Healthy Huddle: Rebuilding Food Trust

We challenge the belief that food has power over us and show how years of restriction erode trust, create louder cravings, and lead to guilt. We share simple tools to rebuild confidence through consistent meals, neutral language, and small, intentional wins.

• why diet rules damage self-trust
• how food noise grows from restriction
• the restrict overeat guilt cycle explained
• using consistent meals to calm cravings
• shifting from good bad to everyday sometimes
• allowing small portions to reduce urgency
• dropping punishment and resetting next meal
• identity shift through repeated small wins
• weekly challenge to practice intentional choice

“Just remember that trust isn’t built through control, it is built through consistency.”

https://aarondegler.com/

Transcript

Welcome And Focus On Balance

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Healthy Huddle. Thank you so much for taking time to join us. Each week we just get together to talk about, discuss a different nutrition topic. Really, our focus is to create a balanced life when it comes to food, not to extreme diet either way, not to diet at all, but to have a balanced life and how do we uh incorporate nutrition in that balanced life? And each week we just join our live call to have a different conversation about a different topic each week. So let's join our live call. So we'll get started. Have you ever what if somebody always told you you weren't worth much? All the time, how would you feel? You believe it. You weren't worth much. What if every time they saw you, they either said, You are so scrawny or you are so puffy. Either way, after an amount of time, how would you feel?

SPEAKER_02 0:54

Not good.

Recognizing Food Voices And Self-Talk

SPEAKER_00 0:55

Not good. And really, probably however they said, you think I'm, you know, always puffy, always and too skinny. And so it would cause a lot of issues, just like if somebody you constantly heard you're not good enough, you would start to feel that way. Nothing I do is right because we look for all those things that drive us more towards that thing. So we are going to talk about how has years of the diet culture done that to us. It has really, if you think about it, all the years over the decades, a lot of us are, all of us are in decades, and we've been around decades, probably been on a diet of some sort. And so, as what that has done is it's ruined our confidence with food. It's no different than than somebody telling us all the time for decades, you can't do that, you're not smart enough, you're not strong enough, you can't handle that, you can't control yourself over and over and over again. Well, without any verbal words, food has done that to us over the decades. Has told us because we go into diets because we need to restrict, because certainly we must have a problem with it since we're having to restrict or not do it anymore. It must now be an issue. And so subconsciously, that is telling us that we have no control over it and we can't handle it, we can't do anything with it. So we're gonna talk about how do we how do we rebuild that confidence or how do we trust ourselves with food again? All those things that, all those foods that might be triggers. If you've ever said, I can't have that in my house, because I'll just eat it all. And so we don't have confidence about food because we think we can't handle being around it. Or if we've ever said, if I start, I won't ever stop, or just simply I have no self-control. And we've probably all from time to time been guilty of saying that. And it really is about we don't have confidence in ourselves that we can overcome that food, that thing. And the funny thing about it is does that food talk to us? Does it say, hey, hey, come on over here, just just take a little hit.

SPEAKER_02 3:21

Just that's what I hear.

SPEAKER_00 3:24

That that is what we hear, but yes, it talks to us.

SPEAKER_02 3:27

I'm like, it talks to me all day long in the cabinet.

SPEAKER_01 3:30

It calls my name.

SPEAKER_02 3:31

Yeah, hey, did you forget you stored me in here?

SPEAKER_00 3:34

Yeah, come get me. And then you pause for a second, you go, Oh, wait a minute, that's my voice talking about the talking to me about that whatever that is. But we do hear the voices that say, just just one more bite, just a little piece. Eat me, eat me, eat me. Eat me, yes, and but the food itself never speaks, it has it's inanimate, it doesn't do anything, yet it is so powerful. And it really is because of the years of the voices in our head about food, our food dialogue. That we have, I mean, we would get mad at somebody, and and one of your family members, if you were a friend with somebody, and they would always tell you, you're so dumb. Your family members go, Why are you friends with them? Because they're always telling you how dumb you are. But yet we tell ourselves all the time, you don't have any control, you can't do that. You you're just gonna eat it. You know you are, so just go ahead and do it. And we're mean to ourselves like that, but we let that slide. But that's what we've done for decades. Yet we're surprised that the chocolate cake speaks so loudly to us, or the piece of candy speaks so loudly to us. I mean, I I I'll have to admit, I think it was last night. Yes, it was last night. I might have a whole big bag of Reese's Easter eggs.

