Michelle Yates (00:00)
Why is it so hard to just eat like a normal person? To just have an ice cream and move on and it not be a big deal? Not obsess over it. Not try to white knuckle your way out of eating it and not be having this mental war in your head every time you try to have something that's quote unquote off plan. Or someone brings, you know, donuts into the office, or a friend offers you a baked good on a Tuesday afternoon.
Why can't you just eat and move on with your day? Why does there have to be so much drama, so much calculating, so much tug of war? If you've ever asked yourself that question, I think I know one of the biggest reasons why you're struggling with eating like a quote unquote normal person and why food feels so stressful for you. And I'm guessing it's probably not on your radar yet.
Hey, welcome back to Nourished and Free the podcast. My name is Michelle Yates, registered dietitian, certified health mindset coach with my master's in health psychology. This is a show where mental health meets physical health, food guilt gets ghosted, and toxic wellness advice gets roasted. If you're new here, be sure you hit subscribe because we've got lots of juicy episodes coming up soon. And I mean, I've got quite a few in the library as well for you to go poking through and find something that tickles your fancy.
today though I do want to talk about something I think every single person listening to this has probably felt, but never really said out loud.
And it's how freaking stressful food becomes when you're trying to lose weight or you're trying to take care of yourself. Or you went on a diet when you were twelve with your mom and food has never been the same since.
So here is the big idea that that we're gonna get into today. What I wanna show you through this episode is that the programs and the diets and the macro plans or meal plans that we sign up for and that we partake in are not teaching you to eat normally and they were never designed to. They were never designed to.
They're teaching you to rely on their methods so that you keep coming back.
You probably were really good at following their plan at some point in time, right? Like let's say you went on Weight Watchers, you probably crushed it. You did awesome. And you lost the weight. And then you decided, you know what, I'm kind of sick of the points, man. Like I just want to go on vacation without seeing points in all the food that I want to eat.
And so you didn't do it you didn't follow the system during vacation because why would you? You're a human. And then you come back and it just feels like it's never been the same since. You've tried to get back on, but it just once again, it's never been the same.
And you've kind of started to see a little bit more clearly or at least a little bit more differently, where you're feeling like, I actually don't really want to live my life constantly counting and weighing and tracking and doing all of that. But what other option is there? Right? Like you've already learned a whole new way of life.
And so what other option is there except to log your food, check with the algorithm that you have access to at that time and see what it's telling you to eat the rest of the day.
Before you even ask yourself, Am I hungry? Do I actually want food or need food right now? You're asking an app, right? You're not checking in with your body, you're checking in with your phone.
You've been trained to start trusting a point system or an allowance of calories instead of trusting your own body. Every single new diet or weight loss method that we do, starts to erode that trust that we have with ourselves bit by bit, just like
A little little ice pick on a mountain, bit by bit. Sometimes a really big chunk comes off at one time. Sometimes it's just a little, but regardless, when we are progressively being taught to look externally and see what this diet or what this plan or what this calculation is telling me I should eat.
Then we're losing touch with ourselves, and it gets harder and harder to eat normally because now we just don't even know how to ask ourselves what we want to eat. We don't know. We've lost autonomy. This is also a big reason why end up backfiring, because one of our basic human needs from a psychological perspective is to feel like we're in charge. We have autonomy. We have freedom.
It's not fun to feel like you don't have a say in the matter or you don't have a choice. think about a time when you've been pretty burnt out or disinterested in something. if you felt like you didn't have a choice and you had to keep doing something, you probably didn't want to keep doing it. But the second that somebody gave you an option and said, Well, you could quit if you want, it's okay, and you had that permission to quit.
Suddenly you were given a choice, you were given autonomy, and it completely changes the game. It completely changes your mindset around it. And so this is similar when we're following a plan or a diet or whatever. we're getting our freedom of choice taken away because we have to follow what this system is telling us. And of course, they can dress it up in ways that make it sound like it's really flexible and you still get to eat all your favorite foods and yada yada. But
You get to eat all your favorite foods within a certain limit, right? Like as long as you don't pass this ceiling, yeah, you can eat your favorite foods, but then you start to figure out, well, certain foods get me to that ceiling faster, so I really should avoid those. So at the end of the day, you really can't eat the foods that you want, right?
it's exhausting, It's technically working, so you keep going or you keep going back to it because it did work at one point, so you gotta get back on it. But underneath all of that, you're starting to dread social events because you don't know how to eat there without the app or without preparing the food yourself. You know, you don't know how to
Eat without an app doing all the thinking for you and all the decision making for you, or without a coach or trainer or whoever doing all the thinking and decision making for you. You've built a mental filing cabinet of good foods and bad foods. You're weighing yourself every single morning, probably weighing your food, or at least you went through a phase. Maybe you did the containers or the 21 day fix. And
What that scale says in the morning is telling you whether you've had a good day or a bad day.
