We Know Better Now Part 1

here with you and us doing an episode today. To get there feels like old time, so I'm loving it. May I just say you look radiant? Oh thank you. I just scrubbed my face and your harror looks beautiful.

I don't know if you have what the mom life is like by I know you posted something on Instagram the other day about you got your hair done and if you know, some people associate that with guilty pleasure and I loved that post so much, so I want to encourage people to go to your Instagram after they listen to this episode and read that post you put up.

I think the photo is your beautiful hair. It's like a you put up a few different photos, but you can see your curly hair, and then you just gave us permission to do things that satisfy us and make us happy without feeling guilty about it. Yes, the idea was we need to really think about the language that we use, and the word guilty pleasure just never settled

right for me. And I don't know if you're like asked this in interviews a lot, but people always ask me, like, what's your guilty pleasure, like looking for some confession that like I eat cookies before dinner, like you know, silly things like that. And sure, I might do something like that, but I don't feel guilty for the things that I

do that make me feel good. And I think that as a culture, we're robbing ourselves of the potential to feel really good when it's available to us by having it kind of like warped under this idea that it shouldn't feel good, like if it costs something, or if it's like you know, reality TV, if it's not stimulating

our brain in a productive way. And yeah, I just strongly believe that pleasures should be pleasuresome and we don't need to attach guilt to anything that feels good, unless, of course, you're committing a crime or killing somebody, but obviously nobody hears doing that. Yes, okay, So at Lisa Ham and that's h A y I am is where y'all can see that post, and then Happy Saturday at

my fam. We're excited to bring you this episode, and Lisa's going to explain what we're going to get into because this was her idea, and I think that it will be really helpful. It's something we're gonna do today and then next Saturday will be this theme. So at

Lisa take it away. Yeah. So when I was driving the other day, I've had a very few moments where my brain is working, but I had this idea to talk about a what we know Now episode, and I recognize that it could be triggering to talk about what we did then, but I think when we explain the now and why we're doing it, it's going to really be more helpful than it could be harmful, because when we can really see how how small and limited our minds were when we thought we were doing things for

a quote unquote health, and then compare them to what we're actually doing now, we could really see a whole, big picture of health, and I think it's going to help a lot of people recognize really normalized patterns of behavior in our culture that are disordered and also contributing to what I call mind body disconnection, which means not honoring your needs because you think you need to eat

or work out in a certain way. So the concept is we're gonna talk about what we did then and what we do now and why we do it now and why that's better. Right, So if you do any of these things, don't feel bad. You're not alone this. There's no shame in doing this. You may just have to hear why, why we know better now and why we don't do it, and then sit with that. Hopefully

it will be helpful to you. And next time you maybe catch yourself doing one of these things, if you can relate to what we're gonna say, you might be like, oh, yeah, I remember Lisa and Amy saying this, and that'll help you reset if you need to love it. So I'll go first on this episode, and then Amy is going to share with me the things that she did then

verse now. So the first one for me, I'm thirty three years old, I grew up when like we used to read real magazines and not just scroll on social media, and one of the biggest things that used to say on everything was to put your dressing on the side, Like that was the pro health tip, or don't use dressing. Either put your dressing on the side, or don't use dressing.

Either way, the message was dressing is bad. And so all of us around the world we're eating dry, crunchy salads that were hard to swallow and forcing them down our throat, thinking that we hate salad, but we have to eat it. Like this flash forward to now, not only are many dressings full of healthy fat, nutrients and satisfy ying components to them, but they can actually help

us eat more vegetables and eat more salad. And when it comes to this conversation, I think it's important to always ask yourself, if it doesn't feel good, don't do it. And at the same time, if you want to eat more vegetables, improve your digestion, feel bad or things like that, think about how you can do that and what you

can add to your plate versus takeaway. And I think this mindset really contributed to this idea that healthy food taste bad, that healthy food is painful to eat, that it requires discipline, when in fact, my relationship now to food with dressing is can I get more dressing? Or please mix it all together. And it's just one of those things that has allowed me to reconnect to foods that I love and enjoy them and find satisfaction from eating them. I don't know, Amy, did you? Were you

familiar with that one? Yes? I think satisfaction is key and this is something I learned from you too, And to be satisfied, you need to give your body what it needs. And sometimes even the simple act of dressing on the side or no dressing please, is a type of restriction, and then you end up eating way more than you would have eaten. And you maybe start with the salad at least this was the case for me, and you would think, Okay, that's all I'm gonna eat.