SPEAKER_02 5:08

Thank you, Recca.

A Small Win Builds Confidence

How Restriction Breaks Trust

SPEAKER_00 5:09

Thank you, Recca. They're in the freezer, and you know, so I they're out of sight, out of mind. But there was a couple in the door on the refrigerator door, so I opened it up, get my snack. I thought I'm a little extra hungry. And I act, and there was one left in the door. And I don't even know if Kim saw, maybe she did and she just didn't say anything. I didn't see this, but I I grabbed it, I picked it up because I thought I'm gonna have this with my snack, and I gave myself permission thinking. Well, you haven't had much to eat today. And I held it and I thought about all those things that you're giving yourself permission, that's permission thinking. You don't need that, you're not gonna notice the difference. Just put it back, and I put it right back in there and shut the refrigerator door. Because part of me thinking about this that we talked about on Tuesday and thinking about it today, thought, it doesn't have control over me. I'm the boss of me, and I'm the boss over that dumb piece of chocolate and peanut butter. So, I mean, I might have caressed it for just a second before I put it back in the refrigerator, and I look, might have looked at it longingly as I shut the refrigerator door, like give it the last look as the door was shutting, but I shut it and I didn't eat it. And so I took that as a really big win. But again, I kind of felt some confidence issues coming back from the decades of dieting that you can't have that and you can't handle yourself around some chocolate. And it was coming true, and I said, no, I can do that. And I put it back in. Now, will I be as strong today as I was yesterday? I don't know, but I sure am gonna try. I mean, it gave me a little bit more confidence that I can do it. I'm not saying I'm gonna be perfect, like I'll never do that again, but it was a win for yesterday. I mean, I'll think about that moment if I go to grab it again today, which now that I'm that I've told you all, I'll feel like a real pig if I went ahead and got it and I'd be eating it and feel bad while I was eating it, thinking I told them that I put it away and now I'm eating it. But it it really is, you know, our our struggle with food over the years is because the restriction, well, the restriction we've put on ourselves has broken how we trust ourselves around food. Because obviously, if we're on a diet, we're telling ourselves subconsciously, again, a lot of it is mental that subconsciously you can't handle food, so you're gonna have to be put on rations. And really that's what it is. I mean, think about, I mean, you go to prison, you get on rations. I mean, so we think I must have done something really bad because I got put on rations. Mine's milk might as well be bread and water. But that's what we've done to ourselves over time. And so we go, I can't trust myself around this food. So, you know, it it the dieting, how does that break our trust over the years? And think about the diet you've been on over the years. You ignore hunger. I'm so hungry, but I can't eat. My plant says I don't eat, can't eat till till 554. I can't eat till then. And then we ignore fullness, too full, not full enough. We look as labels as good versus bad, and that's it. Um we say this is a good label, this is a bad label. It's kind of like, you know, if we we wouldn't do that to people and say good or bad, but we do that to food labels. We delay eating, maybe we delay eating by eight hours because it's our intermittent fasting, because that's you know, that's what we're doing this month or today. And it's really just because we forgot to eat or didn't want to eat. And then diet teaches us we earn food. I've mentioned a lot of times when I was on Weight Watchers, Tuesday was weighing day.

SPEAKER_02 8:50

And it was fat-free fat-free Tuesday.

