Why Diets Fail – And What Really Creates Lasting Weight Loss

In this episode, I sit down with behaviour coach Miriam Blyth to unpack why so many smart, capable people still get stuck in yo-yo dieting. Miriam shares her own story of breaking free from 20 years of fad diets and discovering the deeper link between identity, habits, and emotions.

We talk about:

• The hidden reason willpower and “just eat less” never stick

• How to dismantle food guilt and neutralise emotional triggers

• Why identity work is the overlooked foundation of transformation

• The messy middle—how to push through when results feel slow

• Why mindset, not macros, decides if change lasts

This is for anyone who’s tired of quick fixes and wants to finally understand how to create a body and mind that feel good for life.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hello and welcome to the Greg Fearon podcast with your host, Greg Fearon. And today I'm joined by the awesome Miriam Blythe, who is a behavior coach and helps people fix the unseen problems when it comes to their health and their weight. Welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_01 0:18

Hello. Finally, get to meet you.

SPEAKER_00 0:22

Yeah, so for the listeners, uh myself and Miriam met on Freds, um, where we regularly back each other up with our posts and our content and uh how we understood you know the the whole weight loss and all that stuff puzzle. So great to have you here. Um give me a little I'm excited to have this conversation. So give me a little bit of about your background.

SPEAKER_01 0:48

Okay. Oh, so where do I start?

SPEAKER_00 0:51

At the beginning.

