In a world where the promise of a 'new you' seems just one diet away, especially as the New Year rolls in, it's crucial to take a step back and consider a few things that could not only change the course of 2024, but of the rest of your life.
If you're already thinking about "getting back on track", "getting in shape" or "taking your health seriously" in the new year, this episode is for you.
We're going to cover:
If you want your life to be different a year from now and you want to be free from the constant cycle of yo-yo dieting, this episode is a MUST listen.
RESOURCES
Connect with Sabrina:
In a world where the promise of a 'new you' seems just one diet away, especially as the New Year rolls in, it's crucial to take a step back and consider a few things that could not only change the course of 2024, but of the rest of your life.
If you're already thinking about "getting back on track", "getting in shape" or "taking your health seriously" in the new year, this episode is for you.
We're going to cover:
If you want your life to be different a year from now and you want to be free from the constant cycle of yo-yo dieting, this episode is a MUST listen.
RESOURCES
Connect with Sabrina:
If you're tempted to start another diet this January, you are definitely not alone. Diet culture is loud right now. Diets are big business around the new year and the push to lose weight is everywhere. The marketing gets really smart around this time and it can be so easy to get swept away in a wishful desire of this life that these companies are promising. You Watch out for noob and weight watchers sliding into your DMs or emails in the new year and it's normal to think this time will be different. So if that's where your mindset is at, don't beat yourself up. We're going to talk about three things to consider in today's episode. If you are feeling that way and thinking about starting a new diet in the new year, let's get into it.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the Live Unrestricted podcast, a show where you'll learn how to heal your relationship with food and your body so that you can focus your time and energy on more important things like your personal growth. I'm your host, sabrina Magna, food freedom coach, and my mission is to help make your life happier and healthier, without stress, overwhelm or guilt about food. If you love the show, please do go out and share it, and if you're looking for support with your relationship with food. Details about my programs are in the show notes. Thanks for spending time with me today. Now let's jump in. Welcome back, my friend. We are here post Christmas and we are hitting that weird limbo during Christmas and New Year's where you have no idea what day of the week it is, what you should be doing, and things just feel super off but also kind of nice. I hope that you listened to my past episode before the holidays got started so that you can get yourself in the right mindset and establish the right habits, so that you can navigate the holidays and food talk and food presence in your life with peace, with balance, with ease. On my end, I am doing a little bit of work during this time because I'm putting the final touches to my brand new three part video series how to Stop Feeling Obsessed with Food.
Speaker 1:We already have so many of you who have signed up and the energy is there, and what better way to start the new year when diet culture is super present? And my goal is to give you a new approach, a new way of experiencing food and healing your relationship with food this year, so that you can move out of this system of oppression and of restriction and of punishment. So that's really what today's episode is about, because I know, after having maybe eaten more than you normally do during the holidays, maybe not feeling great about your body and seeing the ads pop up more and more, and it seems like everyone is picking their flavor of the year. So you've got people who are starting age and membership, and others are getting personal trainers, and you've got people joining Noom and there's all of the promos, and so it is so easy to want to go back to that and to forget a lot of your past and your history with yo-yo dieting, kind of like when you always go back to an ex who you've broken up with and gone back together with like six times and it never works out. And you know it never works out and yet you always get pulled back into it. Why do we keep doing that?
Speaker 1:It's a known trap in the intuitive eating world and it is called the one last diet trap, so it could sound something like I'll just do this one last diet, lose the weight for good, and then I'll deal with my food issues, or even though I always gain the weight back, I have a strong feeling that this diet will be different, or you might even think I'm done with dieting, I'm not in diet culture anymore. But this really clean eating program or my friends are talking about this new program that is super different. Although it requires food restriction and labeling and has all the characteristics of a diet, it could also sound like I'm going to be really good this time and this time this is the last diet I'll ever do. I'll be able to stick to it. And that really is kind of the same thing is thinking of that toxic ex and thinking he's going to have changed and this time he really seems different. But he said that to you six other times and maybe it was different for the first two weeks or one month or even the first six months, and then it just went right back to how it was and you're reminded of oh, this is why it doesn't work.
