How To Ghost The Diet-Binge Cycle In 2025 (Part 3)

Are you tired of the endless cycle of dieting and bingeing? 2025 is your year to break free! As a registered dietitian, I’ve seen firsthand how a positive mindset and the right support can transform your relationship with food.

In this episode, I share practical tips on how to shift your mindset around food and why working with a qualified professional can be a game-changer. I also explore the power of community and how connecting with like-minded individuals can fuel your journey to lasting change.

So, if you’re ready to ditch the diet-binge cycle and embrace a healthier, happier you, tune into this episode and the rest of the series. Let’s make 2025 the year you nourish your body and soul.

TOPICS COVERED 👇 

Recap of Previous Points (00:02:01)

Mindset and Behavioral Change (00:07:03)

The Value of Professional Support (00:11:47)

Choosing the Right Professional (00:12:49)

Community Support in Healing (00:16:08)

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Transcript

Michelle 00:00:00  Welcome back to part three of our December series on Nourished and Free, the podcast all about how to ghost the diet binge cycle in 2025. If you're struggling with constant thoughts of food, feeling confused around nutrition, or you struggle with things like binge eating, yo yo dieting, or emotional overeating or all of those things, you're definitely in the right place. If you're not already subscribed to the show, be sure you hit that subscribe button. If you want to know how to create a healthy relationship with food that nourishes you and fuels you, while also setting you free from any toxic cycles you might find yourself in like the diet binge cycle, or if you find yourself dealing with a lot of food stress. If we haven't met yet, my name is Michelle Yates. I'm a registered dietitian and a certified health mindset coach with my master's in Health psychology, and I love talking about how the world of psychology and nutrition blend together to really create a powerful and unshakable relationship with food and with your body, and with health and fitness and all of that.

Michelle 00:00:56  And for me, this is personal because I, I get it. I used to struggle with all of the things that my clients come to me for, and it makes it so much more important to me to help people with this, not only with my professional background and experience, but also my personal story. I know what it's like to feel like you're constantly thinking about food and feel like you don't have power over your life, essentially, and you're just kind of watching it pass you by while you're stuck thinking about food and regretting the choices that you made with it last night, or what have you. It is so worth it to put in the work to get to a place where food is not on your mind all the time. Your body is not a source of stress for you, and you feel genuinely healthy and like you are present in your life, and you can focus on the things that really matter to you instead of having all of this junk floating around. So that's why I'm here, and I hope that you find this show valuable in this episode in particular.

Michelle 00:02:01  So we've been working through this series in the month of December all about how to ghost the diet binge cycle in 2025. And for our final episode today, I'll do my final two points, six in total. If you haven't listened to part one or part two yet, be sure you revisit those to really get the full impact, but I'm excited to hear your feedback on this. If you haven't already, go to the show notes and send me a message and let me know your feedback on this series and on the show in general. And if you have any topics you want me to talk about in the future, I'd love to to hear from you. I can't respond to those messages. It's just a one way communication, but I'd love to hear from you, so feel free to do that. And yeah, if you're a fan, let me know. Leave me a rating and a review on Apple or Spotify. So quick recap of what we covered in part one and part two. We talked about how the diet binge cycle.

Michelle 00:02:54  One way that you can break that is just by not going on another diet. And it can be counterintuitive because we can feel like dieting is the only choice we have. If there were any situation where we want to lose weight or whatever it is, but it's not, and ultimately it is just keeping you stuck in a cycle. So consider maybe not going on another diet tomorrow on New Year's Day. The second thing we talked about is consider approaching the way that you think about your body and your weight differently. Maybe do some deeper body image work there to consider. Why is your weight so distressing to you? And that's not to say that you don't have any legitimate reasons to want to lose weight. If you do want to lose weight, obviously we know there's a connection with your health and your weight and all of that. But at the same time, when we are like trying our hardest to lose weight and all it's done is make things worse, sometimes it's a good idea to just take the focus off of that and dig into the other things that I mean, when we think about it, your weight is ultimately a side effect of other stuff.

