Why Can’t I Stick to My Diet? with Erin Wathen

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Love Whoa, whoa, whoa. This show is about you, not about me. I want to help you find practical, real world ways to dial in your health and mindset so you can finally lose that weight and feel strong and energized. Stop settling for less than your personal best. It's time to find out how to look and feel better than ever. And I'll be right here with you the whole way. Hey there. Welcome to today's show. All right, okay, tell me if you relate to this, why can't I stick to my diet? Have you ever asked that question? And would you like to never ask that question again? Well, I have the perfect person to be chatting about it. Today we are going to dive into what happens when emotions and diet collide and more importantly, what can you do? How can you back it up, become aware and be able to identify these triggers and go, ah, save yourself. Before this all hits, we're going to be talking a little bit about sleep too. You know how I feel about that and a little bit of exercise. And let me tell you a little bit about who I have with me. Erin Boardman Wathan. She's a holistic health life and weight loss coach and a food addiction counselor. And she started out like she is, a totally diverse degree. She has a degree in sociology, a master's in human resources, then became a spin instructor, a Pilates instructor, a yoga instructor, and then started diving into all this after her first baby and really became obsessed with the whole idea of where do emotions play their role in here? And then how do things like sleep and exercise fall into place too? And here's what's cool. She has a great cheat sheet for all of you. So you're going to want to go to jjvirgin.com forward/wathan wellness now. Wathen wellness is w a t h e n wellness. So jjvirgin.com forward/wathenwellness. Alrighty. I just want to do a shout out now to Sandy Riddy from Canada and she says great variety. 5 stars. My favorite podcast to listen to when I go for walks or on my way to work. I love JJ's knowledgeable guests and her humor and down to earth approach. Thank you, Sandy. So we're doing shout outs. I'd love to shout you out and all you have to do is go over to my itunes little area. You can get there from my website. We'll put a link in the show notes, but it's also JJvirgin.com and leave a review and then I will shout you out. We super appreciate it. The whole team reads these. We love them, love them, love them there. While you're there, of course, subscribe and share it with your pals because we no point in putting all this information out there and not getting it put to good use. And one of the things I strive to do, by the way, is make sure that the information we are putting out there, stuff that you can go, all right, so what do I do with this? Like, hearing all sorts of nice stuff and you got nothing to do with it. So what I want to make sure that if you hear something, you can do something with it. So I always like to make things actionable. All right, Erin, welcome to the show. So glad to have you here.

Thank you for inviting me.

Well, we're gonna dive into a bunch of different stuff here, and where I'd love to start with you is you talk a lot about emotional eating. In fact, you've got your book, why can't I stick to my diet, feel better and look good and never ask that question again. That is such a good tagline. And when we're looking at this, I mean, we all kind of, we've heard about emotional eating and et cetera, but let's just hit this is what, what's the issue? And how do emotions impact, you know, our weight, our choices, all of that?

Sure, no problem. The issue is when we're little, sometimes two years old, one, we are told basically that food is celebratory. Food is love, food is everything. Right? We get together around food. We also need to eat it, which is a very confusing message. So as we get older, there's things that happen. You know, that whole thing called life. And the entire time there's food. And then if you're a woman, you realize at some point that skinny is Better than not skinny, but yet you still have to eat. So there's a confusing dichotomy there. And then if you're like most of us, you reach a point about 12, 13, 14, where you go on a diet, the first one of many, maybe you'll own that one, but whatever it is. And then there comes the time when you realize where emotions and food intersect again in which you might eat too much because of an emotion. And for example, this happens often on the holidays. How often do we hear people overeat on the holidays? Well, that's a good example of emotional eating, but, but it's done in mass. And it's not necessarily because everyone's upset, it's because they're celebrating. So an emotion leads to overeating. Not a bad thing. But a very simple example that we all fall into, but with women and their weight and emotional eating come into play in particular is that so many of us get in this habit when we're younger and, and then it affects our weight, it affects our self esteem and it becomes this really vicious thing that we're always fighting because we never get to the before the food. We spend so much time obsessing and counting and weighing and looking at the macros of the food instead of the before the food. So why did we think the answer to the fight with our husband was in a pint of ice cream? I mean, there is no answer to the fight with your husband.

