Food Freedom Friday - Why Just Eating Healthy Won't Work

Thanks for bearing with me, Keisha, as I test out the technology. You're very welcome. Okay, looks like we're live, and I see Haley. Good morning. Good morning. I'm driving. Okay, be safe. That's what I always say. I'm just double-checking my technology because I'm also going live on Facebook. And okay, it looks like we are good. So I'm gonna pin myself. Got it. So We can go ahead and get started talking about failing at Whole30. Okay, good morning. So this is the second installment of Food Freedom Friday, something different that I wanted to come up with. I wanted to get more comfortable with doing livestreams. I've done periodically before in the past. And never like love them. I— if you guys listen to my podcast, Stop Dieting Forever, I love my podcast. I'm all about podcasting, but I wanted to just try something different where I can just come on live, answer questions, share something that I think is going to be helpful, share a solution to some of the problems that I've been hearing within my community. And just, you know, people message me. In a different way. So hello, welcome to Food Freedom Friday. Last week we talked about freedom eating, and so if you missed the replay, or you— if you weren't there live and if you haven't watched the replay, you can go back. It's on multiple different places. Definitely if you're on my email list, you received a link for it. I think I put— we put it on the YouTube channel. So it's out there. You can go back and find it. Now I'm on Facebook, so I forgot to do that last week. So you'll be able to go back and watch this, and if you have any questions, if you're watching the replay on Facebook and you have questions about what I'm saying, just go ahead and type them in the chat, tag me, and I will come back and answer them. One of the things that I got my schedule mixed up last week. Which is so funny because I've been coaching one of my clients on time blocking and having a very like clear schedule in the morning. So I got my schedule mixed up last week and I had to hop off real quick before I could ask or answer any questions about freedom eating. So today we're going to talk about, um, a concept which I call crowding out. But I want to just explain to you what Food Freedom Friday is and where it came from. So I've been thinking a lot. And honestly, y'all, I thought I created this term, food freedom. I did not. I Googled it and there's like a lot of other people using that word too. But when I think about where I am now, right, I am— I no longer struggle with my weight. I no longer depend on diets. I broke my diet dependency. When I think about how I interact with food and how different it is now, I'm like, oh, this is freedom. This is freedom to be able to go to an event and have all the food all over the place and not be like worried about, should I eat this? Shouldn't I eat that? Not to be like overly consumed with what am I going to eat? What am I not going to eat? What is this going to do to me if I eat this, right? Waking up in the morning and not worrying anymore about my weight and like, oh my God, what did I eat last night? Because literally, y'all, that was my thought, my first thought every single morning when I used to wake up. I used to put my— lay in the bed, I used to put my hand on my stomach to see how bloated it was. Like, if it wasn't bloated, I'm like, oh, okay, good. But if it was bloated, I'm like, what did I eat yesterday? And then I would like have that recollection moment, and then there would be all of this self-judgment that would follow that. I no longer struggle with that. No longer struggle with that. So when I think about where I am now as a health and life coach, and I help my clients lose weight, to where I was before, I'm like, this is freedom. So I have achieved food freedom, and I've created the Stop Dieting Forever process so y'all can achieve food freedom as well. So this is what we're working towards. When you learn how to stop dieting, when you learn how to lose weight without having to depend on a diet anymore, you will begin to achieve food freedom. And it's so interesting, as I see my clients in the group, they're like— there was one person that posted, I can't remember exactly what she posted, she was sharing an experience recently And I was like, oh, that's like— sounds like you're experiencing food freedom. And another client, she just lost 23 pounds. She celebrated in the group. She put like her before and after pictures in the group, and she shared where she is now. And I was like, yep, it's food freedom. It is food freedom. It's food freedom is being able to like go out with your girlfriends Friday night, go out with your girlfriends for a girls' night out and not having to deal with all of the mind drama that goes with when you go out to a restaurant like I really wanna eat this, but I, I really wanna get this like pasta Alfredo or this pumpkin risotto dish, but I really should just get the salad because, you know, that's going to feel better in my body. Like not having to deal with that at all, not having to deal with the self-judgment on Saturday morning when you