Love Your Body Now
Love Your Body Now
How To Confidently Eat Healthy Without Feeling Restricted or Guilty
Imagine mastering the art of healthy eating without ever feeling trapped by restrictive diets. On this episode of the Love Your Body Now podcast, we promise to guide you through creating a structure that works for you, balancing your health and fitness goals with your mental well-being and happiness. We highlight personal stories and valuable insights on understanding your own eating habits, emphasizing the importance of being your own advocate and making choices that truly resonate with your unique journey.
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Speaker 1:All right, let's get into the episode. Welcome to the Love your Body Now podcast, the podcast for women who are ready to feel confident in their body right now and redefine what health looks like for them. I'm Savannah, your host, and together we'll be having conversations about what it means to accept and love our bodies now, while simultaneously prioritizing our health journey. We'll be debunking beliefs that do not serve us and diving into misconceptions and unhealthy narratives in the fitness world, so that we can rebuild our foundation from a place of self-love. Hello, welcome to the Love your Body Now podcast.
Speaker 1:I am so excited that you're here today and I'm really excited to talk about this topic. I actually was originally planning on doing this topic and then I just decided you know what I'm going to put a poll up on our Instagram story and just see, give people a couple of options of topics that they want to hear on the podcast, and this one actually won. So it worked out where I was like I think this would be a good topic to do and then I decided to give you guys a vote on what to do, because, ultimately, I really just want this podcast to help you and support you in the best way possible. So anytime I can get feedback or ideas of different fitness-related topics that we can talk about here, the better. But we're going to talk all about how we can start eating better and eating healthier without feeling like we're dieting.
Speaker 1:Because I think that there's this common struggle, and even myself included, where it feels like unless we're following a like, somewhat of like, a strict regimen I don't even know if I said that right, um, just an eating plan then it feels like if we're not following an eating plan, it feels like we're just like all over the place, or it feels like we're not in control and we're kind of just allowing our food choices to take over and not really have any structure to them. And I will say I think that having somewhat of structure to your eating habits is helpful, but I don't know like everyone's different, but for me personally, like being super strict about what I'm eating has never been beneficial for me. It in turn, always ends up making me feel like I'm dieting and making me feel like I can't have certain foods, and it just the mindset aspect of it. There's so much gray area when it comes to our eating habits and ultimately you have to be super clear on what's important to you, what your goals are. Are you working towards a specific fitness goal or a health goal, or are you really focused on your mental health and your happiness and your well-being? Because all of those are huge factors that ultimately have a play in what you decide your eating habits are.
Speaker 1:And as long as you are clear on what matters most to you, then that's all you need. You don't have to do what the bodybuilder on Instagram is doing. You don't have to do what the personal trainer that you see at the gym is doing. You don't have to do what your sister is doing. You can make it work for you and I just like to start with that and make a very big point that you are your own advocate. You know what's best for you. Go out, seek out information, take that information and apply what you need. But it's okay for it to look different than anyone else that you know, as long as it is aligned with what really and truly matters to you. So just wanted to start off with that.
Speaker 1:Now what I will say is I've done episodes on like my thoughts and opinions on, like my Fitness Pal or tracking calories or tracking macros, and what I will say is I think if you have not done any form of tracking or food logging, anything like that ever in your life, it can be a helpful tool in the beginning when you're just trying to understand your eating habits and like, get that data of where am I at, because it's really hard to make changes, make tweaks in your eating habits if you really don't have a big good understanding of what your current eating habits are. And I'll just say no one is immune to this, but we tend to always think our eating habits are better than what they actually are. So just keep that in mind. Like even myself included, who I'm someone who eats fairly healthy. I also will like think that I'm eating like the correct amount of serving sizes, or you know, I kind of forget that I mindlessly will snack sometimes, and sometimes I do have to, like, bring it back in and really re-evaluate, like where are my eating habits? And re-evaluate it, and sometimes I'm shocked at like, oh my gosh, I didn't realize I was snacking in the middle of the day. This much to the point where you know that is a lot of like overconsumption at this point. So, when it comes to food logging and tracking whatever way that works best for you sometimes it can be helpful just to track that data and understand where you're currently at and really try not to have emotions with it.