That's all I'm gonna eat. But because that there was restriction there, then I ended up eating more things and more things, and that led to more food consumption than if I had eaten the meal as it was thought up and prepared. And you know, whoever, if I'm at a restaurant or was created that way, and I took it in. I maybe would have been satisfied by eating half the salad that day, who knows, or the whole thing,

who cares. But because I created this you know, mind game with oh dressing on the side, and I need to just eat plaine, I mean plane romane. There have been times where I've gone to a restaurant and so many things didn't fit all the different boxes of what I needed. That I was eating straight up romane and that is it, and no wonder I was starving for other things and it would lead to more consumption because I thought I was doing what was good for my body.

And really, had I taken it all in the way the chef prepared it or why the restaurant had it on the menu that way, I would have enjoyed it and been more satisfied. And two caveats I just want to say here is that I'm not saying that eating

more is bad not good. What we're saying is to find a comfortable, peaceful place while you're eating, rather than find yourself in what I amy, I could relate to what you're saying to where like you're you eat you know, just the dry food and then you're in this like disconnected place and all you can think about is more and more food, whereas you can actually be present to conversation when you're being satisfied with the meal, if that makes sense right, And it's either you're at a restaurant

or you're at a friend's house. That's why I say the way it was intended to be served to you. You're appreciating what is in front of you. Yeah, there's something about it that is just way more satisfying mind, body, and spirit. Like all the things. You're more satisfied, you're more connected to it. And even now, if you want to have dressing on the side, we're not faulting for that. There. You might want dressing on the side because you want to control how the same thing, but you want to

control it. That is okay, I still do that. Or I'm like, I don't even know if I like this dressing. I don't like this dressing. I don't want a soggy salad. There's a time and a place for that. But what I'm talking about is a hard rule in attempt to

control calories. When we talk about dressing on the side, we are purely viewing health from a caloric standpoint, and what we're missing is is that that dressing can help us eat more nutrients, more minerals, more fiber, more of that good stuff because we've minimized health down to calories. Thank you for summing up my point as a whole. So that's just something to consider your The amount of dressing that you want to use is totally up to you.

But really it took me from that scarcity mindset of oh I have to eat so little and control every little calorie to oh my gosh, this helps me actually eat more greens, more fiber, more nutrients, more minerals. How awesome is that end? I'm satisfied, my needs are met. I'm not thinking about food all of the time and on that constant chase love it. Okay, what is something

else that you now know more and do differently? So I think a lot of us, especially during this holiday season, we're really focused on thinking that because we are eating more holiday foods, that we need to burn it off. And I specifically remember this time of year being this time where I wanted to like wake up extra early so I could get that workout in so I could quote unquote stay on track. Whatever that track was right. It was just it wasn't coming from a place that

I loved my body. It was coming from a place that I'm fearful what my body will do if I don't tame it. And I used to wake up really early, like five am early to get that cardio work out in or whatever it was at the time. And now I understand how important sleep is for health. Health is not food and fitness period. Health is our sleep, our inner thoughts, our mental health, our well being, all of

those things. And recognizing that allows me to see how important rest is for my physical body as wealth as my brain health. And getting those extra hours might mean missing a workout, but it means that my cortisol, my stress hormone, is actually going to stay lower. Because when we work out, when we're stressed, when we're tired, all those things, cortisol jack's all the way up, and that can totally deplete us. But allowing ourselves to rest and

restore can be the absolute best thing for us. Now, if you wake up at five am and you're feeling, oh, my body wants to move and get a workout in or or a flow, whatever feels good for you. Going back to that idea that there's no hard rules, but it's important to recognize that the rigidity of I have to wake up early to get that workout isn't the only way. Yeah, Like it's not oh, this is going to be something that's adding to my overall well being.