Michelle 00:03:57  So let's just focus on the other stuff and maybe put the the thought of your weight on the back burner for a while, because that can be ultimately very triggering and lead you into that diet binge cycle and keep you stuck there. The third thing was examining where your relationship with food might be broken and needs some healing, especially if you are somebody who has tried all of the things and now you're just feeling so lost and so confused. You know, for some people, they haven't ever considered the fact that we do have a relationship with food, just like we have a relationship with our spouse or with our friends or with our parents or whatever it is. But but you do you know the way that you think about it, the way that you talk about it, the way that you act around it, that's a relationship. So examine like, where are things off and why or where can I improve and and heal some things, especially if I'm just very confused. Maybe it's time for a clean slate and to really hone in on what's important for me in my relationship with food.

Michelle 00:05:00  And then with that, our fourth point from the end of part two, our last episode was becoming a student of yourself. And be willing to ask yourself hard questions and look for those answers, even if they're uncomfortable, because otherwise, how are you ever going to make progress if you don't know what needs to be fixed? And we want to do this from a place of being not judgy. We're not condemning ourselves. We're not trying to be hard on ourselves. We're just trying to learn and understand ourselves so that we can move forward. So moving into our topics today. So the next point that I want to bring up our fifth point overall is focus on bridging that gap between what you know you should do versus what you actually do. Focus on bridging that gap between what you know you should do versus what you actually do. I hear this a lot, right? There's this. Like, especially for somebody who maybe is in the health care field, or they just feel like they know they don't even need to be in the health care field.

Michelle 00:06:00  They've just like heard a lot about nutrition, and they know generally what a healthy lifestyle looks like. And regardless, they know like I shouldn't be bingeing, right? But I still do it. So there's some sort of disconnect there. So we need to bridge that gap. And how do we do that. There's some mindset work that we need to do. What do I mean by that? Well the thoughts that you have really impact your behaviors. Everything starts in your brain. Don't underestimate the power of psychology and your mindset, because it is playing a huge role in these side effects that you are witnessing that you don't like, like we're so easily focused on, like, oh, I hate that I binge like, and that's, you know, our primary focus that we see that it's very obvious to us. What's less obvious is the process that was happening in our subconscious and our conscious that led us to that decision. Right? So we need to kind of scale it back and reverse engineer and figure out what is the misfiring that's going on in my brain.

Michelle 00:07:03  How did my wires get crossed in a way that made me get to this spot? So if you're somebody who labels yourself as a self-sabotage, or that you have an all or nothing mentality, or that you struggle with motivation or discipline, that's a problem that's starting in the brain. Like there is a misfire happening and we need to rewire things and get you set up for success. There are specific tools that can help you with that, depending on your situation, depending on what you're going through. And you know it can always be helpful to talk things out in therapy. But I do want to mention that when it comes to your relationship with food, you do need somebody who's focused in on that subject and the subject of your relationship with food and nutrition and your body and everything. It's something that when we're working with our clients, they don't really realize that that's what's happening. And that that's what we're doing is that we're, you know, rewiring things in their brain and in getting them to be set up for success instead of self-sabotage.

Michelle 00:08:04  But it's cool in the end when they're reflecting back on their time and they realize, like, wow, I haven't. Well, again, because we get so caught up on the things that we can that are more obvious, like the binging or the emotional overeating or, you know, being negative towards yourself when you see a picture of yourself. So they notice those things, but they don't necessarily notice all the things that's going on in their brain on the in the back end that helps them get there. So that's always fun for me to point out to them and be like, hey, remember when you used to like, have this thought process and then ultimately it led you there? Now look at what you're doing. Like that was all you you rewired that ish and you got yourself to a place where now you're not acting out in the way that you used to around food. You know, it's super, super cool. We had a client who graduated a year ago. Her name is Megan, and, she worked in the medical field.

Michelle 00:09:00  And she was one of those people who, like, she was like, okay, I know what I'm supposed to do. I work in the medical field, but I don't do it, you know? And and that's super common. And it's just it's sometimes so much easier to see what's going on in somebody else's life and to help them through that. Right? Like if you're in a helping profession, but then you get kind of like fatigued of problem solving these things, and there gets to be a point where it's like, you know what? It's actually so much harder to reflect on what's going on in my own life and see what I need to work on, because I just helped so many other people with that. Now I'm mentally burnt out, and it's just even if you're not a helper, it's just generally harder to see your own problems because we don't like to reflect on ourselves in that way. It's just uncomfortable, you know, like we can help somebody out through their problems all day long.