Speaker 1:I know sometimes like we are used to feeling super guilty when it comes to our eating habits. If you can really just get to a point of like, oh, like, this is just how it is right now. Okay, I think I'm going to make a slight change in this area. Or, you know, maybe you notice that like you really struggle when you buy chips in the house and you tell yourself every time that you're going to have self-control with them and you just don't each time. Maybe it's time to not buy chips anymore, at least maybe not every single week. I had to do this myself I bought, I like to buy the quote-unquote healthier chips, but even when I do that, I do not have any self-control with them, which these chips are made in a lab and that is what they're intended for.
Speaker 1:But again, that's just an example of having that awareness in myself, not having any guilt or shame with it and just saying, okay, I took it a little too far last week. I want to reel it back in, because eating a whole bag of chips within two days doesn't make me feel great. So therefore it's not aligned with what's really important to me, what my goals are. So I'm not going to buy them every single week when we get groceries. Maybe once in a while I will, and that's what I do Like once in a while I'll buy the bag of chips and I just won't allow myself to feel guilty or shame from eating them. I just won't allow myself to feel guilty or shame from eating them, and then the next time around I just won't buy them for a few weeks or a month or whatever it may be.
Speaker 1:So that is where I think it's super important to start with is having that awareness, not allowing yourself to feel shame or guilt, because we were honestly, like, trained to feel this way since birth, especially as women, like we always feel guilty about eating certain foods and we feel shameful or like we feel like we have to justify our eating habits. And the sooner we can get away from doing this, the better, because then you can really just like not have a whole bunch of emotions tied to your eating habits. Same goes for exercise and working out. Like the sooner you can feel less emotionally, feel like all these emotions about it and just see it for what it is, the easier it is to make decisions that aren't where we're like super heightened emotions and doing things because we feel negative about ourselves or feel shameful about ourselves. So start there.
Speaker 1:If you have not done that in a while or you've never done that and there are many ways to track your food I'm not saying that if you start logging your food that you have to do this forever. Actually, I don't really recommend doing that. Just because you don't want to feel like eating is this, I don't know, like this, you have to do your homework. Every time you eat a meal where you have to like log food, I think just like get a good understanding of it and you can always come back to it, and that's what I tend to do is, you know, for a while I'll just eat however I choose to eat, and then if I feel like I kind of don't have an idea of how much I'm eating or what I'm eating all day, then I'll go back to logging what I've been eating just to again just be able to see where I'm at with things and make tweaks or make little changes where I choose to. So start there and use it to help you without any emotions or negative feelings towards it, and then really just start to figure out again what are your goals. If your goal is to just not feel so sluggish, maybe you want to increase your energy levels through nutrition choices and you're not super focused on weight loss then you can start to look into, okay, what kind of foods should I be eating more of that are going to give me more energy, and this can really be helpful after you've done your food logging and start to understand what foods might be draining your energy, might be harder for your body to digest, and maybe where you're lacking some vital nutrients that your body needs.
Speaker 1:One thing that I didn't realize for myself was so I have recently started focusing on putting on muscle actually and I've never actually intentionally done a program where I was intentionally trying to put on more muscle, and that's pretty sad because I used to power lift. I used to do college softball where we were training vigorously and I always just was like, oh yeah, I got my protein shake in, I'm good, that's all I needed for my muscles to recover. And I spoke a little bit on the previous podcast episode how much my husband, his fitness goals, have been impacting me. Just from me watching him and seeing him commit and watching his eating habits and all of that it just made me really want to start looking more into my eating habits, different changes I could start making to gain more muscle as I'm still under 30. I just kind of came to this realizing point that like I want to put on some more muscle now, while it's a little bit easier to, because, in case you weren't aware, as women we lose about I think it's like the stat is like one to two pounds of muscle and bone density every single. I think it's every single, like five or 10 years, as we age, I think Don't quote me on it but it's essentially as we age, especially women, we lose muscle and bone mass, which is very not good for our overall health and longevity.
Speaker 1:So I kind of was just like at a point where I'm like I while I'm still under 30, I want to put on muscle and then after 30, you know, obviously reevaluate things, reevaluate what's most important to me, but at that point then I can just focus on maintaining it and keeping the muscle that I have for as long as possible and that will in turn, grant me a healthier lifestyle, more longevity, and that's ultimately what's super important to me. And we can do a whole nother episode on muscle and the actual importance and impact it has on our longevity and our lifestyle, could totally do a whole episode on that. But reeling it back in, essentially I started evaluating the amount of protein intake I was eating, because if you're training really hard and you're wanting to increase muscle mass or just get stronger, protein has to be, it has to be prioritized and there's a certain amount that you should be eating, based on your body weight, based on your goals. All of that, and after looking into how much I was eating just on a regular basis, I actually didn't realize that overall I was in between a calorie deficit and maintenance mode.
