Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I won't let my body out be outwait everything that
I'm made, don't won't spend my life trying to change.
I'm learning love who I am, I get, I'm strong,
I feel free, I know everybody of me. It is
beautiful and that will always out way if you feel
(00:24):
it with your hands and be here, She'll some love
to the food. Why give the tay go day? And
did you and die out way?
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Happy Saturday?
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Outweigh It's leanne here and today I want to talk
about something that is going to hit home for a
lot of women who've been on the food and body
roller coaster for probably what feels like their entire adult life.
And so we're going to talk about intuitive eating and
why for so many of us it doesn't just work
the way it's supposed to. And I know that's a
bold statement, but stick with me because if you've tried
(00:58):
it or failed at it and ended up feeling more
broken than ever, then I really believe that you need
to hear this, because, let's be honest, intuitive eating is
often held up like the holy grail of post diet
or recovery life, and it promises freedom from rules and
from obsessing and from punishing your body, and it sounds
(01:18):
almost too good to be true, Like, just listen to
your body and honor its signals, and you know, like
they tout it as you know, no more counting and
no more guilt and no more shoulds. But what if
you've spent decades ignoring those signals or have no idea
what they feel like anymore, Because just think about it,
if you've been using food as a comfort blanket or
(01:39):
a stress ball, or a way to anesticize pain or anxiety,
then air quotes, listening to your body doesn't help much
when your body's not speaking in a language that you understand.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Your brain has been rewired to.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Reach for chocolate when you're lonely, or chips when you're panicked,
and bread when you're bored, and hunger and fullness cues
aren't just faint, they might be completely scrambled. And so
I've seen this play out with countless clients who come
to me, you know, tears in their eyes saying leanne
I tried intuitive eating like everyone said it would be
(02:15):
my savior, but I just ended up feeling more confused
and ashamed. And so let me tell you about one client.
Her name is Lisa, and she arrived at my virtual
doorstep after her fifth attempt at intuitive eating, and she'd
read all the books and listened to all the podcasts,
and she desperately wanted to trust her body and to
break free from the diet culture shackles. But every time
(02:38):
she got stressed about work or fought with her husband,
she found herself elbowed deep in a bag of eminem's
hardly you know the picture of intuition that she had
in her mind. And so Lisa said, I'm failing at
intuitive eating, which I thought was gonna finally be the
thing for me, Like there must be something wrong with
me if I can't even work withive eating, or if
(03:00):
that even that doesn't work. And my heart broke for her,
because that's the real tragedy here, Like women blame themselves
for not getting into an eating right, as if it's
this simple concept and they're just too defective to apply it.
But intuitiveating can't fix what's happening deep in your brain's wiring.
And Lisa didn't need more affirmations about body wisdom. She
(03:23):
needed to address the roots of her emotional responses and
the food seeking circuits that had been firing away in
her brain for years. And so this isn't just anecdotal.
The struggle isn't logical. And if it were logical, we'd
all just say like, oh, I'm not hungry, I won't eat,
or you know, i'm feeling sad, I'll just breathe through it.
(03:45):
But our brains don't operate that way under stress. And
so years of dieting and self loathing form neural loops
that tie emotions directly to food, and without tools that
directly address these loops, telling someone to just listen to
their hunger is like telling a person who's never driven
a car to just hop on a highway like it
(04:07):
is overwhelming, it's dangerous, and it sets them up to crash.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Right.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
And so I had another client, Joanne, who was convinced
that if she could just tune into her hunger cues,
intuitive eating would just suddenly click. And Joanne had spent
decades silencing her body signals.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
So she went from.
Speaker 4 (04:25):
Trying to silence them to try and to learn them,
and she.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
Was, you know, starving and binging and restricting herself again, right,
and her brain learned that genuine hunger cues were not
to be trusted or maybe even that they didn't matter,
Like she believed that hunger was the enemy and fullness
was a moving target that never got reached.
Speaker 4 (04:45):
So when I said Joanne, like, maybe intuitive eating isn't.
Speaker 3 (04:49):
What you actually need right now, tears actually welled up
in her eyes, like she got quiet on the other
side of the phone.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
And I asked her.
Speaker 4 (04:55):
I was like, what, what just came up for you?
Speaker 3 (04:58):
And She's just like, I feel so much relief because
for the first time, somebody gave me permission to step
back from this impossible standard. Right, that's how personal we
make this.
Speaker 4 (05:11):
And so here's the deal. Intuitive eating.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
It can be.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
Great for some people, right, but it's based on this
idea that you can interpret and honor your body's signals.
But if your brain is wired to solve emotional turmoil
with food, those signals are muddled.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
It's like trying to pick out a whisper from a
crowd of screaming voices.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
Like, you don't need to try harder at intuitive eating.
You need to quiet the crowd and rewire your brain
so that you're not in a constant state of stress
and shame or fear that prompts you to reach for
something edible as an escape patch. And so another thing
that we need to talk about is the emotional weight
(05:50):
that comes with failing at intuitiveating. And of course i'm
putting failing in air quotes right. And diets are one thing.
