EP. 116 One Simple Strategy to Clean Up Your Eating

You know that eating clean would probably make you feel physically better, but you may not know exactly what it means to eat clean because let's be real, like in the weight loss industry, there's a lot of buzz, a lot of talk about clean eating, and the phrase is tossed around a lot. But what does clean eating actually mean for you? What if it were possible to achieve your goal weight and stay there permanently without dieting? Stop dieting forever podcast where you will discover the key components that most diets won't tell you because they want you to keep coming back. Not here. This is your last stop on the weight loss struggle bus. I am your host, Jennifer Dent-Brown, life and weight loss coach, and I am going to show you how to stop dieting forever. Let's jump into today's episode. Hey, LuxeLifer, welcome to episode 116. This is your certified life and weight loss coach, Jennifer Dent Brown, from jenniferdent.com, where I teach my clients how to take control of their food so they no longer feel powerless over food. Have you ever, like, had that feeling where you're just like, you know, that a certain food is in the house that you're craving and you're like trying to go off and do other things, but it's like, ah, You can hear that food calling your name from the kitchen. You can hear the ice cream calling your name from the freezer. That's feeling powerless over food. So I teach my clients how to deal with those intense cravings. So before we jump into today's topic, let me just catch you up on like what's been happening in the Stop Dieting Forever Community. So this past weekend, I spent an amazing, incredible weekend in person with some of my clients. This is my very first client event. I called it the VIC Luxe Experience, Very Important Client, and it was just kind of like a beta test. I wanted to do something really special for the team members that I work with and also the coaches who coach in my program and some of my clients who have been with me for a long time. And I wanted to do something special in Philly. And give them, like, a taste of my life in Philadelphia. And so we had an amazing weekend. And so you will begin to see photos and videos of that weekend event of just the Luxe Life community and just the amazing women that are part of it. And the one thing that they all said that they love so much about the weekend was just getting to see everyone and hugging people in person and the conversations. Like, they didn't want to go home. They did not want to go home. I was like, "Okay, guys, we got to leave," but they were just all standing around talking. And it was just such an amazing, amazing thing to experience, but it was also just amazing to watch because it was like, wow, like, they're all here because of me and all because they want to learn my process and Some of them have mastered the process and they're learning to lose weight and they have lost weight without dieting. So it was just very, very like a very surreal moment. So that happened this week and this weekend we also closed enrollment for Stop Dieting Forever, which is the Reimagine Lifestyle membership. So if you missed the enrollment date, no worries. We will open again in the future. So just go to jenniferdent.com/stopdietingforever and get your name on the waitlist. But I definitely will be opening enrollment soon. I'm super excited to— one, first of all, I don't even know if I mentioned this on the podcast, but everyone who enrolled in this past launch, I'm donating $10 for each person to Phil Abundance, which is a not even local, it is the area's largest food bank and they're having a food shortage. And so I already donate to them as a company every month. But when I thought about the idea of like, oh, I can, when I enroll new people and new members into the program, not only are they investing in themselves, they're also investing in the community. So I'm super excited to write that check and send it off to Fill Abundance. For the new members that have joined in August. So just lots happening, lots happening. But let's talk about this one simple strategy that you can follow or implement to clean up your diet. So if you've been listening to me for a while, I know that you're interested in being more healthy. If you're new to the podcast, welcome, welcome, welcome. I am happy to have you here. And I always feel like If this is your first episode and this is the one that you've landed on, that you landed here for a reason and it was not by accident. So listen, learn, implement, and tell me how you're doing. So you're interested in becoming more healthy and you like this idea that I've been sharing with you about losing weight by learning to create a healthy lifestyle instead of just following a cookie-cutter diet, right? This is what Stop Dieting Forever is about. And you know that eating clean would probably make you feel physically better, but you may not know exactly what it means to eat clean because let's be real, like in the weight loss industry, there's a lot of buzz, a lot of talk about clean eating. And the phrase is tossed around a lot, but what does clean eating actually mean for you? So in Stop Dieting