The Restrict Overeat Guilt Cycle

Choosing Balance Over Control

SPEAKER_00 8:52

It was see, Kim still remembers it was fat-free Tuesday. And really is what that meant is after I weighed in, Katie barred the door. It was it was whatever you wanted to eat. Usually I'd after all day long. It's like going to an AA meeting, hitting up the bar after you get done at the AA meeting. I I went, I went to Weight Watchers, weighed in, I got done my meeting and went to Sonic and got a breakfast burrito with Tater Tots and a Dr. Pepper. And that was my that was my ritual. And it was, you know, but then you'd have ding dongs at night. Then I would have ding-dongs at night, and she's not lying. I would have some sort of cupcake, something at night, and didn't really worry about logging my food or what I ate that day. Because I felt, again, I earned the food. I earned the right to do that. And that's what it's teaching has taught us, you know, even when we hear about cheat meals. If I do all good all week, I can really look forward to that cheap meal on Saturday. And we've talked about cheat meals that, you know, cheap means you're doing something bad. I mean, really, it's just part of the plan. But but really, diets have taught us that how to how do we earn food? It's like, you know, just like a dog, you know, if they do a trick, oh good boy, you earn a little treat. A diet teaches us no different. It it's no different. We're no different than the dog. And and so, really, over time, our body just stops trusting us. It goes, you know, you don't know what you're talking about. And our body responds is with louder hunger, it responds with stronger cravings, it responds with, you know, there's urgency around food. I gotta eat, I gotta eat. And so that feels like we've lost control, but it's really our body going, I don't trust you anymore. And so, and and we've all experienced cravings that we haven't got them. We just, you know, we keep pushing them down, we keep pushing them down. And then when they do come out, we do fulfill that craving, and we usually go overboard. So it creates a lot of problems. And then how our dieting or how our restrictive overeating cycle is, is we restrict. I mean, think about any diet you've been on. It doesn't matter what it is, it restricts food, then you have cravings because you took out of some of the stuff you were eating that you really liked, and then you succumb to that craving, you have overeat, and then you overeat, and then now you had guilt because you overeat, and now the guilt caused you to restrict food again, and then you start all over again. You have cravings, overeat, guilt, restrict. It goes over and over and over again. So, really, the more you we try to control food, the louder our body wants to fight with it. So, so you know, we're gonna talk about how do we how do we get back in control. And really is what we always talk about is the balance. And we and we try, we don't ever talk about a diet because really that is we want balance where we can do anything. I'm the boss of me. I can do what I want to do. And and when you decide, it's not that I can have it, I don't want it. Just like I mentioned the other night about getting after six years, having a Red Bull. And I'd been thinking about it for all those years. It never went away. Every time we stopped at a convenience store, I'd look and look longingly in the refrigeration case about how good it looked. And so finally, I told Kim, I said, I'm gonna, when we're going to road trip. Huh?

The Red Bull Test Of Autonomy

SPEAKER_01 12:32

I'm pulling the trigger.

SPEAKER_00 12:33

I'm pulling the trigger, I'm getting one. When we go on a road trip, I'm getting it. And and and so I did. And I got the sugar-free, got the big, you know, 12 ounce, the big 12 ouncer, because I thought I'm not getting a little eight ouncer. And I started drinking. I thought, eh, you know what? This isn't as great as I thought. It's not that, you know, it's not that big a deal. I mean, I drank all of it, but is what it helped me to decide was that I don't think I'll ever get a Red Bull again. I I drank it and it kind of left a funny taste in my mouth. I really didn't care for it. I mean, it didn't, it didn't bring back the feeling or the emotion that it did when I first when I was drinking them. And so now I feel like, hey, I can walk past that that cooler and go, yeah, I don't really like them anymore. I have control over that. I have control, and it doesn't have control over me. So that's kind of taking back some control. It's not saying I can't have it. I've just now, after that, realized I don't want it. It's not something that tantalizes my taste buds anymore.

SPEAKER_02 13:42

So there's not like the egg. Not like the Reese's egg.

