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In this episode, I share with you three ways to shift your relationship with food and begin to love your body.
In my book, Become A Nutrition Ninja, I teach about Flexible Dieting and I share an overview of what that is so you can see if it is something that may work for you.
Secondly, I share with you three habits that can help shift how you interact with meal time and foods and how to consciously become aware of how different foods affect your body.
Lastly, I share a few NLP hacks on how to change your self-talk, become more accepting and learn to love yourself right where you are. This episode is great for someone looking to think differently about their body, wants to learn a new way of eating or just understand more about how food effects them.
The resources I share are:
- The free kindle download of Become a Nutrition Ninja
- The blog post on macro counting
- Avatar Nutrition
If you liked this episode, please share with your friends and leave us a review on iTunes! It helps more people find us!
Transcript:
Welcome to The Art of Living big. I’m your host, Betsy Pake, and this podcast is designed to share interviews and new ideas to help you redefine what could be possible for your life. Now, let’s go live big. today’s podcast is brought to you by audible. Get a free audio book download and a 30 day free trial at audible trial, comm backslash live big. There’s over 180,000 different titles to choose from. And you can listen on your iPhone, your Android, your Kindle, or your mp3 player. Now, here’s the show. Hello, everybody. Welcome to the show. Happy mid January, that’s when I’m recording this. But the information that I’m going to share may help you no matter what time of year it is. So I’m going to start this show with like this little disclaimer that this information isn’t meant to take the place of any medical intervention or plan that you’re following. All right? You do you you just listen if you’d like to listen and take my advice, if you’d like to take it. Alright, so since it’s the time of year, when so many of us find ourselves sort of falling off the resolution wagon, right. And since so many people put making changes in their health, or changing in their changes in their body as a value high on the list of things that they’d like to change in their lives. So when the resolution time comes around, people typically go to some sort of health or lifestyle change. So I wanted to do this episode about food, and about our bodies, and not just on how food affects our bodies, but also about how our energy surrounding this whole subject affects us as well. So here’s how it’s gonna go down, I’m going to cover three areas as it relates to food in your body, I’m going to go over some of the strategies that I discussed in my best selling book, become a nutrition Ninja, and I’m going to share with you some of the rituals that you could create around food and eating that I think would really help you. And then I’m going to wrap it up by talking about some of the energy that we give this topic in our lives, and share some neural linguistic programming, some NLP techniques that may help you move through this area of your life a little bit differently. So if one of these areas doesn’t interest you, as I get started, just hang on, because the next one’s coming. And we’ll get there. And hopefully there’ll be something in here for everybody. Two years ago, I was about a year out from selling my CrossFit gym. And I had been training to compete in the Pan American Masters for Olympic style weightlifting, which is it’s two moves, it’s the clean and jerk and the snatch for those of you that are unfamiliar with that. Now I’m in my 40s. And I didn’t start doing these lists until I was in my late 30s. So it was a really fun time of my life to have such a big goal, and to be super focused on something. And when you compete in something like that you enter not just in an age category, but also in a weight class. So I had to actually make a certain weight class to compete in the section of the competition that I wanted to be in. So for about six months before, I really dialed in on my nutrition using techniques that I had learned years before called flexible dieting. And in that process, you know, through social media and my friends on Facebook, and just friends that I knew and saw every day. So many people asked me about it that I wrote it all down and published a book and that book is called become a nutrition ninjas on Amazon and became a best seller,
