You are listening to the Weight Loss for Successful Women Podcast with Shannan Christensen, episode number 1 62. Welcome to Weight Loss for Successful Women, a podcast for women who are ready to break the diet cycle and end their struggle with weight for good. Here’s your host, Fortune 100 executive and certified life coach, Shannan Christensen. Hello, I love, so happy to be back.

And today we have a very special episode. You know, I think every episode is special, but of course when we have Coach Jenn on, it’s so special and today we’re gonna be like that. You know that old show, I think it was called MythBusters. We’re gonna be Diet MythBusters today. We’re gonna go through some diet, old diet beliefs and old diet thoughts.

I think old thinking that pops up. As you know, you’re on your weight loss journey. So I’m very excited to get in today’s show. This has been a really fun season for us. We welcomed in a bunch of new bosses, which I’m so excited about. My family and I, we just came back from Cabin North in Pine and had the best time ever.

And you know, ladies, it’s just a reminder to have lots of fun enjoying your life when a cupcake is the best thing of your day or week or month. I think it’s just time to like look at that. I tell you I had to because we have these beautiful things in our lives and sometimes we miss out on it because we’re just thinking about the food.

I know I was there for a really long time. I was just like a robot going through my life and forgetting about all the beautiful things that were around me every single day, not just on weekends and vacations every single day. Today we are gonna get into it. We are gonna just go through and talk about how these beliefs show up and what to do about it.

Because I think the diet rollercoaster, which I was on Jenn, was on for many, many years. For me, most of my life, these beliefs were just so ingrained in me. I didn’t even really have to think about it. They were just there. And what happens is they just keep a stuff in this like hamster wheel of dieting and not dieting and then overeating and going through our binge cycles and obsessing about what is the next new diet.

And it just keeps us feeling hopeless, feeling like we don’t know what to do. So you ladies know, coach Jenn, if you’re new to the podcast coach Jenn has been on before. She is amazing. Jenn, what do you wanna say to the ladies? Hi ladies. These I think are just going to hit home at least a couple of them for each lady.

So just listen in, see which ones you relate to, and hopefully you get some really great takeaways to walk, walk away with. Ooh, yeah, what’s our first one, Jenn? Our first one is cutting out a food group. Oh boy. Ladies, I know, I’m telling you, somewhere along the way, some, you know, marketer realize that you could create some diet or food plan that cut out some sort of food.

And you know, way back when it was low fat, so cut out all the fat, then it was cut out all the carbs. Some former fashion since, I don’t even know, 40 years maybe now, you know, cut out the sugar, sugar busters, you know, all the things, right? We’ve just been told that we shouldn’t eat a food group,

right? If you think of food groups, right? Protein car, veggie fruit, you know, all the different food groups. I really wanna challenge that because I think food groups, like I think about my own body and I think about all the different foods that I eat on a regular basis. As I’ve reconnected to my body, I eat all the food groups,

some foods, and each of the food groups are fuel for me and some are not. I think this is so important. We call it becoming the scientist of your own body. But I think for me, becoming the scientist means taking back my power and my control and really redesigning my brain around food. It’s this healing process with food. I think about vegetables.

There are some vegetables that feel great in my body and there are some that don’t. I think about grains and rice and all that. There’s some that feel great and some that don’t. And I eat all of it. I eat fuel, food, non-fuel food. This is just part of the healing. You know, ladies, we’ve all been just brainwashed.

I still to this day, you know, when I’m eating bread or I’m like, I have this because I was on Atkins for so long and I still have this moment, right? And not all the time, but sometimes it’ll come like, whoa, you know? And it’s just this old belief, you know, I eat potatoes and rice and all of the things.

And it just goes back to this brainwashing honestly, of diet culture. Someone sold us a diet somewhere and we didn’t connect with our bodies. Now for some of you, there are certain carbs that feel amazing and some that don’t just like me. And I get to become this scientist of my own body. And so we’ll put these episodes in the show notes.

