Foods that will make your life easier
Inside Out Weight Loss
Renee Stephens
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Episode 214 - Foods that will make your life easier

Today, we'll do what we rarely do on Inside Out Weight Loss; talk about food, because what to eat is only about 10 % of the solution to your weight struggle. Yet there are foods that will make it easier to be Naturally Slender, and you'll want to know what they are. Renee also shares Clotaire Rapaille's (author of The Culture Code) story of what not to say to a room full of overweight academics. Also, learn why expensive organic food doesn't always win the taste test, and how to revitalize our lazy taste buds.

Transcript

Transcript

Renee Stephens: Welcome to Inside Out Weight Loss. I’m your host Renee Stephens. Together we’re accessing the control panel of your body/mind system, bringing ease and joy to your weight loss journey, and fullness to the rest of your life. And by the way, I wanted to mention for a moment why it is that Inside Out Weight Loss matters. Because it matters not in the “I’m getting ready for swimsuit season” kind of way, not in the “I’m getting ready for my high school reunion” kind of way, but rather in the “Live your life to the fullest” kind of way. Because it’s not just about being beautiful for vanity’s sake, it’s about really coming into a place of inner alignment and living our true potential, because every moment that we spend in criticism, every moment that we spend unhappy with ourselves or not engaging in life is a moment lost of this life, it’s a moment of our death. And so Inside Out Weight Loss is about not just annihilating that inner critic, in fact not annihilating the critic at all, but re-purposing that energy to bring truly joy and fullness to our lives. Join me. And if you haven’t already, go ahead and listen to the prologue for Inside Out Weight Loss, where you will learn more about why Inside Out Weight Loss matters, and you’ll also learn how to set yourself up for success as you go throughout this program. On today’s show you’ll learn what Technicolor tasty is and how your taste buds have become lazy. Also learn the foods that will make it easier for you to be naturally slender.

Renee Stephens: If you can improve the quality of the foods that you eat, if you have a junk food diet or a processed food diet, if your foods are full of un-pronounceables, see if you can improve by 50 percent now, and then another 50 percent, so that over time improve the quality of the foods that you eat.

Renee Stephens: Eating good foods will make your life easier and will make you feel better. That’s the only reason to eat it.

Renee Stephens: Lets go ahead and set an intention for today’s episode. Mine is to inspire you to break through something that’s been holding you back, as you create new patterns that bring joy and ease to your naturally slender life. So far on Inside Out Weight Loss we’ve spent a lot of time amping up the motivation to change by creating both towards and away from motivators. Away from motivators are those things that you really want to avoid, and towards motivators are your dreams that pull you towards them. By having both towards and away from motivation you set yourself up for lasting enthusiasm and lifestyle change. We then spent time understanding how to dream, and we got some information from Walt Disney’s strategy, how he created such tremendous success in his media and amusement park empire through separating his dreamer from his critic. We learned the importance of that, of dreaming our dreams, planning our plans, and only then allowing the critic to have his say-so. On the last episode we looked at the power of positive intent and understood the concept of the meta outcome or the goal of the goal. And we learned how to amp up your energy, even if you have chronic fatigue syndrome, as I did. Today we’ll do something that we will rarely do on this show; we’re going to talk about food, about what foods to eat and what foods to avoid and why. But not in the context of “you should and you shouldn’t eat this”, but rather in the context of “What will make your life easier?” Because hear this: eating good food will make your life easier and will make you feel better. That’s the only reason to eat it. And I should also mention that I am not a nutritionist, but I do know an awful lot about food. Why? Because I was obsessed with food for years of my life. I studied everything I could, as do my clients. Most of my clients have an encyclopedic knowledge of nutrition.

Renee Stephens: On that note, I wanted to share a story that I found very amusing in a book called The Culture Code by Clotaire Rapaille, pardon my French annunciation, I’m doing the best that I can here. In The Culture Code, he’s got a chapter on, Rapaille is a French psychologist who now lives full-time in the United States and helps fortune 500 companies market their products by understanding the deep desires that people associate with different types or categories of products, and he actually has done some research into the American cultural code for fat, what fat means in America. He tells a story in this chapter that I found so amusing, I have to share it with you. It seems that some years ago Rapaille was invited to give a talk at Tufts University, they were having a symposium on obesity. And lecturer after lecturer at the symposium came up and presented their paper on the solution to the obesity epidemic in the United States. And person after person suggested their approaches that all revolved around education, around simply telling the American population the benefits of exercise and the evils of overeating and being over weight. Well Rapaille noticed something about this particular group, this group of PhD’s and medical doctors, of uber-educated people in the audience. He noticed that two-thirds of them were overweight themselves, and a third of the audience was actually obese. And so he takes the podium, you could imagine the reaction, he takes the podium and says, “I think it’s fascinating that the other speakers today have suggested that education is the answer to the country’s obesity problem.” “If education is the answer,” he says, “why hasn’t it helped more of you?” As you might imagine Rapaille was not invited back to Tufts University or the obesity symposium.