wake up and you recall like, oh, I had too many cocktails last night, right? That is food freedom. Being able to make a choice without having to feel the guilt, the worry, and not just like being able to love your decision, being able to love your decision. So when I talk about food freedom and when I was thinking about what I wanted to teach you all and talk about in this series, these are the steps that will help you achieve food freedom. Okay, so food freedom— I wrote this down, y'all, because I love it so much— is a place where you give the middle finger to the oppressive diet rules and regulations. We're not dealing with those anymore. We're letting go of everything we think we knew about weight loss, and we're learning how to lose weight in a way that feels really good. And the result is when you follow this process, follow my Stop Dieting Forever process, You will lose the weight without a diet and without the drama. So I'm going to talk a little bit today about where the drama comes in. But my mission, y'all, is literally to help tens of thousands of women get off of the weight loss struggle bus by teaching them how to stop dieting forever. That's my tagline. It is trademarked. Okay, stop dieting forever. I want to help you achieve your forever weight. And so if you're interested in working with me and learning more, you can go to my website, jenniferdentz.com, to see how you can work with me one-on-one. I do keep a handful of private clients that I meet with weekly, and also to get on the waitlist for my group. For those of you who have messaged me and are like, I would love to do private coaching, can't do it right now, tell me about the group. The group is doing some things, y'all, doing some things. It's gonna be amazing. But I will be reopening in, in the fall. Just put it that way. Date TBD. But if you get on my email list, you can go— when you go to my website, you can sign up for my newsletter, jenniferdent.com/foodfreedom, and you will be the first to know. Everybody on my email list is gonna be the first to know when new things pop off and when are, uh, becoming announced, or when, when I am announcing them. Okay, so let's talk about these failed attempts to eat healthy. And this idea was also, um, spurred, or, or not initiated, inspired by that same message. So if y'all attended last week, or if you heard, you know, last week's talk about freedom eating, you know that there's a woman that messaged me on Facebook And she talked about she's been trying to eat in moderation. She worked with a health coach and she's been trying to eat healthy in moderation. So last week I talked about why trying to eat in moderation is not the solution and what you can do. I call it freedom eating. Today we're going to talk about this thought of like, oh, I'm trying to eat healthy. And what is that exact— what is that exactly? And why is she struggling? So for those of you who may have in the past struggled with trying to eat healthy, and you, you may have used that approach for weight loss. I'm going to share with you why that doesn't work. Okay, let me just do this real quick. Okay, bear with me 1 second. And yes, the person that asked me, is that a real plant behind me? Yes, it's a big Monstera leaf. From our huge monstera plant downstairs. My husband cut it off, and that's one leaf. So I like it because it's given me some greenery, but it is huge, and it's kind of like in my way. But yes, this is, this is a plant. Okay, so let's talk about the failed attempts to eat healthy. So The problem with trying to stick to this healthy foods approach— I've done this before. If you all are familiar with Whole30, that is a very— it's an eating program that you can do where you just follow this eating plan for 30 days and you're cutting out all processed foods. You're cutting out everything that you probably are currently eating now that's keeping you overweight. And it sounds like a really great idea, but I'm gonna talk about why that approach isn't sustainable. So how many of you, and if for those of you who are on Zoom, if you wanna just put a 1 in the chat, have struggled with like, oh, yep, I'm gonna eat healthy this week, or today I'm gonna eat healthy, and you weren't able to do that. If that's something that you are familiar with, or for those of you who are on Facebook too, you can do the same. See. And comments. Okay, so here's the problem with trying to stick to the healthy foods approach. Yes, all the time. Yep, there's another one. As actually, there's 2 things I'm going to break down, both of them. The first thing is that The reason why you struggle to stick with the healthy foods approach is because your brain makes eating healthy superior to any other eating. Okay, your brain makes eating healthy like, oh, this is better than any other way of eating. So if you decide to eat something else, there is that self-judgment that comes along with eating healthy. So my— this woman messaged me on Facebook, and I pray that she is able to watch these videos that I'm talking about, because she's— her comments have like— are resonating with a lot of you. When you decide, okay, this over here is healthy, I'm just going