Speaker 1:And what's worse about having diet culture as an ex is that that ex manages to make you think that you were the problem. And so if you think that you're the problem, you're not going to go out and date someone entirely different, right? Because you think that no one will ever love you and this is the best that you'll ever get. So if you believe that you're the problem, that you're the reason why the diet didn't work, then you'll just go back and do the same thing and you might be thinking well, I'm not doing the same thing, I'm doing completely different things. I've done a juice fast and I've counted calories and I've done low carb, but all of those things are the same. They rely on restriction, they rely on categorizing certain foods. They are built off of punishment and restriction and guilt and moral value attributed to food and a pursuit of weight loss. And so, even though it may feel, and we can rationalize, that we're doing something different, it's just poo wrapped up in gold. Different diet, same results.
Speaker 1:The reason why you fall off the wagon or gain the weight back is not because of a lack of willpower, poor discipline, being on the wrong diet. It's because your body is not wired for restriction. It's wired for survival. Regardless of what diet, lifestyle, wellness plan you're doing, when you're depriving your body of food, it thinks it's being subjected to famine and will do everything it can do to survive. If it mentally thinks that food is off limits, it's getting taken away, that you only have a short period of time to eat something, then psychologically your body will start hyperfixating on those foods, and I very much understand that.
Speaker 1:You may have heard these words and you may really understand them intellectually and logically, but there's a difference between knowledge and knowing. This is what I always explain to the FFA members is that you can know something intellectually. You can read the books, you can listen to the podcast. Something can make a lot of sense to you, like you could read a book on how to play guitar and you will understand intellectually how to play guitar. But when you get on that guitar and you start to play, you're probably going to play like crap if you've never practiced it before. And knowing is knowing something viscerally and that comes from action, that comes from practice, that comes from doing the things necessary that integrate the knowledge that you have.
Speaker 1:So, reading the intuitive eating book, for example, I've had a lot of people.
Speaker 1:I love that book.
Speaker 1:I think it's amazing, the first time I've ever read it. I felt like someone had written this book about me and so it was such a great first step, and a lot of people will come to me and say I've read the intuitive eating book. I am hooked on the idea. However, I still don't feel like I'm there. I still have my old mindsets, I still feel compelled to restrict, and that's because there's the knowing piece which is really embodying. I want you to think of it as embodying the knowledge.
Speaker 1:So today, to help you start embodying some of the knowledge and to actually create something different in your life this year and not get pulled back into what is familiar, even though it might not be good for you. Right, like that X might be familiar but it definitely is not good for you if you've gone through the same thing over and over again and it's never worked out long term, there's something wrong with that relationship. So what I want to do is I want to talk about three things to keep in mind, three things to explore. If you are thinking about starting a new diet or compelled to go back into diet culture, or if you really want and are ready to heal your relationship with food this year and you want some strategies to help you viscerally know it and feel it and start embodying that Alright. So the first thing that I want you to consider is your diet history.
Speaker 1:Now I completely understand what it's like to look back on some of the things that you've done with rose colored glasses and to only remember the positives. So you might remember the compliments that people made when you lost the weight. You might remember stepping on the scale and feeling that excitement when you saw that number and thought I did that, I'm a success, and feeling proud of yourself. Or putting on that pair of jeans that no longer fits because now it has some give because you've lost the weight. Or maybe the comments about how proud people are of you and how well you're eating. So, of course, when you're looking back on all of that, with just thinking about those positives, then it's so normal to want to go back to it and going back to that analogy of going back to your ex.
