I was in college, you know, way back when, and doing one of my nutrition counseling classes, I was doing some working on some homework one day and somebody asked me, do you think obesity is a choice? And initially my thought was, well, no, of course not. But as I got to thinking about it, I thought, you know what, of course you choose what you eat, of course you choose what you buy. But if we think about informed consent with the healthcare industry, do you really know what you're getting? What about informed consent in the food industry? If people have no idea what they're eating, if people have no idea that the food marketing is not tailored to what's best for you, it's tailored to what we can get you to buy, Then is it really a choice if you're not given the full story? So that was something that just kind of like, that was.

So

is it a choice? Because it seems like it should be. But if you're not given all the information, how good of a choice can you even make? So that was part of it. Yeah. And then. So psychology has always been like, really fascinating to me. I actually thought about a couple of years ago, I thought about going back to school and getting a psychology degree. Just because people's behavior and why they do what they do has always been fascinating to me. So when you take that and you look at dieting, you look at why people eat what they eat, you look at why people don't follow through on things when they really want the result. It's like, okay, what makes you do this? So then I got introduced to neuro coaching, which is learning the science behind how your brain creates beliefs, which then create your decisions, which then determine your actions and of course determine your results. So diving deep into that which confirm your beliefs, it all just goes so hand in hand. You know, why do you believe what you believe and how that determines what you do with your life? And it determines if you can follow through on a diet. It determines why you eat what you eat. Because I'm sure, as many of you know, by and large, people know what to eat. You know, we know vegetables are good for us. We know what salad is better than a cookie, but that doesn't mean that we do it. So why is that? And for most people, it was something that happened or a way they were brought up you know, when you're really little, that creates beliefs that you did not give permission to be created in your brain. And until you unravel what those are, where they came from. Why is it that whenever you're stressed, you reach for chocolate even though you know you don't want it? Like you're literally regretting eating it as you're eating it, but you can't stop. A diet is never going to get you through that. So that whole, that whole course of learning to become a neurodietian, how your brain works, how your brain creates beliefs and thoughts and actions and all that is so fascinating to me. And it pairs so well with nutrition because like I said, people basically know what to eat. But what you always hear people say is, I just don't do it right. And until you figure that out, you really can't get anywhere.

Yeah. Well, so, you know, in addition to all of the, the why we do what we do aspect of it, I do not subscribe to any one specific way of eating. You know, everybody has a different body, everybody has different medical conditions. Keto might work great for somebody and might be horrible for somebody else. Plant based vegan, like there's a million ways of eating and everybody is so different. So I don't tell all of my people to eat one certain way. The only thing I tell people is my four proven principles of health, which is to eat when you're hungry, don't eat when you're not hungry, eat real food and manage your triggers. And if you take those four principles into any specific diet you're following, you know, if it's Whole 30 keto, like paleo, whatever you want to do, then you'll get the best results. But to just say that all of my people need to go on a low carb diet because carbs are evil, is just, it's so narrow, focused. But I think a lot of times you do more harm than good.

So if you start with going back to eating real food, and what I mean by real food is, did it come from the earth? Is it something that was grown, that was harvested, that was, that was hunted? You know, it's real food stuff that did not exist 100 years ago. And I always give the example, you know, Twinkies is not real food. One of the. Another little mind blowing quote for you. When I was in my internship, a dietitian said to me, food is not good or bad, but not everything we eat is food. And I thought, duh, like, just because it tastes good and just because it's edible doesn't mean it's actually food. So if you start by going back to fruits, vegetables, real meat, real cheese, real dairy, you know, nuts, seeds, whole foods, start there. And I always love for people to track. It's not a forever thing. It's not like you're counting calories, it's not like you're counting macros. But if you know what you're eating and then you know how your body is reacting to those foods, you know where to start adjusting. And sometimes this definitely takes a second pair of eyes to look at because, you know, foods fall into 100 different categories. And it could be that it's not the carbs, it's a certain type of food, or maybe it's the type of carb. So there's always a way to figure out what your body is not tolerating or not using well, and then we can either figure out, do you want to just eliminate it and not worry about it, or is there a reason why your body's not tolerating it? Because if it comes from nature and if your body is functioning the way it should, there shouldn't be an issue. People should not be lactose intolerant. People should not be. Well, I would say people should not be intolerant of wheat, but the wheat that we eat now is not the

So that might be a little bit of difference.

But.

But in general food, yes, starting there. And if you're doing something like keto, like Paleo, where there's a pretty big restriction, stick to real food. Because. So one thing that I notice a lot too is that people love shortcuts. And of course, you know, we want to, we want to get results the easiest and most efficient way possible. I mean, of course everybody wants to, you know, protect their time, protect their effort. But if I tell somebody to eliminate grains and eliminate sugar, it doesn't mean it's okay to go eat and make, you know, four batches of keto brownies that are grain free and low and have sweeteners in them. Because it's not necessarily the grains and the sugar. It's why are we making five batches of cupcakes? And just because they're keto doesn't mean you can eat them all day, because that goes back to the triggers that you get to manage.

