Episode 34 Transcript
[00:00:00] Welcome to The Be About Being Better podcast, where we help people make evidence based sustainable. Small changes for their health that compounded the huge shifts towards a better, more vibrant life. I'm your host Abbie Stasior, a health and life coach, future registered dietician, a master's graduate from Columbia University, and a certified intuitive eating counselor.
And I believe that we can't make lasting or meaningful change single handedly. So I'm so happy that you're here so that together you can see that a diet free, sustainable lifestyle is possible, and you can leverage that to live a better life. And remember my disclaimer, This podcast is meant to give you general information.
And it's not meant to substitute or replace medical advice, a diagnosis or serve as treatment.
Abbie: If you are the type of person who has to watch or listen to something while they eat or else they cannot start their meal, You need this episode if you are also the type of person that cooks the same things day in and day out, and maybe you do make the effort to meal prep, but when you actually get to the point of eating the food that you prepped doesn't taste good.
Super boring. And you end up getting takeout because takeout sounds much more interesting and more appetizing, and you end up not eating what you've prepped cause it seems boring. Then you need this episode. In this episode we're gonna be talking about how do you start enjoying. Eating again. How do you start enjoying food Again, we're gonna be diving into one of the, not as frequently talked about intuitive eating principles, discovering the satisfaction factor.
It is an intuitive eating principles, and it's just as important as rejecting the diet mentality, honoring your hunger cues, respecting your fullness. And making peace with food. Like it's, it's up there with all of those and we don't talk about it as much, but when we're on our food healing journey, like if you make the commitment and say, Hey, I wanna get away from diet culture, I wanna do this in the right way.
I don't wanna restrict myself anymore. I wanna fuel myself adequately. But then we're still numbing out what we eat if we're still distracting ourselves, if we're like having to listen. Or watch something while we eat, or we're making food for ourselves that maybe is nutrient dense but doesn't really seem appetizing and we're not enjoying the experience of eating, we are going to hit a roadblock on our intuitive eating journey.
So enjoying the experience of eating might not be the first intuitive eating principle. I mean, it might be, but it might, it's probably not the first intuitive eating principle that you turn to. Cause I think most people need to recognize first before they get to this point, Hey, I need to heal. My relationship with food, diet culture has had such a hold on my life.
I need to break away from this. I need to make peace with food. I need to make all foods available. Or maybe I need to change how I label food. This isn't a bad food cuz if I eat this, this doesn't make me a bad person, but it maybe is more calorie dense and I need to focus on looping in more nutrient dense foods into my day.
Or I need to just honor my hunger cues and start eating something, whatever it is when I get hungry instead of suppressing my hunger kids. So those are the typical places that we start. And then once you start practicing intuitive eating and people that want to dive deeper with it, or they feel like they've hit a wall with it.
This is when I normally talk with my clients about discovering the satisfaction factor and enjoying the experience of eating again, because dieting takes that away from us, and dieting takes away the choice most of the time because most of the time when we're on a diet, It's like, here are the foods that are allowed, here are the foods that are not, or here's the time window when you're able to eat, or how many meals a day you're able to eat, or some diets.
It's like, Hey, we're gonna ship you all of the food. This is what you're allowed to eat and you can't deviate from that or else you're not on the plan and you're not following it. And if you don't see results, then it's your fault cuz you didn't follow the plan that we set up, even though the plan that we're giving you was never meant to be sustainable anyway and was never gonna make you successful skirt.
So. We we're not used to in a diet culture world having a choice. And because these diets are so restrictive and sometimes these foods are so bland, we like, we forget that like healthy food can actually taste good and it should taste good, and. Like we had a field trip with my dietetic internship class last week, and we went to a local farm in Tennessee and we got to eat Swiss chard and carrots and celery leaves straight up from the dirt, straight up from the ground.
It was actually really cool, and because it's all organic and they have composted soil and they don't use any pesticides or fertilizers, literally it was the cleanest vegetable I've ever tasted. These carrots that I was having straight from the ground. You wipe it off a little bit. It was so sweet. I have never in my life described a baby carrot as being sweet, but this was the sweetest baby carrot because it wasn't like dipped in any preservatives or it wasn't, you know, grown with any pesticide.