Speaker 1:Most of the time you hang on to those things that were great, that were positive, and then the parts that were negative may be the feeling obsessed with food 24 seven, hungry all the time, being moody, being irritated, being unpleasant to be around, not being able to go to social events because you have to bring your own food, or having your entire worth be wrapped up in the way that you look, having no self esteem even though you have lost the weight but still not feeling like it's enough, or not being able to control or trust yourself around food and always having to track the calories and then feel anxious if you don't, or feel anxious if you go above it or living your life according to weight watchers points and always having to think about what you're going to eat and feeling overwhelmed because there's so much conflicting information out there, and then spending all of your time on social media looking up weight loss tips and before and after pictures and nutrition advice. You might forget that your entire life revolved around losing weight and around food and it got in the way of you having real connection with people, because it's really hard to be connected with someone when you're living life in your head, when you're thinking about what is someone thinking about the way that I look and not truly loving yourself, not truly having that self acceptance because a big reason and I definitely can't get into all of that today but I do a lot of body image work inside of Food Freedom Academy and we do a lot of deep diving into the reason why we pursue weight loss and a lot of it comes down to the relationship that we have with ourselves. So what you'll often see is that we talk about having a relationship with food and a lot of people are at that level of awareness of. I know that I don't have a good relationship with food, but the reason why a toxic relationship with food tends to develop is because of a unhealthy relationship with our bodies, right, so we want to change it, we want to shrink it, and so how do we do that? Through food and through exercise, and you'll often see chronic dieters and restrained eaters have a unhealthy relationship with exercise as well, but usually you'll hear the food part, because that can start to take over a lot more. And so what's underneath that relationship with food is your relationship with your body.
Speaker 1:But what's underneath the relationship with your body is the relationship that you have with yourself your mindset, your subconscious, your thoughts, the way that you speak to yourself. We use our bodies as a vessel to heal the relationship that we have with ourselves. We think that if we look a certain way, if we get the approval from other people, if we can avoid judgment and if we get praised, then I will feel better about myself. And I want to say that it is completely normal that you feel that way, and I know that we live in a weight-biased, fat-phobic society and a lot of fat folks and people living in larger bodies do get discriminated against, not just in society, in the medical system I mean, it disgusts me to see how people in larger bodies are treated.
Speaker 1:But, going back to exploring your diet history, I encourage you, and I really want you, to write this down. So if you have a pen and a piece of paper somewhere around you, whip it out, and if you have your phone, take out your notes app and write this down. Explore your diet history from the moment it started maybe it was when you're 13 years old or 20 or whenever that started for you and then all the way until now or until your most recent diet, as long as you were doing it, and I want you to explore. I know it's so easy to just remember the positive, but remember the damage. There's a reason why it didn't work, and I also encourage you to move the blame away from you, because I know that's what you're going to do, because it's so easy to blame yourself. But please keep in mind, as you're doing this exercise, the 95% of diners gain that weight back. So please remember that it is not you the problem, it is the system, it is the approach. Our bodies are not meant for this and I want you to evaluate the damage, the damage that it had done on your self esteem.
Speaker 1:That could be one column right how you felt about yourself and get really deep into the details, get super specific. I felt like a failure. I felt ugly, I felt disgusting, I felt moody, I felt unpleasant, I had no confidence. I didn't show up as my authentic self. I was putting on a mask, like let yourself go and really just write down all of the damage on how you felt about yourself. Then the damage on your relationship with food. It might be that you thought about food from the moment you woke up to the moment you went to bed. You were constantly anxious if you ate a food that you shouldn't, you didn't want to go out to restaurants. This was one of mine. I didn't want to go out to restaurants, or I spent all of my time on my fitness pal and I didn't want to travel.
Speaker 1:And then the relationship that you had, maybe, with your partner and the way that your relationship with food during that time while dieting, affected the people around you, your kids. What are they learning? Do you impact on your physical health? Could be something that you can journal on as well, because we know going up and down the same way over and over again is really tough on the body, worse than staying at a consistently higher weight. Maybe, and likely, you've gained more weight over time, and that's because dieting is one of the biggest predictors of weight gain. Maybe you felt like you had cravings, uncontrollable cravings, and it was the only thing that you could think about. Maybe you were binge eating a lot, feeling uncomfortable, using compensatory behaviors like purging over exercising.