and still sells tons and tons of books every single month. And it’s been about two years since it’s come out. Now I’m going to talk about the process that I described in that book, and also some things that I’ve learned and share some research resources on how you can find out more of this whole idea kind of speaks to you. So one thing I know about restrictive diets is that if it’s not something that you can do forever, it’s probably not something that you can really be successful in. It’s hard to incorporate something into your everyday life that you’re that is so foreign or uncomfortable to you. Now, this is just me personally speaking, okay, so I’m just personally speaking, and saying I’m going to talk to you here about flexible dieting, and you can do any kind of diet with flexible dieting. So if you are more on the ketosis bandwagon, you can do ketosis if you are more on just regular everyday eating, you can do that like it, you can customize this, and I’m going to explain how this works. But the here’s the part, that’s my personal opinion, is that it’s really hard to go from eating like a standard American diet, and then going to being someone that eats ketosis and try to maintain that forever. And so the thing that I really love about flexible dieting is that it teaches you a lot about serving sizes, and it teaches you a lot about foods and how those affect your body. So I’m going to talk a little bit more about that. So that’s why I like flexible dieting, you may have heard of flexible dieting called like, you’ll see people put hashtag IFY M, which means If It Fits Your Macros, or people call it macro counting, or anything similar to that, that this is what they’re talking about. So here’s the basic premise is that your body? Gaines maintains or loses fat depending on what type of nutrients you’re giving it in the amounts that you’re giving it. Right? That’s no, that’s no secret. Like, if I eat a whole bunch, then I’m probably going to gain weight. If I don’t, then I’m not right. So the whole calories in calories out thing, but there are three main macronutrients, there’s protein, there’s fat, and there’s carbohydrates. So protein is things like chicken, red meat, tofu. Fats are things like coconut oil, avocado, bacon grease, and carbs are going to be things like bread, or pasta or vegetables. So most foods have a combination of all these things, right. So like an avocado is mostly fat, but it has some carbs and protein. And beans are mostly carbs, but they have some protein to some people do better, with more carbohydrates to maintain a healthy weight. And some people do better with higher fat. The idea behind counting your macros is that you are given a prescription, a number of protein, many protein. grams, you get every day, how many carbohydrates and how much fat every day that you’re allowed to eat. And you eat that exact amount by tracking. And I think the beauty of it, if you do it in the way that I think is right, is that you do that and you’ll see what your body does. If your body is slow to lose weight, and you have fat to lose, you can adjust those macronutrients lower or adjust the ratio of each giving yourself more fat or carbs. And watch again to see what your body does. Now we all do something different, right? So my body isn’t exactly like my neighbor’s body who isn’t exactly like their neighbor’s body. So by having this prescription and tracking, I’m able to actually witness what my body does with certain things. So the idea behind it is that you can eat anything, so you’re not depriving yourself you aren’t like, bad if you go to lunch with a friend and you adjust your other meals for the day around it. Right. So, you know, I think if you’re familiar with Weight Watchers, I think it’s a similar premise, right? So I may have more to eat at lunch, and then I adjust my dinner accordingly, right. So I don’t just like have a lot to eat at lunch and a lot to eat at dinner I, I try to balance it. And I think that those lessons are really, really important. So if you’re tracking your food, and you’re staying within this range every day, and once you start counting macros, and you can get really good at it, then it can be so much easier to sort of move through the world with food because you get a much healthier perspective on what a serving size is, and how things affect your body.