to eat these foods, and I'm going to shun everything else. There is a level of judgment that comes along with this. I'm gonna tell you why this is so unhealthy. And we get the good food, bad food labels honestly, right? Because of society and research. And yes, broccoli does better in our bodies than a burger does, right? Yes, we know this. However, when you attach your self-worth to what you're putting into your mouth, it becomes problematic. Y'all get that? When you attach your self-worth to what you're putting into your mouth, it becomes problematic. So your goal is like, I'm only gonna eat the healthy foods. I'm only gonna eat the whole foods. I'm only gonna eat salads. I'm only gonna eat this. I'm gonna follow the Whole30 plan. Like, I'm only gonna do that. That kinda gives you like this almost superior feeling. Like, I'm eating healthy. I am a good person. I can do— like, I feel superior. Like, I feel good. Right? You pump yourself up because you're eating healthy, and that's the best approach. But life gets lifey, y'all. And when life gets lifey and you end up eating the kids' pizza crust, or you end up grabbing a chicken wing, or you end up having a bad day and you do a beeline to Taco Bell or your, your other favorite fast food, right? Fast food drive-through. You hit up Starbucks because you deserve a treat. You've been doing so well, right? Then the self-judgment comes in on the other end where you feel bad about what you put into your mouth, right? You feel bad like, oh man, did I just like eat the lemon cake at Starbucks and a cake pop? Did I just like mess up my whole week By having too many cocktails with my girlfriends, like the self-judgment comes in because all of a sudden you're not eating the superior healthy foods, you're eating the non-healthy foods, and you feel badly about yourself. And what happens? Yeah, Keisha says, you're describing my week. What happens when you are feeling badly about yourself. You're like, damn, I can't even like stick to the whole— I can't even eat healthy for a week. I can't even do this. You start to feel that self-judgment. And what do you do? You're like, well, hell, I might as well have another piece of pizza. I might as well, you know, go out to brunch with my boyfriend now because I messed up with my girlfriends at dinner last night. I might as well eat the rest of the cookies in the pantry. The self-judgment, all because you try to stick to eating healthy and you failed, which is 100% normal. I'm not saying you're bad for failing. It happens. But when you don't know how to handle the failure— inside Stop Dieting Forever, we talk about— I teach my clients how to fail forward. When you don't know how to do that, you find yourself back eating unhealthy. OK? So that's the first issue. That's the first problem that is wrong with this approach of, like, I'm just going to try to stick to eating healthy. OK? The second problem with this approach to weight loss is that— and I keep thinking about this woman who messaged me, and she said very specifically, I've been trying to eat in moderation, and trying to stick to eating healthy. And I was like, ooh, when I hear my clients say they're trying to stick to doing something, I'm like, mm-mm, there's something, there's a disconnect there. When you don't already see yourself as a healthy eater, that's when you need to like stick to it, right? So your identity has not yet shifted. Your identity is the one of a person who struggles with their weight. And I know this might be like brand new and like very different for some of you. I see some of my clients who are on here and they're like, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. But for everyone else, this is brand new. You, your identity as someone who struggles with their weight, you're always going to be someone who struggles with their weight if you don't yet see yourself any different then you're going to keep finding yourself in that same cycle. Okay? So this woman who messaged me, she had to stick to eating healthy because she has not yet, or doesn't know how to create the identity, become the person, have the beliefs and the thoughts as someone who just eats healthy. Y'all, I don't think like, I gotta stick to eating healthy anymore. Like, that's not in my vocabulary. It's just what I do. Yesterday I made this. It was so good. I made this broccoli chicken stir fry. So if you're on my email list and you get my weekly newsletters, I send out Food Freedom newsletters every Sunday. A couple of weeks ago, and sometimes I'll put like recipes in there. A couple of weeks ago I sent out a recipe with a Frenchy peanut Asian salad or something. Salad was amazing. The dressing that you make with it amazing. And I had this grand idea. I was like, oh, I'm gonna take that peanut. It's like a spicy peanut dressing, and like, use it with chicken and broccoli. Yeah, so good, so good yesterday. But my thought wasn't like, oh, I need to eat healthy today. I got excited because I love eating healthy. It tastes so good to me because that is my identity now. Okay, so when you don't see yourself as a healthy eater, when you feel like you're always struggling with your