Speaker 1:Remembering the full picture is so important because, just like that person who's considering going back to her ex, if she only remembers the good times, then yeah, of course there's a positive and a negative to everything, regardless of what you do. So, yeah, you will only remember the positive and of course you're going to want to go back to it, but there's a reason. It didn't work. So that's the first thing to consider, and this is to consider not only if you're considering going on a new diet, but maybe if you just want to be reaffirmed in what you're doing, because I know that intuitive eating healing your relationship with food eating disorder recovery is not a linear process, so sometimes you just need to do these exercises as a reminder.
Speaker 1:Now the second thing that I want you to consider is a mindset that I share and try to instill in the Food Freedom Academy members very early on, and this is a mindset that I make all of my important life decisions with, and it's to start with the end in mind. So I've always kind of lived my life this way. I think about my future. I often make decisions from the 80 year old version of myself. So when I think about my future and I think about my retirement and the kind of quality of life that I want to have, financially, for example, then I know that if I want to achieve that, then I have to start taking actions now so that I can save the money, I can let compound interests work for me and I can create that wealth. Because I know that it does not happen overnight and whenever, let's say, you're creating a puzzle or you're putting legos in place, they give you a picture and then they say this is what it's going to look like at the end. So, now that you know what it's going to look like, start with that and then put some pieces together. And as you start putting pieces together, if it doesn't fit the picture that the legos or the puzzle gave to you, then you're not going to place it there.
Speaker 1:But the thing is that most people don't start with the end in mind, and it's only natural. Humans are wired for instant gratification. We are wired for short term thinking. It's survival. So we think about what do I want to do right now and what do I do to get faster results, to get quick fixes? And what do I do to feel better right now, as fast as possible? And when you feel uncomfortable in your body, when you feel judged, when you're not fitting your clothes, when your relationship with food is not what you want it to be, maybe you feel very out of control, you're not making the decisions that you wish you were making, then I understand why you would want to do the quick fix right. You want to feel better now, and a lot of times when you're starting with the end in mind and you are planting the seeds to creating something that is going to flourish years or even decades from now right, you know the quote the day you plant the seed is not the day that you eat the fruit.
Speaker 1:A lot of the times, those things that align with the kind of life that you want to live in the future. They're the boring stuff. They're the small, inconsequential. Boring requires patience. Kind of stuff like putting $5 away every day or every week into your bank account does not seem like much in the short term, but over the years it will reap massive rewards for you. And the same goes for if you want to create a life where a healthy relationship with food, with your body, with yourself, is at its core, then the things that you would have to do, starting now, require patience. They require doing the work. They require doing the unsexy stuff that diet culture will not promote to you, because no one wants to do the unsexy stuff. People want the headlines, people want the lose 30 pounds in 30 days. They want the things that are going to catch your attention.
Speaker 1:When I started my business, for example, I knew what my end business would look like. So my own business coach made us do an exercise, which was what does your end business look like? Like your ideal business, what you're doing on a day to day, the things that you're in charge of, the projects that you're taking on. What does your ideal business look like? So I got super clear on what that was for me and then every decision that I made from that point on was with that vision in mind, and so if there was a project that was suggested to me or if there was an opportunity that presented to me that didn't align with the vision, then I won't take it because that's not the direction I want to go in.
Speaker 1:When I was in university and I was working as statistics Canada, still doing my bachelors in financial, math and economics and very unhappy at my job, then I knew that the easiest thing to do was to stay there and to keep getting that cushy paycheck and have the stability and work at the government and get the pension. I mean, I remember when I was working at the restaurant at the same time. So I used to work at a restaurant and a statistics Canada and I had met this couple who was working at the government and they were asking me about my life and I was telling them how I was currently working at the government but that I wanted to start my own business in health coaching and they gave me this wonderful, unsolicited advice, which was to stay at the government and that I should prioritize that safety and the comfort. And that just didn't sit well with me because I knew that to leave that world and to start a business was going to require more effort. It was going to require for me to get super uncomfortable. I mean, I cannot tell you, my lovely listeners, how uncomfortable I've had to get in the past years as I've been starting and then growing and then scaling my business.
