The Strong[HER] Way | Healthy nutrition and habits for moms, routines, strength training for women

Client Case Study: Eat the right amount of food for your body and goals without fear (REPLAY)

• Alisha Carlson • Episode 183

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Have you ever felt like certain foods were your  enemy, lurking in the dark corners of your pantry, ready to derail your health goals? 

This episode is for you. 

Together, we take a deep breath and step into the muddy waters of diet culture, shining a light on the widespread carb phobia that's been fed to us over the years. 

I pull from personal experience and my client's post-keto struggles to discuss the harm in demonizing carbs and the liberation that comes from food neutrality. 

By embracing a non-diet approach, we foster a peaceful relationship with food, one where self-discipline doesn't mean deprivation, allowing for intentional choices free from guilt.

In our quest to break the cycle of dieting, we walk through practical strategies for maintaining energy and emotional balance. 

Learn how planning meals can prevent decision fatigue and keep you clear of the restrictive mentality diet culture often promotes. 

By reconnecting with our body's natural hunger and fullness cues, we start toward intuitive eating, leaving behind the guilt, shame, and stress of binging and restricting. 

If you're ready to find freedom from the fear of food and step into a healthier relationship with your plate and your body, tune in and let's embark on this path to well-being, together.

Ready to get started on your own journey toward food freedom, a fit lifestyle, and overall life transformation? Get started with 3 simple steps!

1. Book a call
2. Get your personalized plan
3. Work with me to stay accountable and on track toward your goals using your personalized plan

Speaker 1:

Hey, welcome back to the Strong Her Way to Eat, move and Live. Here we talk all things food freedom, fitness and life transformation, helping you heal your relationship to food, exercise your body and yourself. Now this topic, the story that I'm gonna be sharing today, the topic that we're gonna be talking about today is something that I see all the time in fitness groups that I'm in comes up all the time with my clients, and it certainly was a part of my story as well. We are talking today about the fear of food and, specifically, I feel like most common. We are living in a time where people are afraid of carbs, afraid of eating carbs. There's a lot of popularity with keto and really restricted or low carb diets. Now, years ago I mean, I gosh, I guess it was back in the 80s, probably, maybe even a little bit earlier, I'm not sure 100% it was the fear of fat, right. So we saw everything kind of go to low fat. But when they dropped the fat, when they pulled the fat out of the foods that we were eating, they ended up having to add more sugar. So you can look back. If we look back, we can see all of these different diet trends and one of the things that so many diets have in common while all diets in a sense have in common is that they kind of demonize one specific food or food group, right. So that's where that diet mentality is really focused on restricting and taking things out and avoiding certain foods, making some foods bad while other foods are good, which can create that whole cascade of emotional response where we feel guilty for eating certain foods and those kinds of things. So we have touched on all of that stuff in past episodes. But just to reiterate, if you are brand new, if this is your first episode listening in, we take a non-diet approach here. This means that we are looking at all food as neutral it's on a spectrum instead of good or bad. So this means that we don't demonize specific foods, making it off limits and feeling restricted around it. Instead, we really work to create kind of this calm, neutral, peaceful relationship with all foods so that we can decide intentionally and on purpose what we want to eat more of, what we want to eat less of, without having that constant battle or fight within ourselves.

Speaker 1:

So this was a recent coaching session that came up with a client. She is having a hard time getting in adequate amounts of carbs. She had done keto for a long time before we started working together and she really was struggling with the fact that she felt like she wasn't able to get her carbs in. And I can definitely relate to this, because when I did my bodybuilding, when I did my figure shows, it's been gosh almost 10 years ago. I can't even believe that In preparation for the training, I was on pretty high protein diet, a lot of whole foods, really focusing on eating clean I'm using air quotes there A majority of the time and then having, of course, the cheat day, the cheat meals, those kinds of things.