So if you wanna go back to that one and listen to it, but we’ll put all of these kind of extra podcast episodes in the show notes for you. So you have them. But when you become the scientist, oh, ladies, and you reconnect and you figure out what foods feel good, what foods don’t, and then you just eat all the things,

things, ugh, It’s everything. Jenn, what would you say to that one? Yeah, I think it’s so interesting as you’re naming all of these trends, what is good food? What is bad food? And how it’s evolved and changed over the years. It just is that when I found myself, when I was cutting out food groups, I was labeling foods,

good foods and bad foods. It wasn’t individual foods, it was food groups. And by doing that, I missed out on a lot of foods that are fuel to me. Rice can be fuel and potato can be fuel for me. And you know, we’ve heard the saying that carbs are bad, stay away from carbs. That’s how you gain weight.

And it’s just not the truth. But what I noticed is, as I was labeling foods, good or bad, it then translated into a reflection of me. So if I ate those foods, I was then being good or I was being bad. And along came, we know with our thoughts come failings and actions. And so from those thoughts that I was being bad,

I would feel guilt or shame. And the beat downs would come. And usually, you know, when you’re not eating certain food groups, you wanna binge on ’em. Once you start, it really backfired to my whole cutting out. You know, I ended up overeating these food gro groups that I was cutting out. And so it just didn’t make sense.

You know, like Shannan said, we’re so used to somebody give me what I’m supposed to eat, give me my meal plan. And the power comes when you get to just start paying attention and you get to decide what your meal plan is. And it isn’t set. It changes, you know, as frequently or as infrequently as you want it to.

Oh, that’s good. Jenn, I loved how you talked about how we start labeling food as good or bad. And then we start labeling ourselves as good or bad. So when I am good, I just eat protein, right? When I’m bad, I’m eating carbs. And I absolutely agree with you. It leads to binging and overeating. I have studied folks who have never had weight problems.

I love those folks. They’re very interesting to me. They’re like my little lab rat, right? Because I’m like, whoa, I don’t even understand it. Cause it doesn’t make sense to me. I’ve been on a diet since I was eight. Someone who has never dieted, who has always never had a weight problem. I find them like aliens to me,

but I love talking to them. And when I do, just the way that they think about food, they don’t think of food as good or bad. They just like, Oh, this feels great. My body, this doesn’t, you know, I eat this sometimes. Great. You know, they just have this whole different viewpoint. And this is what I myself,

have been learning this viewpoint and really practicing these thoughts of abundance around food. And that food isn’t good or bad. Food is just food. I don’t label food as healthy or not healthy or good or bad. It’s just some of it feels amazing and fuels me and some of it doesn’t. And I still eat the, some of it that doesn’t. Mm.

Okay. Jenn, what’s our second one? Our Next one kind of leads into that is thinking that we have to eat at a certain time of The day. This is what I think diets do. They keep us disconnected from our body. See, someone gives you a meal plan, someone tells you what times to eat, they don’t know your body,

so they’re just like, this is what you need to do. And so then you just do it. This is what I, I think is just one of the worst things about diet culture. It keeps us disconnected from our own bodies. We are Searchie for this external solution when losing weight. And you know, eating fuel for our body is an internal thing.

It’s not external. And so, you know, when someone says you need to eat at this time, I mean, I can’t tell you how often. So when I look at all my clients and I have a lot of them, and they all eat differently, all of them. I don’t tell them when to eat, what to eat, what time to eat.