SPEAKER_01 0:52

At the beginning, at the beginning, that'd be a good place. So basically, I was stuck in bad dieting, yo-yo dieting for about 20 years. Um, I was losing weight, gaining weight, losing weight, gaining weight, losing weight, gaining, just on and on and on. There'd be all these transformations, you know, that I would miraculously get, you know, oh I know that diet works because it worked, right? I lost all that weight on that, so I'd keep plugging at it, and then somehow it would come unstuck and it was just going on and on and on. And then I think it was about 2017, 18, around that time, I um, you know, joined Slim in World again, because that would have been about the fifth or sixth time that I've done this, and um, you know, and I was really making progress, but what I did a little bit differently, I started documenting it on Instagram, and um it was that whole, you know, like still yo-yoing just throughout this slimm and world time, and then I flipped over to calorie counting again, and you know, and then I lost this weight again, and you know, and it was the same story, just over and over, kept repeating itself, and then it was in 2020, no, 2019, I remember it so well, April 2019, I came across this concept of hunger-directed eating, and it was like you can listen to your body, like your body's got these inbuilt, natural hunger and fullness cue, which is the calorie counter, and I was like, Oh my god, that makes so much sense! Like, you know, and this whole concept teaches you about like how diet culture has trapped you for so many years and all of this kind of stuff, and then you kind of get sucked in, and then I became like this beacon of hope on Instagram because I'm documenting all my hunger-directed eating journey, and everybody's like, Wow, like, look, she's losing weight listening to her hunger and fullness cue, which I was doing, and it was great. And for about six months it was like going viral, and everybody was following me and listening to me, and then all of a sudden, people start falling off the wagon because they're listening to the hunger and fullness cue for a few weeks, and then they can't do it. And I'm thinking, you know, I my following went up to from about 10,000 followers up to like 17,000 overnight, and now it's kind of dwindled back back down a bit, but it's kind of like I'm thinking, you know, what's going on here? Like, all these people are falling off, but I'm thinking, no, no, I'm really curious about this. I really want to know, like, why? Why was that working for us all? And then for some people it's not, and even for myself, I started finding myself like I know how to listen to my hunger and fullness. Like, we're six months in now, and I'm thinking, I know how to listen to it, but why can't I stick to it? You know, this is really odd. And then um, you know, I'd done all the the things you do, like read James Clear's Atomic Habits and plug good old James over there. He's like totally changed my life with that book, and then and then I hired a coach and I was working in with her for six months, and she was basically teaching me how to apply all of what James Clear teaches in his book. So I'm like, oh my god, this is like life-changing, and so then I'm laying out all about the habits and how to execute habits properly, um, and then I'm learning, and then she hires me because, like, you know, I want to be a coach and I'm I can help with all this stuff too. Getting into it, getting into it. And as the time is unfolding, I'm still sitting here and I'm thinking, it's it's not just this though, like there's something else, it's not just about like habits, like I know what to do. Why can't I do it? Like, what is it that's holding me back? And this is the thing, so many people in the world, like, they just they think there's something wrong with them. Like, you know, I went through the whole scope of my hormones because um I want to throw this out there to everybody. I um was diagnosed in 2019 as well with a really debilitating condition called PMDD, which is premenstrual dysphoric disorder. I can't even remember what it stands for. Premenstrual dysphoric disorder. That was it. I was trying to think of another D. It's and it was basically debilitating me to the point every single month for years. I was um I was like suicidal. I was like, I would come round to my period every month and just be in the mirror, like, I'm disgusting, I'm horrendous, you know, and you would feel like you're wearing this, what me and my colleague call a fat suit. It's like literally you feel different, nothing's changed, but you feel so different apart from your uterus has swollen up to the size of a watermelon, but you nothing's like significantly changed, it's just the shifts, you know. This was debilitating me for years, and you know, all of this back end stuff, and I was blaming that, and I was blaming um, you know, like, oh, it's my husband's fault because he's disagreeing with me on something, and this means I can't stick to my diet as well, or you know, it was everyone else's fault, and like the hormones' fault, and and all of this, and um, you know, but I just had learned though that it's not like that, it's somewhere in there, it's how we're thinking about stuff. So I knew there was another layer to it, I knew there was like mindset involved in this. So here we go. I've got like pieced together, like habits, because habits are basically what you're doing or not doing, and when you do something over and over again, you get better at it. When you don't do something over and over again, you get better at not doing it. So it doesn't matter whether it's a good thing or quote unquote a bad thing, like smoking. Like if you smoke, the more you smoke, the better you get at doing it, and automatically your brain's gonna go, okay, we can do this well, let's just do this on auto. Um, and that works for absolutely everything. So I knew it was habits, knew there was some kind of mindset stuff, like you know, these are self-limiting beliefs. Like, I'm sure there are people with PMDD who can lose weight, right? I'm sure there are people who are, you know, um, even people down to I was like going to the doctors, like, you need to check my um thyroids and everything, you know, like but there are people who have thyroid disorders that are still losing weight, right? There's there's people with all kinds of things. I mean, I was watching a bloody man who was a hundred running a marathon, like, you know, you get all these people, and it's like I'm thinking, what are they doing differently that I'm not? Like, there's something off here, and it was even like down to thinking about people who like when I was doing all the hunger-directed eating stuff, the terminology was these people are naturally slim. And I'm thinking, yeah, that makes so sense, so much sense. Like, what is a naturally slim person doing that I'm not doing? And it was peeling back those layers to see like everything these people were doing was their identity, it was at identity level, okay. So, like when you're thinking of somebody, let's use the naturally slim example, because there's gonna be loads of people going, oh no, I'm not naturally slim. Like, actually, I would completely argue with anyone that thinks that, right? That's a self-limiting belief because you weren't born like stuffing your face as a baby. You would have drank milk and you would have pulled away from that milk when you'd finished, and been sick, right? Yeah, yeah, that that's the vomit over the shoulder. That's the in-built cue, right? Um, now I want to caveat this right now with this because I know like there'll be people probably going, oh no, there's me. I want a calorie count and I want to take weight loss meds or whatever you want to do. And like I am not against any means of dieting as long as you're not underfeeding yourself, restricting yourself, and doing anything that is um dangerous, I guess. Yeah, yeah, or like if you're trying to get yourself to become emaciated, like no, yeah, I'm not gonna help you do that. Um, but it's just understanding that you know, even if you are calorie counting, that do you wanna be in a position where you're not like you're not even trusting yourself, you know, like if you're eating these calories and your body's kind of like I'm I'm a bit full up now, like do you trust yourself to go, do you know what I'm gonna stop here and you know pick up again when I'm hungry, or are you like going to yourself, no, I need to eat that? Because that's when it becomes a little bit, you know, obsessive, or you're going a bit the other way, in my opinion. But going back, sorry, I'm like going all areas here. This is crazy. Um, so I I'd been doing this hunger-directed eating, realized that you know, like something still was off, um, realized that okay, we've got um habits and mindset at play here, but there's something still not quite pieced together, like because it would it would just be like I'd be nailing it, I'd be listening to my body, like this is great, and then all of a sudden I'm not like I'm finding myself knee deep in a bag of sweets, like, why am I eating sweets? And I'd be and I'd be sitting there like, oh, I must be addicted to sugar because I'm eating sweets, like, but then I'm like, no, because then at this point I've learned that no sugar isn't addictive, like the science, like people would tell you. I mean, I went down that whole rabbit hole, that's something I didn't tell you, that I'd I didn't eat sugar for about four years. I say I didn't eat sugar, I'd not eat it, and then I'd binge on it, and then I'd not eat it, and then I'd binge on it, so it was like up and down of the, but you know, I actually avoided things like fruit and everything. I was like, no, sugar's like cocaine, it's gonna like yeah, it's gonna get me like so addicted to it, and then you know, I've kind of gone through the years and then learned, oh, okay, it's not addictive, it just has I suppose addictive like qualities because it gives you dopamine hit, right? If you eat something sweet and you know, it like but it lights up the same receptors as cuddling a puppy does, like a puppy's not addictive. Well, some people might you never know it's gonna be to be honest. Yeah, they'll be like, oh my puppy. Um, yeah, so I'm just kind of like thinking, what is it? Like, I know it's not addictive, so I've I've squashed that limit in belief, but why do I keep finding myself you know, it's not broccoli I'm like in the fridge munching on, it's sweets, it's sweets, I'm going for them. Um and then I I figured it out, and I was just like, oh my goodness, this is like not even rocket science, and um it was literally understanding like the whole puzzle, like your thoughts generate your feelings, your feelings in a human being drives your action or your inaction 100% of the time, and your actions are what give you your results. And I realized that this wasn't about food, it's never been about food. This was about how I feel or how I want to feel, and I was like, wow, mind blown because it then became oh, like I'm not in the in the cupboard eating sweets because I'm addicted to sweets, I'm in the cupboard because earlier on I was chatting to somebody and they annoyed me, they really pissed me off, and then I've come home, forgotten about that, and I'm in the cupboard eating sweets, going, oh, I'm addicted to sweets. But actually, what I've missed out is my brain has gone, ooh, that felt annoying. Don't like feeling annoyed. Let's go and eat sweets because sweets make you feel dopamine.

