117. Weight Loss and Loving Food

 Do you just love food so much that the idea of dieting or going without it just sounds horrible? Well, don’t you worry. This episode is for you. This is all about how to lose weight and still love food. I’m Dara Tomasson, and this is Love Yourself Thin podcast, episode 117, Weight Loss and Loving Food.

So today’s episode is very timely. Because as you know, the holidays are coming and there are all the things. In fact, I was just at the grocery store at Costco and I’m recording this actually in end of September and there’s already eggnog and I thought, no, you have to wait for at least november for eggnog, right? Because we have this only comes out a certain time, that scarcity. And so we all have our scarcity and our memories about food and we have our relationship with food. It’s, it’s just like with a friend. And until we can start understanding what’s going on, we’re not going to be able to get the kind of traction, the kind of change that we really want to have. So this episode is teaching you how to still love food and lose weight and not worry about it coming back on. I know that sounds like a tall order, but hey, I got you.

Before we go into those five steps of how we’re going to be able to do that, I do want to share a win and the win is there to help you know that women just like you who listen to my podcast, finally take a chance on themselves. And when they do, they get into the calls and they get into the modules and they get to learn the tools and they start to change. It’s just like anything with, you wanted to learn to free motion quilt, if you put yourself in a class and you actually put in the time to learn it and give yourself practice, you will eventually become someone who knows how to free motion quilt. It’s the same thing with permanent weight loss. You just have to put yourself in the place where you can learn and then put yourself again, every day practicing. we make it so much more complicated than it needs to be. I promise. So this one is a very simple win. So I go to different events and this one client was just so happy she made the time to drive to find me and we were able to give each other a hug and be able to see each other. And that’s a huge win. Learning how to prioritize what you want even though she has all of these different responsibilities. She’s a caregiver. She still works full time and her husband has a new diagnosis that’s really scary, but she took the time and came and did something that brought her joy. And that’s a huge win.

Alright, so let me go over these five steps. They’re going to help you to understand that you can still love food and you can lose all the weight you want and keep it off. So number one, it’s okay that you love food. In fact, food is what keeps us alive. So way to go, way to eat food and, and do that.

Number two, what do you love specifically about food? So what is it about the food that you’re eating that you love? So I’m gonna call you out on some things. So if you’ve eaten like a bunch of like a brownie or a cinnamon roll or If you’ve eaten a bunch of chips, do you actually feel good afterwards? Because this is the question Is it that you love the food? Do you love like the initial taste of the food? Do you love the anticipation of the food? Do you love the buildup of what’s going to happen when you eat the food? Like what is that story? Because when you can break that down and say, I actually love feeling energized or I actually love feeling whatever it is, that’s when you’re going to understand why you actually love the food. And do you really love the food or do you love the anticipation of the food? Or do you love the memories of the food? My mom makes a really yummy chocolate log. I think it’s why I love Eagle brand so much. Like sweetened condensed milk because it has that with the coconut. Oh, I just, just like thinking about it just makes me, I just love it. And then she does this whipping cream. What’s it called? It’s like you melt the chocolate chips with the whipping cream and then you whip it. There’s a special name for that. I will think of it. And it’s like all of those, and then the memories of it. And we only get it once a year. And so it’s really exciting. Is that what you love? Is it the memory or is it the actual eating? And if you eat too much of it, does that feel terrible? Right? I just want you to just kind of take a step back and get neutral and ask yourself, What do you love specifically about that food? I have a client who shared that she doesn’t have very many happy memories about her dad. But one of them was he loved chocolate chips and whenever his mom, her mom made chocolate chips, You know they would be able to go in the back step and they they’d eat them warm. And that was a really tender time for her and her dad and she didn’t have a lot of those. And so I just want you to get curious about that.