And I have some ladies who eat three times a day, five times a day. I have some ladies who eat, you know, a couple times a day. I mean, it just varies in the spectrum because our bodies are different. We have different needs. And you know, when you’re told that you need to eat breakfast, you need to eat lunch,

you need to eat dinner, you need to eat three snacks, you have to do that to keep your metabolism up. It’s such a, it’s such a myth. It’s boo bust, bust that myth. It’s such a myth, it’s not true. And so, and then on the other end of the spectrum, right, fasting came along and then it’s like,

right? But for some folks that does not work. I say this to you ladies, is because you now have the power to ask yourself this simple question, Am I physically hungry? There are times in the morning where I don’t eat breakfast, mostly because I’m not physically hungry. And so I just ask myself, am I physically hungry? And if I’m not,

I don’t eat. There’s sometimes at dinner I’m not hungry. And so I ask myself, am I physically hungry? If it’s a no, I don’t eat. If it’s a yes, I eat. When you start connecting to your body, and this varies for me, you know, it’s so interesting because my body is cyclical. There are times where like sometimes I’ll eat at nine or 10 in the morning because I’m physically hungry.

And then there are times where I don’t eat until it’s two. And again, when you start paying attention and you start asking yourself, very simple question, Am I physically hungry? Would you know a chicken breast or a bowl of broccoli do right now? And your body’s like, Yes, give it to me. Then you know, the time of the day,

all of our bodies are different. And if someone tries to tell you your body needs this, be very, very, very wary of that. Because they don’t know your body. I, I tell you this because truly the person who knows your body best is you. And when you connect back to it, it’s so powerful. What do you thinking Jenn?

Yeah, I, as you were saying that, I’m like, I kind of fall into a bunch of different categories cuz mine is the same. I don’t always eat the same way every day. It changes literally daily, a lot of times in week spans, or depending on my activity level or what is going on in my life. But when I started thinking about eating at a certain time,

it made me giggle a little bit because I grew up with a very regimented, we eat breakfast before we go to school. You cannot miss your breakfast, you need your energy for the day. Lunchtime was at noon and then dinner time was, you know, 5 30, 6, whatever time. And that was it. And if you were hungry in between, it was like,

you better wait. You can have one snack and that is it. And this is no disrespect to my parents, right? This is just what they knew, what they were raised on and that is it. But when I think about having to eat meals at a certain time, when I think back, it almost created this like panic mode where when it was time to eat,

I would overeat past full. And I wasn’t connected to my body paying attention to this, but my brain was like, okay, you better make sure that you eat enough so you’re not hungry before the next meal comes because you have this time. And it’s that scarcity. You talk about Shannan, right? Like the food’s not gonna be there, you’re not gonna have any food until dinner time.

It’s just so false. Like I didn’t need that food. It just was that mindset of scarcity. My body had more than enough food. And so just, you know, allowing yourself to check in and see are you physically hungry? And then be okay with not eating if you’re not. Or vice versa, if you are hungry and you just ate two hours ago,

maybe you ate a non-fuel food that’s just not long lasting and you are hungry again. And that’s okay. Oh, I think it just really does come back to connecting with your body and starting to pay attention to what your body cues are. Yeah, I love that, Jenn, because you know, we were, all of us were raised differently in different things,

right? And so, you know, some of you have scarcity because growing up you didn’t have a lot of food, right? And so when you became an adult and you started being able to make your own choices or buy your own food, then suddenly you wanted to hoard it because it was like, whoa, you know, I didn’t have a lot.

Some of you have been on diets and so then, you know, it’s like, oh my gosh, I need to eat. I need to, I mean, I was that way. I always had food with me at all times. If I was going on a trip, if I was going on an airplane, if I was going on a longer car ride,

I would have all of these thoughts. And ladies, our bodies are made to want or need food. And we have these hunger cues in us, right? We have this hormone called grelin that actually when we connect with our bodies and we start, we actually can experience what physical hunger is. And just so you ladies know, physical hunger is not an emergency.

I know we think it is, but it really isn’t. And so when we become physically hungry and we allow that, you know, I tell ladies this is a tip I tell my transformed bosses. For me, I didn’t know what true physical hunger felt like. I didn’t know what it felt like in my body. I had no clue because I’d never let myself get hungry.

