Unlearning Diet Stuff: The Real Secret To Lasting Change

Now I'm sharing what I know with you fitness , nutrition and all the deeper stuff to help you discover your strongest body . Hello , hello , welcome back to another episode of your Strongest Body , excited to chat with you today .

Today we are talking about nutrition changes and how it can feel like it will take a long time for your mindset about nutrition to change , why it feels like it takes so long , why it's so hard to let go of certain ideas about food good foods , bad foods , how much food , what role food and nutrition plays in our life and I was inspired for this one and this

isn't sometimes I'll have like a tactical list . Today is more thoughts , thoughts on this and some questions to ask yourself .

I was inspired by a client I currently have in my Built Bodies program and I didn't ask her if I could share her name , so I'm just going to talk about what she's been mentioning to me , and regularly she's talking about all the ways that she's learning about nutrition and how it kind of flies in the face of what she's learned or adopted before now .

And she keeps saying I know it'll just take time for me to wrap my brain around this , because this is how I usually think , and I think that is such an astute observation that , like , what you're experiencing is not wrong , it's an obstacle , but it's an obstacle of just unlearning and there is no apology necessary for your current state or your current perspective

on nutrition , because we are bombarded with this kind of information from a young age and from lots of different areas in our life . We get mixed signals . We get morality mixed in with food , we get morality mixed in with exercise and bodies . We get different people's perspectives and then we get the ideas that have at some point helped us .

You know sometimes our misconceptions . At some point they helped us reach a result , so of course we sort of adopted them and we held on to them .

Some of the things that she's been mentioning have just been about sort of like oh , I struggle with the snacking part and what foods go in the snack category , or I struggle with the eating enough , because I used to sort of think about calories in this way and I used to save up my food or my calories for these other kinds of meals .

And just she's acknowledging she's been acknowledging that mental hurdle less the logistics of planning your food and less the logistics of figuring out what to eat , but the sort of mental hurdles that stand in the way sometimes of adopting new behaviors , particularly around nutrition .

And I think that is such an incredible observation and , if anything , I hope she leaves the program . Even if those new behaviors and new strategies and new thoughts around nutrition aren't on autopilot yet , there's at least an amount of comfortability with them and at least an awareness around when you fall into those old thought patterns .

Why are you falling into those and how do we sort of turn and navigate out of them ? And it made me think about my own experiences with nutrition and something that I will always think about . I saw a video recently that just started with for the girls who skipped meals in high school how is getting your protein in now going Like a little video .

And until that moment I had forgotten sort of all about how I sat at this lunch table in high school and the girls at the lunch table were sort of always bargaining with how little they could get away with eating that day , how little could they eat in order to feel satisfied enough or even just enough energy to get through the day .

It was kind of the contest , the contest of who can eat the least . And I have to say for me in general I was not that kid and I often got made fun of at school because I brought sort of like not that kid and I often got made fun of at school because I brought sort of like quote unquote the least healthy foods . And I didn't really ever have .

I was never sort of like shy about being a kid that liked to eat . Now , later , I probably developed that at some point .

Or you know , I certainly experienced times in which I was trying to restrict my food intake , but it wasn't in high school and I at the time , in high school , sitting with these young women who were like actively trying to eat the least , I kept thinking like , wow , this is wild , this is like a wild thing .

But maybe this is what being a young woman is , and they were very popular young women , and so my ideas , I think , at that point , of like oh , to be a quote unquote hot girl you try not to eat food and I think it certainly sat with me funny at the time but maybe colored my ideas of eating for later in life .

And I think about those women now and I think about , like , how do they feel about food now ? I'd be really interested to ask them . I'd be really interested to ask if they still feel that need to eat less and if they don't , what kind of unlearning did they have to do ? But you experience this in lots of ways .

I mean many women drank SlimFast for years and years and years . Or the popularity of Weight Watchers , and that is still a system that people use and they find results with it . But there are all these sorts of underlying tools for nutrition , that sort of prize eating less over everything .

And we know that if we want to lose body fat we do have to get into a calorie deficit . But we can do that without prioritizing or championing eating less or eating the least amount .

We can actually think about how can I get in that deficit while eating the most food I possibly can and the most nutrient-dense food I can and the most supportive for my training I can , the idea of like I want to be eating as much as I possibly can is another big switch and probably not very common for many women and I didn't grow up as a man so I

certainly do not understand or have the lived experience of like knowing what those pressures are like .

But for women at least my experience has been there has been a real prize achievement , attachment to the idea of eating as little as possible , eating as little as possible , and I've told stories of like eating as little as possible , and I've told stories of being in college and eating those 100 calorie packs .

Or I was in dance and some of the most negative memories of my body and my life come from moments where there was a lot of pressure to not eat and it never gelled with me but I certainly succumbed to it in some cases and I had to learn and relearn the ideas .

I had to learn how to eat more or eat more of the foods that were going to nurture me , and I had to kind of come around to the idea that if I want to train hard and I still want to change my body or something , that enough food is required , that enough food is required and that there are these certain random things we attach meaning or value to .