Whether you followed your diet good enough or or not. Everything becomes a pass fail test. Instead of what can I learn from this today? What served me? What didn't? What do I want to change? It just becomes so black and white and you don't know how to feed yourself anymore.
A lot of times what happens is we do hit that number. We hit that goal number of however much weight we wanted to lose. 20 pounds, 30, 50, 100, I don't know. Whatever it was. And somehow, I mean, it's great at first because you're like, my gosh, I did it. Look at me. I look amazing. And I'm getting all this validation.
But then what happens way too quickly is we're unhappy again. We find something else that we don't like. We have a new weight loss goal. It's never quite good enough, is it?
And you're more obsessed with food than you ever have been in your life. But at the same time, you're like, well, I reached my goal, so now I can be a little bit more relaxed. I can start eating the foods I love again. And then things just explode and they fall apart. And now we're like, I don't know what to do. Right? This wasn't the plan. And now we're we're dreading the weekends because that's when it falls apart.
Especially or the evenings, right? it's easy when you wake up and you've got a fresh day, a fresh start to do well. But the evenings is when things kind of unravel usually or the weekend. It's easy to eat the safe, approved, on plan meal in front of others. But as soon as you're alone, holy cow, it's super hard to have any type of self-control. Because nobody's around. Nobody's gonna know.
what you do in private or if you hide the wrapper or if the door is closed, like technically it's almost like it didn't happen as long as people don't know.
Why is this happening? Why do we keep losing control like this and eating in secret? It's because we don't know how to feed ourselves without following this plan and we don't want follow the plan anymore. Eating normally becomes progressively harder and harder and harder the more you look to somebody else to tell you how to eat.
Now, I'm a dietitian, obviously I tell people how to eat all the time. So hear what I'm saying here. I'm saying there's two different types of people who will tell you how to eat. There's the people who will tell you the calculations and they'll give you the plans and they will train you to rely on them. And then there's the people who will teach you how to think for yourself. It's kind of like that analogy of like you either
Give a man a fish or teach him how to fish and he is fed for life
Now, of course, there's a time and place to have help and to have somebody walking through things with you. I think what's important though is to ask yourself, is this person teaching me how to think for myself
Or is this person teaching me to follow a really rigid and strict plan that I don't really see myself doing thirty years from now?
that in and of itself is a really great litmus test, right? Do I see myself doing this 30 years from now? Yes or no? If the answer is no, do not proceed. Do not pass go. It is such a waste of your time and your precious resources. So here's what I want you to hear if you haven't already heard it in your own mind.
You did not fail these programs or these diets or these weight loss attempts or whatever it is. They failed you. The diet or the program or the meal plan, it failed you because it was teaching you to rely on it and to need it continually and to come back to it and to have an attachment to it. Otherwise, you're unsuccessful without it. And so you want to go back to it.
And I know that sounds harsh and even conspiratorial, but stay with me. There's a really simple piece of logic underneath all of this.
These systems make money when you need them forever. Just business, right? It's just business. A lifelong customer is ideal for really any business. And you know what? It's actually the biggest thing that I struggle with. I struggle to have lifelong customers because they're usually doing really good after we work together and they don't need me anymore.
Most business models though are smarter than me and they find ways to lock people in for life. The problem is that it might be smart from a business perspective, but it's not in the client's best interest or in the customer's best interest. It's in the business's best interest. And, you know, obviously I have a business, and so I think there's ways that you can do something that's beneficial for both people. I don't think it's ethical or good business.
to get somebody stuck in this place where they need you forever. At least not from a nutrition standpoint. different businesses can be a different story. Like you need your car wash for the rest of your life, that's fine. Go for it. Find a car wash you really love and go to them every time. But when it comes to nutrition and especially learning how to eat and feeding yourself, something that's so basic. Like you should be able to figure out how to do that yourself.
Don't you want that? Don't you want to be able to just make your choices independently and not have to check with something first or check with someone first if you can eat a piece of cake at your birthday, you know? That's autonomy, baby. Like that independence is awesome. And once you have it, you're not gonna want to let it go. The problem is that you probably haven't had it in a really long time. And you forgot what that's like, but you see others who have it and that looks very, very attractive.