Speaker 1:

I do not like that terminology. Also, again, I'm kind of using air quotes, rolling my eyes a little bit there, you know, once a week to kind of refeed my body. Now, in the process of getting ready for those shows, I really did limit the amount of carbs. I mean I was eating adequate carbs, I think, to support the amount of training that I was doing. But there definitely was kind of this idea or this fear that started to come up around carbohydrates, thinking that carbs would make me fat, they would make me gain weight, those kinds of things. So I could absolutely relate to where this client is coming from, and maybe you have your own food that you kind of feel a little bit afraid to eat. Maybe it's carbs, maybe it's fats, maybe it's just food in general. Right, you just feel like, because we've had that message drilled into us that we need to eat less, exercise more, and so we're always used to trying to kind of restrict and cut things out. So with this client, her conundrum was is that she felt like she was getting to the end of the day, she hadn't really eaten ample carbs for the amount of training that she's doing. She was noticing some energy dips and things like that, but she was kind of feeling like she was panicking and needed to hurry up and eat a bunch of food at the end of the day. Now, this is one of the reasons that I specifically do not really do macro counting or even calorie counting with my clients, because what ends up happening oftentimes is that they get so focused on eating for that specific number that they completely neglect their body's own cues.

Speaker 1:

Right Now, I will say that I do think that some sort of tracking, some sort of food tracking, or having some sort of a dialed in food plan, can be very helpful in the beginning, when you are learning how to eat more intuitively and more mindfully, because it can help you kind of start to get a sense of an adequate amount of food for your body, for its specific energy needs. Right Now, when we are heavy into dieting and we're really just focusing on eating a specific number of calories, a specific number of macros, we can kind of delegate our hunger, our fullness, or delegate all of the power, all of the responsibility, to the specific diet, to the calorie tracker, to the macro tracker. However, when people shift into a more mindful and intuitive way to eat, it's not always easy to discern or understand or even hear your body's hunger and fullness cues, and so this is where I think oftentimes taking sort of a hybrid approach can be really helpful. So now this client was coming from a lot of that diet mentality around really just trying to eat by the numbers, getting the right amount of carbs in Again, air quotes there, the perfect amount of carbs in and what she was finding is that by the end of the day, because she was so afraid of carbs, she was always kind of low in her amount of carbs. Now, her brain, immediately she wanted to try to make up for that just by eating whatever carb source was available. So the thing that we really ended up working on here is Connecting her to her body, right.

Speaker 1:

So it's like let's kind of look at meal by, meal by meal and let's look at your energy Throughout the day. Do you notice that there are dips in between? Do you find yourself getting a little bit angry Angry, as we might say? Do you think that? You know, do you does it feel like you have to eat every couple of hours or every hour, or something like that? Do you find that you're having a huge energy crash? So once we started to really explore what was happening for her throughout the day, we could start to figure out how and where she could add some more carbs, some more fiber, some more protein, possibly things like that, throughout the day to give her a more sustained energy in Between meals throughout the day. But then also, what was happening is that she was getting more food in without really having to think about it and then, of course, without just trying to meet some number and Filling it with, you know, chips, cookies, candies, whatever carb sources she could get in.

Speaker 1:

Now, of course, on the other side of this. So that's kind of the tactical, sort of strategic side, right? It's like let's figure out how we can be more intentional about getting carbs in, possibly planning meals ahead of time so her Actually deciding what she was gonna eat ahead of time so that she didn't have to think about it, right? That's another thing I talk a lot about is Avoiding decision fatigue, so we can set up a meal plan from a place of feeling like, oh my gosh, this is the only thing I can eat. I can only follow this, I have to do it perfectly. That creates that sense of restriction and deprivation. That's really that kind of that diet mentality at work.

Speaker 1:

Or we can look at setting up a food plan for ourselves as something that we're doing to help ourselves out, right? It's kind of like the way that you make a grocery list before you go to the store. You want to make sure that you have everything that you're gonna need, so that you're not constantly having to run to the store, right? So this is the way that I want you to start thinking about. If you're gonna make a meal plan for yourself or a food plan for the week, look at it as a way for you to set yourself up.

Speaker 1:

So by having this particular client Plan ahead of time what she was going to eat, she was able to get in and an amount of food that wasn't making her feel stuffed, she wasn't constantly feeling hungry, she had sustained energy throughout the day. But then, on the other hand, we had to kind of address the fear around the carbs, the fear around the food, in the first place. That was the mental and the emotional work that we had to do to unwind all of the diet Minded, thinking that she was coming with right, because it's gonna be really hard for her to make these like clean decisions or these neutral, powerful decisions around food if she was still coming at it from this diet perspective, from the diet mindset, from a little bit of the fear of food. The reality is is that Dieting messes with us mentally, emotionally and physically. For many women that I work with, it creates an unnecessary fear around food. Like I said, oftentimes it's around carbs. At least right now, that's kind of the trend that we're in and we end up feeling more disconnected.