Forever, I teach the concept of bio-individuality. And bio-individuality simply means there is not a one-size-fits-all diet for everyone. Each person is a unique individual with highly individualized nutritional requirements. And bio-individuality recognizes that each individual body will differ in their nutritional needs as a result of their external and internal factors, like the foods that you like to eat and the foods that your body likes you to eat, your emotional thought, your emotional literacy, your lifestyle patterns, and even your surrounding physical environment. All of these things impact your health. All of these things impact your ability to lose weight. So I do not teach a cookie-cutter diet. This is why when you join Stop Dieting Forever, I will not tell you exactly what to eat. You will decide what to eat. So I teach you— don't, don't worry, it's not like the wild, wild west. I teach you how to develop a specific eating plan that addresses your body's individual needs and individual, like, nutritional needs. So rather than tell you what eating clean is, just generically, we're also going to apply this concept of bio-individuality to clean up your eating plan. So clean eating for me may look completely different for you, and depending on who you ask in the weight loss world, you're going to get different answers about what clean eating is. So this is why— side note, total side note— it's best to constrain and listen to 1 or 2 experts when it comes to weight loss instead of 20 or 30 or 80 or 100, because there's a lot of us out there talking a lot of different ways and strategies to lose weight. Ultimately, if you're listening to all of these different people and how they teach weight loss, they're all going to contradict each other. And what you're learning is not going to make sense and you're going to be confused. And as I said before on the podcast, my coach, Stacy Bayman, taught me a confused mind will always say no. So when you're confused about what to eat, you wake up in the morning, you're like, well, I don't know. This person told me I should be drinking a smoothie for breakfast, but this person over here tells me that I shouldn't eat breakfast. And this person over here tells me I need to be eating eggs and bacon for breakfast. Like, a confused mind will always say no, and you're always just going to end up going back to what your default belief is about eating and weight loss. So what we want to talk about today is what clean eating is for you. So my definition of clean eating is consuming— and this is just a high-level definition, right? You're going to get specific when you do your own clean eating plan. But my definition of clean eating is, is consuming minimally processed foods: fruits, vegetables, high-quality meat and seafood, meaning grass-fed, organic, wild-caught seafood, nuts, beans, grains. That's to me what clean eating is, and excluding highly processed foods or foods that contain lots of refined sugars or flours. But some of you are out there listening, like, who've been listening for a while, and you're like, "Wait a second, Jennifer. I thought you said that no foods are off-limits." And that is 100% true. In my process, when you join Stop Dieting Forever and I teach you the process and you go through the first phase, which is called Learn, I do teach you that no foods are off-limits. And this rule is in place because it is especially important to help you undiet your brain. Most of us come to weight loss believing, if we have a dieter's mindset, that there are certain foods that we can and cannot eat. And every time your brain is like, "Oh, I can't eat that. Nope, that's on the no list. Oh, no, no, no, no, I cannot eat that. That's going to make me fat." All it does is create a desire to eat that food, right? This is why we suffer from weekend brain. All week we're like, "Okay, I'm eating only the things on the good list." And by the time you get to the weekend, you're so fatigued from eating foods on the good list, you're like, oh yes, but I really want to eat the thing that's on the no list. So we just cut all that BS out from the beginning. There are no foods that are off limits. And when you allow yourself this, like, when you follow the everything is allowed rule, you give yourself permission to eat rather than thinking that deprivation is the only way to lose weight. That's what a dieter thinks, right? And we are undieting our brain. Deprivation isn't a healthy approach to anything, so we don't do it at all. So when you follow an everything is allowed food, no foods are off limits, when you follow that rule, I teach you to dial into your physical body to see how certain foods affect you, right? So the foods that you decide that you want to eat, You're now going to learn how those foods affect your body, and your body will never, ever lie to you. And as you learn how your body reacts, you're going to begin to plan accordingly. Eventually— and this is like the time when the person gets to this is different from everyone— but eventually you will cross the line where you want to feel better physically more than you want to eat or consume that favorite processed food that you love. So what does that look like exactly? If