weight, yeah, you're gonna have to try to stick to eating healthy, and then that's when you fall off the wagon. Okay, does that make sense? Give me a 2 in the chat if that makes sense, or in the comments if you're watching live on Facebook. Okay, so those are the 2 issues with that approach of trying to eat healthy, right? For— I'm gonna recap it real quick. The first thing is that you believe eating healthy is better than eating non-healthy, which you attach your self-judgment to. Okay, see the 2s in the chat. And when you attach yourself— self— or you attach your self-worth to what you're eating, it's always going to become problematic when you're eating something good or something bad. For just— for those of you who are new to me, in my program, we don't talk about good food, bad food. We remove all the labels. Everything is neutral. The second issue with this approach is your identity. If you always see yourself as someone who struggles with their weight, struggles with eating, struggles with eating healthy, that's what you're going to continue to do. You're going to continue to struggle. So you've got to create your identity. You gotta shift your identity to become someone who just eats healthy. Okay? So there are different ways you can approach this. Inside my program, inside my process, these are the first things that we, we attack from day one at the beginning. So I'll share with you really quickly my experience with Whole30. And if you guys are familiar with Whole30, you can just type a 1 in the chat. My dieters out there, y'all know about Whole30. So when I was actually enrolled, I was studying to become a health coach at the Institute of Integrative Nutrition. That's when I learned about health— Health30, Whole30. And I was like, oh, this is it. This is the thing. Like, I just need to follow this 30-day plan. I'm just gonna eat super clean, right? I don't even like that term of clean eating because that just makes you think like anything else is dirty, right? That again, it allows that self-judgment to come in. But I'm like, I'm just gonna follow Whole30. I'm gonna eat super clean. So all, completely unprocessed foods, fruits, vegetables, nothing out of a package or nothing with more than 5 ingredients. I think that was like the rule. And so I followed this plan. I felt so good. And I remember, and you do it for 30 days and it's a whole thing. They've got great branding and great marketing, um, and all the things. I did it for 30 days. I lost a little bit of weight because of course I wasn't eating, you know, the processed foods. So there was probably a decrease in my inflammation. I started to lose some weight, but then it stopped. It stalled, as it always did when I was, you know, trying to lose weight back in the day. And I was like, I'm going to go another 2 weeks. I actually did a whole 45, and I'm so proud of myself, but I still wasn't losing any more weight. And that right there just like sent me into my spiral of like, this isn't working, I've done this for 45 days, something is wrong. And I went back to eating the way that I was eating before. The problem with this, right, the problem with my experience at that time— and this was 2014, 2013— I was learning to be on the health coach, so I was learning about nutrition and holistic health and all the things. However, I didn't have the mindset or the identity of someone who didn't struggle with their weight anymore. I didn't know about that until I became certified as a life coach. My problem was I took to the Whole30 plan as if it were a diet. I started and I approached this Whole30 plan as if it were a diet. And so with any diet that y'all do, and this is my experience, was because I'm giving up all the other things, there is like this undercurrent of deprivation. So even though I was focused on Whole30 and I was doing the thing, there was this undercurrent of like, oh, I can't have a cocktail, I can't have a drink, I can't have french fries, I can't have pizza, I can't have the things that I had been eating. And that created a sense of deprivation for me And so what happens is like when you feel like your brain is like, oh, we can't have something over here. What happens? Well, I'm just gonna eat some more of these kale chips on this Whole30 plan. I'm just gonna eat some more of this stuff that I think I can eat. So it wasn't about the quality of food that I was consuming. It was the quantity of food that will stall your weight loss. Okay? So I'm throwing a lot of like major issues that happen when you approach healthy eating in this way. And why are like, but I've been eating so healthy and I'm not losing weight. Well, one of the reasons why you may not be losing weight is because, one, you haven't shifted your identity. Two, you're feeling restricted because you have cut yourself off from everything else that you want to eat. And you feel that, that feeling some type of way, and you're still overeating. You're still overeating even though you may be eating chickpeas. If you're eating too many chickpeas, you're still going to carry excess weight. You're not going to lose the weight. So do you see why Whole30 is great to teach you about eating whole