Signs You Don’t Trust Yourself With Food

Eat Consistently To Calm Cravings

SPEAKER_00 13:46

Not like the Reese's egg. The Reese's egg tantalizes my taste buds big time. It's a real challenge. So, yeah, I mean, you can think about that when you eat. Does it tantalize my taste buds, or am I just eating it? And so then when we when we talk about what are some signs that we don't really trust ourselves, some of them are trying to eat perfect during the day. How many times do you try to eat perfect during the day and then you maybe eat overnight? Overeat at night, not eat overnight, but overeat at night. Or you try to avoid trigger foods completely. That's like, you know, if I try to, I can't even keep any Reese's eggs in the house. That's like me saying that. Or you start when you see a dessert table, or you have to go to an event with all the desserts, you go, Oh, I'm so nervous about that. Or you think about food constantly. That is how am I gonna handle this? Can I eat that? Can I not eat this? Go on here, I probably shouldn't eat that. Again, that's not trusting yourself. And then believing you need strict rules. You need strict rules to be able to, you know. I have clients that say, I need a plan. I need strict rules. And sometimes, if they've been client while I say, Why? You're not gonna follow them. I mean, why give you strict rules if you're not even gonna go buy them? Or you're gonna last two days on them. It's a waste of my time. And you're not gonna, I mean, within a couple days, you're gonna give me all the reasons why something happened. Something came up. I didn't have this food. So why waste our time? But to them, again, they don't trust themselves, so they need a strict, I need a strict plan. Because we forget about balance, because balance doesn't come quick, it takes time to get back on track and not feel that way around food because really we're trying to modify and change behavior. And to do that, that's that takes time, that takes intentionality, that takes a lot of work to modify and alter behavior. And so, how do we rebuild that food trust? How do we how do we do that? And one of the important things is eat consistently. I just yesterday, yesterday, yes, uh somebody had asked me, a lady asked me how to restart her metabolism, how to how to give it a jump start. I said, Eat. And I said, you can't skip meals. Oh well, I'm usually not hungry and I only eat one meal a day. You can't do that, that's not working. And she said, Well, what other way? Because that wasn't the right answer. She was looking for a different way. I said, hang on, let me think. Oh, eat, yes, and so I kept giving the same answer because eating consistency consistently is really what makes a difference. Because when we skip meals, because we skip meals, why? Because I ate too much at breakfast, I ate too much at lunch, I'm gonna eat a big dinner. So we skip those because obviously I can't control myself, and so I eat, I'm gonna eat too much. But really, what regular meals do is it calms our hunger hormones, it reduces that urgency that we gotta have it when we go to eat, and it lowers our cravings and really does make a difference. And the consistency in food creates that safety. You know, and I can, you know, over the last it's been a month, or a little over a month, a little over a month. But um, as I mentioned, that at lunchtime, Monday through Thursday, I fast at lunch and do journaling and and and prayer and some other things that I was gonna do for 21 days. So it's gonna be 21 lunch days here at the gym. So I've been so I haven't been eating lunch and I replaced that a 21-day fast, but it's my version of that. But I do notice that in the afternoon, in the evening, like it's really hard for me to control my appetite at night. That's why that little egg was trying to tantalize my taste buds, and it took a lot of courage to just caress it and put it back. So it's just funny when you talk about food like that. It just makes me laugh.

SPEAKER_01 18:16

It's not touch unless it's with food. Like he's touching the food more. Poor cute. More fantasies about food touching.

