#33 - Overcome “The Diet”

In today's episode, we are digging into the details of how dieting is cyclical. The goal of this episode is for you to learn the cycles, and be able to identify where you are or have been in an effort to end the cycle once and for all

It's not your fault. You probably don't even know that you're in a cycle...but that's what we discuss today! 

Here are a few points that we cover today:

• What is the dieting cycle?
• Do you REALLY want what you think you see?
• What's your perspective around body image and dieting?

The Dieting Cycle:

1. Negative thoughts // Desire to change
2. Restriction + Increased Exercise
3. Deprivation
4. Cravings
5. Over Consumption
6. Guilt

Next Steps:
Receive updates and learn more at:  AgingStrongLife.com
Send any questions or comments to: jodie@agingstronglife.com 

Transcript

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Speaker 1 0:00

Hi, welcome to the fit forever podcast, hosted by the Omni fit. We're about all things fitness. We help women get off the Diet roller coaster, define sustainable health, embracing life right where you are on the way to where you're going. Welcome to the podcast. I'm coach Jodie v, a certified nutrition coach who specializes in helping women become physically and mentally strong to regain energy for a life they love. I would like to welcome my cohosts Kayla Dunkin, owner of the Omni fit and fellow colleague and nutrition coach Taylor blocks, and together we are the Omni fit.

Speaker 2 0:36

Hey, ladies will come back to another episode of the fit me forever podcast. Today we're going to be talking about picking up right where we left off actually when we were talking last week about learning to navigate your cravings. Well, where do those come from? And today we're gonna be talking about overcoming the Diet and we're going to be focusing about the different steps or sections of what a dieting cycle looks like and helping you guys learn what those are. Identify where you might be or might have been so that you're able to make a conscious decision about hopping right out of that dieting cycle and finding sustainable health. So I'm back with coach Jodie and coach Taylor. What do you guys think about this? This is, I feel like we could go on and on and on, but we want to really simplify this for the listeners today. Yeah. This never ending cycle of, of dieting and I think it's, it just the trajectory of where they want to be and what is keeping them where they are, um, with, with their own, with their own self, what is, what is taking them back and depriving them and totally roadblocking them and we're just trying to meet them right where they are. And I think it's a huge, a huge thing because a lot of women don't realize what these roadblocks are. Um, and it could be, you know, just like we talked about in the last podcast, managing stress, managing sleep, managing these cycles, and that's a lot of, a lot of where we need to point to in terms of their progress. Sure. I also think that, um, if you're

Speaker 3 2:20

in North America or the Western world of any sort, like for women, the whole idea of diet is just deeply embedded in our consciousness and I know the three of us are just passionately want to see that change and with the whole idea of the fit me forever lifestyle and it's how do you overcome the whole diet mentality and really change a culture of what's already had an inbred in us as women from young childhood is through education about what is the dieting cycle. I think as you mentioned, Taylor, so of our listeners and our clients and just so many women that friends and people that we encounter in life don't even recognize what, what the Diet cycle is. And we're constantly in and day to day in and day out with, hey, this new way or that new way. And there's like, if you look back over the last 10 or 20 years, just the cycles of diet, the fads and the, you know, whatever. Um, you know, if we all would have started 20 years ago and just had a mindset around sustainable lifestyle and a bit me forever type of lifestyle, just what, how we would just be able to clear off so much in the garbage. So much of a mess. So much misinformation about that. And again, we're passionate about you. Listeners, we want you to understand what you know, what does this look like and here's the thing is because we are such a visually saturated culture, we see what we think fit is or what it looks like. And one of the questions that comes up for me is do you really want what you see and um, what is the cost of that and how does that work with your lifestyle and your season and what is your perspective around me? I know as coaches, we dig in really, really deep to help clients figure out where they're at, um, perhaps in the cycle or what is their mindset around dieting and body image and all of those things. So how do we help clients learn those cycles? Like, where do you guys start?

