Fix you relationship with food before losing weight. This is absolutely one of the most important things you must do prior to losing weight.
You should not be tracking calories or trying to be in a caloric deficit to lose weight if your relationship with food sucks.
How do you know if you relationship with food needs to be fixed?
You see food as good or bad. You have diet foods and non-diet foods. You have guilt-free foods and guilty foods. Foods that are fattening and foods that are skinny.
You feel bad when you eat certain foods then try to restrict them, only to binge on them later then feel guilty and yo-yo back to restriction.
These are red flags that your relationship with foods needs to be addressed before attempting weight loss.
Fixing your relationship with food is a pre-requisite to losing weight and many women over 35 try to bypass this important step.
Dieting more, calorie counting harder and doing more diets will only make your relationship with food suck more if you continue doing that.
You cannot lose weight and keep it off forever without improving your relationship with food, and fixing your relationship with food is not something you do after losing weight.
The women over 35 I work with in my nutrition practice to lose weight are commonly trying to lose weight with a terrible relationship with food.
This makes it very difficult to lose weight, much less keep it off.
Change the approach if this is you because any weight you lose will always be short-term unless you work upfront on improving your relationship with food.
In this Dish On Ditching Diets podcast, I'm giving you 4 tactical ways you can use to fix your relationship with food. Listen now!
In this Dish On Ditching Diets Podcast Episode, You Will Hear:
- Signs You Have a Bad Relationship With Food
- 4 Tactical Ways To Fix Your Relationship With Food
- Why You Must Follow The Order Of Operations
- Examples That Highlight To You How A Poor Relationship With Food Impacts You & Your Ability To Lose Weight
- How Weight Loss Becomes Short-Term With A Bad Relationship With Food
- Why You Need A Solid Foundation Before Losing Weight
Never Miss An Episode! Subscribe to the Dish On Ditching Diets Podcast on Apple, Stitcher, Spotifyor Amazon Music
Related Dish On Ditching Diets Podcast Episodes
- Can You Eat In A Calorie Deficit & Not Lose Weight
- Foods To Eat When Dieting
- Stop Restricting To Lose Weight
- Are You Dieting Too Much
- Weight Loss Truths You Don't Want To Hear
- Losing The Menopause Belly: Deb's Journey
- Making Peace With Food: Sharon's Journey
- Gaining Food Freedom: Adi's Journey
- Weight Loss Is A Mental Journey: Karen's Journey
- Ditching Restrictive Dieting: Terry's Journey
- Overcoming Weight Loss Struggles: Nancy's Journey
Fixing Your Relationship With Food Podcast Transcript
Today we’re talking about fixing your relationship with food.
This is one of the most important parts of your journey. You cannot lose weight permanently, forever, then you need to make sure you have a good relationship with food.
Because you don’t lose weight and miraculously have a good relationship with food.
In fact, trying to count calories more or cutting out foods more, fasting more, cutting carbs or whatever things you’re doing to stop weight will worsen your relationship with food.
A lot of people just say fix your relationship with food. Today I’m going to share with you the tactical ways to do this. How you have a great relationship with food is what we’re going to get into today.
Before we get into tactics, let’s discuss further why this matters. Often when I work with a client, I will tell them in their consultation that we need to fix their relationship with food, learn how to eat all foods in balance, learn how to make peace with food.
Then inevitably by the 2nd or 3rd coaching call, I remind them of this when they start to complain they don’t have results yet. They're like like yeah, yeah I want a good relationship with food, but when do I get to lose weight?
And I’m like no, you don’t understand you need to have the foundation of your house before you can lose weight. Good habits, good mindset and a good relationship with food first.
They’re like yeah I get it, but I have vacation in two months and I want to wear a bathing suit or I have my daughters wedding next month how do I lose weight now? How do I lose weight now? That is a death trap.
One of the most important things you need to do in your journey is stop thinking that somehow you can bypass the inner work needed to get you to lose weight and keep it off until you’re 85 years old.
This is like you being in 3rd grade and that you’re not a sophomore in high school driving. You can’t bypass this work and if you try to, weight will just come back.
If you do not have a great foundation to your house, you can kiss your weight loss goals good bye. Food is more than fuel and nutrients.
There’s nothing that aggregates me more than when people on social media are saying doos is just fuel.
I mean are those people not going to their kids birthday parties, celebrating holidays or going on vacation? Going to the movies? Going out with friends? Not go out on date night? Never eat ice cream with family and friends?
People who say food is just fuel or go around in grocery stores scaring you about all the foods you shouldn’t be eating aren’t all that helpful because that does not translate to real life. Food is meant to be enjoyed too.