Rethink Labels: Everyday Vs Sometimes

Allow Don’t Avoid: Intentional Portions

Drop Punishment And Reset Quickly

Shift Identity And Rebuild Trust

Weekly Challenge And Closing

SPEAKER_00 18:30

I'm all red. My food, anyhow, I'm not even gonna say anything else, but it does make me more hungry because of that not having that food. I mean, lunch. Today is my last day, and I'm kind of thankful about that. So after that, I'll start having lunches again. But but it does make a difference when we don't eat consistently because it does create that safety because it does regulate our hunger hormone. And maybe we stop labeling our food labels as good or bad. Maybe we look at as more nutritious or less nutritious. The egg, less nutritious. My rice and ground beef and ground turkey, more nutritious. And so maybe we start looking at like, and also look at some foods as everyday foods. I can have this every day. And then we have some of those foods that are sometimes foods. I mean, when our kids were little, didn't we give them sometimes foods? Like we might, like it was a big deal when I was a kid. Uh we lived out at I don't know, Solona, I think. Out Solona way, but it was at BBTI, Bible Baptist Trainlers Institute. But it we would stop at Quick Stop. Quick Stop? No. Yes, Quick Stop at Gary Cunningham's place at Quick Stop. And we'd get a pint of ice cream, and we could get, and you'd get the little wooden spoon to eat it with. That was a sometimes food. And that was, I mean, if we stopped and got that, that was a real treat. And I could usually have it scarfed and gone by the time we got out there in about 10 minutes. But yet, I think it's it's okay to do that for ourselves too. It's a sometimes food. I'm not gonna have it all the time. It's a sometimes food. And then we have those more nutrition that are everyday. So we stop labeling bad or off limits, and we just shift the way we talk about it. Because we are talking about the food, so we might as well shift the way we talk about it. And when the food talks to us, say, oh well, you're a sometimes food, you're not an everyday food. So I had you yesterday, so I can't have you. I'm not gonna have you today because you're an everyday food. You're just a sometimes food, so we can give the food a voice if you want. I'll probably come home and can we be talking to the food and have a conversation? And then we have allow. I mean, yeah, you're right. You're just talking to it, I'm caressing it. So yeah, I guess I'm the one with the problem. Then we have allow, don't avoid. So avoidance makes food really powerful. When we avoid something, what typically happens? We want it more. It's it's those cravings. We're avoiding the food. So really it is when we allow it, maybe we're allowing small portions, maybe it's an intentional portion regularly when we have it. Or so then the food loses its forbidden intensity. Again, because we if we're told we don't we shouldn't do something, we want it more. So, example, instead of eating six cookies secretly in the in the pantry, maybe it's you just eat one intentionally and say, I'm gonna have this one and be done. And why don't we do that a lot of times? Because we don't trust ourselves. So it's part of working on that trusting ourselves again by not avoiding it, but allowing ourselves to have one and move on. And then we just remove remove some punishment from it too. And that says, Oh, if I've overeat, that means I have to skip the next meal. That means I have to do extra cardio and a Course, when we overeat, it means we think we need to do physically more. We need to think we need to whether it's food or exercise. And then what happens? I'm a bad person because I overeat. I'm a I can't control myself. I'm out of control. I don't know why you do this to yourself. What are you doing? And so then our shame starts to spiral because we attack emotional to it. So after we overeat and we go, you know what? I did that. Just say it happened, and we move on and we go, get right back on the next meal. That is, we don't have to wait until the next day to start over. It can be the next meal. We talk about sometimes about starting things on a random Tuesday. You don't have to wait till Monday. So on a random lunch, you decide to get back on track. I'm on a random snack, you decide to get back on track. It doesn't have to be a certain time or day or the moon doesn't have to be right. You can just do it. And then trust grows when the disappearance starts, when the punishment starts to disappear. And then, you know, as we do those, our identity will start to shift from I don't have any control to I'm learning to listen to my body and being honest with yourself and say you're actually listening to your body and not saying it's crazy, it's it's really wanting a egg really bad. But saying what listen to it as in what really gives it energy, what really takes it the energy away from it, what does it do? And then you start, then you also change your idea from I can't trust myself around this food to rebuilding trust, one meal, one snack, one cookie at a time. Those things that we don't trust ourselves with, we start doing and and saying, I have control over this, I can do this. Because again, it is not the food item talking to us. It is the food noise in our head that is super duper loud. So really the challenge is is there something pretty simple that you know maybe you've been avoiding that you can reintroduce and just say and have control over and be the boss of it and say, I'm the boss of me, I'm the boss of food, and food, you're not gonna have any power over me because food has power only because of one reason we give it power because we have we need behavior modification, we need mindset modification. So there's things that we have to do in order to take that control back. So the challenge this week is what is a food that you might say those things that you can start having again, that you can start building trust with food? And it may be that thing that you just can't hardly control yourself around, and it'd be that thing that that's how you start rebuilding trust to say I'll have one, or I'll have it'll be a sometimes food, not an everyday food. And what is that? So that's the challenge. Any any thoughts, comments, or questions? All right, just remember that trust isn't built through control, it is built through consistency. Consistency doing it helps build trust. So everybody have a great day. Um, and I'll see everybody later today or tomorrow. Thank you all, and thank you to each of you for joining us on Healthy Huddle. Look forward to seeing you right here next time on Healthy Huddle.