Head Hunger Vs. True Physical Hunger. Nutrition For Hypothyroidism (Under-active Thyroids). Achieving the Right Fat Balance for Your Meals.

instead are you eating with your head? Today we discuss head versus hunger based eating and how to get a little more in touch with your true physical hunger and formless cues to help aid the self regulation of food intake and support weight control. Hi, I'm Leanne.

And now so much of our content is about shooting food all day, so I literally have not been able to shoot for months, which has been really challenging. So my new house has a walk in pantry that I'm going to deck out like one of those Instagram pantrees. I'm getting your appliances, I'm getting a good fridge, and I am just going to be in kitchen heaven as a dietician who can shoot food. So how many weeks

have I got to go? Five weeks home? And it's also a very large home, which means that when you guys come up, there'll be plenty of room for you and David and me to stay so we can party on in Sydney. So it's very exciting time. I've been waiting a very long time for this.

at all random times. But also there's huge amounts of food available, like I compared, I think I've compared with this before, where if we think back to our grandparents or even great grandparents, now they started the day with a small bottle of cereal, a small sandwich at lunch, and a couple of chops and veggies for dinner. Like we literally eat up to double those calories just with

the amount of food that's available. But the reason I wanted to talk about this so much was there's a couple of key cues that I get from clients that really reminded me this was a great topic to talk through it as soon as I mentioned them, I'm sure you will also have a couple of examples that spring

to mind. So when I first set it cliently and I will get an idea of their lifestyle and the way they like to eat and their goals, and then I will design a meal plan specific for them with a range of different meal options and snack options that fit the macro and calorie profile that I am prescribing them, So it's not a diet per se. It's more ideas on structure and balance through the day to achieve the goal,

which in many cases is weight loss. But what I find is I have clients who'll come to me and they'll say or they'll follow the meal plan as I've written it every single day. So I'll get their food diaries back and it will be every single day exactly as I've put it. And when I'll say to them something along the lines of oh are you hungry or did you feel like that, they were like, oh, well, it was on the plan, So they're eating certainly according to a sheet of paper or in the case of

giving a macro prescription. So another example is that people will say how many calories do I need? How many grams of carbs and protein per meal, and then they'll track it in my fitness Pal and be eating according to that, regardless of what they feel like eating or volumes. Even if they don't feel like the full twelve hundred or sixteen hundred calories, delete them and then the other example I have is that my clients will send me a picture of a menu they're going out for dinner

and they'll say what should I eat? And I'll say, I don't know, what do you feel like? I feel like yeah, because and it's a difficult concept when you've lost trust with your natural signals, physiological signals and are not confident in making those decisions. And this is this kind of area that's really difficult to define. But certainly there are targets in terms of rough calorie loads, rough protein and carbohydrate goals, but every single day is different hormonally,

activity wise, age. You know, there'll be some days that you may only eat six hundred calories and there'll be other days you might eat sixteen hundred and still achieve weight loss if you listen to your body within reason. So there's an art to it, but the art is to always be checking in to say what do I feel like eating? Do I actually even feel like eating? My meal plan might say morning tea, but actually, if you don't need it, you don't have to shove it in.

So you've got to always go back to what your body is telling you, and then when it's time for a meal or snack, just make sure that's balanced. Because it's not an exact science at all. Is it. You know, there's huge inaccuracy with calorie outputs with the numbers we put into my fitness power. So it's all just rough examples. And you know, one of the issues I guess and where the intuitive eating group fit into this is my observation is if you eat food or meals or snacks

that you actually don't feel like. So, for example, you may have on a meal plan or a suggested snack is a nutbar or a cheese and crackers. Now if it gets to three or four o'clock in the afternoon and you actually don't feel like a cheese and crackers, but you eat it because that's what it's said on your plan, You'll keep eating until you actually satisfy what