SPEAKER_00 15:40

Oh Lord, right, hold it there. I've got so many questions that I wanna and tangents. Um because in my work and in the Million Dollar Body Method, the first thing I do is start with what I call a superhero identity. Like, that's who's the person you want to become. And I think it's really it can be difficult to get that across because people are like, identity work, no, I need another diet. Identity work, no, I need to get my hormones checked. Um, identity work, no, I need to, I don't know, stop eating sugar before seven o'clock or whatever in the afternoon. And what I found, and probably what we've seen in in on in on Fred's on how we met was people are so willing to fight for their limitations, not what their possibilities are. Do you see that?

SPEAKER_01 16:35

100% because they don't know what's possible, they think that you know, oh, do you know what? I tried to lose 20 pounds, but I couldn't do it. I couldn't do it because the diet was too restrictive and um I kept yo-yoing, and so so they're like literally building a case story in their mind based on their past. And they don't realize they're not like, do what? Who they're not sitting there thinking, who do I want to become? Like when I started doing this work, I started thinking, who do I want to be? Like, I want to be somebody who gets up, who is consistent, who shows up for herself, who eats like the foods that serve me, the foods that make me feel good. I don't want to stuff my face on snacking in front of the TV of an evening. I want to be somebody who can choose to do that if she wants to, and choose to not do that if she wants to. And then it became well, if I want to be that person, I need to be her now so I can close the gap between present Miriam and future Miriam and be her, not think about Miriam in the past who snacked all day and all night on the sofa and bring her into my food. No, I'm not even her anymore. So why am I gonna keep trying to be her? And why am I gonna keep trying to prove that that's who I am when I'm not? And as soon as I started working from that level, that's when everything started to change. I started to close that gap. I mean, I'm still in kind of transformation mode at the moment. I'm I'm still going because there's been a lot of the mindset work has to happen first, then the body will follow. Because then it becomes a case of now what you're doing is just rinse and repeat in your actions. Now what you're doing is focusing on like the nutrition and all of this kind of stuff, but you can't focus on nutrition if your brain keeps pulling you back into the identity of somebody who loses weight instead of the identity of somebody who has already lost it, who is living that way. And a thing with a human brain is like uh a brain just wants safety. So if it feels safety and I'm the type of person who loses weight, then it's gonna keep self-sabotaging you back to being that person. Whereas if you shift your focus and shift your identity and becoming the person who loses weight and keeps it off, you're gonna create a whole different outcome and you're gonna blow your own mind.

SPEAKER_00 19:33

Ah, do you know what? You literally just like I said, word for word, a lot of the things I say with clients. I'm like it's it's really hard, I guess, as someone, you know, and the type of people we are in our kind of work, we want to help everybody. So we'll be out, we'll be like, comment on people's posts, no listen, what you need to do is this, this, and this. But people will then come at you. So this is a classic one. I'll I'm gonna ask you the question. Um, so for many people, many people will say, Hey, I'm in a calorie deficit, but I can't lose weight. What I what did I say? What was so funny? I didn't say anything yet.

SPEAKER_02 20:13

No, no, I just like I can hear the person saying it. I can hear it.

SPEAKER_00 20:18

Like that is a that is the quintessential line that we hear all the time. Um, and I think with GLPs as well, it's really mudded the waters. Like, I think what's happened is GLPs have helped people stay in a calorie deficit easier because it manages all their hunger stuff. And they're almost like, see, told you it wasn't my it wasn't the calories, it was my hormones. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_02 20:42

So now it is No, it was the calories. It stopped you eating as much.

SPEAKER_00 20:50

And I get it to some degree, you know, it helps people manage this manage their hunger, etc. etc. But I I actually think that there is an identity thing that goes on that people be like, oh, it wasn't the calories that lost weight because I failed with that before, it was the medication I needed to help me, and the medication is all of these things, and we're like, Yeah, it helps you get into a calorie deficit. Like, yeah, but there's like a real big, like a big like, I want to distance myself away from calories. It's really weird. What's your take?

SPEAKER_01 21:24

Yeah, I think this is it. People aren't peeling back enough layers, and this is why we're seeing so much in the news as well from the GLP1 users who do want to come away from it. Because I, as I understand it, GLP1 drugs, if you're taking them, you're taking them for life, right?

SPEAKER_00 21:41

Unless 80% of people will need them for life, I think there's a late start.

SPEAKER_01 21:45

Yeah, unless you're doing the um the mindset work, it's mindset, it's feelings, it's habits. You've got the way I like um explain it is like you've got diet and exercise. And obviously, your diet, like the calories you're eating, the energy you're consuming, and the way I describe it as well, like I think this is just a bit easy to describe because people are going, it's not calories, it's not calories. I'm like, well, calories are energy, body fat is stored energy. You need to reduce energy calories, which will reduce stored energy. That's the way I like to say it. Um, and I also like to just throw in there that weight and body fat are different. So, like if somebody's going to me like, oh, I'm not losing weight, I'm like, well, what kind of period of time are you talking about here? Like, oh, in a week I haven't lost. Well, don't give me a week. Because I'm I'm promising you, like, if you drink a glass of water, you're gonna weigh more. If you have undigested food in your body, you're gonna weigh more. That is not body fat that's different. So just clean that up. But um, oh I can't remember where I was going now. So I was saying about um what was I saying?