Michelle 00:09:52  But when it comes to us, it gets a million times more. There's more resistance there. Right? But anyway, so Megan, back to Megan after she went through working with us in our group coaching program, Nourished and Free, which she was super skeptical when she was thinking about signing up. And I always appreciate that because that's how I am too, about anything, especially if I found it online. I'm like super skeptical. And I'm like, what? You just want my money. so anyway, I never am offended when people are skeptical about working with us because I get it. But when she finished, she said in a Google review, you can go read if you want. Quote I'm so glad I did. I would have been happy to just feel free from any food restrictions and be able to live without having food control. Me. But I got so much more than that. My mindset is much better. I feel in control of my life in more ways than I thought I would, And I understand my own feelings regarding diet culture more than ever.

Michelle 00:10:48  So that was really cool to see her reflect and be, cognizant of like how much her mindset has changed and how that ultimately made her feel more in control of her life. And again, she was somebody who was like, I know what I'm supposed to do, but I don't actually do it. And we were able to bridge that gap with her, and now she feels like she's in control. So that's really awesome. So that leads me to my next point on my final point of this whole series regarding how to go through the diet binge cycle in 2025, which is maybe don't do this alone. You don't know what you don't know, right? And as I said, it is hard to reflect on yourself and see things in yourself because we just generally resist that. If it's something like, we're happy to see what we're doing well and reflect on the things that we're proud of and and all of that, but we're less likely to reflect on the things that are struggles in our life and problems in our life, because we don't really like to face that.

Michelle 00:11:47  And it can be helpful to as long as you're willing to grow through that and learn through that, it can be incredibly helpful to have a third party in your situation to assess problems and identify patterns and reflect things back to you that maybe you wouldn't otherwise have been able to see, and then also provide you with tools that you don't have. You know, like there's something incredibly valuable about having professionals who do have tools ready to give you based on your situation and based on your needs and, and be able to support you through that. And then when it comes to professionals, when you're deciding who to work with, obviously you're welcome to work with us. If you'd like, you can learn more about what that looks like and how to do that. In, the show notes, just click on the information about Nourished and Free the program, but you don't have to. So if you're not going to go down that route and that's totally fine. What I recommend is be sure you're looking for professionals who are educated and specialized in the specific issue that you're looking for.

Michelle 00:12:49  And what I don't mean is somebody who says, I'm a nutritionist who helps moms over 40 lose the weight. Like, yeah, apparently they help you with your problem. But when you look into their specific training and education and credentials, it's not they're right. Like they didn't go to school specifically to learn about nutrition. If they're just like a random nutritionist who got a certification online, right, it's really easy to think like, oh, well, my doctor was telling me about this, so it's okay. Like, I can trust that. But keep in mind that your standard doctor doesn't have more than one lecture on nutrition, so I don't recommend going to them for your nutrition advice. A registered dietitian or a PhD in nutrition. They don't even need to necessarily be a registered dietitian. If they have a PhD in nutrition. That's that's plenty. They're always going to be your best bet for how to navigate the field of nutrition and really get the answers, especially if you are somebody who feels really confused and overwhelmed by all this stuff that you've seen online and all the stuff that you've heard.

Michelle 00:14:00  Go to a specialist. Go to somebody who that is 100% of how they spend their time and their education and their career is focused on that. And then I'm going to actually take it one step further as well. Be sure that they have experience working with eating disorders and helping individuals. Like if you need help with body image, be sure that they have experience helping people with body image. Right? Like you don't want to just go to a dietitian for the sake of going to a dietitian, right? Like a lot of times people will just go see their local dietitian that maybe their insurance accepts or whatever, but that dietitian doesn't have experience in eating disorders. Unfortunately, our curriculum does. not really set dietitians up to be able to treat eating disorders. They have to then actively pursue more education and training and supervision in that field. So be sure you're meeting with a specialist, right? Not only on the nutrition front or the mental health front, but also on the eating disorders and disordered eating front and body image front.

Michelle 00:15:00  That's why we've got in our program nutrition for you. You've got me, the dietitian who is specially trained in this. And then I also have a therapist on staff who is our body image guru. She's loves talking about body image. That's her specialty. So we've got a mental health piece. We've got the food and nutrition and I've got my mindset stuff and training to and both of us have that additional experience of working with disordered eating and body image and everything. And so our clients are getting as specialized of support as they possibly can. Now I'm going to level with you. It is kind of hard to find professionals who are as specialized as that, especially in the same place where they're working together to support you in one container. And you don't have to, like, go to different separate appointments or seek out one of each or whatever. So just know, like, again, you don't have to work with us, but if you're seeking a similar situation, you'll have to do some digging. One of the biggest common denominators of women, or men who are struggling with their relationship with food or with their body is a sense of shame and embarrassment around that.