These people who shoot these videos saying this foods bad, don’t eat this, don’t eat that.
They in my mind have either a terrible relationship with food that you don’t see on social media or they have never worked with 1000s of clients like I have and others and realize that telling people food is fuel and never eat these foods is far from helpful. It only creates more fear around food and more likelihood to binge.
When someone comes to a consultation and asked about how coaching works. They’re curious because they know I don’t give meal plans and I do not give lists of bad foods to stop eating.
So people are curious like how does this work? I tell them I give clients guidelines around food and a framework for building meals to help them reach their fat loss goals but also achieve freedom around food.
One of the most tactical things you can do for your fat loss goals is not necessarily eating healthy, calories or protein or steps.
For a lot of you, one of the most tactical things you need to do to lose fat and keep it off forever is to mend the horrible relationship you have with food. We all know weight loss comes down to a calorie deficit. But it’s not that easy. Why is it not easy?
Because you’re constantly thinking about food all day. Once you start eating you can’t stop. You think about how you binged last night. How you have to start over on Monday. You feel completely out of control around food.
You feel guilty or anxious about food. Going out without thinking you wrecked your progress. Eating something less nutritious without thinking you wrecked your progress. Feeling restricted and deprived.
You days where you’re like what’s the point. Why bother doing this? How about food noise? The mental noise around food is so loud. The more you diet, the louder the food noise gets.
If that’s the case and this is you, the most important thing to do right now is to fix your relationship with food. We won’t put fat loss before that or on top of that.
That is not how this works. I will tell you this right now. If you do not fix your relationship with food, you will not reach your weight loss goal and keep it off forever.
I am not here to just help women lose weight. I’m here to get you out of the diet culture BS if you've been trapped in your entire life.
Break the cycle of passing this dieting stuff on through the generations in your family that your mom struggled with and her mom.
I care about fixing that and that starts with fixing your relationship with food. You cannot have the thing you want without this.
You want fat loss? Great. You want to feel comfortable in your body, more confident and fit into all your clothes? I love it! You want to keep the weight off forever? Be stronger?
Eat healthy foods and make it easy but also enjoy less nutritious foods? Have good habits for life you can pass down to your kids and grandkids? I’m here for it!
You want to go and be able to enjoy yourself and have peace around food? You can’t do any of those things without a healthy relationship with food.
Dieting more, calorie counting more, cutting out certain foods, finding a new diet or exercise program, just seeing the scale go down does not give you any of that.
How crazy would it sound if your friend was building their dream home and your friend was like OMG the builder said it’s going to take 6 months to build the foundation of this house and it’s going to cost another $100,000.
So, you know what? I told the builder to forget it because I’m ready to move in my house as soon as possible. You would think your friend is crazy, right? I think the same thing when people say they’re going to fix their foundation later.
Why? Because you know without a foundation to your house, whatever structure is put up for that house will crumble. It’s just a matter of time. It’s no different in your weight loss journey.
That’s why I know when someone says but I want to lose weight, they’re going to have the same problems down the road. I think a lot of people logically know this. But can’t accept it.
They’re like no, Megan but you don’t understand. I want to fit in my bathing suit in two months. My daughter’s wedding is coming up and I want to be in the picture. My son has his graduation, and we have these family pictures. I gotta lose weight now!
I’ll learn to fix my relationship with food later. I’ll learn to regulate my emotions and stress later. I’ll learn how to set healthy boundaries with work, family and social media later. I’ll figure out how to ask others for help later.
Truthfully, I’m like no. It’s not going to work. This is why you’re struggling. This is why weight keeps coming back.
This is why you have to fix the inside before you diet on the outside. Inner work – your relationship with food, your coping mechanisms, subconscious habits, sabotaging thoughts – these things before outer work.
Outer work without inner work does not work. I’ve said this since day one of this podcast.
Mindset is everything and it’s the missing ingredient for anyone who’s struggling in their journey, and when I say this word mindset your relationship with food is part of that. Because without fixing your relationship with food, you will never lose weight and keep it off.
So, food is more than fuel. We have food involved with everything in our lives. We celebrate with food like birthdays, graduations and holidays. You go on vacation with a friend.
You go out to celebrate someone getting a promotion at work. Food is in every area of our life. We can’t just cut it out and view it as just nutrients. It’s meant for socialization, enjoyment and bringing people together.
You can’t just say cut out all the bad food. Cut out all sugar. All processed foods. What happens when your kid has a birthday cake? Or you have date night? Lunch out with your girlfriends. Vacations?