Well, if we need to look before the food, and I love your whole example that it's almost like, you know, it's like you think of the super bowl and what's the biggest discussion about the Super Bowl? It's like, what are you going to eat? You know, it's like, oh my gosh, why do we need to eat? We're like watching something. I'm, you know, you know, it's kind of crazy. But if you're talking about the before and looking at those, basically you're looking at what are these triggers, right? How does someone do that?

Being aware, just being really aware of, you know, when you're eating. Like, I have a lot of my clients do a 20 minute check in before they're supposed to eat, just to see are you physically hungry, emotionally, what's going on? Because oftentimes we're just, you know, mindlessly eating all day. We go to a meeting, we come out of it, wait, we overate, what happened? We don't even realize it. Why do we even eat? Later on in the day? We're upset about Something we don't even realize what we ate. I have my clients, and halfway through, pause. Do they even like what they're eating?

Well, didn't all these diets, Erin, kind of take it away, being even liking what you're eating? Because it's really, you know, it was just about your points. It's, like, so ridiculous.

It is because we become so detached that we don't even know that we don't like these things. It's because we only can eat tomatoes on Thursdays. Right. And we're eating the entire thing because it's 300 calories, not because we like it. We're so. I almost think of us as, like, floating heads over bodies at some point. Because when you've been on a ton of diets, like I've been, we're so out of communication with what we even are hungry for. And oftentimes, like with the husband and the Ben and Jerry's, there is no solution that food can answer other than hunger. But in a lot of ways, it's the easiest answer in the whole world because we're familiar with solving the problem that Ben and Jerry creates. Go on a diet. Right. But the problem with the husband, that could be a much bigger problem, that we aren't really willing to go there yet.

You kind of slipped in there. I've been on a load of diets. I think everybody listening can relate. I don't really know anybody in my life who's been on one diet diet, like, never met them, or someone who's been on no diets. But is that what sparked your interest in this? Like, how did you start to dig into all of this? Because you didn't come. You know, I was reading your. Your bio, and you came from getting a master's in human resources, so you sort of went sideways.

Yeah, I mean, I definitely have a different background than a lot of people in our industry and that. I came from corporate, and then I was home with my kids, and after about six months of talking about rice cereal, I'm like, I can't do this. And I started teaching group exercise just to get out of the house also, because I was always looking for that magic that could let me eat whatever I wanted and look how I wanted to look.

Did you figure that piece out? Because we're all waiting for that.

I figured it out eventually, but that wasn't the answer to my problems. So I became certified in a bunch of things. And I remember I was saying to my husband, why don't I look better? And he would just Leave the room and be like, ugh, I don't want to answer that.

Oh yeah, no husband ever, ever wants to hear that question.

And so I really got into nutrition because I'm like, that has to be it. Because I was always eating tons of sugar and my beloved Diet Coke. I was on Weight Watchers, I worked for them, they loved me, and yet I was always starving. I started thinking, there has to be more to life than always starving. And before I had to weigh in, I wouldn't eat the day before. And I'm like, this is just insanity. To have little pouches of candy everywhere that I wouldn't let my kids see me eat. That is not living. So when I got really in touch with my behavior around certain foods being really crazy and noticing the connection I would often make with how I was feeling and food and then how food affected my feelings. So in both directions. So for example, how happy I would get when I pass candy and then when I was upset, how I'd go to candy. So instead of having food and my emotions be parallel, they were definitely enmeshed.

So how do you go about repairing that? I mean, you first say, become aware. So someone starts to become aware and go, oh, you know, I fight with my husband. I go eat Ben and Jerry's, or I walk past Canning, don't eat it. I feel victorious, I succumb to it, and I feel like crap. So what's the solution to this?

Well, first of all, it's awareness. Second of all, cleaning up your environment.

It'S got to be more than awareness. I'm going to play devil's advocate over here because it's like someone can be totally aware that they lose their mind in the afternoon. Get, get irritated with someone and eat sugar. They can be totally aware. They do that and still do it.

Yeah, awareness and still mainlining sugar is not.

