How to fix your relationship with food, your body, and yourself with Deanna Schober

Let's Say Hello

With Coach Allan being off this month, there won't be a hello session for a few weeks. We'll see you after mid-October.

Interview

[00:01:47.090] – Allan

Deanna, welcome to 40+ Fitness.

[00:01:50.210] – Deanna

Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited.

[00:01:52.850] – Allan

Yeah, we found each other because you have a podcast, Fitness and Sushi. And so I reached out to be a potential guest I think you probably had listed on one of the sites where you're looking for guests, and that's kind of how I came across you. You and Tony, your husband is your co host on Fitness and Sushi. And then as I started kind of diving into, okay, who are these people and what are they doing out there? I really resonate with your message. I think that so many times people think, well, I just got to find the right diet.

[00:02:24.990] – Allan

I've tried them all, but I just haven't found the right one. And so they're always out there looking for the diet. They're looking for ways to burn more calories than they consume. And so they go into the gym and they find one elliptical. When they get on it, it says, okay, in an hour, they did 500 calories. And then the other elliptical, which is a little different, it says they burned 600. So they now have a favorite elliptical. It's just this whole idea of, okay, I have to do all this stuff.

[00:02:54.540] – Allan

Add all this stuff to my life to lose weight. And your message is quite different than that.

[00:03:01.710] – Deanna

Yeah, what you just described is like, I'm going to math myself to a better body or better health. I'm going to math myself. I always say that we are not math. Of course math is a consideration, but we're all about the whole person, which includes behavior, psychology, emotions and preferences. And also we have these brains that we have to deal with that work a certain way, they're hardwired a certain way, we have to understand them. Because if you're just mathing your way through health and fitness, your brain is not going to like that. It's not going to let you be consistent with that.

[00:03:41.740] – Allan

Yeah, and even beyond that, I mean, yeah, we are hardwired at some level. But our past, our traumas, our history. Everything creates these grooves that's valuable if you were a hunter gatherer and you know, okay, yeah, if I go that way, that's poison ivy and I'm going to be suffering for three days. If I go that way, there's a bear and I'm going to be dead going that way. And so your brain starts hardwiring and soft wiring to kind of remember and know.

[00:04:12.580] – Allan

And as a result, our behavior is not fixed, but it's pretty hard to change. And unfortunately, diet culture doesn't really help us do that.

[00:04:23.730] – Deanna

No, it goes directly against a lot of it. It puts us into famine mode, survival mode. It puts you into a state where you are literally now working against your brain's strongest desire, which is for you to survive. And if you are not eating enough, if you are putting yourself into a state of scarcity, then those are going against your brain's hardwiring desire to survive. And yes, you can overcome it. People do for bursts of time or long periods of time, but they do it and it's extremely uncomfortable. It's not pleasant, it's very difficult. It requires a lot of energy. And it's the hardest way to be consistent when you're working against your primitive. Survival skills or primitive survival mechanisms.

[00:05:16.950] – Allan

Yeah, of course. I'll go on various forums like MyFitness pal and Facebook and things like that. And I think what's so disheartening to me is that there'll be someone and they'll say, I'm eating at a calorie deficit and not losing weight. They're doing the math thing and they're on a diet and they're doing it and they're like, okay, I know everything I'm eating. I know all my movement. I put it all into the formula. I should be losing weight and I'm not losing weight. And they get just so disgusted with that whole thing that when I read it, I just know they're going to quit because no one is reaching out and telling them that they have to do some of this other work first and then the other parts kind of fall in place. So it's not a diet, it's just changing behaviors, changing thoughts.

[00:06:06.460] – Allan

Now, you call that healing. Can you kind of get into how that works and how you guys see that as the basic paradigm of how we can fix ourselves so that we get healthy without having to do all the diet stuff and being frustrated by it?

[00:06:26.360] – Deanna

Yeah, I think the idea is that with healing is actually not that you need to fix yourself. It's that you came into this world intuitively, like having a good relationship with food, having a good relationship with your body and society and all its ideals and the weird things that humans do. Comes in with diet culture and really has kind of destroyed those relationships. So healing is getting us back to that foundational place where we are waking up every day and we're taking care of ourselves. And food isn't like an obsessive thought throughout the day and controlling our bodies is not an obsessive thought throughout the day. And what that does is allow you to return to a state of thriving instead of surviving, which is what dieting puts you in.