Number three; Let’s go to the math when you talk about loving food. So we can’t fight the science. So what is the science about the food that you’re eating? So if you’re eating pie that has refined flour, it has lard, it has usually a fruit filling that has a lot of sugar associated to it. You often eat it with ice cream or whipping cream. And so when you eat that, What’s actually happening in your body? What is being triggered? Your insulin is being spiked. Your digestive system goes into action. And the insulin is saying, Okay, we’ve got to start converting this food into energy. Okay. Now, if the food that we’re eating has a lot of refined flour and sugar, then we are going to be spiking our insulin and our liver is going and it takes a lot of work to get that going and it’s going to rise our glucose, so our glycogen in our blood. And so we’re actually adding a lot of extra energy into our body and we’re not using the stored energy we have. So remember our fat is stored energy. There’s approximately 3000 calories for one pound of stored fat. So if we’re always putting in more energy, which are calories, stored fat into our body and not using our stored fat, then what are we doing? We’re just becoming fatter and fatter. We’re just becoming human storage units of energy that we never tap into and be able to use. And so what happens when this happens? We just get more and more overweight.

Now, I use this analogy that is helpful. So, imagine that you fill up your car with gas. And then you drive a few blocks and you think, Oh, I want to fill my car up with some more gas. But the tank hasn’t been emptied yet. But you keep filling the tank. So, the tank says, Well, I, I’m sorry, I don’t have any more room for you, so if you insist on pouring more gas, I suppose we need to get some storage containers, right? Some gas containers, which in Canada, we call them jerry cans. So now that is the same thing that happens with your body. You’re walking around with a bunch of jerry cans. And so when we go to, and remember, we only have two reasons we’re overweight, over hunger and over desire. So over hunger means we just eat more often than our body needs. So that means we’re snacking. That means we’re eating a lot at dinnertime and we’re not really getting that. We’re not listening to our hunger and we’re filling our tank more than what it needs. That’s one reason, it’s called over hunger. And then the other one is over desire. And over desire is when we turn to the sugar and the flour or the potato chips or whatever that is. And it’s just like, Oh, that sounds so amazing. And that’s so good. And we get that, all that false pleasure and we get that spike. We can’t fight that. We can’t change that. Now, we’ve tried, right? We’ve tried with fake sugar. Which, as you know that’s why we have diet coke, diet sodas. And people who drink diet sodas still gain weight because it’s fake sugar. The body doesn’t even know the difference. And so we’re, we’re filling ourselves with the sugar, but our body is still getting spiked because it can’t tell the difference. Okay. So we try to short circuit this, but the body’s pretty smart and it says actually it’s not going to work.

All right. Next step four, which goes hand in hand with the science, it’s cause and effect. So just like the law of like gravity, we have the effect of what happens in our body when we eat certain food. Now I’m not saying you can’t eat that food. And yes, for the first six weeks of my program, I highly recommend that you have no sugar and flour. But, you can still love food. You can still love cinnamon buns. You can still love chocolate. You can still love chips. You can still love those things and you can still lose weight and keep it off if you plan to eat that food from the higher brain. So let me give you an example. So I have I generally have a joy eat every Sunday. And so I will know that when I get on the scale on Monday morning It will be up a little bit probably because I have planned the joy eat I know that I’m spiking my insulin more, I know my pancreas and everything have to kind of go into action. And I know that I’m gonna have I’m going to feed that desire and really want that thing, but I’m doing it from my higher brain. So I’m really looking at, I can still eat this thing, I’m not out of control and I can still love it. But I am going to have a little bit of a consequence. And so on Mondays, I’m going to have a little bit more of an urge to have a sugary treat. It’s going to be a little bit harder for me not to go down to the kitchen when I’m feeling a little bit of stress. And I can just sit with that. Because I’m doing this from the higher brain.

So one of the tools we want to work on, especially when it comes to perfectionism is not that all or nothing thinking. It’s still okay to have this food, but we’re going to have it in moderation, we’re going to plan it. And now I’m not feeling guilty when I’m eating it. I’m not turning to it to buffer. I’m just enjoying that. And then I do have a little bit of a consequence and that’s okay. Okay? So there are going to be effects of what we do and it’s okay.

