How to improve my relationship with food I Walk & Talk With E Ep 011
In this Walk‑and‑Talk episode, Eric Roberts discusses how to develop a healthier relationship with food. He critiques ultra‑restrictive diets (very low‑calorie plans, extreme keto, rapid‑loss protocols) and the common habit of labeling foods as "good" or "bad," explaining how these mindsets fuel a restrictive‑binge cycle. Roberts argues that weekly weigh‑ins create a pattern of over‑restriction before the weigh‑in and bingeing afterward, and he advocates daily weigh‑ins as neutral data collection, akin to tracking sales trends. He emphasizes that weight fluctuates daily, so trends over weeks or months matter more than single‑day changes. The core advice includes: stop categorising foods, focus on overall calorie balance rather than food groups, reduce guilt by recognizing that one off‑day doesn’t ruin progress, and abandon all‑or‑nothing perfectionism in favor of sustainable consistency. He ties these points together with personal anecdotes and practical examples, concluding with four actionable take‑aways: (1) weigh daily, (2) stop labeling foods, (3) let go of guilt and get back on track, and (4) prioritize consistency over perfection.
Chapters
What is going on, guys? Welcome back to another Walk and Talk with E. Hope you're doing well. Getting outside for one of these walks, taking advantage of the nice weather we have here. Got a lot of work to do, but I want to take advantage of the weather, as you should as well. Because if you're wondering if you should be walking, damn right you should get your ass out there and walk. So in this Walk and Talk, we're gonna kind of spitball some things, but I want to talk about basically how to have, how to develop a healthy relationship With food, because I think a lot of people do not have that for so many reasons. I think one of the, you know, where my head goes first and foremost is like, you know, the, uh, yes, like the very restrictive, the very like, you know, the, uh, you know, the, the ketos or the only eat 1,000 calories or the Optavias where you eat 800 calories. And those things play a role for sure. I think that's one of the biggest things that You know, when it comes to having an unhealthy relationship with food, it all, not all, but a lot of it stems from these good and bad foods, right? This thing where you think this food's good, this food's bad, I can have this, I can't have that, if I have this then I fucked up, or if I have this I feel guilty, and that's where a lot of this stems from. And so that plays a huge role, but I think what also plays a huge role is— What? I think people growing up on Weight Watchers and having these like weekly weigh-ins, which is funny because I'm an advocate for daily weigh-ins. Like I have my clients weigh in every single day. And you might think, Eric, that's more obsessive than weighing in once a week. But hear me out really quickly. Weighing in once a week, it does so many things. If you weigh in every single Monday, for example, what this is gonna do is, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, you're probably gonna be not so on point because it's like, well, my weigh-in's not till Monday, I don't really give a fuck. And then Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, you're gonna be incredibly restrictive. You're gonna think about food so much. You're gonna think about that number on the scale. Like, you know, if you have to report to somebody, for example, your weight better be down or they're gonna ask you, why is your weight not down and what are you doing wrong and this and that. And so this creates again this cycle of like this over-restricting on like Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday leading up to a weigh-in, or whenever you weigh in, you're going to be restricting yourself so you can then weigh in lower, only to then go binge for the next 3 days, right? And so this concept of a weekly weigh-in, that's why I'm not the biggest fan of it. I'd much rather just weigh yourself every day and realize that it's just data That's literally all it is. It's just data for you to collect. Just like Apple, for example, the phone I'm recording my video on right now, Apple company. When they look at their sales over the course of a month and they wanna see if they had a month where they made profit or not made profit, right? They're not gonna look at one random day out of the week. They're probably gonna look at every single day and they're gonna see the trends, right? Were you trending up? Were you trending down? What was the average, right? You don't just take 4 random data points out of the month and try to decide whether you're making progress or not making progress. And so I think that's number one. Actually weighing yourself daily would actually make more sense when it comes to having a healthy relationship with food because you're not going to do this cycle of like when you're weigh-in comes, you're gonna over-restrict, then you're gonna binge. And then, so that's number one. I think that's one a lot of people, I don't think, think about when they think about having a healthy relationship with food. And it's honestly probably quite contrarian to what I think a lot of