How To Ghost The Diet-Binge Cycle In 2025 (Part 2)

Sick of the diet-binge cycle? Are you looking for ways you can escape? Then this series is for you!

In part 2, I discuss two more ways you can break free. I tackle tough topics like food addiction, clear up common diet myths (especially those pesky carb ones), and becoming a student of yourself.

By the end, you'll have the tools to transform your relationship with food and live a nourished and free life.

Don't forget to tune into the rest of this series for more tips to help you break the diet-binge cycle once and for all.

TOPICS COVERED 👇
Where your relationship with food might be broken (02:13)
Understanding Food Addiction (00:04:30)
Challenging Misconceptions About Nutrition (00:05:39)
Importance of Accurate Nutrition Information (00:09:06)
Becoming a Student of Yourself (00:12:40)

RESOURCES MENTIONED:
Episode: Nutrition Advice Red Flags To Look Out For (with Dr. Idz)

LEARN MORE
🔥 My Signature 4-Month Program, Nourished & Free
📲 Follow me on Instagram (you'll get to know me pretty quickly!)
📖 Check out my Blog for tons of helpful articles

SHOW SOME LOVE
⭐️ Loved this episode? Leave a 5 star rating on Apple podcasts or Spotify (thank you!)
💌 Share this episode with a friend who you think will love it
📌 Subscribe/follow the show so you never miss an episode!

Transcript

Michelle 00:00:00  Welcome back to part two of the December series, How to Go Through the Diet Binge Cycle in 2025 on Nourished and Free the podcast. If you're struggling with constant thoughts of food, feeling confused around nutrition, or struggling with things like binge eating, yo yo dieting, or emotional overeating, or maybe all those things, you're in the right place. Be sure you hit the subscribe or follow button. If you want to create a healthy relationship with food that's nourishing and fuels you, while also setting you free from any toxic cycles that you find yourself stuck in, or any food stress that you may find yourself dealing with. If we haven't met yet, my name is Michelle Yates, a registered dietitian and certified health mindset coach with my master's in health psychology. I'm also a former disordered eater. I dabbled in all kinds of forms of disordered eating. I was addicted to my fitness pal and calorie counting, and would find myself bingeing and then not knowing what to do with that, and it was just horrible. So now being a professional in the field while also having that personal experience, I really love showing people how to get to the other side and how worth it it is to put in the work to do that and turn things around, because life is just simply too short to be thinking about food 24 over seven.

Michelle 00:01:11  As I said, we're on part two of this fun series in the month of December, which is all about how to go through the diet binge cycle in 2025. We don't want to keep repeating the same cycles anymore. Let's get out of them. So we're going to talk through how to do that and breaking this up into multiple episodes, because these are things that I really want you to think on in process and think about implementing and take the time that you need to do that. So I'm giving you small chunks to think about and then come back to the next part in the series. So last episode was part one. We talked about let's maybe not go on another diet on New Year's Day, right? We got to break the cycle at some point. So let's have a little exit plan there. or exit hatch. And then the second thing was consider approaching the way that you think about your weight differently. In other words, consider taking that common denominator of all the things you've done before that didn't work for you, and maybe even made things worse, which was something that was focused on trying to lose weight.

Michelle 00:02:13  And maybe we don't do that. Maybe we try a different approach that doesn't have that as the center of what it's all about. Today, we're digging in to the next two points and then come back for part three, where we'll dig into the final two. We've got six in total to help you really go to this thing going forward. And that third point that I want to talk about to kick us off today is examining where your relationship with food might be broken and might need some healing. I talk a lot about healing your relationship with food, but I think that sometimes we don't even really know what that means, what that means. And so I want to talk about what is a relationship with food. And, you know, if you consider the way that you think about food, the way that you feel about food. The way you talk about food and act around it. That's a relationship with something, right? And so we want to consider, especially if you're somebody who is struggling with this diet binge roller coaster.

Michelle 00:03:21  That's your current relationship with food, is it? We're in this interesting tug of war with it where you're either feeling like you can't have it to some extent, right? Or you have a lot of rules and limitations on it, and it's somewhat of a maybe enemy or it's something that is being over consumed. It's overpowering you. It's your source of comfort potentially, or a crutch. Right. So that's what your current relationship with food is. And we want to dig into that and really figure out how did we get here and how do we mend and rehabilitate the relationship with food that you have right now. It's just like if you're in a relationship with somebody, it could even just be a family member. You have a relationship with them, and you may go to therapy to try and change the dynamics of your relationship because you care about that person. Or maybe they're just in your life and you can't do anything about it. And so you have to figure out a way to work together in a way that is beneficial.