unprocessed foods? I love that experience to get that knowledge and how that feels on my body. However, it was missing a major component, which is what I have— all diets are missing, and which is why I've put this inside of my process, the Stop Dieting Forever process. OK, so one of the concepts that I actually learned— I did not create this concept. I learned it in school, in health coaching school, the Institute of Integrative Nutrition. It's a concept called crowding out. This is what we do to avoid the— I'm going all in on eating healthy. And to avoid that feeling of deprivation, that undercurrent of deprivation of like, oh, I can't have anything else. Else to eat though, right? So we're going to, instead of going cold turkey and dealing with all of the mind drama that goes with going cold turkey and forgetting about all the things you're leaving behind, right? All the quote unquote bad food. I love this idea of crowding out. And crowding out simply is what it, what it sounds like. It's when you plan to eat more whole foods, you're taking the healthy foods that you want to learn how to love and enjoy. You're just eating a little bit more each day while you're crowding out some of the unprocessed foods that you're eating, or some of the processed foods that you're eating. So I talked about this within the group coaching call this week in the group. An example would be, so say for dinner you, you're gonna have like rice and salmon and broccoli. I have one client, uh, we're working on her love affair with rice. And rice is— rice is— that's a whole different conversation. But one of the things that you could do, crowding out— an example of crowding out in this scenario would be, well, let's have 2 extra servings of broccoli, 2 spoonfuls, a little bit more broccoli. And on your plate, visually, you will begin to crowd out space for the other foods. Okay, so you're intentionally crowding out the other foods in, in, in, what's the word I'm thinking of? Oh, I hate when my brain skips, skips a jump. In lieu of the, the broccoli, the whole foods. Okay, so you're crowding out visually on your plate. Processed foods with more process— with more unprocessed foods. Okay, when you do this often, I'm trying to think of another good example of crowding out. Oh, here's an example for dessert, right? I have one client, she ate dessert after every single meal except for breakfast. Every time she ate, she would always have dessert. An example of that might be like you always have baked stuff in your house. Like maybe people in your home, they like muffins and cakes and cookies, and there's always something. Oh, that's a good example. Yes, Amy, I will say that too. There's always something in the house, something sweet to eat. So going cold turkey would just be, I'm not having dessert. I'm not having dessert. I'm never eating dessert again, which is not sustainable because one day You're going to be like, I want dessert, and you're going to go eat the dessert. You're going to go want the sugar. So instead of saying, I'm going to have a piece of chocolate cake, maybe it's like, I'll have half a piece of chocolate cake, and I'll eat some of these strawberries to go along with it, right? So the strawberries are the whole unprocessed foods beginning to crowd out the amount of dessert you're eating, which is the processed food. Does that make sense? And Amy just gave me another example. She says, 'cause Amy probably does this herself, crowding out regular rice with cauliflower, cauliflower rice. So adding cauliflower rice to regular rice instead of eating 2 cups of regular rice, maybe it's a cup of cauliflower rice added to the regular rice. I think that's a great, great example. If you guys have any questions about that, you can post them in the chat. She also said Having yogurt with fruit instead of mango gelato. That's an idea, right? That's a substitution. So you can either do this at a meal, so you can crowd out specifically at a meal, or you can just crowd out the entire meal in your day. So an example of this would be if you normally have Panera Bread for lunch, and you, you know, you cook dinner at home instead of having Panera Bread for lunch. I'm saying Panera Bread because you're having a sandwich or whatever. You're going to have a salad for your lunch and crowding out what you would normally— the processed food you would normally eat during the day for lunch. I gave my clients some ideas of how you can do this with instead of having DoorDash or Uber Eats or Grubhub eats delivered to your door, you can get a meal delivery service that provides 100% real food delivered to your door. Hungryroot is one, Thistle is one. I talk about Thistle all the time. Factor, my husband gets Factor every single week. Purple Carrot, Sakara, these are some other options that you can do if you're like, I don't have time to like cook processed, unprocessed, like I don't have time to figure all that out. Make it easy, have it delivered to your door, and just consume it that way. So that is— crowding out is a concept that you can do, but it works really, really well when you do number 1 and number 2, when you address those issues first that I talked