you decide that you cannot live without your chocolate cake and you're like, okay, Jennifer, you said no foods are off-limits, I'm putting chocolate cake on my eating plan. That's exactly what I want you to do. I want you to intentionally decide you're going to eat the chocolate cake versus eating the chocolate cake every day from an emotional need or an emotional craving. And as you continue to follow your eating plan, right? So you're training your brain to follow your eating plan. As you continue to consume the chocolate cake and pay attention to how you're feeling before, during, after the chocolate cake, and you're making notes of that, you're going to get to the point where you're going to decide like, okay, do I really want to eat the chocolate cake every day? Or do I want to feel a certain way every day? And you are empowered to make that decision. It is not coming from me. You are empowered to make that decision. And that is how you learn how your body loses weight. Okay? So I just wanted to make sure that you all understood that, yes, no foods are off limits. So when you get to this point where you're just like, I physically want to feel better in my body, and I want to eat in a way that physically causes me to feel better, then this is when this strategy I'm about to teach you right now becomes especially effective. So what is the strategy? It is very simple. It's a concept called crowding out. Crowding out. Crowding out just refers to the natural, very natural process that happens when you add more of the quote unquote good stuff into your eating plan first or into your body first. So the more healthy foods you add to your existing eating plan, the less room you will have for the junk, the processed foods, right? And the more sensitive your palate will become to ultimately appreciate a greater variety of healthy foods. And when this happened to me, I was shocked. I couldn't believe it. So when you follow this concept of crowding out, you will literally crowd out the unhealthy foods until you reach a way of eating that is sustainable, that makes you feel great, that you enjoy, even if that still includes eating the chocolate cake, right? Eating the chocolate cake is not a problem. I tell you all the time how much I love a good burger, but I'm not eating a good burger every single day. So when I learned to apply this concept of crowding out, this is when I stopped craving fast food. And it was the darnedest thing because y'all heard me talk about the Chick-fil-A on Haddonfield Road, right? Every time I drove past that Chick-fil-A, it was like my brain was wired. I saw the Chick-fil-A, mouth started watering. I wanted waffle fries. It was an automatic thing. And when I was starting to, like, learn this whole concept of crowding out and I was using— and I was following the plan and eating more fruits and vegetables and the whole foods, I literally changed my palate and I no longer craved fast food. I could drive past that Chick-fil-A and not feel a thing. It was so fascinating when that first happened. So I no longer crave pizza after drinking alcohol like I used to. I don't crave French fries, waffle fries, none of that. I don't crave fast food anymore, but I do crave a yummy chopped salad with my own homemade balsamic vinaigrette. Or this morning I woke up and I had a hankering for a Blueberry Bliss smoothie, and it was absolutely phenomenally delicious. So by crowding out processed foods, what happened was with the healthy foods, I literally reset my palate. I reset my taste buds. And you guys, like, this is not a one-and-done type of thing, right? This— you can do this at any point in time, no matter where you are in your journey. And I recently redid it again in the 4-day recommitment challenge that we did within Stop Dieting Forever. And I talked about that on a previous podcast. If you're interested, I will put the link in the show notes to go back and listen to that podcast where I talked about the recommitment challenge. But it literally was like a reset of the mind and body. So the physical part of it was that we followed a 4-day clean eating plan. 4 days, that's it. And I was very happy to do it at that time because I found myself eating a lot of ultra-processed healthy foods. And when I say ultra-processed healthy foods, it's just the marketing, the labeling that makes you think that you're eating something healthy. But the foods that I was eating were processed and had 5 or more ingredients in them. So for example, I started— I fell in love with these. I don't even know when I started eating them, but they're Protein Power. I think they're called Protein Power Curls. And they're made from egg white proteins. They've got some like fake cheese powder on it. So it's almost like eating the healthy version of Cheetos. And they're not orange, they're white, so they're quote-unquote healthier, and they cost way more than Cheetos. But I started eating those a lot, and I like got all the different flavors, and I really like them. I also found myself eating Sargento snacks a lot. When I say a lot, I mean these are the things that are like on the shopping list every week. Oh, you got to get some Sargento snacks. And you know, the Sargento