SPEAKER_00 23:12

Yeah, so that's that's fine. I think that's the those are really great points. I think it's that line where people, especially people who take GLPs, are like, no, it wasn't the calories, it was hormones, that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01 23:27

I think that's it. Once you kind of the thing is, one thing you've got to remember, like what I think now, is like I have so many like people that I could help, but I'm I don't want to help everyone because not everyone wants to be helped. I want to help the people that want the help who are open and receptive to what I'm saying. Like, if you're not open and receptive to understanding that a calorie deficit is ultimately what is making you lose weight, then you know I'm fine with you to go off and keep spinning if that's what you want to do.

SPEAKER_03 24:05

Like, yeah, let them go, let them go.

SPEAKER_01 24:08

I'm gonna let you go. I'm sorry. I love you. I love you, and I will help you when you're ready. When you've and I could I say that with love, and as somebody who I I just told you, didn't I? 20 years I was stuck, I was so resistant to listening to anyone. Like I was uh went sugar free for four years because I got whole brainwashed into that whole like oh, it's not about counting calories and it's insulin or something, yeah. Yeah, I was just like totally sucked in, you know, and that's fine because actually that's gonna make make up part of your story and part of your journey and part of your learning, and actually that will probably help you in the long run. But let's not dress it up, let's just say what it is it's a calorie deficit. When you eat less energy than your body requires, you will lose body fat. Okay, and going back to like the DLP ones and stuff, like I can see where that crossover comes in because people are now being given a drug that reduces the food noise and it tops up that um that hormone in the body to do that, and that's all fine, but um oh, I think that's where I was going with. Sorry, I've gone off an attendant. We were saying, weren't we? I was saying that you know people when they have these drugs, they're gonna have to be on them for life unless they do this mindset work, because if they can understand where they're overeating, where they're eating more than their body needs, and why they're doing it, and it isn't just because of food noise, because let me say that's what happened as well. So when I was doing this hunger-directed eating, what this was really good at doing was getting rid of food noise, because part of the deal was to neutralize food, and once you neutralize food, so I'll say that in plain English because a lot of people won't. What does neutralizing food even mean? I'll tell you exactly what it means. You know, like when you look at a cake and you think, oh my god, the cake is bad, or this cake's so sugary and it's gonna like make me put on a pound just looking at it, all that kind of, you know, like, oh, I get so hungry when I look at a biscuit, or when I walk past the office and there's the biscuit tin calling me, and all of this, like kind of things you hear. That's what you hear people say, okay. That's because what's happening is when they see these foods, smell these foods, taste these foods, they create feeling in their body, so they feel like oh that that's bad, and then they feel guilty for eating it, or they feel excited that they're gonna have it. Food neutrality is like me saying to you, look at my pen. When you look at my pen, are you going, Oh, it's a pen! Oh my god, so lovely, it's gonna make me so happy. Are you going, oh, I feel really bad about that pen? You don't feel any emotion to it. Okay, so if you remember what I was talking about, is when you think something, it creates feeling in your body and your feelings are what drive your actions. So if you feel neutral to something, that means you're not gonna be taking action. When you feel guilt and shame, those feelings drive your actions. When you feel like, oh, something's so bad, something or I shouldn't, those feelings they're gonna drive your actions. And usually somebody who's learned that response is let's eat for a dopamine here, that feeling is gonna drive the action of eating. But it's so subtle, it's not like you're rocking in a chair in the corner stuffing yourself with cake. I mean, some people are doing that, binge eating, but some people just gently finding themselves plonking on the sofa with a bag of crisps or popcorn, watching a film and not even realizing it's because they feel bad about something or they feel annoyed about something.

SPEAKER_00 29:02

Yeah, I think I was gonna say, I think you've raised some really good points that I think one of the things I like to talk to people about is we create our own feelings. So if you if you said to me, Greg, look, my pen is better than your pen, uh, with your lovely pen that you showed earlier. You put people into this pen of a broken pen. I was like, Well, I've got an Apple pen. But you could you it's then on you to go, oh well, I could feel jealous about that pen. So here's one of the questions I want to ask you, which I think is a really good point. I think for listeners, there's this word that comes up a lot called fat shaming, where people feel that they are being shamed because they can't lose weight or they've struggled with it, because of what someone else says. Now, for me, if you've started to really lean into your identity, you won't be swayed by what people feel, but I guess that's a lot of the work that has to be done for people so they don't feel things like fat shaming or any of those things.

SPEAKER_01 30:13

Yeah, I think there's two sides to this coin. So one side is the um, I think I'm sorry, I'm just deciding which side to go first. I think one side, okay. One side is the very real um, you know, fat phobic oppression and the awful bullying.

SPEAKER_00 30:42

It's almost bullying, isn't it? Really?