[00:07:15.420] – Deanna

And when that is your state of mind, then you're much more consistent with any kind of changes that you make. And yes, there's work to do and habits to form through that process. But if you're dieting, you're forming those habits and also working against your brain. You're also working against the way that you are wired. And so healing is really just getting you back to that place of having a good relationship with food and reminding you that you can trust yourself with food. So many people don't trust themselves with food and because a calorie deficit has frustrated them and they've gotten to this place of binging and restricting and binging and restricting over and over again because of that whole math equation thing and following meal plans and feeling frustrated. And when you follow a lot of diets too, no diet ever tells you. Like, this is an us problem.

[00:08:14.190] – Deanna

They say, this is your problem. You're not trying hard enough. You shouldn't have any excuses. There's something wrong with you. And the reality of that is that if 97% of people can't follow a diet for more than two years, then something's going on there. It's working against human being psychology and human beings behavior to our survival instincts. So we want to try to get them back to that healed place where we take away the damage that diet culture has done to those relationships and then start them fresh from that place.

[00:08:52.430] – Allan

Yeah. One of the things I like that Tony had in his book, which I wrote down, is called The Ideal Body Formula. And you guys have talked about this a few times, I've heard Is where you talk about how weight loss is not the objective. I don't think you said side effect.

[00:09:11.540] – Allan

I don't think Tony said side effect. Was that because I've always said, if you're doing the things that your body needs to be healthy and feel safe, then you're going to lose weight if you need to lose weight. If your body needs to lose weight, it will do the natural thing once you start getting it healthy. And weight loss is just a side effect.

[00:09:34.230] – Deanna

Exactly. I think your example of going on to the reddit Forum or the MyFitness Health forum and someone's trying so hard to lose weight and they're getting so frustrated. And the reality is that what we have seen and what we know is that the harder you try to lose weight, the harder it is to lose weight. And the more you try to force this thing to happen, the more resistance you're coming up against, the more frustration you're coming up against, you're more likely to give up. Your behavior really changes. And so what we propose is that you stop trying to lose weight and you start trying to really just wake up every day and take care of yourself in the best way that you can without all the dieting stuff, all the dieting attitudes and mindset and take care of yourself and kind of relax into that. And what we have seen is that that has been the way that people who couldn't lose weight finally can because they're forgetting about it.

[00:10:32.650] – Deanna

They're just trying to let it go and trust their body, that their body will do the right thing and just make changes because they want to feel good, because they deserve it, because they're finding joy in their new routine. That's a big piece of what we do. And when you are finding joy in these things and you're enjoying what you're eating, you're enjoying your exercise, it does become a natural side effect. You're not trying to do anything. And because of that, it's very sustainable.

[00:11:00.780] – Allan

Yeah, it's funny because I will, I'll be out there and I'll be looking at this and that 1% or 3%, whatever it is, the people who successfully lost the weight, doing the calorie counts and things like that, you can look at them on MyFitness pal and it shows you how many days in a row they logged in. Not that they logged their food, but they logged in and they're usually hundreds or thousands of days. And so this is someone who doesn't trust themselves.

[00:11:29.360] – Allan

And so they are probably logging their food every single day and probably will for the rest of their lives. I'm accountant, so I don't mind doing number crunching data and all that kind of stuff, but that just seems so exhausting.

[00:11:45.010] – Deanna

That's not the life I want for myself. I say that to my clients all the time. I don't want to be like 80, 90 years old and still be having to log everything that I eat and weighing myself every day. My grandmother is 93 years old and every time I see her, she still tells me how much she weighs and that's a major thing on her mind still. And I just think, God, I don't want that for myself. And I mean it's the best thing I've ever done, is letting go of that obsession and just enjoying my fit lifestyle, but enjoying it.

[00:12:17.680] – Allan

Right. And it's one of the things I'll talk to my clients about this. They get weirded out by the fact they're like, okay, what's my meal plan? And I said, I don't know. What's your schedule next Thursday? And let me pull up my calendars. So you see, I couldn't write you a meal plan because I'm not living your life. I don't know the food you like. I don't know how they make you feel. And so I said, well, here's what I want you to do. I want you to go eat, and I want you to write down in your journal how you felt before you ate and then write down in your journal how you feel after. And then the next day and what that will be is over time. You're basically telling yourself you're teaching yourself. Okay, these are the foods that serve me, and these are the foods that don't. Okay, does that mean we're going to not eat the foods that don't serve us? Of course we are.