you're looking for. So, sure, you can use meal plans as ideas and guides, but it's also really important to always check in with self and say, actually, what do I feel like eating, because otherwise you won't be satisfied. And when you're not satisfied, that's what drives that seeking of food irrespective of hunger. And that's why when you are going to a special occasion a restaurant, my first feedback to my clients is actually what do you feel like,

and then adjust it to fit. So if you really feel like a pastaf, well that's the time to have it. But if you fall after three mouthfuls because you're not used to having food, you can put it away and take it home and make sure you have vegetable sides, you know, and do it that way. But it's a real trust and it takes a lot of work with clients to work through that, and often anxiety almost because

people are almost scared of skipping a meal. But yeah, I think it's a good question to sort of reflect on after you've listened to this. Am I eating according to my head? What my head's telling me to have as opposed to what my body's feeling like and the times that it's actually really feeling like eating.

So if we eat with our head, we're always likely to choose the more soul foody type option and overeat it because we're eating for an emotional response, versus if we eat with our tummy, or we say what does my body actually need? I always say to my clients, Susie, fill up on whole foods first, and then have the soul food after. So fill up on what your body needs, and then give your head or your soul what it

feels like afterwards. And I think it's a really good question that you ask when you go to a cafe, because too often clients will send us some menu and say, what's the lowest calorie option here? And you're right, we can have anything on the menu as long as we're making other changes or swaps throughout the rest of our day or maybe even throughout the rest of the week, depending on how heavy that meal might be. As long as we can make small changes in other areas, we

can kind of make anything fit. We don't always have to have the healthiers option on the menu. If the goal is weight loss, even if the goal is general health. It's okay to have some pizza, it's okay to have some pasta, but trying our best to balance those meals. And as you said, the serving sizes at restaurants are so enormous that often we leave feeling pretty unwell and

just bloated and overfull. And even I just get a lot of that brain fog if I tend to over eat, particularly the next day, it's not a very nice feeling. So honoring that hunger and yes, my body feels like some pasta, that's exactly what I want right now. Great, but my body will feel better by adding some vegetables or salad on the side, which we absolutely know. And then you get halfway through or three quarters through that pastor and you go, you know what, I'm actually starting

to fill up and feel a bit sluggish. I'm not actually sure if this pastor is serving me. Well, let me just take a pause and put down my foet can reassess how I'm actually feeling. So you're right, there's a whole element of trust to that, and for some of us, if we haven't really been in tune with our hunger, fullness cues for many years, you know, perhaps even ten plus years. We can't expect this to be

something that happens overnight. We can't expect us to go to a restaurant to be able to honor our hunger, put our walk down after we've eaten seventy five percent of the meal and say that's right, I'm done, I feel satisfied. This is going to take some time, and for many of my clients, Susie, it's months, if not, you know, six to twelve months of hard work to really tune into our body and naturally get in tune

with those hunger signals again. Particularly feel somebody that's been doing you know, it's something like into and fasting for a really long time, where you just may never feel hungry at breakfast. You might really not feel hungry at all, and then used to having a large calorie intake throughout the night. If you're trying to regulate more your hunger and space those meals out throughout the day, which you know is good for a lot of sort of hormonal women.

That's sort of a good strategy to do. It might be really hard to wake up and go. We'll have to wait till I'm hungry to actually eat. For some of us, it might be better to eat on the clock to begin with, which then helps kind of, I don't know, reset a metabolism and just give our body a bit of that boost and energy in the morning, and then over time you'll actually start to wake up

feeling hungry in the morning. So I think there's some good strategies if you're someone that I guess isn't in tune with their hunger, Yes, it's important to regularly to sometimes get those hunger signals back, but we also don't want to be eating too regularly or constantly snacking and grazing all morning or all day long, because that can really take us away from our goals and it just doesn't really ever give our gut or our digestion time to have a bit of a rest and properly digest

the food that we've had. So time between meals is absolutely important, but too long between meals can lead us into a whole other kind of range of issues as well, can't it true?