Speaker 2 4:41

Well, I think it's interesting, I think a lot of people, um, and you guys might relate, listeners that are listening is that you fell into this accidentally, that, I mean like you don't even realize that the dieting mindset or body image dysmorphia or recognizing what you look like even crossed your mind until you're like, I need to change. Um, when you think back to young school age, middle school, high school, I was listening to someone else talking about someone commented on this, this person's smile. And it made me think, you know, so often I had the comments. I have a very big smile so much that I've always been like, oh, people can say, Oh, you can see your back teeth. And I remember all of a sudden being self conscious about my smile is too big and there's, if you look back at my school pictures, I would start to like, like these half smiles are like little and I looked super awkward. I look at the picture like that. So I have a good picture of me and I'm doing this and it probably wasn't until I was far into my adult years in my twenties where I started to become really confident in my smile. It's obviously something I can't change. I can't change the, my face smiles and the fact that you can see my back teeth when I'm laughing, but that started at a young age from comments that were just echoing in my mind and what that does. And a lot of times it comes from, um, who you spend time with and as I'm talking to clients and hearing stories of women in our fit me forever group. And um, as people begin to be vulnerable and share, we can relate a lot amongst everyone going. I ended up here on accident and this cycle of dieting started or propelled from a negative thought or from a negative self image about myself that I wanted to change. And then that next step so quickly started with, well, what do I do? I'm going to do something to restrict or do something to end that. And then the cycle kicks off just like you're spinning a wheel, like a wheel of fortune, you know, you spin around and the next thing you know you're just tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, moving through these cycles. So not thinking about it until you come to us or you hear a podcast or you read an article and you go, oh my gosh, this has got to change, this is impacting me negatively. And so by listening to this podcast, what we really want to teach you guys is to identify where you are within the dieting cycle and you can check the show notes for an actual list of what the dieting cycle is. You're going to hear us talk about it, but I know whenever I'm listening to podcasts and it can be hard to identify with different cycles. So the first one though is the first part of the cycle that initiates the start is a negative thought. Oh Kayla, I can so resonate with that. In fact, I just wrote an email sequence, blog posts related to some personally just like that. I had a large overbite when I was a young teenager and had braces and you know, went through all of that kind of thing, but I got to the point where I always put my hand over my mouth and I never noticed that I had an overbite until I'm a boy in my class. Started making fun of me. We had one year and our house and we just mark near oriented, you know, as a kid, but it's, it's funny how that. And then another comment in my teenage years about I had a well formed backside and somebody made a comment about that and I got really, really self conscious about that and it was always like wanting to wear something to kind of cover up or a bigger pair of sweat pants or something like that. And it does. I think these things start so young and now even more days with so much social media and people, you know, young kids being so much more exposed. Seeds are planted so, so much earlier. And so I listened to yours like when, when was that first seed planted towards that? The negative thought that something wasn't right with your body

Speaker 3 8:56

or whatever, to look back on that.

Speaker 2 9:01

Yeah. I think it's pretty popular in this culture right now with social media. It can start very quickly. You don't even intend on it. We don't even notice it, but that comparison and starts and that's where expectations become too high or we become dissatisfied, dissatisfied with ourselves and our current journey and said that's where it can start to really get messy in terms of our own self confidence, our own desire, our own perspective and right where we're at and I think it's just helping our clients navigate those expectations. Especially where, like you said, jody, where that seed was planted of, of being dissatisfied and I'm really just losing all confidence and hope and where you currently are because of that, that realm in that culture that we're currently in, it's so easily easily planted. Just helping fog that out for our clients.

Speaker 3 10:03

I think too though, I'm like, we do have desires to change and grow and that super important and it's identifying are those desires healthy desires to change or are they unhealthy desires to change? And so I think that's the key with the dieting cycle is, you know, determining is the desire to change healthy. And from that you have two choices. You have choice that will move you towards, um, the desires that you want or away from. And so, um, you know, thinking about how that self image connects to how do we reprogram the self talk and kind of move that to action. How do we do that? I mean, that's the big, the big question for each and every person I think,