They're not.

I'm sure you've seen it.

I've been there. I'm like, I'm aware that I'm being self destructive. So with. So you're aware and then you clean up your environment and then you have to replace it with a good, you know, good habits, a mindset, and also foods that keep your blood sugar stable. So with mindset work, okay, my husband and I got in a fight. What do I want to make this mean? Is it the end of the world or is it just the usual, we're bickering, okay, no big deal. And with the food, replacing it with real food and not snacking all day. So you're Constantly having your blood sugar rise and lower and just looking at food as how it's supposed to be. It's supposed to fuel us, meaning our body, not our soul. And it's not our friend and it's not our enemy. It's something we need to live. But along the way, things got really screwy with its importance. For example, in many households growing up, it's what's for dinner, what are we making for dinner? What are we eating? It's what's on the Super Bowl. And I'm not saying we don't eat, but let's face it, at the end of the day, when you look back at your wedding, do you remember what you ate? No. You remember how you felt?

I actually didn't even eat anything at my wedding. I missed the food altogether.

And you probably spent hours ago over the menu. Right? So. But you can tell me how you felt, you can tell me how your husband looked. Right? But you don't care about the food because at the end of the day, it's about the people in our lives, not what we put in our mouth. So being more aware of our life as a whole and not have it being so much about food and those short term, instant gratifications because as soon as they come, they leave just as quickly.

Is this why you think, like. Because, you know, I wrote this book, the Sugar Impact Diet. I, when I wrote the Virgin Diet, I had so many people come talking to me about sugar and I'm like, wow, you know, who knew? I'm guessing because I've been seen enough of this. I've never seen someone get mad, frustrated and say, I'm going to go pick up on broccoli. It's never happened. And they obviously one of the biggest things they go to is sugar. Why is that? Love to hear your take on it.

Well, it's science, quite frankly. This, the sugar we currently are eating, if you've ever seen a sugar cane, if you've been to Hawaii, they have to do so much to it in order for it to be a soda or something palatable for us to eat. It's so genetically modified to hit all those trigger points in our brain that are pleasure sensors that make us as happy as possible as quickly as possible chemically. So broccoli, not so much. Broccoli is not going to make you happy quickly. It really won't. Even if you know it's really good for you. So when you eat the bag of cookies, when you have the ice cream, you're eating something that has Been created in a lab to make your brain feel as happy as possible as quickly as possible. And unfortunately, it doesn't last that long. So that is why sugar is such a beast, because it's made to do that. It's made to do all the fun.

So what do you do when a client comes and they go, I was doing great, and then this happened and I totally fell apart.

That happens. I get that call at least like three times a day. Well, first of all, I tell them, please stop hating yourself. But I just talk about, so what happened? Where were you? Talk me through what happened before, you know, what were you doing, what were you thinking and what could you have done? So instead of going to the event starving, maybe you could have eaten at home. Because home, you have a much better control of your environment versus going starving, not knowing what's going on, getting in a fight with your mother, that kind of thing. So just being much more mindful of our environment and also staying away from those foods that we know trigger us, because bread is also one of those foods. It's the way the grain is currently is. So it's refined and it's almost like sugar when it hits our bloodstream lately that oftentimes. A lot of women clients I have, they get off of sugar and become like breadaholics. So it's kind of easier to have no different. And it's almost easier if I just take everything away from them in one big swoop. So they can just be mad at me at once because they're like, I'm so good. All I ate was an entire pizza. And I'm like, well, it's good you didn't eat a cheesecake. However, your brain is still jacked up right now. So just being mindful of, okay, so let's observe this. Let's not judge it, because self loathing is not going to help us. All right, so you could have turned left and said you turned right, but let's analyze it and see. So next time you're in the situation, you're going to make the right decision. Because let's face it, the years of beating ourselves up, it never produced much now, did it? So that's what I do with my clients. And also be very, very careful. Over the next four or five days, you're going to have a lot of cravings for sugar. And no, that's not your body, it's sugar. Sugar is very, very domineering and very, very loud. So you're going to feel those old urges back because you have to look at it as a chemical in terms.