You know, they're restrictive, so that when you fail at them,
you sort of expect it. But intuitive eating is marketed
as kinder and more compassionate. So if you think you
fail at that, it feels like you're failing.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
At kindness itself or something right.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
It feels like failing at being a normal human who
can trust herself.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
And it can be kind of soul crushing.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
And one of my clients told me she literally goes
leanne I feel like a monster, Like I can't even
do the gentle approach, Like I must be beyond help. Right,
And that's the kind of despair that we're dealing with here,
like women thinking that they are beyond help because a
well meaning approach didn't address.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Their deeply rooted patterns.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
And so I just want to lovingly call bs on
that despair, like, you are not beyond help. Intuitive eating's
not flawed, it's just not the right tool for everyone
at every stage of healing and So if your brain
is yelling at you to eat or not to eat
because you're hungry or but because you're lonely, you're stressed,
or desperate for any kind of pleasure, no intuitive principle
(06:57):
is going to magically redirect that imput Like, you need
something that acknowledges the brain's role in emotional eating. And
so that might mean exploring brain rewiring techniques like learning
how to detect and soothe emotions before they reach the
point of no return, and identifying patterns that trigger over eating,
(07:18):
and learning how to be emotionally available to yourself without
involving food. And it's about unfiring those old neural paths
and just creating new ones. And this isn't just mindset work.
It is deeper, and it's not just therapy or positive thinking.
It's blending brain science with emotional healing and practical tools
(07:41):
that help you handle life's up and downs without punishing
yourself with food. Okay, And so I've guided so many
women through this journey, like Sarah who just comes to mind,
who she came to me after years of yo yo
dieting and one failed attempt at intuitive eating after another,
and she felt so much shame, like I can't even
do the nice, you know, non diet approach, do I remember,
(08:02):
She'd say, like, this is supposed to be non dieting,
and I can't even do the non dieting thing. But
once we started addressing her brains wiring, everything changed, and
instead of trying to listen for hunger cues that had
long been buried, like she really buried them deep, we
focus on recognizing emotional.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Triggers and giving her alternatives.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
So in her case, and again this is like beyond
the scope of this conversation because it's easy. It sounds
easier said than done. There's beliefs that had to get unraveled.
We had to walk through this. But then after that,
it's like, Okay, what do.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
I really need when I'm stressed? Right?
Speaker 3 (08:34):
What do I really need when I'm feeling anxiety? What
do I really need when I get off the phone
with my mom? And I had a big fight with her?
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Right?
Speaker 3 (08:41):
And so it's like recognizing those emotional triggers, giving alternatives
so that you're able to release that tension without eating
your feelings away.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Right.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
And so within weeks she noticed that she wasn't diving
into the fridge every time stress hit, and in time
her body cues got quieter and calm, and she could
finally sense hunger and fullness, And not because she, you know,
mastered intuitive eating, but because she healed what was blocking it.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
Right.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
And so if you've been telling yourself that intuitive eating
isn't working because you lack discipline or you're too broken,
please please please, I am just inviting you to stop
telling yourself that, like, you are so not broken.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Your brain just has.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
It's been through a lot, right, and it learned to
protect you with food, and so thank it for doing
it's best to keep you alive and saying all these ears.
But now you know it's time to teach it a
new language, like a language that you know starts with
identifying why you eat and when you're not hungry, and
why you feel safer with a spoon or a fork
(09:45):
in your hand than with a feeling in your heart.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Right, So what do you do now?
Speaker 3 (09:50):
Well, start by acknowledging that intuitive eating alone isn't gonna
be the magic bullet. And it's okay to feel disappointed
in that, like maybe even angry.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
I know I was that this gentle.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
Approach didn't give you freedom right, but also let that
disappointment free you from the blame game, Like you're not
failing because you're lazier, hopeless, you're failing because the tool
doesn't match the complexity of the problem. And it's never
truly a failure. It's not failure with a capital F.
It's a short term setback, right. But I also want
you to consider that you might need actual brain centered strategies,
(10:24):
like tools that show you how to cope with sadness
without stacking, and tools that teach you how to dismantle
those old habits and build new neural pathways, like tools
that walk you through the messy middle of feeling real
hunger and real fullness for the first time in years,
and so over time, with these strategies, you might find
(10:45):
that intuitive eating principles are actually more accessible to you
after you've healed the real problem because the static in
your head will have cleared. And so this process takes
patience and courage and often guidance. And maybe it's a
coach who understands the brain body emotion triad, or maybe
it's a support community or a more specialized type of
(11:07):
therapy or program that doesn't just say trust your body
but like teaches you how to trust it.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
By first rewiring your brain.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
And remember, you're not wrong for wanting this, Like it's
noble to want peace with food and to trust yourself.
But peace might not come from intuition alone. It might
come from understanding and reshaping your brain's blueprint. And that's okay, Like,
let this be your permission, slip, to step off the
path that's been making you feel broken and onto one
(11:37):
that acknowledges how complex and beautifully human you are. Like
you deserve a solution that fits your reality, not a reality.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
That you wish you had. So thank you for listening.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
I hope that this message frees you from the chains
of self blame and just inspires you to explore deeper,
more brain centric solutions. And you know, intuitive eating might
not be your goal ticket right now, but that is
not a failure, Like it's just a clue that what
you need is some different tools and the journey to
peace and freedom with food and your body. It's still possible,
(12:11):
I promise you, and it starts with honoring your truth,
not just your hunger.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
Okay, So that's.
Speaker 4 (12:17):
It for today, ladies.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
I hope you really got something valuable out of today,
even if it's really just a reminder that you're not
broken or a lost cause, and you are certainly not
alone in your struggles. Well, that in itself would make
me very happy. And if you want to learn more
about how I teach my own clients to turn off
the part of their brain that's obsessed with food and
start wiring their brain so that they can work with
(12:40):
it rather than against it, then head on over to
stressless Eating dot com and I've literally peeled back the
curtain and walked you through the exact strategy that I
teach my clients to do that, so you can access
that over at stresslesseating dot com. So thanks for listening
and we'll be back with more Outweigh next week.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Bye.