Renee Stephens: But I just love that story because it’s so true. We educate ourselves and educate ourselves, and yet it doesn’t allow us to behave any differently. Knowledge of protein and fat grams, if you think about people who are naturally slender already, people for whom weight has never been an issue… You know, the kind of person we all love to hate, the person who seems to have the fortunate metabolism or the person who seems to be able to eat anything they want and not gain weight? Well think about those people really for a moment now; there are many of them in other countries. In Asia for example still many, many people who are naturally slender, and you may even have some naturally slender people in your life. Well for those naturally slender people, particularly the ones in other countries, do you think that they’re slender because they know all about protein grams and complex versus simple carbohydrates? Do you think they’ve studied food combining and they follow the rules of never eating a fruit with a protein passed six o’clock in the evening or whatever the heck those crazy rules are? What about that one about never eat in the evening because it goes straight to fat? I love that one, because as you know from the last episode I lived in Spain for a couple of years. Well in Spain where, certainly at the time the population was generally very slim, if we ate dinner at 9 o’clock at night we’d be opening up the restaurant. It was very tacky to eat an early dinner. In fact the Spaniards, the later the better almost for dinner. Same thing goes for Argentina and probably many other cultures as well. So if eating late at night packs on the pounds someone forgot to tell the Spaniards and the Argentinians. It doesn’t pass the common sense rule. So if all of these people are naturally slender and aren’t counting carbs and aren’t counting protein grams and don’t know about essential fatty acids and food combining and all the rest of it, then why do we think that that’s going to make us magically slim? We’ve learned more and more about nutrition over the years. In fact we have nutrition labeling on all our products, which I actually am very appreciative of, I think it’s a great thing. But I don’t necessarily think it’s going to help you change your behavior. I think if you’re someone who wants to be healthy that you’ll observe those and you’ll make good choices, but if you’re overweight and struggling it’s not going to make a difference. Because education doesn’t help. Ask any addict. Does knowing the dangers of addiction help an addict not be addicted? No, it doesn’t. So if education isn’t the answer, what the heck is?

Renee Stephens: This is Renee Stephens, and you’re listening to Inside Out Weight Loss on Personal Life Media. We’ll be right back.

Renee Stephens: Before the break we were talking about education not being the answer to our weight struggles, and I asked the question, “Well if education isn’t the answer, what the heck is? And in fact what is the answer is what we’ve been talking about, is about understanding our motivation structure. What is the answer is creating that kind of inner alignment so you resolve the inner conflict. And having said all of that, we are going to talk a little bit about food today in the context of what foods will make it easier for you to be slim, fit and healthy. What foods will make it easier for you to be naturally slender. Years ago when I had recently started this work, I held a class for a prominent company here in Silicon Valley, and I thought, I was very excited with myself because I was going to do a taste test. I brought in a whole bunch of food that was organic and a whole bunch of food that was conventional. And so we had conventional bread versus organic bread, and conventional fruits versus organic fruits, and conventional vegetables versus organic vegetables. And I arrayed them all out for the class to taste and to vote on which they preferred. And I was so smug, I thought, “Well certainly once they taste the good stuff they’ll never want to go back.” Well you can imagine my reaction when the class preferred the conventional foods. Most people in the class preferred the conventional foods to the organic ones. I didn’t quite know what to do. I was lost. And I’ve come to understand the reason why that is. You see, the food industry is, like any other industry, motivated by making money. That’s the capitalist way, and in fact it’s a system that seems to work better than the other systems that are available out there. And so big food companies are very motivated to sell more of their product, that’s how they make more money by selling product. And so the food industry thinks about it and says, “Well to sell more of our product, what can we do? Well we can make people want to buy more of it by making them want to eat more of it.” And so in the, about in the sixties, the 1960’s, the whole area of food science was created. There was also another noble goal, not just profit, but to feed the world. There was a real problem with malnutrition, as there still is in pockets of the world, but generally not because we have a not enough supply, but rather because we can’t get the food to the people who need it the most. In any event, the idea was to end hunger and to make money while they were at it.
And so the food scientists went to work to create foods that would in fact be cheap to produce that would last a long time on the shelf so that they wouldn’t spoil, and I fact, to make foods that we would want to make more of so that they would buy more of them over the competition. And guess what? The food industry has been remarkably successful in these endeavors. We have food that has shelf life that you wouldn’t believe. In fact, I’ve heard that many products, even fresh lunches that are prepared for parents to buy for their children, have a shelf life of about six months. When I pack a lunch for my kids, it barely lasts a day, because it isn’t chock full of preservatives.