Now, the fifth step of how to love food and be able to take off the weight and keep it off is learning about the spectrum of where we’re at. And I think about when I was a kid and I don’t know about you, but when you were learning about negative numbers and positive numbers. It was such a interesting concept to teach kids, right? So when you’re learning about positive and negative numbers. So imagine with me, you have this, it looks like a tape measure, I had it on my desk as a kid, and so in the middle of it, you had zero, the number zero. So we call that neutral. And then if you’re looking at to the left of it, that’s when you have the negative number. So negative one, negative two, negative three, and that just keeps going. And to the right of neutral, the right of zero, you have Positive numbers. And so this is the same thing with our emotions. I want you to think of our emotional scale. So when you look at yourself right now, if I was to say, you know, go and look at yourself in the mirror, what would be the thought that you have about yourself? Would you be disgusted? Would you be horrified? Would you be embarrassed? Would you be discouraged? Would you feel frustrated? What is that emotion that you feel? And where would you put that on that scale? Would it be in the negative emotion realm or the positive? Some of us look at our body and we feel grateful. We feel excited. We have hands that work and feet and legs and arms and we have eyes and nose and some of them work better than others. Some of us have a little bit more pain than others. Some of us can move easier than others. But when you look at yourself, how do you feel? So let’s get creative.

Now if we are going to food because we love it, because it’s taking us away from a negative emotion, it’s like a way to escape, then what effect is that having on you? And if you eat food out of a place of love, like I love this food and I love what it’s doing to my body. I love that when I eat these carrots, I’m getting beta carotene and it’s helping me with my eyes. And I love when I eat this protein, it’s helping me build you know, stronger bones when I’m drinking this juice, this you know, whatever it is making me feel so good. So what is the emotion that’s fueling you? And I, when I used to meet with ladies for them to sign up, to work with me one on one, which by the way, I still have a few spots left in my one on one right now. And I love working with people one on one. Of course I love my group program and I love all the benefits from that as well. But I used to ask this question when I was on the consult with people, I would say, you know, if you are trying to lose weight out of a place of disgust, what actually can you expect? And I have this book that I really enjoy. It’s called The Mountain is You, transforming self sabotage into self mastery by Brianna Wiest. And this one section really has impacted me. And if you have the book, it’s on page 170 and we go to 173. And I’m just going to read some highlights because I hope that you can receive this from a place of love and definitely I know that the more that we do this work, the more that we can transform ourselves in a permanent and happy way. And so the subtitle of this part is “moving forward isn’t about getting revenge.” So I’m going to read what she said. And she talks about a glow up. And I think she’s in her like mid thirties and so glow up is kind of a fun term of, I mean, think about it, why do we want to lose weight? Because we want to have that glow up. We want to look really good. We want to look sassy and we want to look healthy and strong and we want to be able to do those things. So she said, “your glow up might not be something others can see. It might not come across as a shift on the surface.”

So, I have a client that worked with me one on one, and she didn’t lose as much physical weight as she wanted, but her emotional weight, she is such a happier person. She can handle things in such a better way. And sometimes she gets discouraged because she thinks, well, I haven’t lost as much weight as I wanted, but I’m just so much happier. And so this is what she’s talking about. It might not happen on a physical level yet. She said “in a world of revenge bodies and come back relationships, a world that tries to tell you that your ultimate transformation should be splayed across your Instagram feed. We’ve lost what it really means to heal, to improve, to move on with our lives.” now listen to this, this one. I love this so much. “The real glow up isn’t proving the people from your past wrong.” Okay how many of us want to lose weight from a place of that? Right? And how many of us, you know, we love food because food is the one thing that didn’t talk back to us or didn’t disappoint us. Right? So, when I asked you that second question of like, why do you love the food? What specifically do you love about the food? ” The real glow up isn’t about proving the people from your past wrong. It is finally feeling so content and hopeful about your future that you stop thinking about them entirely.” Oh My goodness, you and you stay in your own lane when you are trying to do something from a place of self love as opposed to I will show them. Then she says, “when you want to change your life so it looks different and only that, you are only orbiting around the opinions of people who didn’t love you and didn’t have any intention to.” How many of you did something in high school that you’re not proud of, but you did it because you thought that you would get people’s attention and approval? You can always tell the difference too. People who have truly, I’m reading, I’m continuing to read, we’re still on one page 70. “You can always tell the difference too. People who have truly transformed are not concerned solely with how things appear. Their lives are now focused intently on how things feel, how they really are underneath it all.