[00:13:08.910] – Allan

Aunt Martha has a birthday, and we're all going there because she's turning 90, and there's birthday cake. We're going to eat a little bit of cake. That's okay. So many people get so frustrated with. Oh, well, I broke the rule. Yeah, I ate some bread. Oh, my God.

[00:13:26.930] – Deanna

And the irony of that attitude is that it makes you eat more bread and more cake. That's the irony of that. The more you tell yourself, I can't have this and put something on this pedestal of this is bad, or this is forbidden, then every time you eat it, your willpower will break down and you eat it.

[00:13:48.490] – Deanna

But you're telling yourself, this is the last time this is bad, so I won't do this again. And so that intensifies when you eat it and you eat more of it. Yeah, and then that happens all the time.

[00:13:59.230] – Allan

Don't see a purple elephant. Don't think about a purple elephant.

[00:14:02.660] – Deanna

Yes, exactly. Or my favorite one is like, telling my kids going into their room and out and they see a toy that they haven't played with forever, and suddenly it's going away. They're like, that's my favorite toy.

[00:14:18.130] – Deanna

with food, when you threaten to take it away. It's going to suddenly look shiny and exciting, because now it's scarce.

[00:14:27.110] – Allan

You do see this. If you get into the forums where there's a particular way of eating, be it vegan or carnivore or keto or whatever, if there's a certain way of eating, there are purists out there that are going to tell you, they'll even ask. It's so funny. Someone will plug in, and they'll say, well, can I have some tomatoes with my hamburger meat or ketchup? And it's like, well, of course you can. You're a grown person. If you want a little bit of ketchup on your burger, have a little bit of ketchup. You know, the bun probably isn't serving you very well, but the burger, it's fine. If you tolerate meat, then it's fine. But it's just interesting to me that we do get into this thing and then we see the people who are so strict as leadership for almost like a cult and so we go, okay well the diet god just told me, I can't have ketchup on my hamburger meat.

[00:15:29.690] – Deanna

Well and that honestly is really tempting when you are so anxious about your weight and your body you don't want somebody to be like yeah, you can have cake sometimes and you could be.

[00:15:43.600] – Deanna

Lackadaisical about that's not what you want to hear. You want to hear what's going to work fast, what's really exciting, what's really going to fix this because it closes a loop in your brain. It's like I've got this problem and if I here is the answer and it's very extreme and because of that it's going to work and it's going to work fast. And I've got all these proof and before and after pictures without any regard to whether it's sustainable or anything. Sometimes it's a trauma response. I think dieting can be like a trauma response to the anxiety of I'm not good enough, my body's not good enough. I feel bad about myself. I feel this anxiety about who I am and what my body looks like. And so we're much more vulnerable in that position to the diet guru who's going to tell us, like, don't ever eat a hamburger bun again, or whatever extreme thing is that it does feel very exciting to somebody who is desperate. And so that's one of the major things that we work on is to help people to get rid of that body anxiety because the body anxiety will begat the food anxiety and you're more vulnerable to those strict rules and that strict lifestyle that doesn't work, that makes everything worse.

[00:17:00.670] – Allan

Fast is not sustainable and usually strict is not sustainable. You have to feed your body and you have to heal your body as you said.

[00:17:08.480] – Allan

Now another area where because again, as you said, there's anxiety and there's trauma. And there's things that are going on and so as a result our relationship with food is almost like an abusive marriage.

[00:17:23.070] – Deanna

Yes.

[00:17:23.790] – Allan

And so something goes on in our life and now we have to eat it away because this is our companion. This is our friend until it's not because we're going to feel guilty as crap about doing it later. So there's this concept, it's aptly called emotional eating. How can someone recognize when they're emotionally eating?

[00:17:45.610] – Deanna

Well a lot of people first of all I think, think they're emotionally eating. When they're actually just deprived and restricted. So deprivation meaning they have a scarcity relationship with certain foods and restricted meaning they're not getting enough to eat at their meals. You have a lot of women, especially who are skipping meals because of career pressure, because kids or just they don't have time, they haven't prioritized it. And so they're showing up to the end of the day after a long day with their stress built up.