Renee Stephens: Well all sorts of ingredients have been invented, ingredients that I call the unpronounceables. Do you know what a mono diglyceride is? Well you might want to, ‘cause you’re probably eating an awful lot of it if you’re eating conventional foods, if you’re eating foods that you find between the outer perimeter of your grocery store. And the rule of thumb that I’d like you to think about is if you can’t pronounce it your body doesn’t know what to do with it. So here’s the story; the reason the people didn’t like the organic foods better when they took a taste of them is that those conventional foods, I’ll call them conventional, non-organic foods, processed foods, have been engineered in such a way to scream flavor and taste at our taste buds. I call them ‘Technicolor tasty’. They scream at us. You can’t eat just one Dorito. It’s impossible. And Tortilla chips are the same way. There are foods that are designed to make us want to eat more and more of them. I’m very delighted to know that the food industry is now beginning to make smaller portions of our food. But most of the foods that are processed, that have ingredients that are unpronounceable, are Technicolor tasty, they scream at our taste buds. So what happens? Our taste buds become lazy. And that’s what had happened to this group in one of my first weight loss classes. The taste buds become lazy and unable to perceive the subtle textures and flavors of the foods that we eat, of the natural minimally processed foods. And there’s a process of retraining that must occur that I had to go through myself. I was raised on Wonder Bread, Twinkies, Ho Ho’s, I used to love frozen Ho Ho’s, chocolate éclairs, frozen chocolate éclairs, the good humor kind, and all sorts of other highly processed junk foods. So it took time for my palate to relearn the subtle flavors of food. It’s like going from drinking cheap boxed wine to drinking fine wine, expecting yourself to discern all the different subtleties in flavor without having to take the time to appreciate it and notice. So reeducate your palate by cutting down on the amount of processed foods that you eat. See if you can improve your diet by 50 percent. See if you can improve the quality of foods that you eat if you have a junk food diet or a processed food diet, if your foods are full of unprounceables, see if you can improve by 50 percent now, and then another 50 percent, so that over time, improve the quality of foods that you eat.

Renee Stephens: So, we’re almost out of time, but one of the things that I’d like to discuss with you before we go are a few of the ingredients that are particularly difficult for the body to deal with and stay naturally slender. The first one you already know about, I’m sure. If you’re listening to this program you must know about trans fats. Trans fats are those fats that are in many of the packaged foods that we eat today, less and less I’m delighted to say because of the public awareness campaign, these are fats that in some ways it’s almost like they go into your body and never come out. There’s no safe amount for human consumption. They are very shelf stable, they produce delightful flaky crusts, and they’re terrible for out bodies. The food industry loves them for those shelf stability properties that they have, they’re low cost, and yet our bodies don’t know what to do with them. Ironically they were invented to replace saturated fat in our food, which was thought to be very unhealthy and the trans fats were thought to be healthier. So trans fats in the form of hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated oils should be removed from your diet, so check out your labels. They’re still in quite a few foods, but fortunately less and less because food manufacturers are taking them out in response to public demand. The other type of food that I’d like to make you aware of is high fructose corn syrup. High fructose corn syrup is a sweetener that is developed from corn and processed, modified through high temperatures and is in a huge amount of the food that we find on supermarket shelves these days. The thing about high fructose corn syrup is because it is fructose, fructose doesn’t trigger an insulin response in the body. And there’s been a lot of research, particularly out of UC Davis, that suggests that high fructose corn syrup for some reason is linked one on one in fact with the increase in obesity rates in this country, our increased consumption of high fructose corn syrup, which is, guess what, very cheap for food manufacturers and very shelf stable, so it’ll last for the next hundred years on the shelf just about. Do you really want something that has that kind of shelf life in your body? Well it turns out that it somehow messes with our ability to tell when we’re hungry or satisfied. Somehow we don’t get the message that we’re satisfied and want to eat more of it. Heck, if I’m a food manufacturer and I’ve got a product that lasts forever, it never goes off, is dirt cheap and it makes people want to eat more of it, I think I’ve died and gone to heaven. This is the best thing I’ve ever seen in my foods. So food manufacturers love it, but you will want to hate it. Why? Because it’s going to make your life easier. The less of it that’s in your diet, the less cravings that you will have. Take it out of your diet, take it out of your kids diets, please, because it’s all over kids food. In fact the other day I was in a grocery store and I was looking at some applesauce, my kids wanted to get the cute ones that are in the individual containers that I don’t like to buy because they produce a lot of waste. And I picked it up, not suspecting anything, but I happened to glance at the ingredients, and guess what? There in applesauce is high fructose corn syrup. What the heck is high fructose corn syrup doing in applesauce? That’s the last place that we need it, because apples are naturally sweet. So read those labels. It’s, high fructose corn syrup is all over yogurts that are incredibly sweet. So your life will be easier if you eliminate it or dramatically reduce it from your diet. And quite frankly you can completely eliminate it from your diet. The transition is a little bit difficult as you find foods to replace those foods, but once you get in the habit of buying more healthier foods, then you’ll find it’s very easy in fact to sustain.