about in the beginning. First thing is taking the label off of food, right? So food is neither good nor bad. So we remove that self-judgment. And the self-worth depending on what you're eating. We just take that out of the equation. And number 2 is you're working on your identity as someone who eats healthy food. That's just what you do. And we're crowding out that— that's new— crowding out this identity of, I'm always somebody who struggles with my weight. OK? So I want you to think about today in your life, where can you begin to crowd out processed foods with unprocessed foods, knowing neither, neither is good nor bad, but just being intentional of like, okay, I'm gonna have my, um, tortilla chips and salsa, but I'm also gonna have 2 glasses of water with every serving of tortilla chips. Oh, that's one another good one I just thought about. It's Friday. Some of y'all may be going to happy hour, going out to dinner with friends, because that's how we entertain ourselves with food. So maybe instead of having 3 cocktails or 3 glasses of wine with dinner, or 2 glasses of wine with dinner, you crowd out your alcohol with a glass of water in between. And you may find that you just wanna drink less, because one, you're gonna have less space in your stomach for one. And 2, you're just like, you know what, I enjoyed my one glass, and I'm good. Hey, any questions about anything that I just asked? While you all are typing your questions in the chat, or if you're on Facebook and you're watching the replay, you can type them in the comments section, and I will go back and answer them. I know I went over a lot, and one of the things that We as dieters, as frustrated dieters, we receive a lot of information from the world, messaging about, you know, I always think about Dr. Oz, all the things we saw on Dr. Oz, Dr. Oz told us to do and not do, all the messaging we get from media about what we should be doing, what we shouldn't be doing. It's a lot. It's a lot to sift through. It's a lot to understand. And one of the things that I have recognized, because I did all of it, was that one, everybody loses weight differently. So just because they talked about this latest study and you need to be eating, you know, 45 blueberries every morning to like lower your cholesterol, because they talked about it on Good Morning America this morning, it's like, that's the latest thing, doesn't mean it's gonna work for you. You've gotta understand what is going to work for you. And so inside Stop Dieting Forever, I teach you very clearly how to understand your body's natural cues. Our brains are connected to our bodies. God made our bodies this way. Very, very human, smart human, intelligent beings that we are. However, we receive so much noise from the outside world about what we should be doing and what we shouldn't be doing. Our brains are completely disconnected from our bodies. And so one of the things that you're, you're going to do when you start working with me is we're going to, one, change your identity. You're going to become someone in your brain first that stops struggling with their weight, stops worrying about always trying to find a diet. We're going to change that identity. We're going to completely wipe that away. And because of my training as a life coach and just being a lover of personal development, That's the most effective way to never ever have to diet again. And then we begin to dismantle all the other stuff. I make it super simple. I make the process super simple. Um, so again, if you're interested in learning more about my process, working with me specifically one-on-one or within the group, go to jenniferdent.com. I have open spots for, uh, private clients right now. I'm booking out my clients for the end— till the end of the year. I work with my clients 3 months at a time. We meet every single week. And then again, as I mentioned earlier, the group is going to reopen brand new in the fall. So you can go get on my email list if you're not already there, jenniferdent.com/foodfreedom. I talk about these types of things in the weekly email newsletter. And tell me how you're doing. Tell me if you are crowding out, if you've tried this concept, how did it work for you? What did you struggle with? What came up for you? Because y'all, like I said, the one person that messaged me on Facebook a couple of weeks ago, she's the reason why I'm talking about this right now. Her message is the reason why I'm talking about trying to eat in moderation last week. When I talked about food and freedom eating and why eating in moderation is not a solution. It's not a long-term solution. Okay? Okay. All right. So I don't see any questions in the chat. Hello to those of you who are brand new to me. It's nice to meet you. Thanks for coming. We're gonna do this again next Friday. Yes, I'm looking at my calendar. So next Friday we will do this again. If you're on my email list, you'll get a link to join. All right, y'all, enjoy your weekends. Enjoy your weekends crowding out. And I want you to drop this story of like, I've gotta try to eat healthy. No, you don't. No, you don't. All right, y'all. Yes, you can. I'll see you later. Live Lux. Bye.