SPEAKER_01 30:44

Yeah, the awful things that people have had to endure, and it's it's real, it's not fake. Like, you know, there are people out there, I see it all the time, and I'm just like, oh, cringe, you know, like these PTs going on, like, oh, my body is my business card. I'm like, fuck off. Like, no, your your body is like really intimidating to a load of people, and actually, like, your attitude stinks, and you've got no compassion, no love, no, no, you've you're living proof of the fear inside of people about being fat, like, and it and it's wrong, right? And the way I kind of say it, you've got like um a fat person and a thin person here, and a fat person and a thin person here, and up here, fat person and thin person, they both drink, take drugs, um, they both um what else do they do? Just think they eat absolute shit all day, every day. They don't eat any vegetables, they just like they're so unhealthy, right? And the only difference between these, right, is thin person eats the amount of energy to sustain the weight, and the fat person eats more energy than what their body needs. That's the only difference. Both really unhealthy, but one's fat and one's thin. Yeah. Then you've got fat and thin person, and they both eat super foods all day. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But they're completely no, but they're completely balanced in every way. And they um they exercise, they move their body, their mental health is like wonderful. They don't drink alcohol, don't take drugs. They are healthy people, right? I mean, they can both do backflips across the stage, they can both do the splits, they can both do pull-ups, they are both healthy, right? The only difference is the thin person eats the amount of energy to sustain her weight and or his weight, and the fat person is eating a bit more energy than what they need. That's the only difference, right? So once you dismantle it and go, oh, okay, you can be fat and thin and unhealthy, and you can be fat and thin and healthy, right? Then you clean up clean up that because that's you know, there's no need to fat shame, there's no need to be like doing all this rubbish to people and and making them like feel this kind of way by saying this and saying that, and it's understanding okay, let's move along a little bit, it's also understanding that when you say something horrible and fat shamey and all of this kind of stuff to somebody, quote unquote, thinking you're helping them, it's never going to help them. And here's why because when your thoughts create your feelings, right, and your feelings drive your actions, in a brain that's learned to eat if they feel terrible, if somebody is going, you're fat, you're horrible, you're ugly, right? And your thought is oh my god, I'm fat, I'm horrible, I'm ugly, you feel despair, then you're gonna eat. So you're keeping them trapped, okay. But then I'm gonna come around to your side of the story, what you started off with, okay. And this is where you're right, this is what needs cleaning up because we are all responsible for our own feelings, right? And we're responsible for our own feelings through our thoughts, okay. So, for example, person who's being fat-shamed, right? If they were to go, do you know what? I don't care what you say because I'm in my journey, I love what I'm doing, and I'm doing really well, and I'm proud of myself, they're gonna start feeling proud, they're gonna start feeling um you know, empowered. And those kind of feelings they produce fat loss. Yeah, because now they're starting to take actions from a place of compassion and love for themselves, not hate and desperation, because hate and desperation creates that's conducive to overeating, right? So it's about them becoming responsible for their own feelings, but that's the kind of work that I do, I suppose, with my clients, because I get people that come in who are being fat-shamed, or they're fat shaming themselves, that's the worst one, and it's teaching them to be stuck in the mindset of somebody who is like, oh, you know, like everybody's horrible to me, and I'm not good enough, and this is terrible. When you're stuck in that and you're not taking responsibility for how you feel, then you are gonna be stuck in cycles, but you do have to dismantle the fat phobia and fat shaming first because it's real, and then I think this is where like people try to DIY this work, they'll go online, they'll see that Shelly from down the road did an amazing job on her weight loss, blah blah blah blah blah. Oh, let me follow what she's doing, or let me just interrupt you, or they see um an influencer who is, you know, saying, Oh, you know, you don't need to, you can intuitively and you can let go and you can do all this, and which by the way, I just want to caveat that with I think that's amazing. Like if people can live their lives and want to live their life like that, that's absolutely fine. But it's when you don't want to live your life like that. What about the people that you know they want the freedom, but they don't want to live their life trapped in a body that they don't want to be in, and that's okay for them to move away from that and say, Do you know what? I want to take care of myself and I want weight loss. There's nothing wrong with that, so it's just separating the two. Sorry to cut you.

SPEAKER_00 37:58

No, not at all. No, I I forgot what I was gonna say. I think I think what I'm what I see is that people will try to DIY this work and try and do it themselves. Like you said, they'll follow ex-influencer that follows Shelly from down the road, Rita from HR, who said I'm on this new diet, you should do it. And in the same way that down to our DNA, our environment, our taste in food, our culture is so individual. Generally, a cookie cutter approach doesn't work. Um, and that's why when people ask me, Greg, what diet do you use? I'm like, the human diet, like you know, food that humans eat. Like, I don't know. I don't I don't know who you are, I don't know what approach is going to need for you, but I think we get so fixated on what's the best diet, what's the best exercise? No one's asking the question and saying, What's the best bit of identity work, mindset work that I need to do for myself to become the person that I want to be? And then all of a sudden, all this best diet stuff goes out the window. It's really interesting.

SPEAKER_01 39:08

Um it is, isn't it? They're all going, What diet do I need? What exercise do I need? Nobody's asking, what do I need to do to be able to stick to my diet and exercise? That is not even rocket science, is it?

SPEAKER_00 39:26

It's scary though, isn't it? It's like so sometimes I feel like when we put content out, we feel a bit, I'm a bit like, can I should I be saying this? Because obviously we're going against what everyone everyone else is doing a great job of going, you know, you need track calories or eat protein, but all that great stuff. But no one's going, well, what's the identity that you're reading this information from? What's the identity that you wake up in the morning and you decide whether we're gonna skip breakfast or you're gonna say, no, I deserve to have some time to have some good food and read the crossword or whatever you want to do. Like, yeah, how are you operating?