Of like, in terms of weight loss because we're going to dig a little bit deeper into it. I know we've been talking a lot about the emotions behind it, but, you know, what do you think is a big, big area that people are just confused about or don't understand in terms of weight loss?

I think currently a lot of people don't understand keto, understand the keto desserts because it's still a dessert. So you can't just because someone says it's keto, eat truffles.

It used to be this way. It was gluten free. And I still remember early on I sent, I had a gal who came in and she was clearly celiac and had been mixed missed. And I was like, all right, so we got her off the gluten. She comes back, she's so super excited because she has found gluten free cookies, gluten free cupcakes. I'm like, oh my gosh, what is like, I didn't say make a junk food diet. I said, you know, like, eat the gluten free things like an avocado maybe. So, you know, it always happens with any diet trend. I mean, look at like the paleo things that we have and the vegan things that we have. It's like you can junk food up anything.

Exactly. No, I mean, there's the dirty keto people. So over. I mean, so currently I would say that is the mistake is the dirty keto and the keto desserts. Overall, I would say looking for the cheat because I spent, I'm not judging, I'm just telling you. I spent decades trying to find the magic workaround because I wanted to eat how I wanted to eat, yet I wanted the body or the results of someone who wasn't doing the right thing. So we need to stop looking for that magic because you know what works? Eating right, getting a lot of sleep, drinking a lot of water, working out, being consistent. You know, the glamorous stuff, the things.

No one's there like, yeah, yeah, yeah, what's the pill? What's the pill? So you mentioned it. I, you know, I love to get on sleep. To me is if I was going to pick one thing with people, it's usually sleep. So go on a rant there.

Well, sleep. I always tell my clients, you have a choice between working out and sleep. Get sleep. And they always right, because, you know, sleep regulates your appetite. You know, the chemicals in your brain get readjusted so you can make better decisions. You don't have this false sense of hunger. And you also, quite frankly, have less hours at night to eat.

So get in bed, go to sleep.

Yeah, and I used to do this too. So everything I'm talking about, I made this mistake at least 150 times. So I always prioritize sleep with my clients ahead of exercise because your body needs sleep so much and we're chronically sleep deprived as a nation. So also, if you're wanting to lose weight, your body really needs to be operating 110%. So let's just give ourselves that extra hour. You know, let Netflix be. We'll catch up with those shows later. And give yourself that rest. We're not really getting Amen.

That is like, if I could pick one thing, I mean, if you get one poor night of sleep, you're. In fact, there was a great study that showed even if you're eating right and exercising, if you were not getting optimal sleep, you were at risk for obesity. But even one night you're hungrier, better at storing fat, not burning it. I always say you're hungrier. And it's not for broccoli. You know, it's, it's like your blood sugar is more unstable. It's just, it's just the worst. I was on Dr. Phil for two years doing his weight loss challenge. We this one gal, come on. And I didn't know she was going to say this. She's standing on stage and I remember this because I was like, oh no, how do I fix this? She was bragging to Dr. Phil that she gets up at 4:30 in the morning and goes and works out for two hours. And I'm sitting there going, oh, that's the worst thing ever. Like, oh, don't do that. Right? And he's sitting here telling her how great this is. Meanwhile, I get hate mail to the station about this and I'm like, I didn't say it was okay. Like, no, this was not my. Like, I didn't tell her to do that. I told her not to do that. So glad you mentioned that. We're nearing, nearing the end of time and I know you're going to give everybody some of your exercise tips, but let's just, let's just briefly hit exercise and where it fits into all this.

So exercise I put at the end of the priority list because it's great. I love exercise. I do it most every day. But I think sleep is more important. So what if you go to my.

Website, Erin will put it into the show notes so we're all good there so you don't have to worry about writing it down. I'll put like everything's going to go to jjvirgin.com for forward/wathen wellness so w a n wellness so jj virgin.com wathen wellness. You will want to go there because we have some other things for you. So we'll put in. You'll have your website. We go and put a cool gift your guys are all going to get from Aaron. We'll talk about that in a sec. And of course all the show notes and cool stuff. So let go. Let's go back to exercise.