Speaker 1:

The more that we try to engage in dieting, the more that we essentially Shift that responsibility, shift that power to the diet, to the exercise program, even to the expert, right? I am a huge believer that you are ultimately the expert on your body. Nobody knows your body better than you do. This can also bring up more sense of, or less sense of control around food, and it increases our stress and our anxiety as well. So you just want to notice, like, what specific foods for you Do you feel afraid to eat? Or do you feel like, ooh, I can't really have that because I'll get fat, because I'll gain weight, because I won't reach my goal right? So just start to notice that and when we start to delegate To diets or when we're living with the fear of food, instead of being able to follow our body's natural hunger and fullness cues, we end up just eating, you know, based on the number, based on the time of day those kinds of things are based on you know how many calories or mac were rose were supposed to be getting.

Speaker 1:

And this is where we can sort of fall into some disordered behaviors around food if we're not careful. So some of the most common ones that I see is binging and restricting. So this is where this is kind of what I was describing when I was training for the figure competitions. I was really restricting throughout the week and then I would have kind of that cheat day or whatever, and it would just be sort of this free-for-all, that fear of food. This is what we've been talking about Food obsession. So it might be if you're only giving yourself, you know, a couple times a week that you can eat something.

Speaker 1:

Just notice, if that feeling of restriction triggers some food obsession, where you're constantly thinking about food, constantly thinking about your next meal or the next time that you get to have that treat food. Um, sometimes people will skip meals to make up for being quote unquote bad right. So it's like, let's say, if you're feeling a little bit freaked out by carbs and then you go and you eat a bunch of bread or something like that, sometimes as a way to try to make up for that, you might skip eating at your next meal, or you might skip the carbs at the next meal. So you just want to be aware of that. Um, or sometimes and this is a really popular one, this is something that that client was struggling with is overeating, just so that you can hit specific macro or calorie goals, right. So it's like you're not even eating because you're hungry, you're just eating because you need to fill the quota. And then, I think, more commonly, we probably see it on the other way, where you might still be hungry and, instead of allowing yourself to eat until you feel satisfied or satiated, you just don't eat at all. Right, because you've already fulfilled the macro goal or the calorie goal or something like that.

Speaker 1:

So that is really just it is. It's recognizing that there's not going to be one specific meal or one specific food that is going to impact your health or your weight in either direction. Right, it's something that really happens over time. It's those consistent decisions, those habits built one on one on one. But we have a really hard time making the best decisions for ourselves when we're coming, when we're approaching food or exercise or any lifestyle change for that matter from a place of fear, from kind of this place. That is a little bit I don't know if toxic is the right word, but it just feels it's not that clean, neutral place, right? So it's once we can neutralize food, once we know that you know all food is, it's none of it's good, none of it's bad, it's all just kind of on a spectrum, it's all neutral Then you are free to make really powerful decisions around what foods you want to be eating, what foods you don't want to be eating and in the amount. So those are just some of the things that I wanted to chat with you about.

Speaker 1:

Today is just looking at it for yourself. Where do you find yourself kind of afraid of certain foods, maybe avoiding them because you don't feel like you can trust yourself around them? And then how can you start to kind of heal that relationship to that particular food or to that particular food group? I promise you, once you do that work, it's going to be so much easier for you to know how much food your body eats and for you to be able to feed your body the amount of food and the types of foods that it's wanting and that it's needing, that feel good in your body and the ultimately end up aligning with your goals.

Speaker 1:

It's really hard to make those clean, powerful decisions when we are, when our mind is essentially tainted by all of that diet mentality, the diet way of being around, food and exercise and things like that. So if that is something that you are struggling with, right, it's like you know intellectually, or you kind of get the concept of intuitive eating or mindful eating or things like that, but you're having a really hard time implementing it, right? Maybe you've been dieting for years and you're like, yeah, this is getting really exhausting, I'm just over this, but I don't know how else to do it. Then that is where I come in. That is where I can help you.

Speaker 1:

So if you want to essentially break up with dieting, if you want to learn how to be more mindful and intuitive around food but also exercise that healthy self-discipline, that healthy self-control, without it feeling like you're fighting with yourself constantly or you're restricting or you're depriving, then I want to invite you to work with me. You can email alisha at alishacarlesoncom to take that next step to heal your relationship to food, to exercise, to your body and, ultimately, yourself. Hope that you have a great, blessed and beautiful day. I will talk to you again next week. Thank you so much for spending a little bit of your time with me today. Bye.