It was just the straight up carrot because the soil is just so, so good. Oh, just so amazing. I've literal, literally have been dreaming about these baby carrots. I just went back to the farm yesterday to pick up some more cause I'm like, these are so good. And I ate, you know, I ate them so quickly.
We forget that the nutrient dense items can taste amazing and that healthy food really can, can be satisfying and it can be. But a lot of these diets, because we're cutting things. And it, they're so restrictive. Like the foods are ugh, like it doesn't taste good and it's not satisfying. And most of the time it's not satisfying because it's leaving us at a caloric deficit.
So we're hungry after, but it's like, well, these are, this is all my fitness palaces. I have allotted for today. Or like, oh, I can't eat anymore because I'm on this diet, so I have to suppress my hunger cues. So we forget that healthy food, that nutrient dense food, can taste amazing. Diet culture trains us to not enjoy the experience of eating because most of the time when we are enjoying ourselves when eating and immersed in diet culture, it's with the more indulgent foods that then make us feel bads than we have of negative association with the experience of eating and diet.
Culture also trains us that eating is kind of a means to an end. And that eating is for the purpose of losing weight and changing our bodies and striving for thinness. So we just need to like eat just enough to glaze by. And it's not meant to be enjoyed because the point of eating or not eating is to lose weight and to change how we look and that.
What diet culture is selling you is the ultimate satisfaction. But we know that if you've lost weight before, like I, you know, I got to a point where I lost 20 pounds and I was at the lowest point in my life and it didn't make me feel better. Seeing that number on the scale didn't make me feel better, and it just led to more disordered habits and body dysmorphia and.
Disordered relationship with food, bad drinking habits I thought that losing the weight would make me more confident, would make me happier, would heal all of this about myself, but it just amplified it. So diet culture sells us this lie that, hey, if you make the experience of eating terrible, Because we're gonna take away all of the foods that taste good, and I'm just gonna leave you with eating like a rabbit and not eating enough so that you're irritable all the time, like with these restrictive diets.
It's just insane. Um, then the ultimate reward will be you being skinny or whatever it is. And it's just such a false lie. It ends up making. Worse. So if we're looking to heal our relationship with food, how do we start to discover the satisfaction factor and how do we make food taste good again? And how do we enjoy the experience of eating?
So the first thing that we need to do is we need to start savoring our food versus scarfing it down. Can't tell you how many times in undergrad or between Zoom calls, I would be like scarfing down a protein bar and then moving on to the next thing. And not even realizing, like I can't tell you how many times I've gone to the protein bar wrapper going for another bite to literally almost bite my finger off.
Cause I'm like, oh, I ate through the bar. I didn't even realize I finished what I was eating. How many times have you sat at a restaurant and ate a whole meal and your plate's clear and you're like, I don't even remember eating that. How did I finish that so quickly? we're just so distracted and so we need to start to savor our food again.
And that comes from not rushing when we eat. Really taking time out to eat and making that a more relaxed environment and being present in the moment. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to be fully present in the moment when you're eating. If you are distracting yourself by watching something or listening to something, so y'all, I know you're not gonna wanna hear this, but it's, it's necessary.
We need to start working towards, and it's a process, it's gonna take time, and you might need some coaching on this. You might need the academy to help get you through, but it is so important that we start working towards eating in silence. So that we can savor our food so that we can enjoy that experience of eating.
And this is gonna do a lot of things for us. It's gonna mitigate us from overeating because if we're not distracted and we're fully savoring our food, Normally we eat slower at that time and our body can catch up to give us the fullness cues that we need to say, Hey, I've had enough. So you are less likely to overeat because you are listening and in tune with your body's fullness cues.
And you can stop before you get, you know, to be oh, too full. And because you're savoring the experience and fully enjoying the foods that you're eating, it's gonna cause you. You're gonna be less likely to overeat and to keep grabbing for more because, well, I've just, I really enjoyed what I already had.
I don't need more cuz I fully savored this. A lot of the times we go get seconds, we go get thoses, we go get another cookie and we keep eating. We keep taking more and more bites of the chocolate cake, hoping to like taste it number one after like bite three or we, our senses become desensitized to it most of the time.