[00:18:21.820] – Deanna

And they're sitting down and they're eating nonstop and calling it emotional eating because they're stressed and emotional. But in reality, what we've seen is that when we help people to come out of those two states of deprivation and restriction and they're eating enough throughout the day and they're regulating themselves physically and mentally with making sure they're satisfied with their food and what they're eating, that emotional eating is reduced by quite a bit. So we work on that first. Before we ever even get to emotional eating, things need to be eliminated first and then you can start to take a look at emotional resiliency. That is such a big deal.

[00:19:04.910] – Deanna

I think that so many of us are so afraid to feel our feelings. I think that anyone who's 40 plus never had any sort of emotional as a kid or growing up, feelings were not talked about. Like, I was allowed to feel happy, but nothing else, like everything else was very uncomfortable for my boomer parents and very shoved under the rug and they just didn't know what to do with it. And so a lot of what we do is teach people how just teach women how to just feel their feelings, which is to not sit and ruminate in the thoughts that are coming along with the emotions, but to actually sit down, turn off the thoughts that are running, and stop the story and just feel the physical sensations. Because emotions are very physical and the sensory experience of it and tuning into that helps you to process it and get it out. And when you learn how to do that and you also learn adaptive coping skills for those emotions, which is you're feeling the feelings, and then maybe you still need to soothe yourself in some way. There's other things that you can try that are so freaking simple that nobody ever believes that it's going to work. It's just sitting and taking deep breaths, doing tapping, if you've ever heard of tapping, just going for a quick walk. Standing outside and looking at birds.

[00:20:26.330] – Deanna

These things sound so simple, but it really works. It helps you to soothe yourself and to release certain hormones and chemicals in your brain that will calm your nervous system down. And you also need to learn how.

[00:20:40.990] – Deanna

To complete the stress cycle. Because the stress cycle is you go into fight or flight, your body needs some kind of signal that you're safe. What we've been doing is coming home and using food to tell our body that it's safe. Which is like, there's no shame in emotional eating. That's number one. If you emotionally eat, that's nothing to be ashamed of. And it's not even always a problem. We always say it's only a problem if it's a problem.

[00:21:02.370] – Deanna

But completing the stress cycle can look like just shaking your like coming home and just shaking your body, shaking your arms and legs. It's a way that animals do this to shake the stress and move the energy out of their body. We can do the exact same thing. And it's very simple, but it works. It definitely works.

[00:21:20.970] – Allan

Yeah. That's kind of a concept that in my coaching training, they called it breaking the chain. So basically what you're doing is you realize, okay, I shouldn't be hungry, but I want something, and I just need to know if this is emotion or is this actual hunger. And I thought it was funny, you have an email list, and I'm on it. So I'm reading your emails,

[00:21:42.770] – Deanna

I know what you're about to say.

[00:21:43.940] – Allan

You wrote the other day about the statement. I guess the advice was, okay, would you eat broccoli? You kind of tore that one a hole. But even with that, there is a need to somewhat figure out the right way for you to break that chain.

[00:22:02.570] – Deanna

Yes.

[00:22:03.380] – Allan

Can you talk a little bit why not broccoli versus something else?

[00:22:07.270] – Deanna

Well, first of all, I think that that's just misleading because never in my life when I have been super hungry have I ever craved broccoli. That's just not I don't crave broccoli. I eat broccoli because I know it's good for me, but I don't crave it. I've had clients told me before that they crave it, but I never have, the whole idea is, like, if you're not craving broccoli, then you're not hungry. And so that's not totally true. I've seen clients who, when you get so hungry that your blood sugar is low, you don't crave broccoli.

[00:22:39.480] – Deanna

You don't crave vegetables or anything with any kind of fiber in it because that takes too long to digest. You crave chips and sugar and high calorie foods because your body wants to get energy to your brain really fast. So just because you're having those cravings doesn't mean that you're emotionally eating. You might just be over hungry and let yourself get too hungry. We see that quite a bit.