snacks are like the little things with the, like, the nuts and the cheese and the dried fruit. And I really like the one with the Wheat Thins, or were they Triscuits? Wheat Thins and the cheese. I was eating those. I was eating a lot of cheese, and I was eating the Halo ice cream, which I said I wasn't going to eat anymore, but it was like on sale, 2 for $5 at Target, so I picked some up. I was eating Kodiak has these like protein— because I was trying to increase my protein by unnatural sources, clearly. Protein pancakes and protein waffles from Kodiak. And so these things like on occasion are fine, but when you find yourself eating them like every day, multiple times a week, it can potentially cause some issues for you. And so that's what I found with me. But I didn't notice it until someone had taken some photos of me. I look back at the photos, I was like, damn, who is that? Because I could see how inflamed my body was. I could see like my face was puffy, places where I used to have muscle tone, like in my shoulders and in my arms, gone. There's no muscle tone whatsoever. And it wasn't something that I was like, oh, I think I'm just dehydrated. I can just go have an IV drip therapy, which I did do. That did not solve the problem. I was like, okay, let me look at what I've been consuming. So this is one of the reasons why I was super happy to do the recommitment challenge with my clients. And so after 4 days, 4 days, that is it, 4 days of following a clean eating plan, I felt amazing. Less bloated, the puffiness was gone, my belly And I didn't even think my belly was that bloated, but clearly it was because it went down. And it stopped the craving for the ultra-processed healthy foods. And I haven't had any of that stuff since then. And that was, mm, well over a month ago. So it's just really fascinating. Like, sometimes you just don't know how badly you're feeling until you feel better. Right? Have you ever experienced that? So let me just share with you what crowding out looks like. So, two things. First thing you can do to begin crowding out is just real simple. Start by eating more of the vegetables that you like. If you like spinach and if you like broccoli, you just begin to include more of them in your meals more often. That's it. Right? Spinach and cauliflower are like those two vegetables that take on the flavor of any food. You can put them in anything. Like this morning in my Blueberry Bliss Smoothie, I used spinach. One time I used arugula, like, mm-mm, nope, arugula is too peppery to put into a smoothie, at least for me. You may like it, but I didn't like it. But if you like whatever vegetables you like, then just eat more of them. That's it. If you make, say for instance, you like broccoli and you usually put like a little bit of broccoli on your plate at dinner, just like double the amount of broccoli you have on your plate. Okay, so just start thinking like, what are the vegetables that I like and how can I eat more of them throughout the day? Very simple. Second thing you can do is to look for your whole food alternatives, not the store, the whole food alternatives to your current favorite treats. So if you enjoy like a mini Kit Kat or mini Snickers in the evening because you just like crave something sweet after dinner, I should do a whole podcast about cravings after dinner. But if this is where you are right now, try replacing the candy bar with like dark chocolate, or make yourself some trail mix with like nuts and dried fruit and little like mini dark chocolate chips. Or how about this? Eat a piece of fruit. Eat a piece of fruit. Some of the fruit is so sweet, like have mango. Oh my goodness. I ate a, I think it was a pear one day recently, and it was so good and it was super sweet, but that definitely could have been dessert. And pear is a higher sugar fruit, but it was, it's a whole food versus eating a mini KitKat or Snickers. Nectarines, whatever fruit is in season right now, eat it. I guarantee you. Oh, this weekend at the VIC, Very Important Client Luxe experience that we had, the restaurant that we went to, Wilder in Philadelphia— I've talked about them on the podcast before— food is amazing. And they had— we had brunch and they made a fruit salad. Oh my goodness, the fruit was so good. It was blueberries and strawberries and cut up peaches and bananas. It was delicious. So try eating fruit to kill that craving for something sweet. Here's another example. If you're used to eating regular white pasta, try black bean pasta or lentil pasta or chickpea pasta. That's what I like, chickpea pasta. Or use rice noodles or try zucchini noodles, which are called zoodles. You can buy them in the freezer in most stores now. So just like be curious and see what are the whole food alternatives to the things that you currently are eating that are highly processed. Okay, if you're used to drinking soda, maybe you want to try flavored sparkling water, but make sure before you buy it, look at the label that there's no added sugar in it. So Spindrift is one label or one brand that I like, and LaCroix is one brand that I like. Spindrift actually has real fruit juice in it. It's not artificially flavored. I think LaCroix might be artificially