SPEAKER_01 40:00

And it's so interesting, right? Because the clients that I work with, here's the funny thing like uh because I started when I started out, I was really it was me just guiding everyone through hunger-directed eating. But as I've kind of evolved myself and learned all this mindset work, I've realized like, oh god, it's not like it doesn't matter what your protocol is. You come to me and tell me what protocol you want to do, and I'll show you how you can adopt the mindset to do it. And it's interesting because I do have clients that are like, um, you know, I don't want to eat sugary foods because it gives me bad skin. And I give them the tools to be able to create the mindset and the habits and feel how they need to feel to enable them to stick to it. And what that looks like, it's kind of like you know, I don't know, you might get somebody who's vegetarian, right? Now, a vegetarian doesn't eat meat, but they don't sit there going, oh, I feel so restricted, and you know, like all it is is they're aligned to their values, they're aligned to what works for them, and it's effortless because now they're in alignment, right? And this is what happens like my clients come along and they're like, holy shit, like you've made it so easy, like there is legwork to do in building that skill set because it's a skill set, like if you've woken up every day looking in the mirror, going, Oh my god, I'm so fat and disgusting, and I need to change, like you it was like what I said at the beginning about habits. If you've done that every day, you've got better at doing that every day, and then it's become automatic. So now you've got to unlearn something, it's about creating new ways of thinking, and that can take time, it's not gonna like happen overnight, but when it does happen, it's like, oh my god, it's so easy now. Like, wow, it's so funny because I driving, I get in the car and I just like I don't have to think about putting my foot on the clutch or moving the mirror, or I just put the satnav in and start thinking about where am I going on holiday? I'm not thinking about how to drive, and it becomes like that, like with your eating habits.

SPEAKER_00 42:40

It's so funny you say that because um I tell my clients all the time that they're athletes and bodybuilders, and they're like, What do you mean I'm an athlete? I'm like, You're an athlete, they can't get their heads rounded, they're like, but Greg, I don't run, I don't, I'm not the Olympics, I'm not even doing a park run yet.

SPEAKER_02 43:00

I'm like, you're an and not even doing a park run.

SPEAKER_00 43:08

I don't do park runs, I pure sprinting over 30 seconds. So for me, I'm like, listen, you're a bodybuilder.

SPEAKER_03 43:19

I'm like, how?

SPEAKER_00 43:20

Like, do you go to the gym? Yes, do you lift weights? Yes. So, what are you doing? I'm building my body. So, oh, and again, it's because the identity they've they've gone in with, oh, I'm just an average person going to the gym. Once they go, Oh, I realize they're a bodybuilder, all of a sudden they start lifting heavier, the PR start going up. I start getting messages going, Greg, um, I've done this in the gym, I've never tried it before. It was on the program, but I wanted to try it because I think I can do it. Knock yourself out, like and I think. That aligns with what you said about when you get the identity piece right. I do think there's another part to it, which I'll talk about in a sec. But once you get the identity work, all of it becomes so much easier.

SPEAKER_01 44:14

100% as you said, there's work to be done.

SPEAKER_00 44:18

Like people have to understand that we you can't just turn up at our desks and be like, right, fix my identity. No, we need to we need to understand the where your identity is now, so you can see it, and then we go, right, what's the next level of your identity? And there's work to do, but I think you're totally right that identity is such a missing part. Is it because identity doesn't feel tangible for people? So people can hold a diet, right? They can see carnivore diet and go, right, I can eat two pieces, two pieces of chicken, four eggs, and some butter.

SPEAKER_01 44:58

I think it's more to do with like probably the bit that we should talk about is like the messy middle. So it's like there's a period of time what um James Clear again refers to as the plateau of latent potential. So it's like this part in the middle where you are doing the work, but nothing's changing. So you're not actually seeing any results, nothing tangible. But it's only when you cross a threshold and you tip into and you've put enough reps in that you tip into like the results that you can go, oh, there it is. And usually with identity work, you know, you've been like your identity has been building over years, it's not gonna like change overnight. And here's the thing like a human brain doesn't actually like your primitive brain does not want you to change. Change feels hard, change feels unsafe. It this part of our brain hasn't evolved since like cave people times or whatever, so it thinks like if you're going, oh, I'm gonna um I don't know, listen to my hunger and fullness when you've counted calories for 20 years. Oh my god, is a tiger coming? You're gonna die. Like this literally means death, yeah. Your your brain, or or vice versa. If like for me, that's probably something I should say. Like, so I would when I was doing the hunger-directed eating and then figured all of this stuff out, it was like, oh, it's like not dieting that's the problem, it's like all this stuff, you know, it was like all of a sudden I came full circle. And the way I always describe it to my clients, if you imagine some balance scales, it's like the balance scales on this side were up high and that side down low. And up here we were fad dieting and you know, doing all this stuff to lose weight, like um, you know, lose it as quick as possible. Um, you know, eat as little as possible to lose it as quick as possible, like restrict sugar and stop eating this, and um, you know, like just hanging around with or following people on social media and reading magazines only about skinny and all of this kind of stuff, right? Hating ourselves, trying to hate ourselves thin, and all of a sudden we tip the scales that way and we've rejected diet culture, like, no, that's like the devil, and then we we're like hunger-directed eating or intuitive eating, and we're like, yay, like, and even in the intuitive eating book, it says, like, um, what does it say? It says reject dieting or something like that. I can't even remember what it says now, but it's like really, really like anti-diet and everything, so you go there, but when you want weight loss at some point, like actually you you can be there and still inadvertently lose weight. That that's fine. It's safe to say some people have done that, but actually, when you want weight loss, and if you are sort of finding you're somebody who is emotionally eating, um, or I like to say eating your feelings, or um I don't even like to say that because some people don't resonate with that. People think I'm not an emotional eater. I'm like, yeah, but it's so subtle, it's not about being depressed and eating.