[00:23:02.480] – Deanna

But also it doesn't solve the problem, which is like just telling yourself, well, I'm not hungry, I'm not hungry. I just want to eat, doesn't give you a solution to that problem. And the solution is to emotional eating tonight way past, or it'll be weeks in the future at this point, but when this comes out but I'm teaching an emotional eating Master class tonight because there's a lot to know about emotional eating. It's a multipronged approach. It's definitely not as simple as am I hungry or am I just bored? Am I hungry or am I emotional? You have to know what to do with the emotions. If you are just emotional, you've got to have proactive things put in place. Like daily I journal my feelings and just get it out onto paper. That helps me process it. So there's the proactive side, and then there's the reactive side. What do you do when you're having the emotions? You don't run from them. You feel them. And then you soothe yourself in a way that works and turns off the stress cycle. I'm sorry about that email. You have to be kind of opinionated. About these things sometimes.

[00:24:10.990] – Allan

No, it was great because it really made me think about, okay, I understand. We have to break the chain or at least have to understand why we're doing what we're doing.

[00:24:18.720] – Deanna

Yeah.

[00:24:19.400] – Allan

Slowing yourself down, whatever that can be. I love the idea of journaling. So sit down, or you eat and just sit down in your journal for about five minutes. And I'll tell my clients this. I'm like, you're a grown ass man or you're a grown ass woman.

[00:24:34.220] – Allan

If you want to go have a slice of pizza and drink some beer with your friends, you do it. You do it. And sometimes you do it not just because it's taking care of you, but sometimes you're taking care of them. A friend calls me up and says, Look, I'm going through something. Can we go have a couple of beers? My neighbor, I think tonight yeah, he's going to be building something across the street, and we watch over his property because he doesn't live on this island.

[00:24:58.640] – Allan

And he just said, hey, let's have a cookout together. It's my birthday. I want to celebrate my birthday. So what am I going to do? I'm going to go over there. I might have a couple of beers. I'm going to have some cooked food that wouldn't be food I'd necessarily eat. I know tomorrow I'll wake up and. I won't feel 100% because I found out what 100% feels like.

[00:25:17.110] – Deanna

Yes.

[00:25:18.790] – Allan

Okay. And so when you find out what feeling good feels like, then you know when you're not feeling good. So far, we've probably spent most of our lives feeling terrible and thinking that's normal.

[00:25:29.790] – Deanna

Yeah. And I love everything you're saying. That's the whole picture of life. Right. It's like I could get to the end of my life and be like, man, I was perfect with my eating, and I was perfect with my exercise, but I missed out on beers with my friends or I missed out on wine night or margarita night. That's not balance to me. It sounds so cliche and so simple, but it really is all about balance and being able to live this lifestyle that allows you both, and that's going to look different for everyone. So. Yeah, I love that.

[00:26:01.840] – Allan

Right. And that's why I'm going to ask you this next question. But I define wellness as being the healthiest, fittest, and happiest you can be. And one of the reasons I asked that question that way is because I think when someone goes down the diet rabbit hole, they're rejecting happiest.

[00:26:21.050] – Deanna

Yeah.

[00:26:21.710] – Allan

When they think they have to burn off calories so they can eat what they want to eat, they're not paying attention to what fitness really is. It's not about how long or how fast you can go on that elliptical. It's about what your body's capable of doing. And sometimes it's not just being an endurance athlete on the elliptical machine. You got to be able to lift stuff, push stuff, move stuff, move your body so there's a lot more to fitness. So when someone's on that diet culture thing, they're often not paying attention to their fitness and they're not paying attention to their happiness. And nine times out of ten, because of the way they're approaching this with this restrictive approach and everything else is going on, they're not actually even taking care of their health

[00:27:03.640] – Allan

So the things that matter most in life, health, fitness and happiness are completely avoided as a topic in their lives. When they're on this diet. And so I'm going to ask you so folks can get off the diet roller coaster.

[00:27:20.690] – Allan

I define wellness as being the healthiest, fittest and happiest you can be. What are three strategies or tactics to get and stay well?

[00:27:30.270] – Deanna

Okay, first of all, we have something that we call the ideal body. And the ideal body is not your perfect body. It's not societal's ideal, but it's kind of like what you're saying. It's those kind of three things put together. It's your healthiest body that's in perfect harmony with your healthiest mind. It's your physical health, but not at the expense of your mental and emotional health.

[00:27:54.730] – Deanna

So that is kind of our definition of that. And those relationships are good food, body, exercise, and mind. So what was your question again?

[00:28:04.010] – Deanna

Three tactics?