But also like we. Grabbing more, hoping that we're gonna like keep tasting it and keep bringing that dopamine hit back when our body is actually full and doesn't need any more. And if we just slowed down, we could have just had a more satisfying experience with less. And if we keep grabbing for more, then we're not gonna be in touch with our fullness cues.
And it's not gonna be as satisfying of an experience. So we need to take this, we need to meet ourselves where we are and use this as a step-wise approach to start to eat with silence. And what I will say is that eating in silence doesn't mean that you're like in meditation, not having any sort of thoughts.
Like I think when there's a misconception with meditating that we need to just be like clearing our thoughts. No, when you're eating in silence, you are bringing awareness to the meal You. Not watching something or listening something, but you're filling your mind with questions about the meal. How does this taste?
How does this smell? How does this look? What's the mouth feel? How is this making me feel? Hmm. How good does this taste? What reminiscent feelings or nostalgia am I getting with these smells and this meal, and how this tastes? How does this feel in my body? Am I feeling full? Am I ready to stop? Do I wanna take one more bite?
Let me put my fork down in between bites to just be in this moment and fully enjoy this.
That's what we need to focus on. So that's what's going through your head as you're eating, instead of watching a show or listening to a podcast or something like that. And you would be eating while you're listening to this, which I appreciate that. But we might wanna find other times to listen to podcasts or watch shows.
That aren't around mealtimes because we just get distracted and we're not in tune with our hunger and fullness cues and we're not fully savoring the experience because we're not present with it. And that leads us to normally overeat and not be as satisfied with the dining experience or the eating experience.
So if you watch something on tv, I want you to meet yourself where you are, cuz we're gonna take this as a stepwise approach and you'll obviously know where you are in the steps as we go through this. So I wanna start working towards you. Eating more in silence and filling your thoughts with awareness of the meal that you're having.
So if you currently watch something while you eat, I want you to try just listening to something while you eat. I'm not saying to go cold Turkey and go from watching TV to absolutely nothing. I mean, if you're able to do that, great, but most people aren't. So instead of feeding this need to watch something, we're gonna take one small step and just listen to something while you.
Maybe with headphones. If you currently listen to something and maybe it's a podcast or if you're listening to a TV show and it's something with words, well, if you watch like a show or if you're listening to like something informational where you're taking information, I first urge you if you listen to something, to switch from taking in information while you eat because that's gonna distract you cuz you're trying to focus on the TED Talk or the podcast or the show, whatever it is to listen to.
So, That where you're not learning new information. So if you're watching a show or listening to a podcast while you eat, switch to listening to a song first, because song, you're not really listening unless it's like Taylor Swift lyrics where you gotta like, really try, try and dissect what she's saying.
Oh, I feel like Taylor Swift's lyrics are kind of complex sometimes, which is cool. But, um, I can't always listen to her music because I'm like, I don't wanna think right now. I just wanna like, Almost numb out to this song. I just wanna listen to the song. I don't wanna have to like think. So find a song where you don't really have to think.
Then once you listen to that and you feel like you got that and you're ready to take the next step, listen to something that's just an instrumental that doesn't have any words, because that will distract you less and have you focus and bring more awareness to your food. The point is to do this in a step-wise.
Motion. Beat yourself where you are to work. Being silent while you eat. Okay. Then if you've gotten down to an instrumental while you eat, doesn't have any words, then I would switch to taking out one headphone or turning down the volume. Like if you normally listen to it, like half volume or all volume, go to half volume and half volume, maybe down to a quarter where it's like really fate in the background or, and or take one headphone.
And then eventually from there you should be able to just silence it all and sometimes with sometimes just putting headphones on or earbuds in can be enough. Like you're not listening to anything but it can kind of feel like you are. So maybe just try and from there, like if you've are doing this in a stepwise motion, just try and .
just have headphones on, but not listen to? And then from there you might be able to take your headphones off and just be and just be with your meal.