Speaker 1:I had to get comfortable with not knowing certain answers and being in the unknown and having to learn a lot and doing things consistently, doing small things that people wouldn't see, that I have to do behind the scenes, the late nights, early mornings, working weekends. I mean, especially during the pandemic, there was a lot of hard work that went on behind the scenes and it's because I didn't expect these quick results. I knew it was going to take some time, but I also knew that it was worth it because of the life that I want to create in five, 10, 20 years from now. So what I encourage you to do is I want you to start with the end in mind. So what I mean by that is fast forward to you as an 80 year old, and this is what I call the front porch test, or you can call it the funeral test or the gravestone test.
Speaker 1:Think of the life that you want to have and that you want to look back on. Think of the things that you value, the things that you think, the things that you believe and that you pass down to your kids and grandkids. What do you want your life to look like from the moment you wake up to the moment that you go to bed? What do you want to be remembered for? And once you get clarity on what that end life is for you, then every decision that you take from this point on should align with that vision. And if it doesn't, then we don't do it.
Speaker 1:So if that vision, for example, is that you want to get to the end of your life and you want to truly believe and know and pass down this belief to your daughter, granddaughter, maybe even great granddaughter, if you want to have this belief that your worth is not dictated by your body, if you don't want to let the size of your body dictate the size of your life, if you want and believe that all bodies are worthy of love and respect and that's what you want to pass down, the only way that you can truly do that is to embody that and it's to start working towards that belief. And if there's a diet or a system out there that tells you otherwise, that tells you that the only way to be healthy and the only way to be happy and the only way to be confident and to have your quote unquote dream life is to lose weight. Well, you'll just know. Well, that doesn't align with my end life value and the beliefs I want to hold, so I will not participate in that anymore. Be so convicted in your values and in the things that you want your life to embody into the future, and anything that doesn't align with it we throw in the trash, and anything that does, we move towards. So, for example, when I knew the end business that I wanted to create, I also knew the values that I wanted to hold. So I knew that I wanted my business to be inclusive. I wanted people to feel good. I didn't want to prey on people. I wanted to have integrity in what I was doing and be proud of the work that I was doing out there and not put out anything that didn't align with what I truly believed just for the sake of making money. And so when I knew that and I got clear on that, then all of the decisions that I made from that point on, aligned with that vision, so that I wouldn't accidentally take a wrong turn and start moving down the wrong path.
Speaker 1:The impact created by one change, one decision in your life is similar to the effect of shifting the route of an airplane by just a few degrees. So imagine you're flying from LA to New York and if a pilot leaving from LAX adjust the heading just three and a half degrees south, you'll land in Washington DC instead of New York. Such a small change is barely noticeable in the moment at takeoff, but it gets magnified across the entire US and you end up hundreds of miles apart. And so a small decision right now that may seem insignificant, like either I decide to do one more diet, or a small decision to say I'm breaking up with diet culture and I'm doing the sometimes uncomfortable work to heal my relationship with food and to become an intuitive eater those small decisions in the moment may not seem big, but again, remember that the day that you plant the seed is not the day that you eat the fruit.
Speaker 1:And so, as you start working towards what really matters to you, every day, you're getting either closer or further away from the vision of the light that you've created, that end in mind. So start with the end in mind. If the vision of your future, of your end of life 80 years old, 90 years old, hopefully 100, does not involve being afraid of eating carbs or counting calories or letting the size of your body dictate the size of your life and how you feel about yourself, then that needs to be super clear and every action that you take from this point on is in alignment with that vision. All right, so the third thing, the last thing that I want you to consider and we could go on for hours, but I'm gonna keep it to those three things the last thing I want you to consider is the impact and the cost of whatever decision that you make right now from this point on, the decisions that you make for yourself. Let's say it was to do another diet or it was to heal your relationship with food.