[00:28:04.960] – Allan

Just three strategies or tactics that we can take away that could help us be healthier, more fit, and have more happiness and joy in our lives.

[00:28:14.750] – Deanna

Okay, well, I would say think in terms of addition, not subtraction when it comes to food. Abundance, not scarcity.

[00:28:23.530] – Deanna

Like I mentioned at the beginning, that we have to work with our brain and not put ourselves into that state of scarcity. Because your brain, when you're in scarcity and it can't have sugar, it can't have cake, can't have pizza, there's a process that happens in our brain automatically that starts scanning its environment for pizza and sugar. And that is just how it works. We cannot get away from that as human beings. So don't think about what you can't have. Even I tell this to my diabetic clients, to clients who really need to eat less sugar and really need to eat less cake. Don't look at what you can't have. Start looking and finding the things that you can and stay focused on addition, not subtraction. You're not trying to get rid of anything. You're just looking for nutrient dense foods and trying to get those in and enjoy those.

[00:29:13.090] – Deanna

So addition, not subtraction.

[00:29:15.270] – Deanna

This is going to be more towards happiness, and that's stop thinking of your body as this prize or an outcome. I think that when it comes to happiness, we think that happiness lies at the other end of that weight loss. And so that's why we're like, we'll do whatever it takes, we'll work really hard and then we'll be happy when we get that body. And I've been there, I did that.

[00:29:42.840] – Deanna

I dieted down to what I thought was going to be I had ABS, I had like a six pack. And the body I thought was my dream body, it did not make me happy. It was really shocking. And some people don't believe me when I tell them that. They're like, I'd like to try. But I was actually more insecure than ever. I felt like I was on display. I felt like everyone was watching everything I did.

[00:30:07.250] – Deanna

And it was like a temporary hit of happiness. And then I had to work harder to keep it.

[00:30:16.020] – Deanna

There was so much pressure on me. So get rid of that idea. Just get rid of the idea of achieving something with your body and start thinking in terms of today. How can I take care of my body? Just stop objectifying your body at all. It's not that you don't like it or like it. It's just that this is your body, period. It's your home, you live in it. It's not an object, it's you. And to just practice self care every single day and start thinking, being more present about that.

[00:30:47.970] – Deanna

Third, I think, let's see, all or nothing thinking, I think is probably one of the best things that you can do for yourself is to get out of that all or nothing state of mind where I'm either all in and doing it perfectly or I don't try at all. And just find the messy middle where you're taking messy action. We call it half ass action sometimes, like, something just take action, get out of your head, stop overthinking everything and really just find something.

[00:31:17.480] – Deanna

Something that you can do is better than nothing at all. Like doing one workout a week is better than doing no workouts all year. And doing eating a few fruits and vegetables throughout the week is better than eating none at all.

[00:31:30.350] – Allan

Awesome.

[00:31:31.180] – Allan

So Deanna, if someone wanted to get in touch with you and Tony, where would you like for me to send them?

[00:31:36.750] – Deanna

Well, I since you're listening to a podcast, I'm assuming you like podcasts. So the Fitness Position podcast is where Tony and I, we banter, we talk about the healing process and we talk about how we've overcome it ourselves and how we've gone through these very things ourselves. We have a long history with this stuff, but the Ideal Body Formula book my husband Tony wrote and he went into depth. It's our strategy. It's how to heal your relationships. There's an assessment in the book that you can take and find even what your relationship with food, body, exercise and mind is like, and that is at idealbodyformula.com.

[00:32:16.250] – Allan

Okay, you can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/606 and I'll be sure to have links there. Deanna, thank you for being a part of 40+ Fitness.

[00:32:27.150] – Deanna

Thank you so much for having me. I had a blast.

Post Show/Recap

[00:32:30.130] – Allan

Hey, Ras.

[00:32:31.240] – Rachel

Hey, Fitness and Sushi sounds like a really fun podcast.

[00:32:35.870] – Allan

Yeah, if you go back, I was on, I think, September. Her August 30 episode. So the episode that came out last Wednesday, I was on her podcast.

[00:32:46.410] – Rachel

Awesome.