Speaker 1:I don't think it was very consistent, but I had no idea. I was like pretty shocked. I thought I was eating way more than what I actually was and that just goes for like the vital nutrients. So, like I mentioned with the chips chips I can eat a lot of them, but they're going to provide little to no nutritional value. So they like essentially those might be the days where I'm like going over my calories, but it doesn't mean that the nutrients from those calories are actually doing anything good for my body. And I just really wasn't aware of that. I thought I was.
Speaker 1:I think I was hitting like the minimum amount of protein that I needed, but still I didn't realize that I was like not really eating a whole lot compared to the amount of training I've been doing and me admitting my goals of what I want to achieve with my fitness. It is like if you're not eating what your body needs in order to recover and meet those goals, your training is essentially I don't want to say useless. But if you're trying to actually achieve specific goals with fitness, then yeah, it's kind of like what you're doing is counterproductive, because nutrition and your fitness workout routine they go hand in hand, they go together. You can't just go to the gym and do you know, like a heavy workout training program and expect to get stronger, expect to put on more muscle, if your nutrition is not giving your body what it needs to build that muscle and recover, because every time you lift and work out, you're breaking down the muscle and it needs more to repair itself, and that you know. We could go into sleep too about that.
Speaker 1:But there are so many pieces of the puzzle and me just taking that data, realizing, oh, like I'm really not giving my body everything that it needs to be successful and hit my goals. And from there I was able to really just like figure out, okay, what can I maybe substitute instead of what I'm currently eating. And that is ultimately one of the things that you can do as well, where, after you've logged and are able to analyze what you're currently eating and see the macronutrients that you're eating each day, which, if you don't know what the macronutrients are, it is your carbohydrates, your protein and your fat, and they're all vital nutrients that we need, like our body needs to function properly, and there are recommendations on basically the percentages of each macronutrient that your body needs each day to properly function and it can vary based based on what your fitness routine is like. So, like for me, who is lifting and training vigorously a lot more throughout the week and wanting to put on muscle, my protein percentage is going to be a little bit higher than someone who's maybe just exercising to stay healthy. Those are a little bit different goals, but you do need to have an idea of how much you should be eating of.
Speaker 1:Each macron on calories is really like only one piece, one component of the equation, and I hate that the diet industry has made it so like heavily pushed for so long. I think that the fitness industry is doing a better job at like helping people understand that, yes, calories are a part of the equation, they do matter, but they are not the equation. There are parts of the equation that matter just as much that we should care about if we really are trying to eat healthy and feel good. So, for example, if you're trying to just eat the amount of calories that your body needs to properly function every single day, and that's all you worry about, you could potentially be eating only carbohydrates and fats and very little protein, and that can be. That can cause a problem with our health if you're not eating any protein. I mean their protein again, is where and how we maintain our muscle and bone mass. It helps us with our immunity. So you know you're more likely to get sick and not be able to fight things off. It's vital. Again, they all are vital, they all have their. They all have their.
Speaker 1:What do you say? What do you call it? Their purpose? So understanding for yourself, being an advocate for yourself and figuring out how much of each macronutrient you want to be eating each day is kind of important.
Speaker 1:And again, I know this topic is about how do we eat food without feeling like we're dieting? And here I am talking about all of these tiny little pieces of the puzzle. But the reason that I'm sharing this is because it's important to be educated on these things before you just blindly go into something, especially like a diet. If you're not really, if you don't really understand or you haven't done the education to understand nutrition, at least the basic fundamentals, then it's always going to feel like you're dieting. But I've found that by doing this foundational education for myself, it's allowed me to not feel so obsessive about what I've been eating and it's allowed me to just have an understanding of what my body basically needs in order to function properly, and it's allowed me to not feel guilt or shame from what I'm eating.