So
I think that people can benefit because of this, like the tracking and the awareness, right. So once you become conscious of how different foods make you feel, it’s much easier for you to make better choices. And then eventually, because I don’t think counting and weighing and measuring your food forever, is an ideal way. But it can be a really great way just to build awareness. Now one of the things I know for me is that if I eat a bagel, even if I get enough carbohydrates in my day to eat a bagel, that when I eat it, I noticed that it’s got way too much glucose for me, it sends my blood sugar spiking, like I ate three candy bars. So I eat it, I feel terrible. So if I wasn’t tracking and, and really, if I wasn’t paying attention, then I might not have recognized this shift how when I ate that, I felt like that. And this can be important because during my day, if I have a big meeting, and I want to be alert, I probably don’t want to eat a bagel like 30 minutes before, right and I love bagels you also this is terrible news. But just to recap, for flexible dieting, you’re given a prescription of daily fat, protein and carbohydrates that will help you reach your body composition goals. You track and you eat those macronutrients every day, evaluate every day, or I’m sorry, evaluate every week and then adjust. Okay, so I really like the flexible dieting because it allows you to live your life and it’s something that you can lose weight on you adjust your macros, and you can maintain your weight on it or you can even work to increase your metabolism using something called a reverse diet. Now, I’m not going to get into the specifics really of how to calculate your macros that are right for you. But I’ll give you my book for free, if you want. It’s become a nutrition Ninja, it lays it all out. And you can go to my website, Betsy pake.com backslash NINJA book, I’m gonna put a link in the show notes. So it’s a Kindle edition. So you’re gonna need to get the free Kindle app, because it’s a, what they call a dot mobi file. It’s a crazy fast read, literally, you could read it in an hour or two. And it lays it all out. You could also buy it on Amazon, if you like having a hard copy. But I also have, like an epic blog post that details it all, and lays it all out. So you can read it, and then create your own profile from everything that I put in the post. So I’m gonna link that in the show notes. Okay. And that blog post, I think has been shared, like 14,000 times or something. So I know a lot of people have had really good results with the information that I share in that blog post. And there’s also a lot of coaches that can help you do this, right. There’s some great coaches out there. And if you’re an athlete, and you and you have that mentality, to be able to find a coach that understands those challenges is really important. But if you’re just wanting to make some changes, try this out, here’s my advice is, if you think like, this is sort of interesting, go to my blog post or get my book, try it out for a couple weeks, or even just start tracking. So you see how much you actually eat, you might be surprised of what you actually eat. And then there is you could get a friend for accountability. But there is a tool that I really like online, and it’s called avatar nutrition. And it’s literally like 10 bucks a month. But here’s the deal with it. It’s a computer program. And so you go in and you put like your body weight and your body fat percentage, and they, they help you walk through how to figure that out, they give you your prescription of macros, you follow them exactly. And the following week, you put your new numbers in. So if you’re not following it, exactly, the computer isn’t going to be able to help you. So try this for a couple of weeks, before you shift to something like avatar just so you get the kinks out before you’re paying for it, you know what I’m saying. So I’ll put a link to avatar in there as well in the show notes. So you can get you can try that out too. Okay. So if this is all too much for you flexible dieting seems like a lot of work because it is in terms of tracking and calculating. And if that is just not your jam, I totally get it, we’re going to move on to my second option, because sometimes, even if you try flexible dieting for a while, and then you want to stop tracking, and you don’t want to calculate anymore, and you would just like to establish a regular eating rhythm to fall back on. This is where my rituals come in. Now, if you’ve ever read my book, start small, live big, you know that I’m all about small steps to move forward. When we try and we change everything all at once. It can just backfire, right, and we end up right where we started. Or even worse, we end up where we started. Plus, we beat ourselves up because we’re so angry with ourselves for falling off track. This is when I start thinking small and slow. And simply incorporating some rituals into your eating plan. And this can really help. So I’m going to share some of these rituals that can help you. But I want to suggest that you do the first ritual first, work on it for a few weeks, when it’s pretty regular. And you can do it without thinking, then you add in the second ritual this way there are they’re stacked on top of each other. So you get really good at one. And then it’s way easier for you to be able to build a solid foundation of good rituals or good habits, instead, adding on the second one. If you try to change everything all at once, it can sort of blow up in your face. But when you can establish one thing at a time, add on the next one, add on the next one, it just makes it much more stable, and much more of a foundation that you can