[00:32:47.030] – Allan

She's on mine. So we kind of just swapped back and forth because we have similar messages. In the way that we look at food and movement and things like that, is that the things you do should serve your body, and it shouldn't be strategies and tactics or diets and exercise before you actually start working on the mindset stuff. That's where their whole ideal body concept comes in is this, okay, you're not on a diet. You're eating. You're feeding yourself. And you've got to work on your relationship with food. You got to work on the relationship you have with your body, and you got to work on the relationship that you have with yourself.

[00:33:25.250] – Rachel

Well, I love that she had said you need to find joy in both eating and exercise. And she had mentioned, too, you need to consider what foods serve you. Just like you mentioned. I mean, we're not just eating calories. We're eating foods that we want to enjoy tasting and that do good in our bodies. And it's not that always foods are good and bad. You guys talked about craving broccoli. I don't crave broccoli either on a regular basis.

[00:33:55.130] – Allan

Well, I crave Brussels sprouts, but that's only because I can't get them.

[00:33:59.630] – Allan

Yeah, but I think the thing is if you start understanding what food does for you, it's energy, which is the calories, and you need energy. No one sits there and says, I want less energy.

[00:34:12.610] – Allan

I want less energy. And then no one says that because. They want more energy. But energy comes from food. So if you're eating good quality food. And you're eating the right varieties of it, you're giving your body the nutrition it needs and the energy it needs. And your body turns on. And so there's just opportunity there. I mean, we're going to talk about vitamins next week, but vitamin B12, if you're not eating meat or animal products, you may not be getting enough B12. B12 is a key component to your body producing energy. And where is it going to come from? Mostly animal products.

[00:34:54.020] – Allan

Okay, so when people start looking at foods and label them as good or bad based on what they've read or what they've heard, it just creates this syndrome, this cycle that just self inflicts over and over and over. It's like, oh, I ate a bad thing. Well, I guess I'll start back on Monday. Yeah, well, dude, it's Tuesday. You're going to wait till Monday because you had a cookie today. You're going to destroy the cookies for the rest of the week and start back on Monday. That makes no sense whatsoever.

[00:35:24.230] – Allan

So you got to fix that relationship stuff, because if you don't do that, you end up in these cycles where, oh, I screwed up. I did something bad. I'm a terrible person. And you're just beating yourself up over that.

[00:35:37.930] – Rachel

Right. Well, it's important to find foods that agree with you. There are certain foods I eat that just don't agree with me, but also find foods that are palatable besides the ones that are manufactured to be palatable.

[00:35:51.720] – Allan

Yeah, well, I was at a party. And I should have eaten before I went. I didn't. There was vegetable platter, just the basic broccoli, carrots, and forget what the other one was, but little tomatoes, I guess, and it had the ranch dressing. And so I go over there with a plate, and it's like, okay, there's chicken nuggets. There's all kinds of sweet stuff. And I'm like, okay, well, I guess. I'll go grab some broccoli, and I put it on my plate. No one else was anywhere near this vegetable tray. And so I grabbed some of the broccoli, and I grabbed some of the ranch dressing, and I went over. I'm just eating this, and then I'm still kind of hungry. So I go back to the table, and no one else has touched the broccoli or the carrots. But the broccoli looked good, and I liked what I just ate, so I grabbed more of it.

[00:36:39.950] – Allan

By the end of the night, I had eaten all the broccoli, every last bit of it. No one else had any. There were still a lot of carrots there. I don't know that anyone else ate carrots. I don't know anyone ate people were eating some of the tomatoes. But just at that moment, that wasn't what my body wanted or what I wanted. I just ate broccoli, and I enjoyed it.

[00:36:57.930] – Allan

So it's not that you would crave a vegetable over it. The basic principle was this, if you're going to label broccoli as good and you're going to label a cookie as bad, and that's in your head, then you're going to label yourself based on what you just chose to eat

[00:37:18.720] – Rachel

success or failure.

[00:37:20.320] – Allan

Right.

[00:37:21.060] – Allan

And who are you? Who are you? Yeah, I wanted to lose weight, but I ate the cookie bad. okay.

[00:37:29.380] – Allan

And that's what they want to try to get away from, because that's what gets toxic, because someone says, hey, I just baked these cookies I brought into work today. You should have a cookie. Are you literally going to look them in the face and say, no, I'm not eating any of your cookies?