Because you're human.
So these businesses, these systems, these diets, what have you, these coaches, they make money when you need them forever, right? It's just math at the end of the day. The moment you stop needing them is also the moment you stop paying.
A method that actually taught you how to trust yourself around foods would be a one-time purchase. You'd learn it, you'd internalize it, you'd graduate. And maybe you'd want some additional help with mastery and different phases of life and stuff. But generally speaking, it's not a need to have. That would be just more like a want to have. Like, I just want somebody to help me a little bit more. But that's not what we're typically getting, right? We're getting a whole bunch of rules.
Points, colors, streaks, a spreadsheet, right? It's a game with no off ramp.
the moment you stop paying, you're standing alone in the kitchen with zero skills on how to feed yourself and how to choose what to eat in a way that nourishes you.
satisfies you and helps you reach your goals. You've got no internal compass anymore. It's just silence, right? You don't know. Well actually it's not silent. There's probably a lot of food noise. There's probably a lot of food anxiety. But in terms of actual steps you need to take and like a clear plan, that's not, that's not happening. There is no clear plan.
That's because you were never taught to coach yourself. You were taught to need the coach.
So that's really the the whole concept I want to leave with you today in terms of if you're finding it really hard to eat normally, I want you to ask yourself, have you been taught to coach yourself or were you taught to need a coach? And when I say coach, that can be changed with a diet or a system or a plan, right? Were you taught to rely on something external, something?
out there instead of something internal and in here. And I'm pointing to my chest for those listening. Something in here or in your brain, right? In your head. Your head act your brain is really smart. You're a really smart person and you're capable of this. You just sometimes need to be taught, you know.
If any part of what I described today felt uncomfortably familiar, like the hidden wrappers or the good day versus bad day, the
Checking the app before you check in with yourself. I want you to know that this is so insanely common in our culture to just completely disconnect with what your body is telling you because we've been trained to think that our body is just fundamentally wrong. And don't get me wrong, there can be skills that you have to learn and master. But again, like those should be taught in a way that's facilitating you being your own coach for the rest of your life, not needing a coach for the rest of your life.
That doesn't make any sense that you would need a coach for the rest of your life to do something as basic as feeding yourself, right? Like none of us would be here because our civilized would have died off by now.
So I want you to know, no, you're not broken. No, you're not just addicted to food. It's not a willpower problem. It's not a self-control problem. It's honestly just that you really haven't been taught how to eat normally and how to trust yourself and how to coach yourself through cravings or urges or hard days. And that is your next step is leaving behind all these systems and approaches that have made you rely on them and instead.
Learn how to coach yourself through things. Learn how to stand ten toes down, confident in the choices that you're making for yourself and being able to make choices with food that feel good for you and they're not a big deal.
This is the type of work that we do with our clients at Nourished and Free is I'd rather they learn how to coach themselves through things and get those skills built up and and be an expert in their own body and in their own mind than them needing us for the rest of their lives. Right. Like obviously we're gonna have a lot of back and forth in the beginning as they're learning all this and and untangling everything. So that's really normal. But
At some point, like we want to see our clients needing us less and less because they're doing well.
My team and I we actually have weekly meetings to go through all of our clients and talk about their progress and when's the last time we heard from them. And more times than not, if we haven't heard from somebody in a while, it's because they're just doing really awesome and they don't need us. And so that's always a really fun response to get when we reach out and say, Hey, we haven't heard from you in a little bit. Like just want to check in, make sure everything's okay. And
You don't need anything. Are you are you safe? Is what's going on? I love getting that response where they're like, I'm honestly just doing so well and I haven't had any questions because I'm doing this on my own and I'm good. You know, that is to me, I would rather that than somebody continually feeling like I need to hold their hand for the rest of their lives
If this one hits home, make sure you let me know, tag me in your stories and let me know you're listening. leave that rating and review, you're interested in getting support with learning how to eat like a normal person, really be able to coach yourself through things and become your own expert in your own body and in your own mind and what's going on with these food thoughts and being able to work through them Definitely recommend checking out Nourished and Free.
At the time of this recording, we're building up a wait list right now for our fall launch. But I'm sure if you click the link in the show notes, you'll get all of your most up-to-date information on all things nourished and free, depending on when you're listening to this. All right. Thanks for spending your day with me. Until next time, cheers to Living Nourished and Free.
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