really build on. So the first ritual is actually to train you to get used to building a ritual. So all I want you to do is to choose one, five minute action that you do every day. So maybe that’s a health based one. Maybe that’s like drinking water first thing in the morning. Or maybe it’s like preparing a healthy snack in the morning so that you have it for the afternoon. Every day, I just want you to do one thing that takes less than five minutes. It can be the same thing every single day. Or you can try something new but at the same time in the morning, do this one thing that’s five minutes long, and do it for a week. And although this sounds really silly, and you’re like okay, this is a waste of time. I got 20 pounds to lose. This is a waste of time, Betsy. I’m telling yourself that I’m telling you that training yourself to be consistent and having this constant In Action is going to be huge in getting your body and your mind ready to start making upcoming shifts with food and how you eat. And if you’d like to hear more on forming habits in a systematic way, you can go back, I have an episode on the podcast episode 27. That’s called creating habits that serve you. And that explains at all how to actually use your brain to help you get into better habits. So once you have this down, so I’ve been doing my habit my one five minute action every morning for like a week, right. So now I’m sort of like used to doing this new thing My body is used to this, my brains used to remembering this. Now I want you to do the second ritual. And this is eating slowly. Okay, so this sounds so simple, I totally just heard you groan. But this can be one of the most, I want you to hear what I’m saying this can actually be one of the most substantial rituals that you ever establish in your whole life. Like, truly, in our society, we are in such a rush, right, we got fast foods, we got microwaves like everything is in a hurry. So even without realizing it, I bet. If you’re like me, you shovel in your dinner, and you don’t even really enjoy it, or you sit at your desk for lunch, hovering over your computer, not even paying attention to the food that you’re eating. And you eat so fast, that when you’re done, you don’t feel emotionally fulfilled at all, because you didn’t really taste or enjoy the food. So try this just for a week, watch yourself. Watch yourself at work, work on this first habit of establishing a habit and then see how fast you eat. So this first week, you’re working on establishing a habit, just become aware of how fast you’re eating, objectively watch other people. And see it probably feels a little bit like competition. I did this a few years ago, and I noticed that I eat so fast, even now I have to bring myself back so that I catch myself and start to eat slow again. And if I’m not watching, I’ll eat so fast, that will actually look down and go, where’s my food. Like, I don’t even know how sometimes you drive someplace. And then you get there and like I don’t remember driving. That’s what I do some time with eating, we’re all eat. And then I’ll look down and be like, Oh my gosh, now I do notice that my husband actually eats pretty slow. I’m always done before him. And it’s not just because I eat less than than him. I’m also done because in my head, I’m thinking I’m the one that’s got to clean up, right. So I and I need to be able to help everybody get what they need. So if somebody is eating, isn’t that silly, I know that’s probably silly. But as my job as the mom, like, that’s what I do, I’m I’m ready to go and get everybody what they need. And so my eating becomes secondary, right, that has to stop. So that’s something that I’m going to become more aware of here in the new year too. So slow down, when you’re ready to try this habit, after you’ve done the first week of establishing a habit, and the first week of establishing the habit and noticing, right so you can do that in that first week. The second week, when you’re ready to try this ritual set a timer. So this is gonna sound crazy, but take your phone out and turn on your your timer and only take a bite, like every 60 seconds, you are going to be shocked at how long 60 seconds is, you’re going to notice that you actually have the second bite waiting typically like five seconds after you’ve put the first bite in your mouth. Right? So slow down. You don’t have to do a minute per bite forever. But just try it experiment. If you have a lunch where you can actually sit and you know, you can put your you don’t have to put your foot like if you’re at work, people don’t have to know you’re doing this, it can really be something pretty incognito. But slow down, experiment, see how this feels and see what feels like a good pace pace. So after a few days, you might want to try 30 seconds, see if that is a pace that you could maintain, I’m going to bet that still feels really slow. When I did a lot of nutrition coaching, and someone would come to me to actually gain weight, I would have them do the total opposite of what I’m telling you. I would tell them to speed up to set the timer and to take more bites. You’ll get more in without noticing. Those of you who have little kids or have had little kids and you can’t get them to eat. You’ll notice what do they do. They eat really slow. They’re standing up there looking at stuff they’re getting sidetracked, you can’t get them to eat. And you’re thinking like they’re so thin I need them to gain some weight. So let that be the the proof that you need that we all just need to slow down and that could have one of the biggest impacts on any kind of weight issue that you’re trying to get your You know, get your control of and to get your mind around.