Michelle 00:04:30  And like it or not, you can't avoid food for the rest of your life. You know, it's a basic need. And, you know, this is something that I hear a lot from women is like, I feel addicted to food and I wish I could just cut it out like I could if I was addicted to alcohol or drugs or something. Right? But you can't because you need food to survive. And so it creates this other layer of being super challenging to figure out how to navigate. Having a relationship with food. When you feel like this, pull towards it where it's addictive or a love hate relationship. And so it's super important and worth your time and your energy and investing yourself into what that relationship with food looks like and how you got there. And then what we need to do to mend it, especially when you've been if you're somebody who's like, done years and years and decades even of dieting, or you've done all the self-help books or you've listened to other podcasts, or you've done online research, or you've seen a nutritionist, or you talk to your trainer about a meal plan, or you talk to your friend about whatever it is.

Michelle 00:05:39  You know, we get flooded with so much information and opinions and quote unquote, facts about food and health and and weight and all of that. And most of it is complete baloney. And when we get indoctrinated with all of these different opinions and ideas and, and again, quote unquote facts, it becomes like something we really believe. You know, like, one of the biggest misconceptions that I see that people, like, really believe deep down until we challenge it and I really do some like educating around it is that carbs are bad, that carbs make you fat. And it's so interesting because that, you know, somewhere along the way somebody said that many people say that, which is just ridiculous. It's the dumbest thing ever. But because so many people say it and you know, they can find ways to say that sound really intelligent and sciency and everything. people will, you know, believe it. And then it becomes like this core belief, like, I can never have carbs if I eat a carb, this happens.

Michelle 00:06:54  I gained £10 or I will blow up or whatever. And and so then we think, and we believe that if I just don't eat carbs, then I will lose weight. I won't binge anymore. I won't look the way that I don't like when I look or what have you. And. And we don't realize that that's a belief and that has been created from bad Intel. You've been advised poorly. You should have never been told that carbs are bad or carbs make you fat, right? That needs to be corrected. And like it or not, that is now become a part of your relationship with food or someone's relationship with food, if that's what they believe. And it's so interesting, like all of these core beliefs and we even put value on it, right? Like I value a low carb household or I value having cauliflower pizza instead because it makes us feel like a moral superiority or something. And it's so interesting how deeply that gets embedded into our psyche and our identity. And we don't usually want to challenge things like that.

Michelle 00:07:58  And so you have to be open to learning and challenging those things and potentially being wrong about what you thought you knew about food and nutrition. And I want to say too, like, that's not your fault unless you are a nutrition professional who has gone on and studied this extensively. And I don't just mean like a two hour certification course. I mean, like somebody who has gone a gone to get a whole degree on this and, and maybe multiple degrees about this, then you're probably not going to know very much about nutrition and rely on other people, and that's okay. The problem is that there's a lot of people who think they know what is healthy and what is unhealthy, and about food and nutrition, and they just don't. And we end up getting misled and fed really bad information. So it's really not your fault if you've got all of these misaligned values and beliefs and ideas about nutrition, but it can be your stumbling block. It can be what's causing a lot of issues and creating a lot of problems.

Michelle 00:09:06  Because the more rules and things that you think about food that ultimately aren't helpful. The harder it is to have a healthy relationship with food, and then the more issues that creates and side effects. I was just talking with a previous client of mine who graduated our group coaching program, Nourished in Free in August of 23, and she was talking about how she's now doing this workout program to build muscle and how it's been a completely different experience for her now doing something like that versus before when we worked together, like before we ever worked together. She was really into fitness. She did really like, going to the gym and she was trying to build muscle and all of this. But because of her relationship with food and her getting really bad Intel on, like what was healthy and what wasn't, it was ultimately really destructive for her and unhealthy for her in the way that she was approaching nutrition and approaching exercise. And again, that was just like, she's got bad information. That's not her fault. And so Taking her through the process of, like, stripping all of that down and like giving her a clean slate and then building off of that with what's now accurate and correct information and helpful information when it comes to her health and nutrition and the way that she views her body and all of that.

Michelle 00:10:29  Now she's able to approach something like building muscle or working out frequently, or even examining her diet to be sure it's optimized for building muscle. And that's not triggering for her, because she has this solid foundation of having a good relationship with food and with her body. That's based on accuracy, right? And I think when we get fed so much information that's wrong, then we feel really unstable and we feel confused and we feel lost and and we've got our foot on unsteady ground. And it's because, you know, we have the wrong ideas. All that to say, if you are feeling lost and confused about what is right and what is wrong when it comes to nutrition and you're just feeling so bogged down with all these rules and conflicting info. I don't blame you. I'm not surprised there's so much bad information out there, especially if you're somebody who feels like they've tried it all. They've done everything, they've done every diet, hired every coach, every trainer, read every book, like done all this stuff right.

Michelle 00:11:34  And it might be time for you to enter into a clean slate era where we just kind of wipe all that clean and you focus on, okay, what is the most evidence based, accurate and helpful and logical and realistic nutrition advice and what works for me in my life, like, don't start something that you don't can't see yourself doing in five years. And a lot of this advice that we get online especially, is stuff that's just like, so extreme and so ridiculous. And I know a natural kind of question is like, okay, well, I want to do that. I want to have a clean slate, But how do I know who to trust? You know, and to then build on that clean slate with their information. And it's a really good question. It's a really tricky question because there's this temptation to be like, well, just trust anybody with this credential or that has this professional title. But truthfully, there's people in all positions and professions who can totally screw things up and who should be an expert, but they're not.

