Sensual Being

Ep 113 - Why We Eat More But Nourish Less

• Jolene Whiting • Episode 113

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The disconnect between what our bodies need and what our food culture promotes has never been more profound. Today's journey explores the hidden conditioning that shapes our relationship with food and the surprising ways it impacts our health.

Have you ever noticed how food packaging boldly highlights natural allergens like eggs and milk while completely normalizing chemical additives? This subtle yet powerful messaging trains us to fear whole foods while accepting lab-created ingredients without question. Meanwhile, government guidelines promote ultra-processed cereals over nutrient-dense eggs, creating deep confusion about what truly constitutes nourishment.

The simple practice of intermittent fasting reveals one of our body's most remarkable abilities – self-healing. By extending the overnight period without food to 16 hours, we allow our systems to shift energy from constant digestion to vital repair work. Many listeners have shared profound healing experiences simply by creating this digestive breathing room, contradicting the conventional wisdom that we need three meals plus snacks daily.

Particularly troubling is the resurgence of "Y2K body" ideals – the dangerously thin aesthetic that dominated the early 2000s when public figure Victoria Beckham was weighed on television and models with visible bones were still considered "too fat." Those who grew up during this era continue struggling with body image distortions, yet this harmful standard is being glamorized for a new generation. Rather than chasing these arbitrary ideals, we need to reconnect with what makes each of our unique bodies thrive.

As we've moved further from growing, raising and cooking our own food, we've lost touch with fundamental nutrition. Processed foods enable us to consume more while receiving less actual nourishment, leaving us paradoxically overfed yet undernourished. Beginning the journey back requires conscious choices – perhaps choosing butcher-sourced meat, prioritizing whole foods, or simply becoming more mindful about how different foods make you feel.

Join me in breaking free from food conditioning and rediscovering what your body truly needs. This journey isn't about perfection, but making better choices where possible while navigating the complexities of modern life. Your body has the wisdom – are you ready to listen?

- If you would like to connect further you can find me on Instagram @jolenesensualbeing
- You can sign up to my mailing list here: Sensual Being Mailout
- My Youtube channel: SensualBeingJolene

I hope you enjoy your day.
Jolene
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Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome to the Sensual being podcast with myself, your host, jolene Whiting. I have been a pole dance teacher for nearly 20 years. I'm also a yoga instructor and my favorite pastimes are connecting to my own sensuality, connecting with the world and connecting with animals as well. In this podcast, you'll find new and inventive ways of how you see yourself, connecting yourself with others, and also how you see and view the world around you. Today, we are talking about food, the conditioning around food, and how it's so hard to navigate taste versus what do we actually need to eat? Hello, sensual Bean, and welcome back to the podcast. Thank you so much for joining me here today and before we get into this episode, I just wanted to say thank you so much. If you are a long-term listener or a new listener, I really appreciate you.

Speaker 1:

And for those who follow me on Instagram or Facebook and also have been following the podcast, you may have noticed that I've kind of I don't really share in the same way on Instagram anymore At the moment. I am kind of finding that space really difficult to share and I don't know if you're finding this too. So I thought I'd just drop this little note here just to connect with you Because I'm finding that whenever I go on there it feels like really toxic, really toxic through so much of the AI content is just absolutely mind-boggling. Some of it, I mean, looks so real, it really does, and I just I'm not on board with it at all. And I can kind of tell when people are using it in their own like musings and content, creating and sharing things and you're like this isn't like what you used to share. Something's changed and I don't know. I'm just I'm finding it very hard to share on there. So, to be honest, this little corner of the universe where we are now just you and me, this is the only real place I'm sharing, apart from in person. So again, just thank you for being here and for being you. So I don't know if you found that. Feel free to hit me up with your wisdom on that too. I can't be just me, but this episode has nothing. Well, actually, I say it has nothing to do with social media. You could argue it probably does, um, due to the conditioning around this, but I would like to talk to you about food.