SPEAKER_00 48:30

Yeah, it's not like you're it's not like you're eating bed and jerry's after you broke up with your last boyfriend every week.

SPEAKER_01 48:35

Yeah, no, it's not like that. It's so subtle. It's like what I was saying earlier, like having a little argument, or if you're a parent and your baby's kicking his legs and you got frustrated when you're changing his nappy, and then like a day later you're eating ice cream, but you don't connect to it.

SPEAKER_00 48:51

I've got a really good point there, actually, just just before you jump into the rest of that point. One of the things I think happens is what we call emotional eating becomes habitual eating. Yeah, you go to the work, stressful day, glass of wine. Yeah, and then before you know it, the glass of wine is now standard, and it's never a glass of wine, by the way. Anyone tells you they just have a glass of wine. That glass of wine as you come through the door to reduce your stress now becomes a habit.

SPEAKER_01 49:26

Exactly, and then something worth just jumping in on that is also your thoughts become habits too, right? Because you might think then, oh, it's okay, I'll start again tomorrow, or I'll start again Monday, or I'll start again. It's a lie, right? And that's just your brain churning out something that it's always saying to make you feel better in the moment, like, oh, this gives me the permission to do this now, because I'm gonna start again Monday, so I don't know. Tomorrow, yeah, tomorrow, and it and it'll keep you trapped in this loop, yeah. Um, but yeah, going back so on those scales, you're up here and you've rejected diet culture, but at some point you've got to bring it back to the middle, right? And this middle ground is where you're going, okay. Well, I'm rejecting fad dieting and diet culture, but what I'm doing is I'm learning how to diet properly, how to do non-restrictive dieting, how to hold that point, hold that point right there.

SPEAKER_00 50:32

So I think that this bit here is what stops people from actually losing weight because they spend so long trying to reject the word diet, but diet is something that we all have, everyone in the world right now has a diet. Yeah, if you if you forcibly try to always reject the word diet, knowing that you still have to make dietary changes, which means you have to go on a diet or reduce your diet or amend your diet, you're you automatically start to fight with the word diet in your head, so then you end up not start going, oh, that's restriction, that's restriction, but actually, no, because restriction is in your mind.

SPEAKER_01 51:17

Restriction is in your mind, and it's something that you create, so and you can uncreate it. So, like the way you do that is by practicing abundance. So, like, for example, my clients aren't going around saying, like, oh, I'm eating as little as possible, or I'm eating less, I need to eat less. They're not saying I need to eat less, they're saying I need to eat as much as my body needs, but not as much as my mind needs, because my mind will keep telling me to keep eating, because my mind is getting a dopamine hit from food, and our minds are like, Yep, keep going, keep going, it tastes good. Like, oh, don't finish that yet. Like, just listen to the story that your mind tells you when you're eating food. Like, the clients will be going to me, like, oh, I can't stop eating. I'm like, who's telling you that? Who's telling you you can't stop eating? And they're like, Wait, what?

SPEAKER_00 52:15

That's such a great point. Yeah, I think you've nailed it. Where, yeah, people are trying to reject the thing that they actually have to do, and the way that we talk about ourselves is where the power light is. Like you said, you're not trying to cut out everything, you're trying to eat as much nutrient-dense food that allows me to become the person that I want to be.

SPEAKER_01 52:42

Exactly. And then it's living it, it's like saying that's who I want to be, so I'm gonna be her now. But also, it's like reminding yourself constantly that food is not scarce. I mean, we are so fortunate in this Western world that you know, food availability, we we have it, you know, and if we've got this story but that we keep going over in our head, like, oh, you know, this is gonna run out, or like I'm not gonna taste this again, or like it's not going anywhere. But if you if you're eating a meal, like often I'll eat a meal, and I'm like, oh, I'm feeling full up now, or I'm getting fuller, and I'll say, okay, well, I can stop this now and save it for later, save it for tomorrow. Like, and people go to me, oh yeah, but that's waste. Like, how is saving it for tomorrow waste? Oh, because I wouldn't save it for tomorrow, I'd throw it away because I I don't like eating leftovers. So I'm like, okay, so what you're telling me is that you're not happy to waste it in the bin, but you're happy to waste it in your body, you're happy for it to show up like on your body because that's what it will do. You're like showing yourself waste. The logic is not logic in the math, it's not logic in, the math isn't mapping, and it's like, oh yeah, you know, but it's because like people have these deep-rooted, entrenched beliefs that somehow it equals waste if it's in the bin, but it doesn't equal waste if I'm eating it. Yeah, well, you know, yeah, like feeling stuff, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 54:37

You can't absorb it, so you're gonna have to store it, right? Yeah, then you're gonna produce too much insulin and then you're gonna gain weight, not yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 54:48

Not like the the simple logic, they they take themselves down that path, but also going back to what you were saying about the whole, you know, like um people not liking the word diet, and I can uh huh?