It's more of a stress marker of like, oh, I have to get this done or my day is going to be off for I'm gonna you know, it's a punishment of sorts, or a way so that you can eat. There's a lot of different reasons why you might put pressure on yourself to work out, but when yes, it's a rigid rule, and I used to operate that same exact way. I wouldn't maybe get to wake up early because I did a morning show or I still do a morning show, the Bobby Bone Show, So I might

sacrifice sleep at bedtime to get a workout in. And what I could have been in bed an hour thirty minutes earlier, which is probably what my body needed after a long day, but it would be ten pm and I'd be like, well, nope, I've got to check that box or it's going to mess up my entire body.

I think I came on your podcast last year, and we talked about the glimphatic system and brain health, and if we look at this idea that like the only thing that matters with health is food and fit us, we really miss out on an opportunity to take care of our total bodies and our major organs, like our brain. When we sleep, the glimphatic system kicks into gear and all the toxins that we naturally accumulate leave through our body. But if we're not getting enough sleep, that junk is

kind of accumulating. And this was never part of the conversation and health, and that's why I'm so passionate about expanding out that viewpoint so that we can skip that workout when we need rest, recognizing that we're actually still taking really good care of our health even though we didn't make it to the gym exactly. I love that one. What's another thing that you now you know better? This is a huge one for me because it has helped me with not just the mental pain but the physical

pain that was associated with my disordered eating. And it was the idea that I can and should only eat when I'm really really really really hungry, like starving, like I would think that that was the proper time to start a meal, and I push myself to that limit.

But what that did is it left me evenance. It left me unable to decide what to eat in a civilized manner and unable to find a comfortable full point to a creative, chaotic eating every single time, and took me from completely empty two stuffed every time, so that physically being empty in my stomach hurt that starving feeling where your stomach is like er. And then it took me to painfully full where I'm like, I'm never eating again, multiple times a day. And that's how I thought it

had to be. Compound that with the thoughts around food of when will I get to eat next, When will I get to eat next, to at the end of that meal, being like I'm never eating again. I was so consumed with food, either physical pain from it or thoughts of it at all times, whereas now I actually want to get ahead of that physical empty I just want to eat when I'm a little bit hungry, physically hungry speaking, so that I can be more intentional with

what I'm eating. What do I want right now? What would make this more satisfying as opposed to like the grand sweep that it used to be, and a lot of people with disordered eating or eating disorders can relate, I think to the fact that your meals when you

are in that state are really weird. You might think that they're good, but they're they're really weird, disconnected, random things, and it's because you're just like revenous to put it all together, and everything tastes so good because you're so hungry that you lose complete connection to your body. I don't know, could you relate to like eating like really weird things when you were Oh, yes, for sure, like it.

It would always be I'm still grabbing for more. Would be like I go to the fridge, eat something, go to the pantry, eat something, sit down, eat something like It would be like a thirty minute or longer or deal of like okay, meal time, which if I had been taking care of myself and eating properly throughout the day, it could have been a ten fifteen minute thing, unless it's like a dinner worm with people. But I'm just

using like lunch as an example. Or if I went all morning long, all afternoon and then at two p um, I'm like, okay, I need to eat and kids are at school, husbands at work, like I happen to be home, and yeah, it would be a much longer process than it needed to be. That left me completely feeling gross as I don't know that anybody. It always led to the gross feeling. But you do. You feel full, you feel icky, you have you feel regret, you feel shame of like looking at like, oh my gosh, did I

really just eat all of those things? But there was no satisfaction or I would go from salty to sweeten and that that still happens to me to this day, but I'm more aware of it and like okay, cool, and then I can go on like the amount of times I used to think about food in a day, and then I look at how I am now with it.

I have such relief And I don't share that to brag in a way, because if I was old me was in a place where some of you listening might be, where I still was obsessed with food and thinking about all the time, I would be like, okay, yeah, you way to go, like I'm still struggling. So I want to say this with sensitivity, but I just want you to know there is freedom and there is such hope

and like I am a I'm a success story. That might be a weird way to say it, but that it's possible because there was I'm sitting here listening to Lisa talk and I'm like, oh gosh, there was a time where food just had so much power over me. And now it's like I've taken my power back, and eating throughout the day and giving your body and your brain what it needs and not starving it and waiting for those hunger cues of like hello, because then your