Speaker 1:

Food. We love food, don't we? Food is amazing, but I think I have done some episodes before around food, but I think it needs to be talked about again and again because food is a really hard subject. It's really difficult because there is so much conditioning around food, like when we were growing up, did you get something as a reward, did you get something as a treat? Do you still do that now? Did you have you ever eaten out of being upset, going through grief, depression? This is all very real and food is such a giver of life, but it also takes away our life at the same time and it can make us have cravings for things that we really don't need in our body and you could argue, probably isn't even food some of the times and I just think we have been blindsided and we continue to be as well, and it's so hard to wake up and see what is going on with food.

Speaker 1:

There are massive rabbit holes with this to go down. If this any of this sparks an interest with you, I urge you to dig deeper, because I am only going to scratch the surface with you with this. Some of this is just sort of things, of my findings and things that I'm feeling lately or that I've noticed there is more, so much more so. One of the things that strikes me, and I said this a few months ago to my mom and to my partner. I said don't you think it's weird that whenever you see on the back of a packet of food, you see the list of ingredients, and you see on it the allergens in bold, yeah, allergens in bold, yeah, like milk, eggs and things like that. And you're like, oh, wheat. And you're like, okay, I see you. So you're putting all of those in bold. And then all of these other chemicals are obviously absolutely fine for us and no one's ever allergic to them. All these words that we can't pronounce, they never come up. Do they in a listing of? You may be allergic to this. Please go with caution. Oh, no, no, no, it's, it's eggs, milk, you know, okay, but you know, the things that are normally involved have something in common and they are normally actually all what I would deem as real food and they're not a chemical based, lab created thing that's within our food and I just find that interesting. Ok, let's just leave that there. Interesting, interesting. Okay, let's just leave that there. Interesting. So real food is getting demonized and yet the chemicals, oh, jog on. They're lovely for you. Red flag, red flag.

Speaker 1:

I mean, we live in a world where the government guidelines and recommendations of what they put out, of what a good breakfast is for you and what a healthy option is, which would be something like cereal oh yeah, cereal doesn't even look like food anymore. Oh, you want to have eggs for breakfast? Oh no, very high in cholesterol, very bad for you, and certainly don't have them raw. Literally, whatever the government says, I'm intrigued by what the opposite is, in a world where our government who have the best interest at heart of ourselves, let's not forget that will put out that we should be eating something so overly ultra processed as cereal over a simple whole food like an egg. That's the world we live in and I'm like, hang on a minute. I used to buy into this as well. I used to honestly be somebody who thought having a bowl of cereal in the morning, that was healthy, and I just don't see it like that anymore. Not at all. To be honest, I don't really see having breakfast in the morning as healthy anymore.

Speaker 1:

Depends on your work and your day. So this is open to you know. Thought of how you live your day compared to how I live mine. Even the term breakfast, if you break it down, it's break fast. You're breaking the fast. And when you start to look into intermittent fasting, even on a really basic scale of doing like a 16 hour fast and trying to do that every day, that means that you won't be eating from, like, say, six o'clock at night until you'll go right the way through without eating. You can still drink water, but don't eat anything until at least 10 o'clock the next morning, so not first thing in the morning, but at least 10 am. That is a 16 hour fast. That is intermittent fasting. There is more with intermittent fasting. You can do a lot more with it, and on a very small scale of.

Speaker 1:

What I want to say about going further with that is that when you actually fast and your body is not in this constant state of digestion, your body can actually start to heal itself, because our bodies can and they do actually heal ourself. But the more food we keep putting in, the more we have like our three meals a day and everything and the snacks in between, the more food we are putting in particularly if it's ultra processed food as well, in which case your body has to work extra hard in the wrong way with digestion it's making our body take its energy sources away from healing and putting it into digestion. And sometimes I find as soon as like, particularly if I'm not eating in the evening before bed and I always used to, and particularly since I gave up the studio and my life has changed my eating pattern has been able to change. I knew I needed to change it for my own health. I really did, but now I can change that because I'm not doing the late nights. I used to get in at like 10, half 10 every night and be desperate to eat, so I had to eat something before bed. I've also learned now that I can go to bed a little bit hungry and I'm okay. But my body isn't trying to digest that food during sleeping. And you can also find that if you're not eating from six o'clock in the evening and you're like I'm going to go right the way through, sometimes when you get to about 9 pm and you're about to go to bed, you think I'm a little bit peckish, but your body isn't actually calling for food. It might be calling for water, but it's not calling for food. And to be able to recognize that it's actually really hard because it's almost as if your your tummy gets a bit empty and goes oh, we can fill it now with food. It's like this habit, this ongoing habit that we have through the conditioning that we've had around being brought up around food and your three meals a day breakfast, lunch and dinner and the sort of things that they should look like. You know, if you have a bowl of cereal in the morning, I can guarantee it will get your metabolism going and you will be hungry very soon afterwards because your body has not had any nutrients. It's had nothing.