Michelle 00:12:40  Or they have, you know, some really sketchy ethics. So I do have a podcast episode with doctor IDs that will dive deeper into like how to tell if somebody's a good source of information for you or not. That episode is from last year on November 21st, 2023. If you want to go find that and listen to it. So that's the third point of ghosting. The diet binge cycle in 2025 is we really need to examine where am I, our relationship with food be fractured, and what do we need to do to heal that, and that could mean correcting some misaligned or inaccurate nutrition values and beliefs and ideas that have ultimately led you astray. The second point of today, and the fourth point of this series overall, is become a student of yourself. Ask the hard questions and seek the answers. Even if it's uncomfortable. You can't really know how to fix a problem if you don't really know that there's a problem in the first place, or you haven't really taken the time to think through, why might that be a problem? What's going on? You know you need to diagnose in order to treat.

Michelle 00:13:49  And so you might be noticing these side effects or these symptoms of something being wrong, like bingeing or excessive weight gain or, you know, weight up and down all the time, or lab values that don't look great or low energy or, you know, there's so many different things that we can experience as a symptom of a poor relationship with food. So if you're noticing those, don't stop there. That's a sign. Those are signs of flag that something is going on. And we need to dig deeper. So become a student of yourself and start to study yourself. What is it about my lifestyle, my behaviors, my thoughts, and my actions that could be contributing to these side effects that I'm experiencing and that I don't like? Then from there, you can start to make a plan for how to move forward, how to correct, how to readjust and align in the way that you want to go so that you can become the version of yourself that you really wish you were that didn't have those symptoms, you know, that was binge free and that didn't jump on a diet every other Monday or every new year, or who didn't get bad news from the doctors, or who wasn't worried about what example you were setting for your kids.

Michelle 00:15:02  Right? Like take the time to consider, even if it's uncomfortable, what might be off here? You know, don't shy away from holding up a mirror to yourself and and asking the question of why whenever you do something that you're not proud of or you didn't like about yourself or whatever, challenge it, right? Not because you're going to judge or condemn yourself, but because you want to understand yourself better. And you want to be a student of yourself, and you want to learn and you want to grow. It's always really funny to me when we start working with a client and they're like, Holy cow! I have never been this introspective about myself. And now, because I'm introspective about myself in this area of my life, like with my relationship with food or with my body. Now I have this like, I'm kind of in a habit of just being introspective. And so now I'm noticing all these other things about other areas of my life. And it's it's cool to see, how being open to learning and growing in one area helps you be open and to learning and growing in other areas.

Michelle 00:16:14  And it's just like overall improves your quality of life. And and there's so much growth that happens and it's really, really cool to see. It actually reminds me of our client, Catherine, who just finished about a month ago. She's a teacher and she has a really challenging classroom. And, you know, for her, she wasn't taking a lot of time to think through her relationship with food and her body image and like where all of her stuff was coming from because she was just so focused on other people, on the kiddos in her classroom. And she had a husband. And it's just it's easy to not again, hold up that mirror, right, and look at your issues and examine what's uncomfortable to think about with yourself. But when she did that, it was so, so cool to see. I mean, she would show up on our group calls and she just have so much to say and like to unload about in the best way because she was learning so much about herself. And man, it was really cool to see her be able to challenge herself and and grow through that.

Michelle 00:17:22  When she was finishing up the program, she wrote a review on my Google page and I loved this quote from her. She said, this program is about healing your relationship with food and addressing the long held beliefs about food and weight that for most of us have become second nature. Habits, nourished and free can help you identify those habits, stop the patterns and cycles, and give you alternative ways to navigate those thoughts and emotions that come with poor eating habits and poor body image. Those symptoms, right, that we're talking about, she said. The investment I made was in myself and was 100% worth it. Since beginning the program in June, I had only one binge episode compared to weekly binges I was experiencing before Nourished and Free. So really cool to see that. Like when you examine your thoughts and your beliefs and your values around food and your body and everything, How it does change the symptoms. Right before, she was binging weekly and then she went from that to binging once in 16 weeks, you know, like how awesome is that? And we actually did just hear from her this week that she had gone to the doctor and gotten bloodwork back, and it was looking amazing.

Michelle 00:18:39  Like her cholesterol was awesome. So yeah, super happy for her. Okay, so that wraps up part two. We talked about examining where your relationship with food might be broken and, you know, perhaps giving yourself a clean slate and the time and energy to heal what's been broken and then becoming a student of yourself. Ask yourself the hard questions that maybe we don't really want to ask because they're uncomfortable and seek to find those answers. So those are the two things I want you to focus on over the next couple of weeks. Come back in two weeks for our final episode in this series about how to go through the diet binge cycle in 2025, we'll have part three ready for you, and hopefully you'll feel equipped and inspired to let this be a new chapter in your life.