So I just have, you know, three different workouts depending on how much time you have because if you can fit it in, that's fabulous. But let's see how much time you have. So 20 minutes is better than zero minutes. 30. Great. Just on the go workouts because we're all so busy. So really quickly you can look out on your phone, you can have it on your computer. And it's not a big production because we all have stuff to do.

Perfect. And I know you're going to give everyone the on the go exercise tips, little cheat sheet so you'll all be able to grab that there. So again, jjvirgin.com Wathen Wellness W A T H N thank you so much, Aaron. I super appreciate your time today.

Thank you for having me. This so fun.

All right, now after the break, I'll be answering a listener's question, so stay with me.

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Welcome back. This is the time when I answer a listener's question. Now, what I love to do is grab things off of my Facebook and Instagrams when I'm doing my lives. And I love hanging out with you. So if you have not jumped on and caught one of those with me, jump on over, become a member of my community, and then you'll get notified and hang out and then let me know what you'd like most to know about. So this one actually came from one of my friends who texted me and said, I'm having, like, terrible sugar cravings. What should I take? All right, so here's the deal. It's not a simple like, what should I take? And I think you probably got that from today's show. My question was, why do you have the sugar cravings? What's going on? Have you always had sugar cravings? Or is this something new? Because you may have sugar cravings from your genes, so you can blame it on your parents is the bottom line. You may have them from your genes. It makes you crave more sugar. And the more sugar you eat, the more sugar you want. It doesn't mean you're, like, stuck with that forever, by the way. There's things you can do. Or you may have sugar cravings because you've got blood sugar issues and insulin resistance and so you can't get energy into your cells. So it makes you crave sugar. Or and this is what I guessed with my buddy, because she hadn't always craved sugar and she wasn't insulin resistance, didn't have unstable blood sugar. So the third one was she was stressed out because I was like, what's going on? Like, you don't normally have this going on. What's going on? And it Was this. And I also know her. She's a little high strung. So in that case, we've got to go. All right, so stress can deplete serotonin and make you crave sugar. Stress can break down muscle and raise fasting blood sugar and then make it hard for you to get energy into your cells. And then you're sitting here craving sugar. So my guess for her was, okay, if it's, you know, it's stress. And if it's stress, what could help with that? First off, I love tapping. And we'll put this into the resources. I've got a great tapping resource from my buddy Nick Ortner. Because tapping can lower stress hormones by as much as 27%. That's like crazy. I don't know anything else that can do that. First thing we want to look at is like, why are you stressed? And could you change your mindset around that? I wrote a book on that. It's called miracle mindset or warrior Mom. We'll put that in the show notes. So could you reevaluate how you're interpreting that? Because a lot of stress is how you interpret it. Can you get it out of your life? You know, some of these things we can't. You can't just like say to your kid or your husband, hey, bye. I mean, I guess you could, but that's not, not what I'm recommending here. But you know, what is that stressful situation? Is there a way to circumvent it? And then if not, what can you do to improve your stress tolerance to help you handle this better Burst style training, high intensity interval training. Like what I do using the exciser. And we'll do a link to me using the exciser and that so you can see it can help your sympathetic nervous system handle stress better. Tapping can lower stress hormones. Journaling, being in gratitude can help too. We'll put my little gratitude appreciation miracles exercise in here as well. Vitamin C is super duper important and some of the cool things like ashwagandha and rhodiola. And so we'll put some resources in here as well for stress supplements. But again, I want you to look at the bigger takeaway is if you've never been craving sugar, why are you craving sugar? Like, always go back to, why is this happening? Just like when Aaron talked about, I wanted to see the thing before the action. Like, what was the trigger? What's the trigger for the this craving? And what can we do to change that? So we stop the trigger. Okay, all right. I hope to see you on one of my lives. Jump on in, ask some questions. I also would love to know what you would love to hear about on the show. If there's a guest you'd love to hear from, topics you'd love to hear. Go ahead and leave them in the review. We read on all of those over and you know we're here to serve. All right, see you next week.

That's all for this episode of the JJ Virgin Lifestyle show show, which marks another step towards a healthier body and mind. Don't forget to rate, review and subscribe to the show and we'll talk to you next week.

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