Speaker 1:

And when you see things are fortified with more vitamins, no, they're adding crap into it when actually those vitamins are in actual, real food. They're in real food, like some of the things I try and have every day because I like to try and get as much nutrients as I can. So zinc and magnesium I try and get from pumpkin seeds every day. Omega-3 oil is actually in walnuts, so I eat those every day. There's certain bits of food that I will try and eat every day to try and get as many vitamins and minerals and nutrients into me as I can. And the more I eat in this way and see food as fuel, not just what I want, then I find that I'm less hungry because my body is actually getting nutrients to carry me forward in my day. And this is something really to think about that when you are about to eat or you're thinking about what you're going to eat, you want to treat food as fuel.

Speaker 1:

Now, this is very hard and try and do it 80% of the time. The other 20% accept that you're a human here on earth and maybe you like something just purely to taste nice and there's no nutrient in it. And because you're not doing that all the time, you're only doing it part the time. Then your body can deal with it a bit easier. But you might find that you don't end up doing it as much. You just get less and less. So, asking your body do I actually want this or do I actually need it? It's really helpful to try and decipher what it is that you are doing to yourself.

Speaker 1:

Because we eat blindly. We really do. We just inhale food. I've done this, I still do it sometimes. I'm not exempt from this, but sometimes we just inhale food and we don't even enjoy it. We don't even notice it. It doesn'm not exempt from this, but sometimes we just inhale food and we don't even enjoy it. We don't even notice it, it doesn't even touch the sides. And to become more mindful around food is an absolute gift, because your body can heal itself from so many things and you would have been told in this life that there's so many things you can't heal from. But there is so much healing going on with people who are taking control of their own food, of their own eating, and I have been hearing so many stories over the past few years of people healing from arthritis, healing from cancer, healing from so many different things, and those are huge, those two, but through the correct eating for you, for you, and adding in at least intermittent fasting where you can. The 16 hours overnight is an absolute game changer. It really really is.

Speaker 1:

And I have been seeing some things as well lately, and I was like about this that I'm about to say, and I thought, oh, I didn't even know that. So have you heard the term Y2K body? And I thought what the hell is Y2K body? What the hell is that? And then I thought, oh, my God, seriously. So Y2K refers to the year 2000. So back in the year 2000,. And I think I was around 19 around this time, around that age, and I'm going to tell you people now like youngsters now. I say youngsters, you know, but youngsters now who are like in their late teens, early 20s, are talking about Y2K body and they want it. Well, for a start, want your own body. That's a game changer too. God, if I only knew I could want my own body from a younger age, my life would have been so much different. I always wanted somebody else's body, but a Y2K body.

Speaker 1:

So in the year 2000 we had things like uh, posh spice, victoria beckham being popped onto the scales by chris evans after she had recently had a baby and he wanted to see if what her weight was like. Yeah, we also had uh, bridget jones diary that film that came out around that time. She was 136 pounds in that film. I wouldn't exactly class that as overweight, but the running theme throughout that story was she was always a little bit overweight. Okay, wow, okay. And people want to have this y2k body. Now, the y2k body. When victoria beckham got on those scales, she was. She was skinny. I'm not saying she was slim, I'm saying she was skinny, my god. And she was going through this backlash. Models were getting sent home for being too fat. When you look at them. Their bones were sticking out. They weren't even slim, they were skinny. That's what a Y2K body looked like then, and it's like people died from it.