Alright, onward.
So after you have this low eating thing down, and not before, move on to number three. Okay, so number three is the ritual number three is to stop eating when you’re 80% full. Alright, so let’s talk about this because you know what starving, like, you’re gonna puke. And you could eat some leaves off the ground, what that feels like, that’s a one. And you know what Thanksgiving Day stuffed is. That’s a 10. So I want you to stop when you get to an eight. So how will you know when this is? Well, you’ll be eating really slow, so it will become much more apparent. This is going to take some getting used to though, because so many times we start looking for food. When we’re at
like a six or seven,
we start planning our meal. And we may even start eating when we’re at a seven. Our world is so full of food. And we have such easy access to it that sometimes it’s easy to forget that being hungry isn’t an emergency. Like it’s okay to feel a little hungry. Now, I don’t want you to get lightheaded or get down to a two, but it’s okay to feel some hunger. So start to notice that become aware. Notice how your brain feels? Are you foggy or after you eat? Are you foggy or after you eat certain foods? What level of fullness feels best for you throughout the day. And then you can start playing with timing your meals. So you could be at an optimal level for different meetings or events or whatever it is you wanted. But becoming aware. Before every meal, ask yourself, how hungry Am I rate it on a one to 10. And when you get to where you’re eating, and you start to notice you’re at an eight, notice how much you just ate? What was the portion size? What kind of food was it? Now if you sat down to eat, and you asked yourself, how hungry am I and you said a four? And then you stop at eight? How much food did I eat? How much did it take for me to go from a four to an eight, right? So now you can start to really become aware, because what’s right for me isn’t going to be what’s right for you. And what’s right for you isn’t going to be what’s right for your spouse or your friends. So becoming aware of yourself. And because you’re
eating slow, you’re gonna start to really notice this.
Okay. So you’ll notice that different foods like vegetables, or beans or protein are gonna fill you up sooner, and you’ll stay full a whole lot longer than processed foods. So processed foods are actually engineered to trick your brain into eating more of them so that you never feel full. So when you get the hang of this, you’re going to start to see how much better you feel when you eat whole foods, and how processed foods probably make you look feel a little bit funky. So and also if you’re eating slow, like the ritual number two, then you’ll notice that junk food actually tastes like total crap when you eat it slow. Have you ever tried to eat chips? Like when you eat chips? Think about it, like how do you eat them or popcorn? Like if nobody’s looking? How do you eat popcorn, you shovel it in, right? I’m not the only one I know I’m not. So you have to eat these kinds of foods really fast to make them good. So if you don’t believe it, try it. So nothing like a soggy greasy chip to make you change your mind about junk food. If you’re going to eat junk food, eat it slow. And you’ll notice that you don’t want to keep going. When I was coaching people exclusively on nutrition, the thing that I noticed was that our weight and our body composition can really be less about food, and more about emotion, more about what we’re telling ourselves, and the energy that we put into that part of our lives. There are more habits that I could teach you than these first three. But I want to move on to some NLP tricks and talk about the energy that you bring to the table when you want to change your health and your body. Now, I’ve talked about this before on the show, but I’m going to repeat it here. And if you want to know more, go to Episode 76. It’s it’s called how your brain creates your reality. So our bodies are biologically designed
to listen to our brains,
our bodies, biologically designed to listen to our brains. This is how emotions formed. It isn’t something that happens in your brain. It’s a chemical reaction that happens in your whole body. So one affects the other your brain and your body aren’t separate. Because of this. It’s hyper important, maybe even more important than all the other things that I’ve said here today, to be aware of the things that you tell yourself every day, especially in regards to food and your body and how it reacts and it’s doing what you want or what you don’t want. So don’t worry at first about changing things. But I want you to become aware when you start slowing down And you start to notice the things you’re telling yourself. Like, what is it? What are you telling yourself? Is it things like you’re doing really great, I love you? Or is it? Oh my God, you’re so fat I can’t believe you lost didn’t lose any weight. Oh my god, I can’t believe you ate that year. Disgusting. I can’t believe you do this. Does that sound more like the things you tell yourself?