Speaker 1:So the reason that I share these foundational things and talking about the macronutrients is because I know that if I want to prioritize protein above all else, or just making sure that I'm eating balanced, I'm going to make sure that each meal that I'm eating, I'm including a serving of protein, a serving of a carb, fats in each meal to essentially eat what I need to be maintained or whatever. And then if I go a little bit over one of them or if I have a treat, but at least I know that I've given my body what it needs to function properly for the day, then I'm not going to feel like guilty because it's like okay, but I still gave my body what it needed. And I think that that's one piece of eating healthy. I think the other piece of being and feeling healthy does have to do with enjoying food, and I see a lot of, I guess, like fitness bodybuilders, personal trainers on social media that really share a lot about eating everything kind of like by the book, following a plan, exactly how it's written, and I am just like we are people who have cravings and we like to enjoy food and you know we like to go out and have social experiences, which involves food. It's like it's not that black and white, like there's a lot of gray to eating healthy, and the more we can help people understand that, as long as you're doing the right thing or eating, I guess, the best for your body 80% of the time, or maybe even 75% of the time if that's what feels good for you, then you can eat things and do things 20% of the time or 25% of the time, without having to feel shame or guilt. And I've found that that's like a really good way to feel balanced, to feel like we're still eating healthy. Again, we're not having to diet because we're not taking away anything that we don't enjoy, but we're still prioritizing our health. And it's not going to feel this way probably overnight, if you were new to it, because you'll have to kind of like train your brain and get used to understanding how much you should be eating every single day. But once you get past that point of like, okay, I've got a good understanding of this you can kind of just use it as, like the way you measure your food and you're not really even measuring anything.
Speaker 1:And that's where I was, at that point where, when I finally did log all of my food to figure out what I was eating, knowing me, I thought I was like, oh yeah, I definitely probably go over this every single day because I never track what I eat. But then realizing, oh, I'm actually like right in my maintenance, a little bit under some days, a little bit over some days, but like it doesn't do anything. You know, like to be right around your maintenance every single day and me just eating food because that's just my habit and not really having to think a whole lot about it. That is optimally what it feels like to eat healthy, without feeling like you're dieting. Again, it's not going to happen overnight to where it feels maybe this quote-unquote easy.
Speaker 1:But again, once you start practicing these habits for a couple of weeks a month, it just starts to become who you are and you start to let go of the little things like having a cookie. You stop feeling so like should I have the cookie, should I not have the cookie? Because you trust yourself enough that on a regular basis, this is how I eat and I know I'm taking care of my body, so I don't have to feel guilty about having the cookie, whereas if you're following some diet plan where I don't know, maybe they make you cut out carbs completely, then like yeah, you're going to think twice about having a cookie because it's like, well, this diet says I can't have them. And I do want to get a little bit into the mindset piece of it. I feel like a lot of this episode has been kind of like the science side of it and helping you understand and just like educating a little bit.
Speaker 1:But there's a part of you know our nutrition habits that just tips that I feel like can be helpful as you are learning about nutrition and wanting to improve your eating habits little things that you can do that will help improve things. And the first thing I want to share is obviously just drinking more water. That, in turn, can help with not feeling so hungry all the time, feeling just, I guess, like satiated full A lot of the times when we think that we're hungry, and not all the time, but sometimes if you are feeling hungry, maybe a little bit more than you feel like you should be, sometimes it's because your body may be a little bit dehydrated and so that can be just one easy thing that has nothing to do with food that can help make you feel healthier is just by drinking more water. I believe the amount you should be drinking every single day is like half your body weight in ounces, so that's a lot of water, even just like right. When you wake up, drinking a glass of water is super like. That's what you should start with. Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:So the other thing that I want to share as far as like mindset tip goes, mindset tips is if you are thinking about doing a diet, just really consider if it is something that you think you will be able to do for the rest of your life, and if you don't think you will be able to, then maybe it's not the best approach for you. Again, because I think that the best way that you can eat healthy and not feel like you're dieting is to find a way to eat for the rest of your life, to where you're not going to feel deprived, to where you're not feeling like you're taking away foods that you enjoy, but also, again, you are prioritizing what your body needs. So anything like if you hear and I see this with people all the time where they'll be like, oh yeah, like so-and-so was telling me that intermittent fasting is really working for them, or low carb or keto or whatever is really working for them, and I'm thinking about trying it. It's okay to try these things, but again just know, like always going back, is this something that I'm going to be able to stick to with the rest of my life? If the answer is no, then it's probably not the best option for you, and that also may be why you feel like nutrition. Anything having to do with eating healthy feels like dieting is because you're trying these eating plans that aren't going to be sustainable for you. So then it feels like you have to do either or I either have to diet and be healthy, or I am not being healthy because I'm not dieting. And I think, if we separate dieting and eating healthy, I think that they can be separate things and that eating healthy does not have to be dieting, whatever you call that.