and one are teachers. Because teachers, morning tea is usually about eleven, and that's actually a time for them to eat lunch because the days early and busy, and the second lunch is too late. So I give them lunch at morning tea, and then I give them a second, lighter lunch later. But I'm arguing that I don't know if many of us really need morning tea because I find if I put something delicious there, you know, yogurt and granola, cheese and crackers, well who doesn't want to

eat those foods. So then you've had your breakfast and it's sort of ten thirty eleven, and you sort of think, oh, well, morning tea time. So I think another question, as you go away from this chat this today and really be thinking about am I eating on autoqu or I'm actually thinking about what I feel like and timing and prepared

to skip a meal if I'm not hungry. If you're a morning tea eater, unless you're up at the cracker door nexus sizing, or a surgeon so you'd come out of a surgery regularly at ten thirty eleven and are hungry, Or a teacher, I'm questioning if you really need that morning tea, and you're actually better to go through to early lunch, because my observation is that people have their breakfast and then a couple of hours later morning tea, which is usually sweet kind of food, so often a

milk based coffee that's sweet, some fruit, and then they don't have lunch till later, and then it drives appetitle afternoon. So I would prefer my clients in general to have an early lunch, even eleven twelve, and then afternoon tea and go to four meals per day rather than five, because I don't know, unless you're little or a teenager, or as I set a teacher with that very early sort of day, I don't know. If I'm a big

fan of morning tea. I don't eat morning tea. You know, I have my coffee and breakfast and then I'm really good until eleven twelve, you know, so I'm questioning if we really need that one Lanne, Is that harsh? No, I think it's a fair point, And I think do you eat morning tea?

coffee outside of meals and other reasons. It just kind of keeps them going, like just that, you know, one hundred hundred and fifty calories at morning tea is enough just in a coffee based form to get them through to lunch. So we're not actually eating, but we are taking in some calories at morning tea. Yeah.

can you cut back a little bit? Would you be okay with a piccolo coffee and a punea of berries or a mandarin rather than a more substantial snack that might be better placed in the afternoon.

left for the hospital battle traffic. I used to live forty five minutes away in traffic was about an hour drive. When I lived on the North Side, had to come over to the South Side. At the hospital, I would have to eat breakfast at six am. I started work at seven seven thirty, and then basically by like nine am, I was like, crap, I'm hungry.

for some people can be a good strategy. For other people, it might fell disaster if it means that they're so hungry that they then overeat. But I had one last example. I really wanted people to think about Susie when it comes to hunger, particularly for our females, and it's period week or leading into period week, because we talk about hunger a lot. We talk about why can we cut down? Are we eating too much? But are we eating enough?

When it comes to that period week, So most females who get their cycle will have one, two, three days of bottomless pit hunger. And most of my clients say this to me. They're like, oh my god, I could not eat enough right now. I could eat off my arm. I'm that hungry. It's important to honor that hunger because when you're mens reading, your body is actually burning more calories. For most of us, it could be one hundred, one

hundred and fifty extra calories. That's what the research actually shows, and so it's important to honor that hunger, to have an extra snack, maybe two, maybe three if that's what we need, but knowing that that bottomless pit tube of hunger doesn't last forever. Normally, once the cycle actually hits, it's day one, day two of the period, the hunger drops right off. But a lot of people use that three four five days of their period almost like an

excuse to just eat more. But generally the hunger is actually the week before or a few days before for most people the period actually hits. So it's important to

honor the hunger than when it's really there. It's okay if you're eating a lot more on those few days, and then you can back off once a cycle actually hits and you find that if you're really tuning in and listening to that proper hunger, you're probably not as hungry as what you thought you were or what you've previously eaten, because a lot of us, I think, are just eaten for the whole Poor me, I've got my period.