flavored, but there is no added sugar in it. So the result of you doing this, right, beginning to crowd out the unhealthy processed foods with more of the healthier foods, you'll be able to reduce bloating and inflammation in your body, and you will definitely begin to lose weight. And your body will thank you. Because here's the thing, y'all, when you begin to eat more whole foods, they're more filling, they're more satiating. And I'll talk about this in a future podcast, but you're going to just naturally eat less because you're not going to have as much room in your belly, right? So it's almost like you're crowding out the space in your stomach to eat a lot of food. So again, when you begin this concept of crowding out, you're going to find that you're going to start to feel better. And again, like I said before, like sometimes we just don't know how badly we're feeling because we're just used to feeling that way until we begin to feel better. And you're like, dang, I feel so much better now. I didn't realize I was feeling so badly last week. So when you reach this point, your brain is going to begin to shift to the desire. Your brain is going to actually crave, and your body is going to crave wanting to feel better. And this is when you're going to want to continue eating cleaner, right? And this is when you don't have to, like, use willpower to eat, quote unquote, healthy or better. You just want to. And that's when it becomes natural. And that's when you begin to lose weight permanently. It's a beautiful cycle. So I hope you found this helpful. This is just one of the strategies I teach inside Stop Dieting Forever. Bio-individuality, and crowding out. So if you want to learn more and you really are interested in losing weight and creating a healthier body without dieting, then I want you to go to jenniferdent.com/stopdietingforever to learn all about my lifestyle membership and how it can help you. It's helped hundreds of women so far. I can't wait for you to hear the stories of my clients. Who attended the BIC Luxe Experience this weekend. So good. All right, because listen, y'all, we can want to lose weight because of vanity reasons. Like, we want to get into a size 6, we want to be smaller, we want to look good in our bathing suits, right? That's vanity reasons. But there's other reasons to want to create a healthier lifestyle. Other reasons to create a healthier lifestyle is one, because hell, you feel better. And when you feel better, you're thinking better, you're moving better. Everyone else around you is going to benefit from you feeling better. You're creating healthy habits to create a longer, healthier life, which, you know, who doesn't want that? I mean, that should be the vanity right there. But we're all always so focused on like, now I need to like lose weight quickly, fast. And we don't think about the future. So I am very, very focused on helping you create your healthiest lifestyle so you can, one, learn it for yourself, and two, you can teach others to do the same just by being an example. All right, so let us stop and celebrate. Colette, play the music. All right, I just want to celebrate the women who joined Stop Dieting Forever. They are the first cohort to go through the 3 phases of weight loss. So they are all now in the Learn phase, which is phase number 1, and they are learning the process. And tonight we have our very first live call. It's our orientation call, and we're also doing a working session. We're going to create our 90-day plan to clear, complete, and organize. And if you're wondering what the heck does that have to do with weight loss, well, what I have found, and the reason why I added this into my process and the program, is that the women that normally come to me are very busy, high-achieving women. They're doing all the things. And so when they come, yes, they want to lose weight, and they try to compact— they try to pack everything I'm teaching them on top of everything that they're already doing. And so at the beginning of this process, at the beginning of the learn phase, I am teaching you all how to create a plan to clear off things out of your schedule, out of your head, things that, that have just been like rolling around, just open items, taking up energy, energetic energy. I'm teaching you how to complete things and how to organize your life so that you can energetically clear up space in your brain and have the time and the focus and the attention to learn the process so you will lose weight without dieting. Okay? So I'm super excited about the call tonight and meeting all of the new people and all of the new Luxx Lifers in Stop Dieting Forever. All right, y'all, live Luxx, and I will see you in the next episode. Share this episode with a friend and y'all can start crowding out stuff together. I love it. All right. See ya. Love ya. Bye. If you liked today's episode of the Stop Dieting Forever podcast and you want to learn more about creating a lifestyle instead of following a diet to lose weight permanently, be sure to visit JenniferDent.com. There you'll learn more about my unique weight loss process and how it can work for you. Go to jenniferdent.com to discover what you can do to stop dieting forever.