SPEAKER_00 55:02

Or calories, yeah, yeah. Well, calories in, calories out must be the most um and this is and this is something like that's something to kind of spy on your brain with.

SPEAKER_01 55:14

Like, why don't you like that? And this is something that me first hand experience, it's like what I was saying, I've come full circle, so it's like I rejected diet culture, I had to bring it back to the middle, and now I'm like, oh, okay, I'm really open to understanding that it's not actual actually dieting that is the problem, it's the mindset that we have. Um, and it's not like to say, like, oh, it's your fault, that's not what I'm saying, like, oh, your mindset is like terrible. It's it's that through all the years that we've lived and been shaped and conditioned and listened to all like social media. I mean, my day was Kate Moss in a magazine, like and you know, uh Cindy Crawford and all these beautiful women that I was just like, oh my god, like I want to look like that. It was just like deeply conditioned, and you know, like you'd see all these picture perfect photos of people, don't you, on social media? And you know, it's so refreshing, isn't it, when you can see people showing their like three-minute um or not even three minute, three-second differences, like you're like, oh yes, she's real, you know. But our human brains are looking at all these aesthetically pleasing, wonderful pictures, and we're just like boom, boom, boom, boom, want to look like that, want to look like that, want to look like that. So we've got this deep wiring, this deep conditioning, and this deep belief that that equals safe. Because your brain only wants to be safe, and it's like we want to fit in and we want to belong, and it's it's so much deeper than just thinking, oh yeah, I just want to lose five pounds or whatever. It's like this um, you know, it's really toxic, actually. And it's like we just have never realized that that's what's been going on in the background. We've just kind of learned it and thinking that that's how how it should be. So, like when we start to learn, like, oh okay, that's not how it has to be, and you know, like, and we start dismantling that, it can kind of be where we reject everything, like you know, and then we can become really judgmental as well. Like, oh well, you know, I remember just following all up, sorry, unfollowing all like um diet accounts and things like that, because I was just like, no, I don't want anything like that, you know, because it's a trigger, until I until I realize like, but these things are always gonna be there. Like, the way that I'm gonna overcome this is to work through my triggers, it's gonna be to neutralize them because remember, I want to feel like I do looking at a pen. And so, you know, with that word diet, even I had to neutralize dieting because you know, if we're trying to lose weight and we're, you know, manipulating our food intake a little bit to do that, that that's dieting.

SPEAKER_00 58:29

Whichever way you cut it, we're whichever way you cut it.

SPEAKER_01 58:33

Like I was saying earlier, if you're a vegetarian, that's your diet.

SPEAKER_00 58:38

Everyone, everyone in the world is on a diet right now.

SPEAKER_01 58:41

Yeah, it doesn't, and it doesn't actually necessarily mean to lose weight either, does it?

SPEAKER_00 58:47

No, you just just you diet just is just what you eat habitually, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 58:52

Exactly. And I think when you kind of get that park that idea, like, oh okay, it's okay. It's just it's just the diet. And what needs to happen is that I work on like why I'm eating more than my body needs and dismantle it at that level. And no, it's not because like there's something wrong with me, it's just that I need to figure out my own personal what works for me and what is quote unquote triggering me to eat when I'm not even hungry, or um what's triggering me to eat slightly above my threshold. Because sometimes it can just be that somebody's just eating very only very slightly above, but it's because they're doing it over time, compounded, it's gonna equate to fat gain.

SPEAKER_00 59:48

Yeah, no no. This has been awesome. Um leave one tip that you think the listeners should walk away from this with.

SPEAKER_01 59:59

Oh, now you're asking. I okay, my biggest tip is don't think that you're you know, if you're eating more than what your body needs and or if you're not losing weight and all of that, it's don't think it's to do with the food. It's got nothing to do with the food, it's got to do with why like why are you eating more than your body needs? Where is that happening? Um and sorry, I'm going into more tips here. I think my biggest tip it would actually be to understand it's all coming from your feelings, because your feelings are what drive your actions 100% of the time. Um and your feelings they come from your thoughts, so and like you can choose what you think anytime you want. Like, okay, you can't always choose what comes in because if it's a habit thought as well, like you're probably just thinking it automatically. But if you get really curious and you really get aware of those sentences that are coming into your mind, because that's all a thought is, and you start really like dismantling it at that level, your whole life is gonna change. Whole life.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:30

I totally agree. That awesome. Where can the listeners find out more information about you? Where can they store you? All of that good stuff.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:40

So I'm on Instagram, I'm Miriam.blythe. I have Miriam Miriamblythe.com as well, my website.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:52

Awesome.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:53

Okay, um yeah, and I how I work, I I do one-to-one coaching, and I also um I have run like a group coaching program. It's called the Aligned Habits Collective, and um in there it's got my methodology on you know how to sort of change your mindset. It does all the identity work, um, and we work at that kind of level to I show people how to do the self-coaching on the mindset so they can align themselves to the diet and exercise protocols that they're trying to do so that they can sustain them and they can do them properly.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:41

Cool, love it, love it, love it, love it. Um to the ladies mainly who listen who are in my audience. If you enjoy this, go give Miriam a follow. Also, share this podcast with people who will definitely need it and want to hear it, and drop a five star review on Apple if you are an Apple listener. Um, and then I will see you on the next episode of the Million Dollar Body. Thank you, Miriam.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:05

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:06

All right, bye for now.