So I’m recording this before the retreat and ladies are coming to my house and I’m going to be driving my van. Now my van is a 2012 Honda Odyssey, super solid van. It has gone through five children and it has some wear and tear of course. The doors don’t slide open automatically like they used to, there is a big scrape along the side, there is some paint that’s coming off on one side of it. It’s not a super fancy van. But it’s a great van and it works super well and if I am going to a camp with a bunch of kids, I don’t feel bad about it. I got some chairs yesterday. I loaded them up in the van. It works. It works really well. But there is a piece of me that’s a little bit worried that people might judge me that it’s not this super fancy van. But this is the fun part. That I’m not focusing so much on what other people think. I’m focusing more on me. And I love that I love this van. I love that I don’t owe money on it. That I treat it well and it does so much good for me. “And then she says a real glow up is authentic. It is lifting off all the cover up and baloney and addressing the real problems. It is healing. It is changing for good. it is for the first time prioritizing your heart over someone else’s eyes.”

So I will talk more about this book. But I do want to share that with you because when we say we love food, there are things about food that we love, but there are things about food that really don’t serve us and the kinds of food, when we eat the food, when we’re turning to the food, we have to be willing to change our relationship with food. And so I encourage you to spend some time on these five steps and I want you to look at, are you always looking at your body and your relationship with it from a place of, I’m disgusting, I’m terrible? Because if you are, you’re not going to be able to approach food in a way that you can even get neutral and say, so why am I? I have to say, one of the things that I did that I never realized was I overate at dinner. And in fact, I didn’t even realize I was doing it because with my kids, with other busy schedule, I’m just like, I’m eating the food, but my brain is not even at the food. I’m thinking of, okay, I have to get this kid to this place and I have to get this, I have to do this thing and I’ve got to do all these things. And so even though I’m eating, I’m not actually present with my food. I’m not enjoying it. I’m not experiencing the joy of the food. And then the next thing I know I’m feeling really full because I’ve already over eaten because I wasn’t present with my food. This was a really vicious cycle.

And the next episode I’m gonna talk about fear and what happens when we don’t really focus on what’s, what’s important. So I’m gonna encourage you to get to neutral. Now, if you can’t get neutral, one of the steps that I’m going to share with you is to look at yourself. So if you look at yourself and you’re like, Oh, my body, I’ve got this loose skin. I got this flabby skin. I got these bulges. What would it be like for you to say, instead of saying I’m disgusting and this is terrible, you could say bodies are funny. They’re kind of crazy. I’ve kind of got some bulges here. Yep, bodies are funny. And then you can just move on. How different would it be for you to say that versus, I’m disgusting, I’m pathetic, this body is gross. That has helped me so much. I remember when I was nursing and I was so excited because I am a fairly flat chested person. And then when I stopped nursing, my chest just went like deflated. I felt like I, it was just like not much there and it was kind of saggy. And I thought, Oh my goodness, this is crazy. And It kind of bothered me. And then I was able to kind of joke about it a little bit. Like I went, my friend said they go from rocks to socks and I thought, yeah, they do. And thank you breasts for actually doing what you’re supposed to do is one of your jobs is to feed babies. And thank you. I had 10 pound, nine pound babies and they always fed my babies and my babies are strong and healthy and they have good immune systems and I was able to kind of take a step back and kind of laugh a little bit.

So anyways, I’m going to conclude this episode with a recap of the five steps. So the first one is it’s okay that you love food. It keeps you alive. The second one is what do you love about it specifically? And are there things about the food that you think you love that Actually is not really loving? So all the sugar and the flour and the addiction behaviors. The third one is let’s do the science. What does actually happen when you eat certain foods? And so at number four is the cause and effect you can’t fight what happens. You can’t fight. Even though we’ve tried, even though we have, you know, aspartame, we can’t fight with it. It does trigger our body. It is going to take its natural effect, cause and effect. And then the fifth one is let’s get creative. Where are you on the scale?

And my invitation to you is to get as much neutral as possible. And this is the kind of work I do in Love Yourself Thin. I help you learn to get to a place where you can kind of laugh about bodies are kind of funny to a place of neutral. And then you get to a place of I actually have an amazing body and I’m going to take care of that body. And the more I take care of it, the better it becomes. This is the work we do in love yourself Thin. And I invite you to come and join us. All right. Take care, everyone. Bye bye.