[00:37:48.690] – Allan

have some of the cookie. You don't have to eat the whole one. Just say okay, yeah, I'll try it. And you take a little pinch off and you eat it. And there should be no remorse to that. You're basically doing something kind. You're doing something nice. And if you think, well, I'm being bad, this is bad, then you can't come from a genuine place of love and caring and kindness because you've labeled this whole event as bad.

[00:38:14.020] – Rachel

Right.

[00:38:16.510] – Allan

And it shouldn't be.

[00:38:18.140] – Allan

A little bit of this or a little bit of that is not going to derail you. It's not going to kill you. And unfortunately for a lot of people, mentally it does. They let it derail them rather than sit there and say, oh, I don't know how many times when I was in ketosis, I would know. I'd almost know as soon as I got home.

[00:38:35.850] – Allan

I'm like, crap, something's not right. And then I'd check my ketones either then or in the morning, and I'd be out of ketosis and I'll be like, dang, something was in the food.

[00:38:50.170] – Allan

 I didn't know was in the food. And now I'm not in ketosis. Now I could have lost my stuff and said, well, since I'm out of ketosis, I may as well go eat everything in the kitchen that I wouldn't eat otherwise. And I didn't approach it that way. It was like, okay, well, that happened, right? I know next time I'm not getting that. I know it's on their menu. It was delicious.

[00:39:09.700] – Allan

But if I want to stay in ketosis, that's not going to serve that purpose. So I'm not going to have that. I'm choosing not to have that when I go back because I know it will take me out of ketosis.

[00:39:23.270] – Rachel

Sure.

[00:39:24.160] – Rachel

Well, that's just the point, is that it's just this one meal, this one snack, this one thing. We're on a health journey, hopefully for decades, years. Just one day out of that snapshot of time. It's not that big a deal. And we need to learn how to give ourselves a little grace when these things happen. I mean, I always talk about the holidays when my mom breaks out the delicious Greek cooking, particularly the baklava. You can imagine there's a lot of sugar in the baklava. But it's a celebration. It's a time to enjoy the family traditions. And it's just a moment. I will probably pay for it later, personally, but it's worth it you know, and you just move on. The next day can be a better day.

[00:40:14.130] – Allan

Yeah. And that's really what Deanna and Tony are all about, is just this idea of let's work on our relationship. Let's think about why we feel the way we feel. Why do we put value on a dress size?

[00:40:27.910] – Allan

Why do we change clothes five times in the morning? Because we don't like the way this dress or this thing looks on us, so we're going to change into something else. Why do we do that?

[00:40:37.370] – Allan

Why do we put so much worth in size and weight? And that's kind of the whole point of where they're going with this, is let's just work on being healthy and actually being kind to ourselves. And if we'll do that, if we'll fix the relationship we have with ourselves, the relationship we have with our body, the relationship we have with food, the relationship we have with exercise, if we work on those relationships and we truly think of them as relationships, and every relationship takes investment. And so if you invest the time and effort to build that relationship up, to build yourself up, to understand that your body is what it is, but you can help make it better with some basic work, realize, okay, I'm not going to approach food like there's good food and bad food. I'm just going to ask myself, is this something that's going to serve me and give me the nutrition or not?

[00:41:32.980] – Allan

Is this something I want to build my brain out of? Is this something I want to build bones out of? And occasional cookie is not going to matter.

[00:41:43.750] – Allan

But if I'm eating cookies every day.

[00:41:45.890] – Rachel

Right,

[00:41:46.660] – Allan

then it does. So that's a different thing. Basically, I'm okay to put in a little of substandard stuff here and there, but I can't make that the staple. I can't make that the norm. And that's really where they're coming at.

[00:42:00.890] – Rachel

I love it. That was really fun. I imagine their podcast is a lot of fun.

[00:42:04.790] – Allan

Yeah. So I'm going to be a guest on there. If you go over to Fitness and Sushi podcast, well, wherever you listen to this podcast, it's there in the show notes for this episode. I'll probably have a link to their podcast. So you can just go on over to their website. But it's everywhere. You listen to podcasts. And so I'm on their August 30 episode, which was last Wednesday.

[00:42:26.330] – Rachel

Sweet. Can't wait to listen.

[00:42:28.460] – Allan

All right, well, I will talk to you next week.

[00:42:31.040] – Rachel

Thanks, Allan. Take care.

[00:42:32.820] – Allan

You too.

Music by Dave Gerhart

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