Fast food because you drove home from work, picked up the kids from school and went right to baseball practice. We can’t just cut everything out. It’s not practical.
People who stand in grocery stores saying here’s all these bad foods. Don’t eat these foods. I know they’ve never worked with people in real life, or they have never struggled with food a day in their life.
A lot of us have an all or nothing mentality around food. I can’t be healthy and still have less nutritious foods. Except both things can co-exist.
It’s not you either eat only healthy foods or you do not. It’s you eat healthy foods, and you enjoy less nutrient dense foods too. Food is nuanced and the goal isn’t to cut things out and eat like a robot.
The goal is to land in a middle ground that works for you where you have a guilt-free relationship with food, enjoy your food, be healthy, be a great example to your kids are able to lose body fat, be content with your body, be confident, have your clothes fit and just feel at peace.
There is a world where you can have all of this. The problem is most people are all or nothing. They’ve never lived in the middle.
They’re either all nutrition and health or nothing where they binge eat several days a week, obsesss about food and dieting. So, the brain has no experience in the middle so of course it’s hard.
Your mind craves what’s most familiar. So, if you’ve never experienced the middle ground, it will feel hard. It’s going to take time for your brain to learn the middle ground.
Your brain will question everything. I don’t know if I’m doing this right. This can’t be right; I’m eating pizza with my family on a Friday night. No way I can lose weight like this!
Your brain is used to restriction so it will try to pull you back to that place because that is what you’ve known.
This is what I have to work with clients on. Helping them feel more at ease about their choices, less guilt and finding the middle ground that works for them.
Listen, if you have a poor relationship with food, you are not ready for weight loss yet. I know you want to lose weight now. I know you hate the way you look in the mirror and don’t like how you feel. I know you’re uncomfortable in your skin now.
But the problem is that’s not enough of a reason to justify doing things in the wrong order. You skipping over your relationship with food, is the thing keeping you stuck.
You have to earn the right to lose weight. Just like a homebuilder does not have the right to put up the walls, doors and windows of your house until the foundation is laid.
It’s a waste of time, energy and money if you are not willing to put a pause on weight loss and fix your relationship with food.
Your identity has to change. I’m going to do this the right way so I can actually keep the weight off forever. Because if you rush weight loss… I’m just going to do this as fast as I can.
I just gotta get this weight off yada-yada, you’re going to just keep struggling. You will 85 years old realizing you fought the same 20 pounds for years.
So, if you have not fixed your relationship with food yet you’re not ready for weight loss.
Here are four tactical things you need to do to fix your relationship with food.
Number One – stop labeling foods as good or bad. You need to realize that labeling foods is getting in the way. Words have meaning. Words carry beliefs. Words matter.
Let me put this to you in a very blunt way that will help you see how words impact relationships. So, I like to drink sparkling water so it’s very common for me to say to my boyfriend “hey honey, can you get me a sparkling water from the fridge?”
Now instead of that, let’s say I asked it this way, “hey asshole, get me a sparkling water from the fridge?” Uh. I don’t even like saying that it’s so yucky. But imagine if I did that or you did that to your partner. Don’t you think over time this would ruin your relationship?
No different with food. This means in weight loss when you use words like good food, bad food, unhealthy food, healthy food, weekday food, junk food, high sugar food, too much sugar food you’re instilling a bad relationship with food. Just like would happen in a relationship with a person.
Your words overtime change your subconscious beliefs. Have you ever heard the saying if you tell a lie long enough you start to believe it? A great example of this is Hitler.
How did so many Germans believed him when he kept saying Jews were bad? There have been numerous psychologists who have analyzed what happened during world war 2 and have said how so many people truly thought Jews were awful because Hitler said the same thing over and over.
You say the same thing over and over again people will eventually believe it, even if it is not factually true.
So, start auding your vocabulary around food. Stop saying that’s a good food. That’s a bad food. That’s fattening. That’s healthy. That’s unhealthy. Pay attention to how you speak about food.
Nothing is inherently bad. Water is healthy, but you can drink too much water. Deplete your potassium and electrolytes and end up in the hospital. You can also drown from water. I see clients who are eating all healthy foods.
Almost no processed foods, but they’re overweight. Why? Because they’re eating too many calories. Just because something is healthy doesn’t mean it’s not negatively impacting you especially if you’re eating too many calories. You can still overeat healthy foods.
You have to understand labeling foods like this is going to keep you stuck in this disordered pattern. It’s keeping you trapped in diet jail. These are the fat free foods. These are the skinny foods. These are the guilt-free foods. Stop. All foods can fit.
Number Two – Change your beliefs. This is something I actually have in my program that I work with clients on and what I mean by this is stop believing a certain food stores fat or a food group makes you fat.