I hope that this helps. This will help you to savor your food versus scarf it. Slow down the experience of eating. Putting your fork down in between bites really helps with this and slow down the meal. And it takes about 20 minutes for your digestion to catch up, to tell you, Hey, I'm full. So your meals need to be at least 20.
So that can really, really help. And then I want you to fill that silence with questions about the meal. How does this taste? How is this making me feel? How does my body feel? How good is this? Hmm. So that's one way to discover the satisfaction factor is to make the whole mealtime and the eating experience more enjoyable and to bring more attention and awareness to it.
The next part of this is to make your your food satisfying and to actually prepare meals that you're excited to eat. Like if you're not excited to eat salads and chicken, number one, you can make salads really, really interesting. And we can, we should definitely talk about that on future episodes, or I should make it real about that or something.
Because the best salads that I've had have had different textures and different flavors. They've had Sweet. They've had salty, like it's kind of all the combinations there. If I just have a salad with chicken, and like cherry tomato. If you think of like a general house salad at a restaurant, like that's so boring.
But when you go to like a salad place, I look up the menus of the salad places that I like in town. Like I love the market salad at Chick-fil-A and I've made it myself. Now I, and that is a really good, um, example of this because it's got strawberries and blueberries, so it's got that sweet, it's got some crunch because they put almonds and walnuts in it.
, savory and creamy from the blue cheese and the salad dressing. Like it's got the, I put the chicken nuggets on top, so that's really good. It's got little savory there, little protein, and then I do their like apple vinegarette dressing. So that's a little like acidic, zesty type dressing , and then you have the fresh crunch.
. I think there's cucumbers and obviously the lettuce. So all the combinations, like you need, you need a crunch, you need something sweet, you need something salty. You need something creamy in there. Csy, acidic. Mm Like just all, it has everything. So I would say kind of go through that list when you're trying to make a salad more interesting.
Just go through it and if you want more salad recipes, let me know. We could talk about that more on Instagram or on the show. If that, if salads just aren't doing it for you right now, like right now I'm on the oats with overnight oats, like I'm gonna avoid making overnight oats. You can make over overnight oats more interesting and change the flavor.
So maybe try and do that and either look up some recipes on Pinterest or go to the show notes. And I have my meal plan and prep guide. There's different recipes in there and different ways to like different combinations and ways to season different things. To give you more flavor profiles to try out to keep your same things because you could make like a chicken with vegetables and rice.
You could keep that kind of basic easy meal. But if you season the chicken differently, like maybe one week you do lemon prep, or maybe the next week you do Cajun or um, like to use taco seasoning. And then, um, The next week you do barbecue sauce, like that's the same meal, but done three different ways with three different .
Flavor profiles. Like that sounds much more dynamic. So maybe you just need to change your flavor. Maybe you just need to change up your recipe for the overnight oats, but also maybe you just need to take a break from the overnight oats. Maybe you just need to take a break from making salad. And maybe you need to take a break from making chicken and rice.
So maybe you need to change exactly what, what you're making to keep food more interesting. And only you wouldn't be able to know that. I can't tell you what to do, but you would be able to know intuitively, like I could look up some dis different recipes to see how I can make this taste different because I generally like this.
Or for like, I'm really on the house with this right now and I really wanna keep things more interesting. So you wanna make the. It's satisfying and tastes good and I would avoid making the same food day in and day out. Like don't meal prep, all of the same things Monday through Friday or you know, so even if it's seven days a weekly, I just think that's too much to be eating.
The same thing. You're going to get bored and that's when you're not going to eat what you've meal prepped. I'm not saying that we have to, you know, meal prep for every meal and eat everything that we meal prep all the time. Cause you wanna leave room for going out and doing other things. But if you've invested the time to meal prep and that was your intention to eat the majority of your meals from home that week, and then you don't because what you prep doesn't taste interesting, then it's not effective.
We need to change something up there, and this is why you should download my meal plan and prep guide in the show notes because I go through my Be about being better meal planning and prepping method. I walk you through, okay, how are you gonna plan your meals? What's your grocery list gonna be and what order are you gonna do things in the kitchen?