We attach value to fasting For some people that might be the right choice and for some people it's not the right choice . Or we attach value to skipping dessert or only eating the vegetables at a party , and in some circumstances that might be the best choice for you , but it's not always the best choice .

Sort of rethinking about nutrition is a hard thing to do and it's very hard to recognize how deeply rooted all these beliefs are and how you don't even remember where they came from . You don't even remember why you don't eat this food , like why don't I eat this ? Oh well , somebody told me it wasn't like good for me . At that point .

I remember a few years ago it was probably like I don't know 2010 or something where the New York Times came out with an article that said egg yolks are okay . And I remember I trained a lot of clients on the Upper West Side of New York and they were like what are they talking about ? The New York Times came out with the egg yolks .

I don't eat egg yolks . I haven't eaten egg yolks in years and I just thought , oh , that's so interesting . Your belief about this food has come from something that you probably don't even remember the origin of it , but you've adopted it .

You have said in your mind that this is a thing that we don't have , and then , when presented with new information , you're at sort of like a you know a little impasse , because you go I don't know if I can adopt that new information , and that new information takes time , and so maybe you can't have the egg yolks yet because you're stuck on it .

Whatever , that's okay . But realizing that any sort of like longitudinal nutrition success you have is going to be about adopting new ways of thinking and flexible ways of thinking and prioritizing your health along with your mood , along with your training , along with your goals . It's not as simple as I learned the stuff and now I do it .

I think that's what we end up feeling with nutrition . We just end up doing this . I learned it and now I do it , and now I never have to think about it again .

Food is something that has so much wrapped up in it , from a relational piece , a familial piece , a cultural piece , and then our whole deeply seated body image and health stuff , and so you don't just get over those feelings , you just kind of constantly have to nurture your relationship with food , like you nurture your relationship with people .

I had a really cool win the other day with a client who is a different client , who is tracking their macronutrients and tracking their calorie intake and has been doing it consistently . For the first time in kind of a long time , had a long time in their life being paleo , so they had some foods that were restricted .

They found some success for a long time with that paleo diet , but after a while it really graded on them from like a psychological perspective . They weren't seeing the physical changes that they wanted and it had really shifted the way they thought about food .

So we had to do some real focused work and pay attention to what it was like to reintroduce the amount of carbohydrates that they needed in order to be successful training and in order to have energy .

And it took a little while and that's a hard thing to get over because if you were paleo for I think it was something like you know , eight to 10 years you have really adopted that lifestyle and so something else is going to feel like it doesn't feel natural , like you're fighting against this new way of thinking , and so it did take a while and it took some

rethinking and it took some reassurance that , oh , are you sure this is okay for me to have this and to have this amount and everything ? And oh , I'm noticing that I have everything . And oh , I'm noticing that I have more energy and oh , I'm noticing that I'm looking forward to food more .

And then , in a super exciting way a super exciting way , she has both seen physical changes and results . So she has decreased body weight and body fat and has seen that . But then she mentioned to me .

She said I just want to say that I enjoyed making dinner the other night and I used to hate making dinner and I believe that my new relationship with food , my improved relationship with food because of this tracking , because of what I'm eating now , has made me actually enjoy cooking again . Oh my gosh , like what a win , what an absolute win .

But it doesn't happen overnight and a lot of these are like more mental hurdles than the actual physical hurdle . You can figure out how to eat enough protein . You can figure it out . What the hurdle is is mentally like do I want to eat these foods ? Do I feel like I'm eating too much ? I used to not have that kind of food .

Is it okay for me to have it . I need to wrap my brain around snacks being . It's okay if it's a little bit more food than I'm used to . All of these things tend to be .

They're not only mental hurdles , but a lot of it is unlearning the stuff we learned before and being willing and able to learn new things still , because I say that too , like I have a nutrition philosophy and a system that works really well right now .

I believe , as a coach and someone who is certified in nutrition coaching and in strength coaching , if I get new information and we have to change what we're doing because we have better information , then I have to be willing and able to adapt .

It might be hard and it might take time , but I got to be willing and able to adapt and that's what you're doing with nutrition changes . So , if you're feeling like you're really struggling , if you're feeling like why is this so hard for me ? Why is nutrition change so hard for me , I want you to take a step back .

I want you to be gentle with yourself , give yourself a moment of kindness and then say a lot of this is unlearning , and unlearning takes a lot of time . Unlearning and relearning takes a lot of time and we have to let go of long-held beliefs . We've got to adopt new ones , and there's so much wrapped up in that .

So just realize that the habits might be easy , but the thinking about it , the bigger picture , the mental adjustment and the long-held ideas about food and your body , those are going to take a little bit more time to change . So be kind to yourself . Okay , that's my message for you today .

If you have any questions about this , you want to talk about it more ? I would love to . As always , you can email me , betsy , at BeFosterStrongcom . That's the letter , befosterstrongcom . Or you can send me an Instagram DM at Foster underscore strength . As always , I am so grateful that you would listen .

Feel free to leave a rating or review , feel free to share , feel free to say hi to me and until next time , go build your strongest body . I'll talk to you later . Bye .