I had these thoughts back to Jenn’s point about don’t get hungry. Whoa, you cuz I, I didn’t like the feeling of being physically hungry. And so I would do everything not to feel that feeling, but this is important. So then for years I just avoided that feeling. So I never knew. So I was just eating all the time and caring,

you know, I don’t know, anywhere from 80 to 150 pounds of extra weight. And so ladies, my tip for you, if you don’t know what physical hunger feels like in your body, cuz it feels different for all of us than depending on when you sleep. So when you have your daily sleep of, you know, six to nine hours,

whenever that is for you, you just, when you wake up, instead of eating right away, just extend that by an hour or two and then that way you can start to see what physical hunger feels like in your body. For me, it’s a little wispy. I feel a little lightheaded. My brain is like, Hey, we need to get some food,

we need to get some water, we need to like my body. I start feeling these signals, right? I start thinking about food a lot. And if I go a little past physically hungry to the next kind of level of that, I do, my stomach feels so light that almost gives me a little bit of a stomach ache actually. And so for me,

that’s how physical hunger feels like. Jenn, what would you say physical hunger feels like in your body? I start to get tired. I start to get a little lightheaded. Not crazy, but a little lightheaded. You know, my mood can shift, angry can kick in for me angry. So just noticing that those are probably my biggest hunger cues.

And it varies for all of you, you know, ladies, just allowing yourself to feel a little physically hungry, know what that feels like in your body so that when you’re not physically hungry, when you’re emotionally hungry, you can tell the difference. Now, we emotionally eat for many reasons, and one of them is because, you know, we don’t wanna feel a feeling.

So we put something in between us and the feeling. So we buffer. We buffer with food. And so if we don’t wanna feel loneliness, if we don’t wanna feel boredom, if we don’t wanna feel anger or frustration or sadness, we’ll eat because we wanna put something in between that. Another reason why we emotionally eat is because we want that dopamine hit.

We want to feel better. We want, you know, we think we have this thought that food is gonna make us feel better. And so we emotionally eat. And you know, emotional eating also lends to what I like to call habit eating. And so again, this is just, we’ve created this habit. Maybe it’s at night, maybe it’s when you get home from work,

maybe it’s, you know, I always have to have a dessert after dinner. It’s just this habit, you know, we have this old habit that just plays. And so at that time of day, or maybe it’s a certain circumstance that we get into, again, it lends itself to we’re eating for another reason other than physical hunger. So we’re eating that dessert after dinner because that’s what we do when we’re not even physically hungry for it.

We’re just eating it. You know, eating at night, right? I know night eating and weekend eating can be a real trigger and habit for so many ladies. And my advice ladies, is just ask yourself and get into the habit of asking, am I physically hungry? Because just yourself coming into that awareness will take you out of that habit brain.

It’ll take you out of the feelings, right? Avoidance of feelings because you’re coming into awareness and sometimes you might eat anyways, but just asking yourself, am I physically hungry? You’ll start to become surprised at how many times the answer that pops in your head is no. And then you get to decide what you wanna do. Do I want to eat this?

Or I’m not hungry. So you actually start to say, you know, I’m just not hungry for it right now. And I tell you, when you do this over and over again, it feels so powerful to say, I can have it, I just don’t want it. That is like, that is the sweet spot, ladies. So we’ve only gotten two diet beliefs.

I know, ladies, these episodes are gonna be amazing. Jenn and I are gonna continue. So next week’s episode will be more diet beliefs and more beliefs that just keep us on the diet rollercoaster. So you wanna make sure that you hit subscribe or follow wherever you listen to the podcast. So every week the new episode just pops up in your library.

And if you wanna go deeper in this work, then go to free boss course.com and you can take my free course. Mm. So good. Okay, we’ll see you next week. All right, Bye for now. Thank you for listening to this episode of Weight Loss for Successful Women. If you love what you heard today and wanna learn more, come on over to b fly coaching.com.

That’s bflycoaching.com. See you next week.