And then I want you to think about Would it be okay,
if you had a friend come over? And your friend said the same exact things to you this afternoon? Right? So if you saw a friend, and they walked up to you, and they said, Oh my God, you are so fat and lazy, you are never going to be able to do this? How would you feel about them? Like, would you want to help them? Would you support them in their goals? No, heck, no, you’d probably kick them right out of your life forever and think they were terrible friends, or at the very least, do your best to not be any kind of service to them. So don’t tell yourself these things because your body is biologically designed to listen to your brain. So what if you’re telling yourself You can’t do this? Oh, okay, I can’t do this, you’ll never lose weight. Oh, I’ll never lose weight. So become aware first. And then we can start to shift some of the things you’re saying. But But if you can interrupt that pattern, that’s the first step. So when you notice that you’re saying something ugly to yourself, all you have to do is say but I don’t care if you don’t know what you’re gonna say after the but, but the word but negates everything that you said before it. So here’s an example. So let’s say my husband, I see my husband and he says, You look terrible this morning. I’d be sort of pissed. Like, I’d be like, Okay, well Screw you. But what if he said, You look terrible this morning. But I know you had such a rough night’s sleep. How does that feel? feels different, right? It feels a bit more like understanding the word but makes your brain disregard everything that you said before it. So when you hear the negative self talk at a big old, but in there, even if you don’t know what you’re gonna say next. So become aware, say, but then you can try to add something better. So let’s try it here. So I can’t believe you haven’t lost any weight yet. But I know I’m on the right path and things are shifting. You see the power in that. So now you’re telling your brain, don’t listen to any of that. I’m on the right path and things are shifting. Did you know that people who are naturally thin do something before they eat that heavier people don’t always do. Now, I’m kind of generalizing here. So don’t email me about it. But it has shown that they actually imagine how they will feel after they eat, they probably do this unconsciously. So they have an image in their head of how they’re going to feel
after their meal is eaten.
So if you’re about to sit down and eat a big molten lava cake from Chili’s, and you think about how you’re gonna feel after you eat this, how much do you think you’ll actually eat? Probably not as much. If you’re eating it slow, you might be amazed at how you thought you would be and then how you actually are. And you might be much more likely to stop after just a couple bites. Do you know that those people who can stop eating something after just one bite? Do you know those people that are like naturally thin and you’re like, I don’t get it? That’s probably
why.
So I’m going to wrap up just by saying watch the energy of the words you use. Watch how you talk to yourself, and what you say and the tone in which you say it. Louise Hay had a suggestion that every day for 100 days, walk up to the mirror, look at yourself right in the eyeballs and say, I love you. Try it. You’ll notice, if you’re like me, you’ll notice that this
like 12 year old comes out and says
oh my god, like those wrinkles. But just come back and do it the next day. I love you right in the eyeballs. You’ll still hear that little voice. But after a few days, it starts to dim. It’s sort of remarkable. So 100 days, I have to tell you that I couldn’t stop laughing when I did this. Like the first couple days. I felt so stupid. Like I didn’t want anybody to see me. I was like this is weird. It felt ridiculous. And you know, in the beginning, I found every flaw on my face. I realized like that getting older means you have weird hairs on your face. But when I started to really lock eyeballs with myself, and say I love you. That’s when things really started to shift for me. I love you. Thanks for listening. Now let’s go live big. You got this. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Remember, you can find me inside my facebook group at SS lB community.com stands for start small,
live big community.com.
And as always, here’s a little message from my husband.
That’s it.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