brain doesn't trust you. It's like I can't trust this person because she does not know how to eat, and she just made me get straight up starving. So now I'm going to eat meat meat because I don't know when she's going to feed me again. And I also want to flag what you said. You said you feel like you got your power back, something I thought about yesterday. It's a little tangential, But is this like idea of

food freedom everybody. It's been like plastered all over the internet to the point where I think, if you see it, at least for me, I'm like almost rolling my eyes, like food freedom, food for you, I don't know, just for a long time. It's an important concept, don't get me wrong. But what is underneath it is the important concept that you amy hit the nail on the head with food. Freedom is great, that's when you start to feel freedom around what you can eat, when you can eat,

and how you can eat it. But underneath that is getting your power back and your life back and creating again what I call that mind body connection. So food freedom is just the start, but what's underneath it is you getting your life back, your brain space back, a comfortability in your body back. And I don't mean comfortability where you look in the mirror and say, wow, you

look amazing. I mean stopping from experiencing that place where you're so painfully hungry, we're so painfully full, ending meals at a place where you know you can have more later and you feel really confident to stop then because there is no hard stop time of when you're allowed to eat and when you're not and to It's kind of tie in the working out thing. I think sometimes when we restrict and then we end up eating way more and we don't feel good, then it's a cycle.

It all feeds off of each other pun intended. I feel like if I had those moments where maybe I would have been fine without not working out that day, but the minute I went over that threshold and felt gross and full and whatever, then it was like, all right, now I gotta work out. I mean, I just ruined that because I need to burn all of this because this feeling doesn't feel good. So I feel like if

I work out, that will help me feel better. And it's just this weird cycle, and you're you're creating a negative relationship to exercise that way, because you're using it solely as a tool to counteract what you quote unquote did when the two are separate and can both be good for you, But now we've made both of them negative experiences exactly, why don't you share one more thing that you now know better. The last one I'm going to share today is thinking that bloating was bad and

that eating a salad would get rid of it. So these are kind of two different points I want to get into. But the first one is that bloating is normal to some degree. Now, what you're experiencing is it bloating or is its stomach distension After you eat a meal. Your stomach is only about the size of a fist, So I hold your fist up amy like that's like less than a sandwich, right, So one sandwich in your stomach and there's going to be some distension. There's a

digestive period that needs to happen. And so when for me, when I was in this disordered state, I was body checking all the time. So any time I passed a mirror, I was lifting up my shirt to see what my abs or my stomach looked like, or this and that. And I was so hyper focused that I noticed really subtle changes such as normal stomach distension and called it bloating.

Now bloating if it is uncomfortable, if it is constant, if it is giving you pain, that is a different story, and you should consult with your doctor to make sure there are no g I things. However, I think in our society we are really obsessed with our own bodies to the point where we are over checking them and finding things that are totally normal and labeling them as something that's not, such as bloating, and then looking for a solution. So why I said the salad portion was

because back then I would only eat salad. I wouldn't eat carbohydrates and things like that, and I didn't understand why some of my friends who ate whatever they wanted didn't have the stomach distension that I was experiencing after a meal. And you have to consider the fact that a lot of healthy foods like salad, high fiber stuff takes longer to digest and therefore is going to cause possibly more stomach distension or possibly minor bloating. That doesn't

mean that it's a bad thing at all. We just need to, really, I think, remove ourselves from this idea that if our bodies change after a meal or a couple hours after a meal, doesn't mean that we've done something wrong. And instead of reaching for the food that you think should fix it because it's healthy, ask yourself

what would satisfy me in this moment. I love that it makes me think of one of the things that I'm going to share next week when I go with most of things that I now no better along the lines of body checking and just you know, weighing yourself and the roller coaster ride that that can take you on. So yeah, I'll be unpacking some of that next Saturday. Lisa, I think this is a good idea. Hopefully it will

be helpful for y'all. Don't forget if you have any thoughts or your personal journey you would like to share with us. We're still going to continue, especially into sharing personal stories from you, so we would love to get them from you, and you can email us hello at Outweigh podcast dot com. I hope this was helpful, and I hope the next time you fall into one of these traps you're able to zoom out and see why it might be time to do things a little bit differently.

All right, You'll have a good day by