Ep #55: The Reality of Food

You are listening to the Weight Loss for Successful Women podcast with Shannan Christiansen, episode number 55.

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 Christiansen.

Well hello love. So happy to be back with you. I am excited about today’s show. And you know, today we’re going to talk about food, and I think about all the diets that we’ve tried where we’re eating foods that maybe we’re not that crazy about.

And so I’m going to talk a little bit about it today and how to stop doing it and how to actually enjoy your food more. So good. But first, I want to give a listener shout-out. This is where I’ll read a review of the podcast every week. And this week’s listener shout-out is to Kelly Anderson.

She wrote, “I have to keep reading this over and over. It does consume our minds. My journey is my journey. It’s funny, I would also compare when other people fell off their weight loss journey and I would confirm we were all doomed. LOL. This is excellent. I love doing this work.”

Thank you so much Kelly. I loved it. I loved the review. And ladies, I love those reviews, so if you’re listening and you love the show, please rate and review it. I would so appreciate it. You can also subscribe so every Wednesday and Friday I am just in your podcast app, wherever you listen to podcasts.

And also, we still have the contest going on. So if you rate and review the show, you can be entered in for a $150 gift card. I’m going to give away two of them. The details are you have to do it on iTunes or Apple. So if you have an iPhone or if you have a Windows computer, you can just download iTunes. And then just email me, support@bflycoaching.com with the title of your review and you are in.

So ladies, BFLY has been busy. We just finished a five-day challenge, and we are preparing for our virtual event on ending self-sabotage. I mean, it’s been so fun. My husband and I are also preparing our three-year business plan. And the first piece honestly how we’re doing it is just looking back at the last two years of business and seeing our success and our opportunities.

And honestly love, as I’ve been going through this, I have been so emotional. I just am so proud of how the business is growing and what we’re learning. When I look at how many ladies we’re helping, I just get emotional. I cry.

I am so proud of our team too, and how they’re growing, and they’re just doing mind-blowing things. Building a business, becoming an entrepreneur, I mean, it really has pushed me. But it has been one of the greatest joys in my life. I love the Transform bosses, I love each and every one of them, and they inspire me every day.

So ladies, let’s get into the food. So early in my diet career, I went to one of those prepackaged diet programs. You know the ones I’m talking about. It’s where they give you the little frozen – and actually, other meals too that just sit in your cupboard because they have so much preservatives in them.

And I was excited. I was going to do it, I was going to try it, and this was going to be the thing that worked. And I was going to just eat the little meals and I would finally be skinny. Finally losing my weight.

So I went to the appointment, I got my food, and I bought a week’s worth of food and I thought I get snack too, okay, I’m in, I’m going to do this. So I brought home my few bags of these little packaged meals and I heated up one of the meals, and ladies, it was a no go.

It tasted terrible. So I ate the snacks and I basically threw everything else away. It was the last time I did that. There are foods I like and foods I don’t. I really enjoy fresh organic home-prepared, I mean, that is the best. I love when my husband cooks. He is an amazing cook, and he cooks the best food.

And I have to tell you ladies, he made these mahi-mahi tacos with mango salsa. My mouth is watering just thinking about it. It was so delicious. And you know loves, I have to say, the reason – one of the reasons that I believe that diets don’t work is because we’re following someone else’s food plan.

We’re shoving in foods that we don’t like and don’t feel good in our bodies. I remember being on this diet and it was all about calories and low fat. And so I was eating fruit and yoghurt for breakfast because it was part of it. Low calorie, low fat.

It was “healthy.” But love, it felt horrible in my body. I would have a stomachache after I ate it. I did this with so many “healthy” foods. They did not feel good in my body, and I could get those same nutrients in other foods that felt great in my body.

But we never stop to see if our bodies actually like it. Instead, we’re focused on some diet plan that someone designed who doesn’t even know us, or how our bodies function or work. And every body is different. Like every body is different. Just like we have different fingerprints, our bodies are different, and we need different things.

And you know love, instead, we’re just counting carbs and points, and it keeps us disconnected from our bodies. And so there are foods that fuel us. I believe there are foods that are neutral. They don’t really energize us and make us feel like rockstars, but they don’t give us a bellyache either. They’re just like of like, felt good, I got some nutrients.

And then of course, there are non-fuel foods. And those are the ones that we eat them, and we feel lethargic or we feel tired, or we feel really hungry very quickly after we eat them. Learning to lose weight for good is about deciding to become the scientist of your own body, learning what fuels it, learning how to eat non-fuel food and not overeat to a bellyache.