Not a single food is inherently bad and not a single food group is bad at all.
I shared a video on my Facebook, Instagram and TikTok recently that said carbs don’t make you fat.
The comments were crazy and show just how misinformed people are. One woman said we all know carbs break down into sugar and create fat. I told her you’re misinformed. That is not what happens.
Sugar is an energy source and will not automatically layer on fat in your body unless you are in a calorie surplus.
A guy on my TikTok told me carbs fly through your blood stream and create fat. I was like wow carbs can fly? That’s new to me. Again, carbs do not automatically create fat without a calorie surplus.
A few women commented and said they just can’t stop eating carbs. I said okay, are you eating the right amount of protein and fiber because I guarantee if you were, that wouldn’t be a problem.
The thing is a lot of the carbs people are referring to here are snack carbs – chocolate, candy ice cream, chips, pizza. These foods the majority of the calories are coming from fat. Fat has 9 calories per gram.
Carbs and protein have 4 calories per gram. If you read the back of a food label and do the math, you will find the majority of the calories in the snack foods that you binge on are high in fat. Carbs are not the problem.
Most people are eating these foods that tasty delicious and are easy to overeat, but they have a high concentration of fat, driving up calories creating a calorie surplus. So when someone says, I cut carbs and lost all this weight.
Right… because you cut out the snack foods that are high in calories from fat. It’s not because carbs fly through your bloodstream and turn into fat or that sugar layers on the fat.
I mean seriously I don’t know where people come up with this nonsense. Remember what I said, you tell a lie enough… people will believe it. A lot of people say things like this about carbs on social media, but it is not true. It is for marketing and to sell you something.
Here’s the thing. The dose is what makes a food lethal. You’ve probably had a headache before and taken aspirin. Right? You take 1 or 2 aspirins to alleviate the headache.
Why don’t you take the whole bottle of aspirin? What would happen if you took an entire bottle of aspirin? You’d probably get really sick or die.
But you take 1 or 2 aspirins and you’re fine! 1 or 2 pills great. 200 pills bad. Both as aspirin so is aspirin good or bad? Is that good for you or bad for you?
It depends how you use it. This is why it’s really not helpful to classify something as good or bad.
Now let’s talk pizza. You say pizzas bad. At what point is it bad? Is a whole pizza bad? Half a pizza? 4 slices? 2 slices? 1 slice? What about 1 bite of pizza? I mean at what point is it bad?
This is exactly why no food is good or bad. Yes, some foods have higher nutrients in them, but it doesn’t make them a calorie free for all.
Formaldehyde is toxic to humans and can cause serious health problems if you ingest a ton of it. Apples, pears, bananas, spinach, carrots, almonds… are just a few examples of foods that have a trace amount of formaldehyde in them.
You would have to eat a ridiculous amount of these foods to ever reach the toxicity level. Do you avoid these foods because of the formaldehyde? No!
If you live in the land of believing you look at bread and store fat, it’s nonsense. Or certain foods are good. This is my issue with diet programs out there. Weight Watchers as an example tells people these are the guilt-free foods.
The zero point foods. Eat as many of them as you want. They are literally telling you that you can go binge on these foods.
And their point system punishes you for eating foods high in points so then people are like I don’t want to eat those foods, there’s too high in points.
Weight Watchers in my professional opinion creates an unhealthy relationship with food for many people.
Telling people this is your free for all list is not okay. It’s promoting a disordered behavior. Just because it’s a high-quality food, doesn’t mean you can binge on it.
All calories matter. No food is good. No food is bad. No food is fattening or guilt-free. You can literally eat table sugar and still lose fat in a calorie deficit. I’m not saying you should eat junk food in a calorie deficit. I’m saying all foods can fit.
Yes, you can eat pop tarts and twinkies and chocolate in a calorie deficit and lose body fat.
But you’re going to be hungry, you’re not getting the protein you need to build and retain muscle, you’re not getting vitamins and minerals, you’re energy’s going to suck, you’re digestion will be off, you will feel like crap.
But would you lose weight? Yes, because you’re in a deficit.
So… change your beliefs.
Number Three – You need to change the meaning and emotions you assign to certain foods. People who struggle with their relationship to certain foods, tend to apply morality to food.
They will say I’m good because I ate a salad. Or I’m bad because I ate birthday cake. I mean think about this.
Does eating a salad make you a good person? Does eating birthday cake make you a bad person? There should not be a moral standing with food.
If you look at foods like candy, pizza, chips, chocolate, ice cream, brownies and you immediately feel guilty, anxious or think restriction that’s a red flag.