Speaker 1:

People's mental health suffered from it. And there's people like me who grew up in that time, who has had to try, and still trying to undo so much conditioning about body shaming, about how much weight is too much. This is an internal thing that is there in me, present every day, and I have to really work at it. Why should I have to work at that? No one should have to work at loving themselves. It should just be a given. But we have to do so much work, and particularly around food and the guilt we can have around food as well, like, oh, have a bit of cake. Oh, shouldn't have had that. Oh, dear, shouldn't have had that. Oh no, oh no. And the guilt around food shouldn't be there. And I think if there was less guilt around the food, we wouldn't overeat, we wouldn't binge, we wouldn't starve ourselves, we wouldn't go through these shame spirals around it.

Speaker 1:

But then to be given guidelines by the government that a bowl of cereal which is just sugar is healthy for you, but an egg which has so much nutrients in it and that's bad for you. So we need to undo a lot. We need to undo a lot of this because our bodies are screaming out for nutrients. How many times have you been out for a Chinese only to be hungry about an hour later? It's all the MSG that they put in the food as well. Our body can't process nutrients in the food, and the more processed food is then the more nutrients have been taken out of the food, and processing it does mean cooking it as well. So there are levels to this.

Speaker 1:

If you buy food directly as it is and then you cook it, that is processed, but that is okay. But when you get food that has been cooked, melted down, repackaged, reorganized and everything, it's no longer food. I mean, look at Pop-Tarts. Pop-tarts is a great one that is so ultra processed you can hardly even tell what was supposed to be in it. Same with cereal you can't tell what that grain actually was because you can't. It's not there anymore. It's so ultra processed that there's no nutrients in. They've even they've accepted that, and so they've fortified it with extra vitamins and minerals. But when you add stuff in that your body isn't taken in naturally from the original food source. Your body can't process it. So you might think I'm getting all these vitamins and that just added into my cereal, but you're probably not, because your body can't actually deal with it.

Speaker 1:

So our bodies nowadays are so hungry we are. We are living in a time where a massive percentage of the population is very obese and yet we are hungrier than we've ever been in our whole, in our whole lifetimes, because the food that we are consuming particularly things like ready meals, packaged food, convenience food, quick snacks, sandwiches, ready-made all of this is convenience food. It has taken us away from the source of cooking our own food, and not only that actually either foraging our own food, growing our own food, raising our own food. We are getting so much further taken away from the actual connectedness of food itself that we are losing the pathways of what is actually right for our body. We are not making the connection. We are just getting hungrier and hungrier. But we are eating more and more.

Speaker 1:

And you see this with the youngsters now, and when I say youngsters, I actually mean children. Just think of what I'm telling you now and you might be thinking yeah, I do actually know that. I have seen it happen in my lifetime. I do know at least you know it might still be hard for you and me, but at least we know these children coming through. Nowadays, if their parents are just like, yeah, convenient food, yeah, it's okay, whatever, it doesn't matter, does it? It's food? Government wouldn't give us food. That wasn't okay for us.

Speaker 1:

If children are growing up with parents who think that these kids have got no hope, and when they say kids are our future, those kids aren't. They're really not, and it's really sad. You know life is coming into this world and we are not giving them what they need. It's heartbreaking, that's what it is. It doesn't. There's no other word for it. It's completely and utterly heartbreaking and unnecessary. It's really sad and we have to remember as well, with processed food, it's easier to eat more. It's easier to eat more of processed food, and this goes for things like juices as well.

Speaker 1:

You might think, oh, juices are really healthy. I mean, yeah, I'm going to pick a juice over a Coca-Cola or Pepsi, definitely, or Pepsi definitely. But when it comes to a juice, say, if you have orange juice, there's like five orange juices that have been juiced into that. Now you're not sitting down and eating. When would you sit down and eat five oranges? You probably wouldn't, but just drink a glass of orange juice. The processing has made it much more easier and palatable to have and gulp it down. But the issue with it is that you're getting all of that sugar. You're getting none of the fiber from the fruit to actually help offset the sugar and if you were, you probably only sit down and eat one orange and that, to be fair, is probably all your body needed in the first place.