I eat non-fuel food. I’ll eat a cookie. I’ll eat a cupcake. I’ve talked about this previously, but fruit actually doesn’t feel good in my body, but I like fruit. And so sometimes I’ll put it on my plan and even though it doesn’t feel good in my body, I know it’s non-fuel, I know that it’s going to give me a little bit of a stomach ache, and I’m going to be a little hungry after.

And so I just pair it with a fuel food, which helps some of the dopamine hit. It also helps to satiate me more. I see ladies who fear food. They are so restrictive because they’re scared if they eat a cookie, they won’t be able to stop. They’ll eat 10.

And love, I just want to say, this is what dieting has done to us. We either are indulgent, eating everything, or we’re so restrictive. And every once in a while, we find that middle place, but mostly, we’re in the extremes. And I teach my Transform ladies to not fear food and to learn how to eat without completely overeating or completely restricting.

So love, we’ve eaten food that does not fuel us, that does not taste good. And then we sit and wonder, where do we even begin with it all. We have become so disconnected with our bodies because we’ve either totally been off overeating, or again, on some restrictive diet.

I see this with my new Transform bosses. They want to know what I eat. They want me to tell them what to eat. But love, I teach them something different. I teach them how to learn how food actually tastes, how it feels in their body, how to really enjoy it.

I teach them how to reconnect with their bodies, how to feel the signals that we have in our body, that tell us when we’re hungry and when we’re full. We do this worksheet in Transform where ladies slow down, and they actually taste a particular food. Then they know if they even really like it or not.

I cannot tell you how many Transform bosses realize that there is food that they do not even like that they thought they did. I did this with myself and I was surprised there were foods that I would eat that when I slowed down and really taste them, I was like, yeah, that’s not really that great.

Like popcorn. I know, I know it’s hard to believe. So paying attention to the food that we eat is how we get off the diet roller coaster. One of the things I challenge my Transform bosses with too is to try things that they thought they did not like.

I have to tell you ladies, I used to hate brussel sprouts. I disliked them so much. But a couple of years ago, one of my friends convinced me to try them. She said these are all the rave, and she was going on and on. I was like, okay, I’ll try one. And it turns out I love them.

And I eat them all the time and I absolutely love them. I love them crispy too. Our tastebuds actually change over time, and also as you start to eat more fuel food, you’ll want higher quality fresh food. A Pop-Tart just does not taste the same to me.

If I want something sweet, I want it to be homemade and really delicious like a good helping of tiramisu. And by the way, five years ago, I did not like tiramisu. I would have rather had the Pop-Tart, and now it’s the complete opposite.

Now I love it and when I have it, I slow down, I really enjoy it, and when I start to feel like I’m satiated, that I’m satisfied, I stop. So why is all of this important? We have spent so much time obsessing about food and our weight and the craziest part, my love, is we don’t even know how it really tastes.

We don’t even know how it feels in our body. So what to do? Number one, start with a couple of things you eat and see how it feels in your body 10 minutes after you eat it, and then 30 minutes after you eat it. Do you feel energized? Do you feel amazing? Do you feel satiated? Or do you feel lethargic? Do you feel like you’re starving 30 minutes later?

But sometimes maybe you just feel neutral. Eat more foods that feel good in your body. That is one of the biggest a-ha moments I had was learning how food actually felt in my body.

Number two, slow down. Not to see when you’re full actually, but to see how it tastes in your mouth. Ladies tell me all the time how they love food, but they’re not even enjoying it. They’re standing at a kitchen counter, eating it in two minutes. They’re sitting in their car, going through a drive-through, rushing to eat it before they get home because they don’t want their husband or kids to see that they had extra food.

I know love, I have done this so many times. Really see how it tastes and how it feels in your mouth. Slowing down is about enjoying your food. When you love something, you pay attention to it. And I will challenge you, do you really love food? Are you slowing down? Are you enjoying it?

To lose weight for good, we must learn to reconnect with our bodies. We have to know how food fuels us and also try different foods. I think it’s the most exciting part. Losing weight does not have to be this restrictive cardboard box frozen meals.

It can be amazing food that tastes good and fuels you. So today’s transformational questions are, number one, what are three foods that you want to slow down and really enjoy and taste? And number two, what three foods do you want to test to see how they feel in your body? So good. I’ll see you next week. I am going to dive into families and how we think they affect our weight loss. Bye for now, love.

If you loved listening to this podcast, I would love to have you come check out Transform weight loss program. It is my monthly coaching program where we take this work to a whole new level. And ladies learn how to lose weight for good in a way that they can always do. Join me over at bflycoaching.com/join. I’d love to have you join me in Transform weight loss program.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Weight Loss for Successful Women. If you love what you heard today and want to learn more, come over to bflycoaching.com. That’s B – F – L – Y coaching dot com. See you next week!