people believe. And so that's my 2 cents on that. Because again, let's just say, for example, let's say you weigh 200 pounds right now. Let's say on Monday you weighed 200, and then on Tuesday you weighed 201.6, and on Wednesday you weighed 200.6. And on Thursday you weighed 199.4, and then on Friday you weighed 199.2, and on Saturday you weighed 198.6, and on Sunday you weighed 198.7. I don't know, but let's just say on that next Monday— let's say Sunday night you had a meal that was higher in sodium, so on Monday morning you weigh 202, because that can— that happens all the time with my clients. But we saw that because we were taking our weight every single day, we saw throughout the week they were trending down, right? And that's the biggest thing. It's not what you weigh, you know, from Wednesday to Thursday. Over the course of a period of time, are you trending down? Don't, don't take your, your weight and compare it from June 4th to June 10th. Take your weight and compare it from June 4th to July 4th. July 4th. To August 4th to September 4th. That's how you compare. You don't compare over a 6-day span because your weight's gonna fluctuate. So that's number one. Now getting back to— that was kind of a tangent, but getting back to more like healthy relationship with food, which I think that does play a role because the restrict and binge cycle. I talked earlier about, you know, good and bad foods and the overall concept of restricting Over-restricting. That's where this relationship with food comes about because listen, if you wanna lose body fat or if you wanna just maintain a healthy body weight, no, you can't fucking eat whenever you want and whatever you want in whatever quantity you want. No, that's a lie. Like, there's some restriction has to be there, right? But there's a big difference between like a healthy restriction and a not healthy restriction. Like, eating 20 grams of carbs per day, in my opinion, is not healthy. That is not a healthy restriction process. 'Cause you're gonna have to cut out so many foods that you enjoy. And maybe you don't even enjoy them, but they're just out and about. Like, if you go out to eat, you know, you probably— there's probably, you know, carbs on the table, and you're like, no, I can't have those 'cause I'm doing keto. Or, for example, intermittent fasting. And again, these are just examples, not to say that happens every single time, but intermittent fasting. Let's say you're on vacation at the beach, and you're like— your kids are like, hey, can we go out to breakfast at our favorite place? And you're like, huh. No. Welp, uh, sorry kids, I'm, uh, can't eat till noon. And they're like, well, I'm fucking starving, so can we please eat? Nope, can't eat till noon. And it's like, okay, well, fucking restrict again, right? So that's over-restricting, whether it's food groups, whether it's certain foods. Like, for example, you know, if you love a certain food group, you should not be taking it out of your diet. Or a certain food— if you love a certain food, Like, for example, every day for the past 2 months now, I've been having birthday cake Fruity Pebbles. They're amazing. I love them. If I took those out, I would not be happy. It's like when you tell your kid, you walk in the store and say, hey, don't touch that. What are they gonna do? This lighting is kinda off. They're going to immediately touch that, 'cause that's what happens when we restrict ourselves. We want it that much more. So what happens is, you know, you restrict yourself for 3 days or 4 days or 5 days or whatever it ends up being, Then eventually you're gonna snap. And then what happens when you snap? This is where the over-restrict and binge cycle comes from, because you've been over-restricting for such a period of time that when you finally do have said food, guess what? You're not gonna have it in moderation. Because 2 things: number one, you've been restricting yourself from it for so long, but also number two, you know when you're done having said food, said bad food, said food you're not allowed to have, you're gonna go back to not having it. So you wanna eat all of it while you can. And this is that perpetual cycle of like, that's what binging is. You're eating everything you possibly can in a short amount of time 'cause you know you're gonna go back to not having it. Whereas opposed to if you know that there's no food you cannot have, well, guess what? You can have any fucking food. So that cycle of restricting and binging goes down way less now because you've gotten to a point where you're not over-restricting a certain food group, right? So that's that as well. And I think that kind of ties into the next point, which is going to be the overall feeling of guilt. This is— this might be the biggest thing because you, you're smart enough, you watching this, you're smart enough to know it's not one day Or one night or one meal that ruins your progress. You know that because when you're perfect for one day, you didn't make all your progress, right? Like when you eat salads every day, all day for 2 days straight, you didn't ruin all your pro— you didn't make a ton of progress. You didn't like, you know, get skinny in 2 days. So when you eat bad for one night, that