I deserve a bit of a treat kind of thought process versus I'm actually physically hungry and physically need more food during this time. So I think it's important to honor the hunger when it's fair and to back off a little bit and recognize is this more of the head hunger or do I physically need more food right now? Or am I eating to make myself feel a little bit better. A little bit of a food for thought for our listeners at home.

lean for our client case study today. This is a topic that we have had several requests for and I know a little bit, but it's certainly not my Arab expertise, but It was sent to us fight Instagram this time, and it was questioning what is the right diet for thyroid dysfunction or specifically hyper thyroidism, which is a surprisingly common issue in Australia, and one of the theories behind that is because our particularly low ID levels is in our soil, which is one of the reasons that we

generally recommend iodie AsSalt for people, particularly to found the history of thiroidysfunction and still a really pertinent issue in pregnancy that can have profound effects on neurological development and children, So really worth keeping an eye and particularly if you're feeling tired and a little bit sluggish. So I think a lot of people will be very interested in this and how do you eat to protect and manage your thyroid, particularly if you are on medication.

period of time. I've had clients who've said, God, I thought I had cancel and it turns out they just had an overactive thyroid. And if you have anyone who's sort of losing weight, you know without really meaning to, or you've got these like heart palpitations, sweating that sort of thing, I mean, those to me would signal, you know, cardiac issues that absolutely either go to the hospital at least,

at the very least see your doctor. But if things don't feel right, it's absolutely a case just a quick reminder for oalysis at home to go and get some bloods, to go and chat to your doctor and figure out if there's something going on. But the thorad is one of those glands that actually plays a huge role in our metabolism. So alongside inchulin and cortisol, our thyroid hormones are the driving factor behind weight loss and also behind

how our sort of metabolism works. So for a lot of people, if you have issues with your thioid, if it's under active, it's not working properly, it can in fact impact on weight loss and your metabolism. But I think it's important to note that food and diet alone cannot cure or independently treat a diagnosis of a poorly functioning thyroid. So if you have a diagnose from your doctor or your doctor says to you you've got an issue with your thiroid, you need to take some medication.

Please do not go online read some natural health blogs and think that you can cure all with food. There is absolutely a place for modern medicine and absolutely a place for good nourishing nutrition. But guess what, guys, those things can work together. They do not have to work in isolation. So if we have an underactive thyroid or what is called hypertherroidism, I dine, as you mentioned, Zuzie, is something that I would be thinking about. So it's

an essential trace element. Basically we all need it, but it's really important because our thyroid gland actually requires this id and to produce the thyroid hormones in order to work efficiently. So for that reason, basically, deficiency and IDNE can actually lead to an underactive thoroid. So we're not

eating enough throughout diet. And as you said, Zuzie, there are I dine rich foods you can get it riched in salt, things like navy beans, potatoes, eggs, cow's milk, so you know, if you're vegan, obviously that counts out eggs and cows milk. So really just looking at the quality of your diet overall and actually if you're getting in enough iyodne. But it is important to note that there is a specific type of thyroid condition called Hashimoto's thyroiditis.

If you have that condition, I wouldn't be automatically bumping up your IDNE intake. I definitely would be speaking to your doctor because in that particular type of condition, it may basically irritate your THIROI it might not be a great thing. So it's not a one size fits all when it comes to thyroid conditions today on the body, we're really talking about that hypotheridism or where the thyroid

is just underactive and it's not working as much as possible. Now, the second nutrient I want you guys to be aware of is selenium. So there's a lot of I guess talk online within the thyroid community that supplementing with selenium is just basically going to be a great thing.

selenium supplements with hypertherroidism. So the easiest way to get selenium into the diet is with you know, to Brazil not a day, most of us will get pretty close to our requirements of selenium, but that's actually not something that has a whole lot of evidence based to it. I'm not saying that brazil not's unhealthy. I'm not saying that we need the lenium in the diet, but unfortunately, just supplementing with that is not going to reverse or

automatically improve your thiroid issues. So those two nutrients I think are really important. And then I think, of course a lot of people have heard, well, your carsiferous vegetables, you know, you can't eat them when you have an undirected thirog You have to stay right away from them. This again is more it's not a myth as such, but I think it's been really kind of played up

over time for whatever reason. So if you have an undirective thiroid, your carciferous vegetables may potentially inhibit your thiroid production. But and this is a big SUSI this is only the case if you have an IDIE deficiency or if you consume ridiculously large quantities of these vegetables in raw amounts.