Speaker 1:They're never just about you, because your relationship with food and your relationship with your body are two of the most important relationships that you have in your life. Right, because they affect everything. They affect your career, they affect your family, they affect your partnership, they affect the way that you show up in the world, they affect your social life. They affect your desire to travel, they affect the experiences that you choose to have or choose to miss out on, like going in the pool or taking the pictures. So we can think of our relationship with food and our bodies as being this isolated thing, but it creates a ripple effect on all of these different areas of your life.
Speaker 1:Those ripple effects can be positive and they can also be negative, and so when you are having a hard time embodying self-acceptance or being an intuitive eater, it is very hard, for example, to pass that down if you have kids, to be able to embody that and to show that to the people that you love. It's very difficult to do that. I want you to imagine you're showing, you're trying to teach someone how to play guitar, for example, but you don't know how to play guitar and you've never played. You've only ever read the book, for example. It's very difficult to do that because you don't have the knowing. You have the knowledge, perhaps the intellectual knowledge. So sometimes it can be easier to take yourself out of your own perspective, because I know that I work with a lot of people-pleasers who don't like to think about themselves, who don't like to think about their own needs and put their needs first, and so if you're that kind of person, then it could be helpful to stop seeing this as just about yourself and to see it as about all of these different things around you the people around you, the things that you care about your hobbies, your career and to make decisions that would make you proud and would make you feel like you're creating this positive ripple effect into the world.
Speaker 1:Diaculture is a oppressive system. It is meant to make people, especially women, small and quiet, because if you spend your entire life making shrinking your body a full-time project and if you obsess over these flaws that have been created by this very system, then you won't be able to focus on the things that really matter. You won't be able to have the same voice that you would fight for. If you had that mental space to do that, I would have never been able to start a business and speak out against things that I think are wrong in the world and that are very truly wrong in the world. I wouldn't have been able to do that if my body was still taking up 99% of my brain space and, as a result, food was kind of lumped into there as well. Those are the three things I would love for you to consider. As we are going into the new year, you may want to reaffirm your faith in the journey and your desire to heal your relationship with food, or if it's like you're really considering, you're on the fence or you already signed up for Noom and you needed to hear this episode. Those are the three things.
Speaker 1:Number one reflect on your diet, history. Reflect on the impact. Try not to look at it through rose-colored glasses. I want you to do this exercise. If you're listening right now, take out your pen and piece of paper or a notepad, and I want you to work through this exercise. I don't want you to just listen to this episode. Work through this exercise, do it.
Speaker 1:The second one is start with the end in mind. Get clear what is your end life? What are you doing? What are you focusing on? What are your values? What are your beliefs? What does it look like with the people around you? And then make every decision in alignment with that vision. And then the third thing I want you to consider is this isn't just about you. This has a ripple effect on people around you. So try to take yourself out of just a personal perspective and look at how this affects the world as a whole and what kind of system that you want to encourage and participate in.
Speaker 1:I know that it can be a scary decision to leave diet culture behind, especially if it's been a big part of your life for a very long time. And if you do decide to pursue healing your relationship with food this year so that you can finally create a life free from food guilt, obsession and constantly being on and off the diet, then I got you, because I don't want you to do it alone, and that's exactly why I created my brand new free video series that is coming to you starting January 25th 2024. I know that it's a few weeks away, and so I have created a waitlist for you to hop on that list and be the first one to be notified when registration opens in this week long event. You're going to have access to both live and pre recorded videos, a workbook, a community coaching from yours truly, me, over here behind the mic, and so much more.
Speaker 1:I have a bunch of surprises for you, and the whole theme of this video series is helping you stop feeling obsessed with food, so you can go to SabrinaMangalcom for a slash training dash waitlist Sorry, I had to think about that for a second or you can find the link in the show notes as well. I hope that you have an amazing end to the year. Happy New Year. My friend and I will see you in 2024.