Speaker 2 10:56

right? I think that's what changes the. I'm trying to think of the right word to say this, so it changes from just going through the motions, just following a diet or just. I mean because being healthy is gonna require some exercise, being healthy, it's going to require a little bit of thought behind what you're eating and we can blur that line of doing something for the right reason really quickly if we don't keep our mindset in check because comparisons going to happen, comparison happened before social media comparison happens. Now I'm a lot of people kind of what's common now. You guys might recognize this listening is, you know, taking fast from social media or taking breaks from social media and how it can be rejuvenating. It's also difficult to remain in a community. So a lot of the social media, I know with our fit me forever group, it's a community and so you have to show up in order to experience that you have to put out in order to take, like there has be this exchange of energy, um, any type of environment. And so when you're, when you're busy and you're not maybe hanging out with friends, you're after college and now you have a family and having that time for self care and being able to recognize when those negative thoughts start to creep in and when they're not aligning with a desire to change because we can have a negative thought that propels a desire to change and we can realign that negative thought in a way so that it serves us. I love using finances as an example because they're tangible and we can't really judge about a dollar. A dollar is a dollar. It's not going to be pretty or not. You know, so you can look at your bank account or you can look at your debt or whatever it is, and you can have a desire to change and start to make a plan and move towards that, um, or you can use that desire to change that negative. I'm in so much debt and go on a shopping spree which is not going to help your situation, which is what we see. If you think about the negative thought desire to change, okay, let's use the example of someone being healthy and they move into the second step in the cycle of what is negatively connotated as restriction or increased exercise. What if that's posed as being more mindful and moving a little bit more so your desire to change can move you into healthier choices or it can move you into unhealthy choices of deprivation and restriction and too much exercise.

Speaker 3 13:25

I think a key factor in this is determining do you desire the behavior change which will lead to the outcome or do you only desire the outcome? And I think that's the thing that segregates healthy from unhealthy. And when we peel it back, what we know is when there is consistent behavior change as it changes the outcome to the positive, but when your focus is only on the outcome, what I believe happens is you set yourself up for the pattern of this dieting cycle that we're going to describe here what, what the steps are so that that healthy versus unhealthy is really key. Um, and we know that working on one behavior change aspect at a time is what's going to lead to success. And part of that is identifying where are you at, um, if you find yourself in a dieting cycle, identifying that you are in one and where are you at and what behavior change needs to happen that will get you in a healthier decision making process.

Speaker 2 14:36

I think that is fantastic. I just want to repeat that for the listeners that it's that important. Do you desire the behavior change that results in the outcome or do you just desire the outcome? Didn't want to wear a smaller size jeans, or do you want to feel better? Do you want to have more energy? Do you want to be more patient because you're not tired, and then your metabolism is revving and you're craving the healthier foods that serve your body, and then inevitably, well, if your Jean size is too big, it'll probably be where it should be. You're going to feel better. It's going to lead to that outcome, so that's kind of a real life example, and as we talked about in podcast, 32, cravings come from stemming from being deprived, so if you don't have this abundance mindset, if you're not being mindful about the foods that you're eating and knowing that you're making that choice because the behavior makes you feel better and it's going to result into the desire change that you, that you desire for yourself, you're going to experience those cravings that are gonna. Feel insatiable. They're not. You're not going to be able to be satisfied by that one bite of ice cream or that one square of chocolate or all the examples that we give, and it then will lead to that fifth step in the dating cycle of overconsuming and bingeing.

Speaker 3 15:59

Okay? You get that too right at the beginning, like someone's going to go on a diet or I'm going to start this coaching planner, I'm going to do this, and so they go out and have these massive binges because all of a sudden they're going to start rather than recognizing that there can still be things that they enjoy along the process. So deprivation is a big indicator of healthy versus unhealthy. What do you think?

Speaker 2 16:25

And one thing that's just continually going on in my mind right now, what tastes better? Something in the crock pot or something in the microwave, something that cooks longer, that is going to take deep rut and it's going to be harder to change is, is much better in the long run. And that's where in this generation, in this culture, that instant gratification is where things start to get messy with that expectation. Because what is sexy about really taking a habit and taking a behavior change? You know, that's not cute, that's not cute. So you know, making those changes versus I just want. I just want that six pack abs or I just. I just want all of these desirable changes in the, in the long run versus I want to be able to have that lasting energy or I want to be able to play with my kids or I want people to get ahold of these cravings in the meantime. Nobody thinks about it like that. And so that's where it just comes back to those realistic expectations and knowing that it's going to not be something you actually want to do in that moment. Um, and just kind of being in that humble state of have we as coaches, I feel like that's a very popular thing we do very often is kind of real our clients back in and say, okay, what actually has to happen in order for you

Speaker 3 17:50

to get this desired outcome? And so a lot of people think, oh wow, that's going to take a lot longer than I had thought. And of course it, no, because Nikki knows, gave her changed is that actually produced results is not going to come overnight. But I think,

Speaker 2 18:06

um, some of the listeners need to be to kind of soak in is that the results come a lot faster than what you think when you were enjoying the journey. When you're doing it for the right reason, you're recognizing, wow, my face, my skin, so much tighter. I'm useful. I look younger because I got more sleep and my digestive track, I don't feel bloated. So even though my skill weight might not have changed, I feel so much better. I feel more confident. I'm going to wear different clothes. Therefore, when you see pictures of yourself, you're going to look better because you're going to be radiating where confidence, you're going to be stronger because you're bringing more to the table.