Michelle 00:16:08  And I get it, because I've been there. There is a lot of stigma around struggling with disordered eating or your body image, especially if binge eating is a factor, right? Nobody wants to talk about that. Nobody's proud of that. And community can be so, so healing. So many of our clients started off thinking like, well, I feel like I really just need one on one or I don't really know about this group thing, like I'll do it, but I'm not like, I don't think I need the group. And then they end the experience and they're like, that was actually the best part. And that was the part I needed the most, was to know I wasn't alone, to feel supported by other women who were going through the same thing. Women who look completely different than me, too. I think that can be really helpful is to remember, like people of all shapes and sizes and backgrounds can struggle with the same things you do. Like you're not crazy, you're not broken.

Michelle 00:17:06  Other people struggle with this too, and healing is possible. And it also just accelerates the growth when you're all learning together. And there's, you know, questions being asked over here that you didn't think to ask before. And now you're learning that answer as well as the answer to your question. It just accelerates things so much more. So no matter who you work with, no matter where you go from here, if you're going to do this with support and you're not going to do this alone anymore. Get professionals who are specialized. And consider finding a community as well. So if you're sitting there and you're thinking like, man, that sounds like a lot of work to go through all of these things. Like, I don't really know how to start with working on my mindset or my relationship with food or my body image and, and trying to find these professionals that are specialists and trying to find a community that just sounds super overwhelming. I wish I could just get all of that in one place.

Michelle 00:18:06  I do happen to. If that's you, then nourished and free our program. My group coaching program is a perfect fit for you, and I'd highly recommend that you apply for it, which the link to that is in the show notes. I'd love to chat with you. And and also just verify like, yes, this is a good fit for you. so that you don't waste your time or your money or your energy doing another thing that doesn't work for you. You know, I really want to take the time to consider will this process work for you? So feel free to apply and we'd love to chat more. Just a little bit more about the process, which you'll learn when you go to the link in the show notes anyway. But if you want to hear about it here, we will be going through those three main concepts of mindset your relationship with food, your body image, and making sure that like, we're rewiring what needs to be rewired. You're learning how to tune in to your body instead of tune out and set yourself up for success on the nutrition side of things, and then also examine any body image, things that are ultimately a barrier for you from, you know, making it harder for you to reach your goals.

Michelle 00:19:11  We'll be doing all of that. There's online modules that you're you'll be working through. You'll get access to me and my team Monday through Friday through slack, which includes me, obviously, and then our body image therapist. You'll be able to ask questions of both of us during the week. We've also got a community manager who will be checking you in, you know, keeping you new, accountable, and you're going to have access to that community as well. Who will be supporting you in the midst of that? And we've also got weekly group calls that alternates between me and our body image coach slash therapist. So you'll be able to do some live chatting with us as well, and you'll get access to those replays if for whatever reason, you can't make the call. So anyway, I really love the process that we have in place because I've seen it be so effective. And I know that if you're listening to this, you're sick and tired of feeling like this and you want to figure this out ASAP, and you do not want 2025 to be another year of you stuck in this cycle and hoping that the next year it'll finally get better, right? Like, let's have you look back a year from today on New Year's Eve and be like, wow, I finally broke out of that cycle and was able to have victory over my relationship with food and freedom from bingeing this year.

Michelle 00:20:38  And I feel a million times better because I took action. You know, don't sit around and wait for the right moment is never going to come. You just got to decide, is it worth it to me to put in the work now and and finally have freedom from this and not look back a year from now and wish I had started a year ago. So if you'd like to apply, link is in the show notes. Again, you do not have to work with us though. You are welcome to work on all of this on your own and I support you in that. If that's the best decision for you. And I genuinely wish you all the best, and hope that the December series that we had this month was helpful for you in thinking about your relationship with food and with your body in new ways, and hopefully gave you some good nuggets of things to work on moving forward with that. Happy New Year! Stay nourished and free.