Speaker 1:The other tip I just want to add, which I kind of touched on in the beginning of this episode, is, again, if you know that there are certain foods that you really just don't have a lot of control over. There are certain foods that you really just don't have a lot of control over. Don't buy it in groceries, if anything. Find ways that you can have a healthier alternative. I mean, there are recipes galore all over Instagram, all over TikTok, wherever you are at on social media scrolling your reels or whatever you're scrolling. There are so many recipes these days that literally are healthier alternatives than what we might go buy at the grocery store or maybe our favorite cookie shop, which, again, there's nothing wrong with our favorite cookie shop.
Speaker 1:But if you know you are someone who craves cookies once a week, can we substitute it for something that maybe has a little bit more nutritional value? So, again, we're meeting our body's needs. We're meeting our emotional and, like, we're making sure that our mental well-being is good because, again, food is a component of it. You know it makes us feel happy, like we get dopamine hits. So we can't just ignore the fact that food doesn't do that to our life and, you know, have that effect on us. So how can you be strategic and plan ahead with? Okay, like I know I'm going to be craving something sweet in the middle of the week or maybe after dinner. What is a healthier option that I can include in the house that will check that box for me but also provide nutritional value for me, and then that way you're not going to be feeling guilty or shameful after eating it. You still are not like you're feeling okay after eating it because you didn't just consume a bunch of like empty calories is what we call them. So that is another little tip that I like to add is doing like I will like go and binge recipe searches on Instagram and I just save them in a folder and then I come back to them and try them out and see how they go. So there are so many resources out there to start looking into.
Speaker 1:But ultimately, like letting go of the shame and the guilt when it comes to food and nutrition, being your own advocate, going out and doing your own research and understanding what your body needs, and just having a good understanding of where you're at is going to be where I recommend you start and then just going from there. Always building off of that, I feel like I have been learning so much about food and nutrition over so many years and I just feel like it continues to enhance my life. I continue to learn new things. I continue to see things differently, feel different ways about how I'm eating, and I just know that it's never going to be this end destination. You're always. I mean, your goals are going to change and again, like, you want to do things that are aligned with your goals. So it doesn't hurt if things change.
Speaker 1:And I mean, I have been sort of talking about it recently of like how I'm wanting to put on more muscle, about it recently of like how I'm wanting to put on more muscle and that requires weight gain, which, for me, I could not do that for the longest time. Like I was terrified to gain weight even though I don't weigh myself. I recently, like, got on the scale after really thinking about it because, again, putting on muscle for me is really my number one priority at this point and I really needed a baseline of figuring out where am I starting? How am I going to know I'm going to be making progress. So that required me to.
Speaker 1:I actually got on an in-body scan scale which reads how much muscle mass you have, and so it's not just a scale where it spits out the weight, because that would not have been very helpful for me anyways, but it was the first time that I had ever not felt any emotion about the weight that I was. I didn't feel anything negative, nor did I feel anything positive, which is exactly what I wanted, and that was very liberating for me. But, like I said, that doesn't happen overnight For a good I don't know, like three or four years, I was terrified to get on the scale and before that it was just like always a spiral emotional mess if I would step on the scale. So your journey is never ending. There's always so much more to learn, but just know that you ultimately know what's best for you. Just stick to what's most important to you and the goals that you have in mind for yourself and make decisions that are aligned with that. You don't have to do what someone else is doing just because that works for them. So I hope that this episode was helpful.
Speaker 1:If you have further questions about nutrition that you want to get into, let me know. I'd be more than happy to dive further into topic that you think would help. So feel free to DM me if you think of anything, but otherwise I will chat with you later. Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode. You have no idea how grateful I am to have you as one of the Love, your Body. Now listeners, if you are loving this podcast, it would mean the world to me if you subscribed and left a review. This helps me get the message out to more women just like you, who are also committed to their journey. And if you love this episode, please be sure to share it with someone who you know needs to hear today's message. Together, we can help more women recognize their self-worth and build their confidence from a much deeper place, just like you're doing right now. Let's help change the world, one woman at a time. All right, talk to you soon, friend.