Speaker 3 18:44

Yeah. Or I just, you know, I enjoyed a wonderful meal out with my husband last night and I didn't. It wasn't necessarily restricted, but it wasn't over the top either. You like, I was able to enjoy that. Those kinds of things, the relationships, the events, that's the real stuff in our life. Like learning how to navigate through that rather than just slapping.

Speaker 2 19:08

And it's truly a life spent not thinking about food. It's a life spent not thinking about yourself, not thinking it's when you're able to look back at that vacation and be like, I didn't think about food the whole time or myself. I was looking at my children. I was looking at my spouse and being like, man, I look at the ocean, it looks so great. Or you look at the mountains like you're not thinking about yourself. And that's freedom. That is true freedom. And that is when you're not in this cycle because you're not thinking about the restriction or the overexercise, you're going for a run or a walk on the beach or you're going to the gym to move your body because it literally feels that good. You're not going if I don't go,

Speaker 3 19:50

happens, right? That's totally the opposite of the deprivation mindset and that step in the dieting cycle. You know? So it starts with those negative thoughts. You feel like you have to have a certain outcome and then you go to restriction. And that restriction leads to deprivation. Deprivation sets you up in a cycle for cravings. Like what we talked about on the last podcast and then when once that trigger hits, it's the overconsumption and like we had talked about a while back then what the hell, you know, forget it. I'm gone for it all because I can't. There's no way. I don't have the skills, the behavioral skills to navigate what just happened and then you start the whole guilt pattern and the cycle starts over and over and over again. I think we all have the opportunity to work with a large diversity of clients, younger women, older women, and a lot of things that I find with the older women that I work with is, you know, these things have this dieting cycle is so in bed because years and years and years of it and so I'm doing it takes a little bit more time, but when it clicks it clicks. But also what I love about working with some of the younger clients that I have is the opportunity to have them be able to learn these skills at a younger age that are going to serve them well their entire lifetime. Yes. They might be on a macronutrient plan right now or specific paradise training plan or something like that, what they are learning how to work with their body so that when it's time to move to that intuitive place, they've learned what their feedback loops are kind of already what negative patterns that can catch themselves falling in most places. So it's super fun. I know like all of us, our desire is to really want. I mean this is a movement to want to change people's minds about the culture that surrounds us and really keeps my men in bondage and it breaks my heart. It breaks all of our hearts. I know that.

Speaker 2 22:03

Yeah, totally. So today, the big takeaway is just ask yourself, do you desire the behavior change that results in the outcome or is it only the outcome that is fueling your behavior? I'm just kind of check yourself and think about that and see if you can identify where you are in this cycle, where you might've been and it. I think it's something that we can all be weak at times and maybe fall into those other three categories aren't being met. Well, you know, sleep and stress and being well fed. It's a, it's an opportunity to just slip right into old ingrained behaviors, but I found over time and years and years and years of, of working intentionally outside of this to go, oh, I recognize it super fast and I need some sleep or I recognize it super fast and you know, I need, I need to eat lunch so that I don't have these cravings and so on, so forth, which you talked about before. So that's the big takeaway guys. We're gonna um, we're gonna be back next week for another podcast of, um, do you have to count calories to be successful?

Speaker 1 23:05

See, well, there you have it. Guys. Thank you so much for joining in to another episode of the fit me forever podcast. If you guys have any questions, please don't hesitate to reach out via email@infoattheOmnifit.com. And of course, please connect with us on social media. All of our handles are instagram and facebook are both at the Omni fit, and if you like this kind of content, if you like what we're putting out, please rate us on itunes and stitcher. That helps other people find us and it lets us know that we're putting out content that you enjoy. All right. Talk to you guys soon.