And I give you space to like write all these things out and plan it where you have meal plan A and meal plan B, and you switch and you alternate days. So you plan a full day's worth of meals for like meal plan A, and then for meal plan B. Would be a second option. And you alternate days. So meal plan A, maybe you eat that Monday, Wednesday, Friday, meal plan B, maybe you eat that Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and then Sunday's kind of a catch all day and you eat leftovers or that leaves you some meals to go out during the week.
Um, so you're not making 21 meals for the whole week. Like you don't need to make 'em for every single. So I would say do that. That can keep things interesting too, not doing the same things every single week and also not doing the same things every single day. And also, if you start to get more into cycle sinking where there's certain nutrition considerations for each phase, that keeps your food more satisfying too and more interesting.
Because each week, depending on what phase of the menstrual cycle you're in, You are looping in some new fruits and new vegetables and new proteins and new recipes and flavor profiles to cater to how your hormones are fluctuating that week, and to support your hormones in those fluctuations and in that phase.
So psycho sinking can really help you enjoy eating again because it adds more variety and. I also just think like you could be having the most delicious meal in the world and have the meal plan that has so much variety and be so excited when you're cooking it. But if you're scarfing it down and just eating it super quickly or eating it in a rough state, or eating when you're super distracted, you're not going to enjoy and savor what you've prepped because you're just scarfing it.
So these two principles of savoring your food and then also keeping your meals more interesting. Add more zest to your meals. We need both of these things to discover the satisfaction factor and really make this intuitive eating principle come to live and be integrated into your life. So I would download my meal plan and prep guide and try it out.
See? See how that works for you. And. See if you can flavor things differently and think about some other meals. And if you are just completely lost and maybe you've already downloaded my meal plan and prep guide, you can. I'll also link to my meal prep episode, so you can see that in the show notes. And that tells you more about my meal planning and prep method.
It's a whole episode about. The breaking down what I talk about in that freebie. But if you find that that's not enough for you, you've already tried it and you need more accountability and support and more personalized suggestions, then I would suggest you take the quiz and see if the bee about being better Academy is for you.
We have a couple spots left for our next class, and this is exactly what I do with clients. I look at how they normally eat. They send me photos of what they normally eat, so I can gauge portion sizes. I can see your meal patterns and your interests, and. Give you personalized suggestions on how you can optimize.
I'll have clients send me their grocery list before, not even their grocery list, before they go. They send me their meal plan A and their meal plan B before they go to their grocery store. Hey, here's what I'm planning on making for the week. I can review it with them and say, Hey, you actually need more protein, or, oh, what did you think about?
Looping in some more fruit or did you think about, um, an afternoon snack? Like what are some ideas that sound good to you? And we kind of go back and forth, make sure that that's optimized, and then that's your grocery list right from there. And so my clients can feel really comfortable about what they're going to the grocery store and buying and what they're meal prepping, because I've already reviewed it with them.
So as long as they eat that they are going to meet their nutrition needs and they're. Invested in the process because they're excited about the things that they have put on their list and in their meal plan and that they're going to prep. And so they're more likely to follow through and eat it. Um, and I'm holding them accountable to making sure that they're savoring their meals and walking them through the other intuitive eating principles, honoring our hunger, respecting all our fullness, ditching the diet mentality, making peace with food, all of these other things, um, that helps them be successful with intuitive eating and healing their relationship with food, and even more likely to not just eat what they've meal prepped, but actually enjoying the meals that they're prepping.
Ugh, so good. So if you need help with this, definitely take the quiz, see if the academy's for you. We got a couple spots left for our next class. And um, if you don't really know where to start and you're not sure if you need coaching support, you can take the quiz anyway too if you want. But you could also just start with our meal plan and prep guide.
Yay. Of course, always if you have questions, message me on Instagram. Would love to chat this out with you and I will see y'all on the next.
Hey y'all. Thanks again for listening to the Be About Being Better podcast. I so appreciate you. If this episode made you laugh, smile, think about yourself or your life differently, in any way, making your life better, I empower you to share the show with three people who just like you, need to hear this message and have this type of transformation in their lives.
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It's linked below in the show notes, and that quiz will help you see which one of our coaching programs is right for you. Thank you so much again for listening and hears to being about being better.