doesn't mean you ruined all your progress. And logically, you know that. But a lot of times what happens is when we're in the cycle of binging, restricting, so on and so forth— I'm going to turn around so I don't run into anybody— but when we're in the cycle of binging and restricting, you get to a place where you feel guilty. And from that guilt, that's what makes you not be able to get back on track. That's what makes you not be able to see progress. That's what makes you keep going. Like a lot of people think like, oh well, I already ate cheeseburger or donut or already went over my calories, so you know what, I'm just going to keep going and I'll get back on track on Monday. And like that whole cycle happens, right? If you just realize from the beginning, you eating a donut or you going— God forbid you go over in calories one day. God forbid, God forbid you go over in calories one day. That doesn't mean you did something inherently wrong. That doesn't mean you did something that was going to ruin your progress. And again, logically you know that, but we get so caught up in these emotions sometimes that a walk and talk like this is helpful because you're going to understand and go back to the logical side of things where you're right. Like, you didn't get skinny from one day, you don't get fat from one day. It's the fact that you feel super guilty So you won't, you almost won't allow yourself to get back on track, 'cause you think you fucked up anyway, so what's the point? You didn't fuck up, man. You just gotta keep going. You have to understand that nobody's ever going to be— I think this is probably the last one, which is like this all-or-nothing mentality. A lot of people think that if they're not all in, well then, what's the point? Well, The point is perfection doesn't breed results. Consistency breeds results. Perfection breeds inconsistency. Consistency breeds results and perfection breeds inconsistency. You don't need to be 100% perfect. You don't need to only eat clean foods because that is not going to be— that is not going to allow you to be consistent. And if you can't be consistent, Then if we just learned consistency breeds results, you will not be able to see results because you won't be able to be consistent. That's why, for example, sometimes I'll have my clients go through like a rapid fat loss week, for example, and I tell them, hey, this is for one week. And after the one week, like, can I keep going with this? Oh, you know, I lost body fat. I'm like, no, because you eating 1,200 calories is not sustainable. So we're not gonna keep going, 'cause it's not sustainable, so you won't see results. And so, you thinking of being perfect, you're never going to be perfect. 'Cause if, like, if we could all be perfect, like, obesity wouldn't be such a little epidemic in America, in the entire world, to be honest with you. Because they'd all just be sweet. No, there's other things that go on. You have a real life, you have a job, you have kids, you have other things you have to do. And other responsibilities. So being perfect is never going to happen. And so, and that's how I wanna end this probably is, number one, we talked about weekly versus daily weigh-ins. All right, this is a walk and talk, but my legs are kinda sore today, so. We talked about weekly versus daily check-ins. We talked about labeling foods good and bad. That is by far one of the biggest things when it comes to having an unhealthy relationship with food. Stop labeling foods good and bad. There's no good and bad foods. The only way you will gain body fat is from eating too many calories over a period of time. It's not from a certain food or a certain food group. It's overall calories. So as long as you eat— that's why I like calorie counting, because you can see I can still have a donut, or I can have carbs, or I can have this, or I can have that, and still see body fat loss progress, or just maintain your weight, whatever it is, because overall calories are what matter, not Not one food group. So that's number 2. Number 3, stop feeling so guilty and just get back on track. Like, that, that's what you need to do. That is how to have a healthy relationship with food, is you just gotta get back on track. And that bleeds into number 4, stop trying to be perfect. You're not going to be perfect. I'm not perfect. I'm the farthest fucking thing from perfect. You're not perfect. Your favorite Instagram model is not perfect. Nobody's perfect. But here's the beautiful part, you don't have to be perfect. 'Cause as long as you're consistent, consistency breeds results. So you do things that are going to allow you to breed consistency. And you eating 1,200 calories and you eating, you know, doing these over-restrictive things, that doesn't lead to consistency. And that's why it doesn't lead to progress. 'Cause if you were to do those things consistently forever, you'd be able to see progress, but it's not fucking possible. And that's why, that's why you don't see any progress. So do things that allow you to breed consistency. From there, you will see progress, right? Hope this helped, guys. Any questions, concerns, comments, whatever it is, drop below. Love to hear from you, and we'll chat soon. Okay.