You should not feel guilty and anxious if you ate a brownie. If you ran over your neighbor’s dog, you should feel guilty but not with food. If you have all these negative emotions around food, there’s a problem.
Likewise, you should not feel like it’s a free for all around nutrient dense foods. Like I’m such a good person. I snack on almonds all day and I eat my broccoli.
I’m not like those dieters you talk about Megan who struggle with food. I’m a good person because I eat good foods.
You should not put yourself on a pedestal when you eat healthy foods because what happens when you do eat a brownie? You feel like you screwed up, defeated and why should I even bother?
I messed up, I failed, my life is over.
Let me start over Monday. Now that I’m starting over Monday and I’m not allowed to have these foods, I’m going to eat as much as I can. Get out of the house. Out of my system. So, I won’t want them anymore. Then you get back to your clean eating on Monday.
You need to change the meaning and emotions you assign to food because it affects your actions and habits.
Number Four – You have to change your actions. Stop restricting. Stop depriving. Stop cutting out foods.
Unless a food is rotten or you’re allergic to it or you don’t like it or it hurts your body, then there is no reason why it cannot fit into your diet if it is something you enjoy.
Let’s say you change your words and stop calling foods good and bad. You can do that, but if you keep restricting and depriving foods nothing will change. Your actions need to change along with your words and beliefs.
If you never allow yourself to have certain foods, it’s going to cause you to continue to struggle with your relationship with food. Something I talk to clients a lot is about their restrictive patterns.
A lot of them were taught certain foods were bad growing up. These are the bad foods. These are special occasion foods.
You can only have this much of this food. You have to earn this food. A lot of them were brought up this way.
So, someone will tell me I know ice cream isn’t bad but I’m still binging on this food. And I say, how many times a week are you including ice cream on your plan.
You’ve got protein on your plan; why isn’t ice cream there too? And they will try not to put it on the plan because I always overeat it and I’m trying to lose weight.
This is an example of unconscious restriction, and this is why you have to change your actions.
You have to practice eating foods you typically eat out of control or that you’re scared to eat. This is part of healing your relationship with food.
If you are used to restricting, demonizing food and getting rid of food and depriving yourself, then it is going to feel really weird incorporating these foods into your day to day.
But you have to face your fear to literally get over your fear.
If you’ve always restricted, you may logically hear and understand what I’m saying but your brain won’t buy-into what I’m saying because it’s used to your old way. That means you have to go out of your way to eat these foods you’re scared of.
And I know what some of you are thinking, but Megan once I start, I can’t stop. You don’t understand. I can’t just have one cookie or one brownie and walk away.
There is a concept I work with my clients on called the gas station method who binge.
My client Deb talked about her chocolate addiction in podcast 53 and explains this concept. I’m not going to get into that today because this is already long.
The problem is your brain is used to the all or nothing. Binge, restrict. Binge, restrict. You binge then you feel guilty and try to restrict more which leads to you binging more, feeling guilty more, restricting more and it’s a vicious cycle.
So, restricting more is never the answer. You enable restriction, you get restriction. You don’t get freedom from restriction and weight loss is much easier when you fix this first.
If you offended your partner, would avoiding them fix the relationship with them? Absolutely not. The issue doesn’t go away if you don’t talk about it.
You might put it under the rug, but it always resurfaces. It’s no different with food. You can keep restricting, but it’s always come to come back and bite you in the butt. You have to face the issue and stop avoiding it.
Most people lose weight under restriction and chaos, and then they feel even more deprived and horrible. They lose weight and now they have all this mental noise about keeping up the restriction to keep the weight off.
This is exactly why we don’t lose weight before we fix our relationship with food. This is why you have to be careful in your journey and this is why I don’t allow my clients to focus on weight loss until they’re mentally in a good place.
They have a good foundation with their mindset and good relationship with food.
A lot of people keep trying to skip this part because they’re so impatient and want weight off now, but I’m telling you that if you keep doing that, you keep going around on this diet merry-go-round.
If you want freedom and peace, you have to do things differently. You have to do the scary thing.
My client Sharon was on this podcast back in January and talks about the mental freedom she got from our coaching.
My clients: Adi, Karen, Nancy, Terry.
Those are the ones that come to mind off the top of my head and yes, I remember every single client I’ve ever worked with!
Every one of their stories should tell you that what I am telling you works. It’s up to you to either do the thing that scares you to fix your relationship with food or if you can’t do it on your own, get help.
Or… stay the same. Those are the options. You get to choose!
Okay, that’s everything we’ve got for today. I’ll talk to you soon!
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