So our vegetables from those Christopher's family, I'm talking broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, bock choy, cabbage, kale, those types of vegetables in those families, they're actually better tolerated by your thyroid when you cook them, So I would largely avoid eating too many of them raw. Cooking them really well, and it actually breaks down those compounds in there that can, you know, play with their thoroid. So it's not just say you need to avoid all of these wonderful you know,

some people know them as a nutchet type vegetables. They're really healthy for you. They do wonderful things for our health. But I would actually just be not limiting the amount, but being cautious not having them. You know, just those vegetables in a meal every single day and absolutely cooking the large majority of them, So they're probably the three biggest nutrients or foods I would think about FRO an

underactive thiroid Susie. And that probably brings us to the point of the question or the case that we were looking at, was is there a particular thyroid diet for weight loss? So basically the large answer is no. If you have an undirected thorroid, you're right, it can make losing weight extremely difficult.

need to use medication to correct the thyroid first. Then once your th hormones are within the correct levels that they should be. Guess what, guys, you can lose weight just like anybody else. Let me say that one more time, Susie. If your thiroid levels are within range, you can lose weight just like anybody else. The amount of times both you and I, Susie, have heard I have a thioid condition,

I can't lose weight, that is simply not true. Yes, it's true if your levels are not within range, if you've just been diagnosed and your doctor says to you or we need to play with your medications, you need to start you on this. We'll recheck your levels within a couple of weeks. Yes, that may be true. But the first thing I say to client Susan when they say I can't lose weight I have a thyroid condition, I say, when was the last time the doctor changed

or check your medication? They go, Oh, it doesn't need checking, it's been normal for years. You're just using that as an excuse. Once your thyroid hormone levels are within range, your theiroid is functioning just like anybody else's. You do not have anything wrong with it anymore. Sure, you might need medication to keep it within range, but if it's within range, it's functioning well. It's functioning healthy, just like anybody else's. So that's the take home message today, Susie.

Work with your doctor to stabilize your thyroid levels, make sure that you're eating all the right nutrients in terms of a good quality dot you're doing all the right things for weight loss, and you will actually lose weight over time. If you're not losing weight, it is not because of your thyroid is because of something that you're doing nutrition, exercise, or lifestyle wise.

So whether it's the gluten or just the foods you eliminate on a gluten free diet, you know, there's no harm in swapping potentially to you know, some whole grain corn crackers for a while, or a gluten free cereal to see. The evidence is mixed. You know there's no result from a gluten free diet and benefiting the thyroid, but certainly if you anecdotically feel better, or if it's an easy way to clean up your diet away from processed food because it now actually improves the profile of

carbohydrates in your baseline diet. But it's not something we routinely recommend unless you know someone is preferring that because

the evidence is mixed at this stage. But in general, gluten free diets if they're followed well and can be pretty clean sort of anti inflammatory diets, but on the whole eliminating any type of refined carbohydrate and processed snack foods, so things like biscuits and process white bread and things, and so you still better to avoid the gluten free varieties of those, but in a purest form, if it does make you feel better and you're still ticking the

box on the central nutrients like your B group vitamins, certainly can give it a go. Even though it's not our first port of call, I.

those how you feel individually. So that brings us to the listener question of the wick, which a listener would like to know. How do we know if we're getting enough good fat or bad fat? What is the right mix of this? So how do I actually how can I tell?