Yeah. So I don't even know if I answered your question.

around the holidays, it's this, it's, it's this free for all mentality of I've been really good, you know, now it's okay that I go crazy, whatever I want, or it's that all or nothing mentality over. Either on keto or we're not. We're either on our plan or we're not. And you may have heard the like the 80 rule where if you eat good 80 of the time, you're generally okay. And while I don't love that because I think that gives a lot of leeway for setbacks, but the holidays, they're a day. It's not a hollow weekend. It's not all a week. It's not a hollow month. You know, it's the end of October and I've had a lot of Halloween candy and Thanksgiving is in the corner and then it's Christmas and then it's a New Year's party. So I might as well just throw in the towel. And that's the mindset that's really easy to get sucked into. Especially, you know, if you have a bunch of holiday parties and you have several Christmases and a couple of different Thanksgivings. So, right. Holiday be a day if there's if you've not been eating sugar for the last several months because it's not part of your plan. Like, do you think your body is going to handle all of the sugar and all the sweets at Thanksgiving dinner and at Christmas? Like, you're probably going to feel horrible. So prioritize what matters to you. You know, if you just want to taste it, have a couple bites. If pumpkin pie is your thing. Pumpkin pie is my thing. Have a piece, enjoy it, and the next day go back to your normal eating patterns. And, and so two things usually happen with this. Number one is that you've been eating so well that one day of not eating well is not going to throw you off track. You know, your body's going to readjust, you'll go back to feeling normal. You'll be fine. The other thing that could happen is that if you've been eating really well and then all of a sudden you go crazy on Thanksgiving, your body's going to have a reaction because it's not used to that food. It's not used to the processed flour, it's not used to the sugar, it's not used to all of the, you know, canned everything and highly processed, processed everything. So you're going to feel horrible. So if that's the case, you know what your tolerances are and you know that you can't do that at Christmas because it made you feel awful at Thanksgiving. So a holiday is a day. What is your priority? Is one day of binging and going crazy worth losing all of the months of progress that you made?

Is it okay to just eat it once and then be good for the next year? There's no black and white. You just have to figure out what your priorities are and how your body reacts.

that people forget is that your taste buds are going to change. If you've not been eating, you know, highly processed, refined flours, high sugar foods, it's not going to taste good. Probably you're not going to like it. So instead it was a couple years ago, like I made a grain free, really good pecan pie and I thought it was delicious because I had been eating differently, so my taste buds had changed and I wouldn't even be able to stand a regular pecan pie anymore. So you figure out how to make it. I mean, there's different ways to make grain free crusts and there's different ways to use other sweeteners that aren't, you know, processed white sugar. So there's ways to adapt your favorite foods to fit your new lifestyle so you're not missing out and you don't have the option of either not eating it or eating it and feel horrible.

Ignore most of what you read and see and hear because a lot either has an agenda or like I said earlier, you know, people, they get so good at what they know that it's like they get tunnel vision where you might be fantastic in knowing how metabolism works, but you're forgetting that we actually need some of these other nutrients because carbs is more than just carbs. Or you might be fantastic at getting people results on the keto diet, but you forget that it's not just about, I guess again, the carbs. So looking at everything from that 30 foot view, can you actually do this forever? Is this going to give you the results you want and trying to avoid the shortcuts? Of course we want results quickly. Of course we want results, you know, the easiest way possible, but.

What are you sacrificing by trying to make it easy and what are you not learning because you're not willing to go through the challenges to figure it out. And that goes back to what you said too, of, you know, people want to just, just tell me what to do, just tell me what to eat. And while it's great in the beginning, do you want somebody to tell you what to eat for the rest of your life or do you want to be knowledgeable in what your body can handle and what your tolerances are that you can make an informed decision no matter if you're at a party or on vacation or at a restaurant or you're just making a snack for yourself?

And the other thing is be very, very weary of marketing, leery of marketing. That's one thing that I really tell my people at the very beginning. We go through this whole, you know, food marketing mastery course, basically because what you see on the front of the package usually does not line up with what's on the back. And it's not all about the nutrition facts label. It's about the ingredients, it's about the quality. You know, there's so many buzzwords that are unregulated. You know, it's natural, it can help reduce cholesterol. You know, it's heart healthy. Like, a lot of those things don't mean anything. It's low calories, so you know, you can eat all you want or it's fat free or it's diabetes friendly. Like that doesn't mean anything. People get over and the ingredients aren't real food. Think twice before eating it. So, yes, yes.

Oh, yes. Okay, so the first One is the 21 day reset. So, like, tell people you can start over without starting from square one. So let's say you just got back from vacation or it's been the holidays or you just kind of fallen off track. This 21 day reset will let you get back on track really within like the first week. And then you can just get back to your, your schedule, your eating plan. It's not a certain way of eating. It's just getting you back on the horse. So it's pretty cool. You sign up and then you get an email every day with tips on what to do. You get worksheets to do for that day. Just getting you back into your routine, and you can start it over as many times as you want, as often as you want. So that's the 21 day reset you can sign up for. The second one is the Healthy Habits starter kit. Does all of the trackers, the planners, the food journals, everything that you need to be in control of what you're eating so that you can get to the point where someone doesn't need to tell you what to do because you know how to plan your meals. You have meal plans that you can reuse. It's very easy and quick to do. You can track your food and know what triggers you, what doesn't make you feel good. And there's a food journal so you can know why you're doing what you're doing. So when all that comes together, it's pretty cool. Way to really get started on your health.

Thank you so much. This is great. All right, I hope you got some

good nuggets from that interview. If you have a goal of dialing in your health next year, please aim to figure out what your body needs and don't just force whatever trend you've been hearing about. Yes, we are continually learning more about food, disease and biology, but I still firmly believe the phrase, if it's true, it ain't new, and if it's new, it ain't true. So do yourself a favor and keep it simple. No matter what you want 20, 26 to look like and what you want it to accomplish, take action. The quicker you do, the quicker you can adjust, and the quicker you will see results and stay empowered. Nothing saddens me more than people who've lost the ability to critically think, lost their confidence, and lost trust in themselves. You know more than you give yourself credit for. You just have to take action. So Merry Christmas and I'll see you next week.

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