Speaker 1:

So I do love juices and smoothies. I do think they're better when you've actually made them yourself, because, interestingly again, I would pick a smoothie or a juice over a soda, but I probably would just pick mineral water, spring water. But anyway, when you open the smoothies that you get from a supermarket, they don't really change color for like three or four days. If you're one last that long in the fridge before you've drunk at all, you'll find in about three days time the colour has not changed. But if you make your own smoothie or juice and you think I won't have it all now, I'll pop it in the fridge and I'll have some more a bit later. Within a few hours, if that, your smoothie or juice would have already started to change colour, which is normal and you can still drink it that day, absolutely fine. Your smoothie or juice would have already started to change colour, which is normal and you can still drink it that day, absolutely fine.

Speaker 1:

But you know it's ripening, it's open to the air, but how come the smoothies that you buy from a supermarket don't do that? What is in them? What have they made them? What have they put in there to add extra shelf life? So again, it's so hard with food. It's so hard because even our fruit and veg.

Speaker 1:

Now, when you look into a peel, which is A-P-E-E-L, which is a substance that is getting sprayed on a lot of fruit and veg, you'll find that the fruit doesn't actually sometimes it doesn't even fully ripen, but it doesn't go over and it will last a long time. You start to think hang on a minute, what was on this? And there is actually the code. I forget what it is, but you, I think if it's got a peel, you actually says it on there. Well, in theory, it should have a little sticker that says appeal. But also the different barcodes of the different numbers are on fruit and veg. They have a long number on them, but you can tell from the first couple of numbers, whether it's organic, whether it's grown in artificial light, whether it was grown on a farm. They have like a give. They tell you in numbers, they tell you.

Speaker 1:

So you have to remember what these codes are, which is a nightmare because it's more stuff for us to remember and, let's face it, every single login that we seem to have has a different password and we've got to try and remember all those as well. So it's no wonder we can't remember what should be at the start of a barcode for a clean bit of fruit. Don't blame you. So it's so, so hard with food, but what I believe in doing is we need to make a conscious effort. Which bit you decide to draw on for that conscious effort out of what I've said, or maybe you've come up with yourself? That's up to you, because we live in this world and we live in this time. We need to do our best that we can do in that moment, and if that means that you're out, you haven't got time to make your own juice. I don't even have a juicer kind of thing, but I'm going to get a smoothie instead of the usual soda that I get. That is a start, and no matter how many of these changes you implement, we are always just starting, because there are so, so many, so many things, so many hang-ups when it comes to food, so much mind control, so we can only do the best that we can do.

Speaker 1:

And one of the things that I have recently started doing which is something that I did start doing when I started eating meat again after being vegetarian for about 15 years, and my body was calling for meat. And it was calling for like steak burger from the butchers, which is weird, because when I used to eat meat before, I didn't really like that at all. So it was calling for like real full-on butcher meat. And then, over the last few years, whilst I do like to try and go to the butchers often, I have got a little bit slack and just started eating what I would deem as regular meat from the supermarket. I've actually changed that a month ago and I've actually said, right, I am not eating meat unless it's from farm shop butchers. Otherwise, on the days that I'm not having meat and I want more protein, I'm just going to get it more from eggs and from cheese.

Speaker 1:

Having meat and I want more protein, I'm just going to get it more from eggs and from cheese, and that is a difficult one to do because so so much meat is convenient to get from a supermarket. But, to be honest with you, it doesn't sit right on a conscious level, on a vibration level, for me to eat meat, but my body tells me that I need to eat it. So I find I'm in this constant battle, not only of all the other stuff that I've just told you and all that Y2K body business when I was like early 20s I'm also having to deal with the conscious and vibration level of eating meat when I don't want to, but my body tells me I need to. So these internal battles are going on everywhere, left, right and center, for everybody, and it's so important that we find our own way to navigate through.

Speaker 1:

I'm always here if you want to talk about anything to do with this, because sometimes it's very hard to talk about food with other people. I'm always here for you if you need it. So I hope that has landed well in many ways for you today and remember, as always, to lead through your life with your heart and to live with intention, with your heart and to live with intention. Thank you so much for tuning in today. If you enjoyed this episode, please do share it with your friends and on social media. If you have the time to rate or review this podcast, I'd be ever so grateful. If you'd like to follow me on Instagram, you can find me at Jolene sensual being. The links to my youtube and to sign up to my mailing list will be in the show notes as well. I look forward to speaking with you again very soon.