a matter of counting. So as a very brief summary, we have our process fats, so things like our palm oil and our saturated fats in dairy and meat and

processed food. Basically they drown out and the diet the good fats, and the good fats can be a mix of monofats which are mono and saturated in extra version, olive oil, almonds, peanuts, avocado, so the dominant foods in the diet that give us those, and then we have our poly unsaturated fats, which is processed vegetable oil, but also those long chain beautiful amiga threes that we find in foods like lin seeds, pumpkin seeds, and of course

walnuts and oily fish like salmon and sardines. So, as a general rule of thumb, most people get too much processed fat because we eat add a lot and like our meat and dairy, and we get loads of monos from our avo and our almonds and our peanuts, and then they drown out these beautiful amiga threes. So what I get my clients to count. First of all, I try and get them to choose the leanus meat and

dairy possible, and obviously avoid palm oil wherever possible. Next, I say they've got three or four good fats a day to play with, so that can be avocado, about a quarter tablespoon of extraversion olive oil. I don't usually count that for cooking. That's more the dressings. For example, a serve of cheese, but that's not really a good fat, and then ideally some oily fish, and then some nuts and seeds, a serve of which is about ten fifteen

nuts or about a tablespoon of seeds. So a couple of easy ways to do it land, and you may have some different ways. I'll say to clients, add an extra fat per meal. So for example, at breakfast you might add avocado, you then wouldn't use it again through the day, Or you might use an extra version olive oil dressing. Well, I wouldn't then add nuts and avocado to a salad, so each meal you've roughly got one.

And then I don't really use the extraversion olive oil in cooking, and I don't really count that because it's usually sort of sealing a pan, or it's not really oil that we consume the entire amount of and of

course trying to look for ways that are a leaner. Anyway, you might cook your fish on baking paper, So I like my clients to have oily fish at least three four times a week if they can, and then sort of three four others a day, which might be nuts and seeds or avocado, and you can choose one per meal and that roughly gives you three or four is my sort of rough guide. But you're right, it is confusing, but it is also really easy to have way too much when it comes to of a weight loss perspective.

But if you're aiming for weight gain, having more healthy fats is actually a really good thing. And sometimes what I would say, like if you're confused about if you're getting the right mix of good or bad fats, go get your cholesterol checked. You're gonna look at your overall triglycerides, which is really important. Plus you're going to see your levels of HDL and LDL as well, so you can know your ratio of the low density with low density

lipoproteins and high density liperproteins. You'll like those more good fats and more bad fats. So I think that's a really easy way if you're going to get some blood tests anyway, and let's be honest, in the middle of winter, what's the recess. He's about thirty percent of us a deficient vitamin D, so many females are deficient in iron.

are in range. Because I can't tell you, Susie, the amount of quote unquote healthy twenty five year old thirty year olds that I've sent to the GP just to get some baseline blood and their cholesterols come back elevated. Shock them, like shocked them. Then we actually look at the quality of the diet. They think that they're not eating too badly, but as you said, we're not getting

anywhere near the quality of good fats in. We're having far too many bad fats, not just from soul foods, but in those little things that slip in, like the biscuits in the office, the chocolates in the office, the meals out. The alcohol contributes to triglyceride levels as well, and so it's a lot an old person thing to have, Like cholesterol, we're seeing it more and more and more on our clinic in a lot of our younger people, particularly when you're eating out a lot, you've got high

stress jobs. There's a lot of wining and dining clients and that sort of thing.

You know, one added fat per meal, and nuts and are good fat, but they count as a fat, as do seeds, and cheese is more fat than protein. I'm sorry to say, very sad to end on that note.

to say. And to end on that happiness that brings us to the end of the Nutrition Couch for another Sunday, So if you haven't done so already, please subscribe to the podcast. We will be automatically delivered in your inbox every Sunday and Wednesday for our product with you, and don't forget to join us for our fabulous live events

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