Renee Stephens: What other foods before we go today? Do you want to eat to make your life easier? You want to eat foods that have complex carbohydrates in them, as you know, good protein content. And what about sugar? Now sugar’s an interesting one because I’d rather eat sugar than high fructose corn syrup, absolutely. It’s a fairly natural product. It comes from the sugarcane. So refined white sugar, you know, not as bad as some things, but, you know, it’s so darn addictive. And the truth is that it’s easier, it may be easier for you if it’s completely out of your diet. It takes the body about three days to eliminate something from the system. So if you are addicted to sugar, if there’s a lot of sugar in your diet, and I speak from experience here… My idea of a healthy lunch in college was an ice cream cone with some chocolate covered peanuts on the side to add protein. So if you’ve got a lot of sugar in your diet, give yourself about three days to get off of the sugar. When I did this I actually had headaches and shakes because of the withdrawal. You can do it cold turkey, or you can wean yourself off of it. Again, reduce your sugar intake by 50 percent. And you’ll find that the less you eat, the less cravings you have. When I have something sweet immediately the next day I want more sweet. Now I have a moderate amount of sugar in my diet, in fact very little, but occasionally if I’m at a dinner party and there’s a particularly good dessert I may have it, but as a conscious choice that I make because I know that I’m going to have to deal with a craving the next day. That’s no fun. I don’t feel a choice when I’m subject to cravings. So sugar for many of us is highly addictive, and it can make our life more difficult. By moving towards less processed foods, more organically grown foods that are free of hormones and pesticides, by moving to foods that have more natural flavor we will reawaken our taste buds to the subtleties of natural nutrition and make our life easier. It’s easier for our body to tell us if we’re hungry or we’re full if we’re eating minimally processed healthy foods. Yes, protein is great simply because it lasts longer in our stomachs than does a carbohydrate. Fats last even longer than protein. So have some fats in your diet, have some protein in your diet, have complex carbohydrates in your diet, eat moderately of all things. Because all of the comments that I’ve made today, everything about the foods that I’m telling you really doesn’t matter at all unless you’ve done the Inside Out part of your journey, unless you’ve cleared the way the inner objections, unless you’ve discovered the gifts and found new ways to receive the gifts that your behaviors, your unwanted behaviors are trying to offer you. So this is probably about 10 to 20 percent of the effort, the what you eat, and I want to be very clear about that. But I’m talking about food, it’s very easy for us to latch onto food as an answer to all the issues. The real answer is the Inside Out answer. These are just some ways and some types of food that’s going to make it easier for you. And I encourage you to do your own research, because different bodies are different. My body likes a high carbohydrate diet. Other bodies thrive with high protein. Find out what’s best for you, but give yourself a chance by eating foods that are not adulterated, that do not confuse your systems signals of hunger and satiety, that don’t create instant cravings. You might be able to tell I get quite worked up about these topics, because I care so much about making things easier for you, and freeing you and me and all of us from the weight struggle.

Renee Stephens: That brings us to the end of our show today. Join us next time as we learn what exactly being naturally slender is, and how naturally slender people make decisions about what and how much to eat. It’s a great show next time, and you’ll be amazed and delighted by how simple the decision strategy they have is. Thanks for being present. Remember that with your free subscription to Inside Out Weight Loss, you’ll automatically get every episode the moment it’s available, as well as the “how do you know you want to change?” worksheet, and any other worksheets that I’ll be offering in the near future. And remember you’ll get out double or more what you put in to this journey, but you must put in to get out. Go to the blog, go to personallifemedia.com/blogs and find Renee, post a comment, share, participate. You can also leave a message, a voice message at 206-350-5333. I can’t wait to hear what you have to say. I may play your question or comment on the air. This is Renee Stephens, and that brings us to the end of the show. Thank you for listening. For other shows on the Personal Life Media network, visit our website at www.personallifemedia.com. I’m on a mission to eradicate the weight struggle from the planet. Join me as we evolve the world by evolving ourselves. World peace begins with inner peace. Take good care.