Episode 215 - The Naturally Slender Eating Strategy, Part I

Transcript

Renee Stephens: Welcome to Inside Out Weight Loss. I’m your host Renee Stephens, and together we’re accessing the control panel of your mind/body system, bringing ease and joy to your weight loss journey and fullness to the rest of your life. Today on the show we’ll go where you’ve long wanted to go. We’ll go inside the heads of the naturally slender to learn how they make decisions about what and how much to eat. This is part one of a two-part series on this important breakthrough thinking. But before we get to this I invite you to set an intention for today’s episode. Mine is to enable you to break through a pattern that’s been holding you back, as you create new patterns that bring joy and ease to your life. And by the way, if you haven’t already, go ahead and listen to the prologue where you’ll learn how to set yourself up for success throughout this program. I hope you’ve subscribed to this show by now as well. That way you’ll get every content rich episode the moment it’s available automatically.

Renee Stephens: So lets start out by understanding who are these naturally slender people anyway? What exactly is a naturally slender person, because for some of us it may seem like an alien species?

Renee Stephens: If being slim for them was really the big effort that so many of us think that it is, do you think that they’d be slim and fit? I don’t.

Renee Stephens: So far on Inside Out Weight Loss we’ve learned about how to create a powerful motivation cocktail of towards and away from motivators. We then spent time understanding how to really dream about what we want by keeping our critical voice thoroughly removed from our inner dreamer. We then went on a guided journey to fill in the details of the new reality that we’re creating. We also talked about the power of positive intent and meta outcomes, as well as how to amp up your energy levels even if you have what I did, which is chronic fatigue syndrome. And last episode we talked about foods that will make it easier for you to be naturally slender. On today’s show we’re going deep into the minds of the naturally slender to discover just what it is that makes them tick.

Renee Stephens: So lets start out by understanding who are these naturally slender people anyway? What exactly is a naturally slender person, because for some of us it might seem like an alien species? But come on, if you think about it you know someone who’s naturally slender. Maybe it’s a relative, a parent or a sibling or a cousin or an uncle. Or maybe it’s a co-worker, someone who you see. These are the people we look at in wonder. We think, “My god, no matter what they do they always seem to be slender.” These are the people we love to hate. Because they fill up their plates, they’re eating the cupcakes, they’re eating the cookies, and yet they’re slim. And year after year their weight stays about the same, no matter what happens. So who are these people, and what is it that’s going on in their minds? When I was struggling with my weight I used to look at them and wonder, “How is it that they think?” Well fortunately now we know. Now we know what goes on in the minds of many of these naturally slender people to enable them to year after year be slim. And lets face it, if you think about it, the people around the world that are naturally slender, and yes there are many more of them in other countries than there are in the United States sadly because here in America we’re getting fatter and fatter I’m afraid… But if you go to even Americans or Europeans or Asian people who are naturally slender… Say lets go all the way out to Asia. Say you find someone in China whose always been slender and never made an effort with it. Let me ask you a question; do you think that person is counting calories? Do you think that person is counting carb grams? What about fat grams? Do you think they’re doing some magic formula of food combining? Never eat a protein with a fruit past 6pm on a full moon? I don’t think so. In fact I bet most of these people don’t even know what a protein gram is. They just eat naturally. So they don’t even know what protein grams and carbohydrate grams are, and they don’t have access to light mayonnaise and light this and light that and hundred calorie packets. What is the trick for these people? And I’ll say another thing; if this were really hard work for them, do you think they’d be able to do it their whole life? If being slim for them was really the big effort that so many of us think that it is, do you think that they’d be slim and fit? I don’t. Seems to me of all these people that I’ve ever seen or known that it’s the most natural thing in the world. That’s why we call them naturally slender. And the truth is that this is where you want to be. You want to be naturally slender. Why? Because if staying slim for you means depravation and hard work, when push comes to shove you’re not going to do it. When, you might do fine when it’s your top priority and your entire life revolves around counting your calories and getting your food just right. But say some stress comes up in your life; you change jobs, you change relationships, end a relationship, begin a new relationship, have something, some financial loss hit you. When things get tough, if it’s really, really hard work you’re not going to make it anymore, you’re going to quit. And so in order for you to be sustainably slim, you want it to be easy. That’s what I tell my clients. If it’s too much hard work there’s something more that we need to do together to make it easy for you.

Renee Stephens: Let me tell you a quick anecdote about a recent client of mine. We were at the three month marker of our work together, and she said to me, “You know Renee, this entire process has been effortless and easy”, and she said, “That’s just how I set my intent to do it, to be effortless and easy.” And she was down fifteen pounds without following any kind of diet plan. And so that’s how it can be for you. Don’t take my word for it. Listen to this program, do the homework assignments and you will find out for yourself that if you’re finding it a real struggle then something’s not right. So lets go now into talking about the naturally slender, what goes on inside of their minds. We’re going to take a break now to support our sponsors, and when we come back we’ll be learning all about metabolism and what kinds of things affect what our metabolism might be on any given day.

Renee Stephens: We’re back now, and before the break we were talking about who these naturally slender people are. Now lets learn more about metabolism. First lets talk about metabolism. This is a big deal for a lot of people. Many of you who struggle with your weight will say, “I just have a slow metabolism.” Many people who are slim will look at those people and will say, “Oh well they just have one of those lucky metabolisms.” So is this about metabolism? Are we going to be resetting our metabolism here? Do you have a problem with your metabolism? And finally, can you be naturally slender with the metabolism that you have. Lets think again for a minute about those naturally slender folks. These are people for whom year after year their weight stays about the same. So what do we know for sure about them? Well one thing that we know for sure about them is that their metabolism changes over time. Now how do we know that for sure? Because that’s true for every human being on the planet. Our metabolism will vary of course depending on the amount of physical activity or exercise that we get, sure. That’ll vary it. But it will also vary depending on the amount of lean muscle mass that you have on your body. The more muscle you have, the higher your metabolism. So people who are naturally slender who have a lot of muscle will have a higher metabolism than those with a little bit of muscle. Your metabolism will vary by how much weight you carry around, so if you are 200 pounds you’re going to be burning a lot more calories taking a walk than somebody who is 150 pounds. Lots of factors; the amount of sleep that you get will influence your metabolism. Your hormone levels will influence your metabolism. In short there are many factors that go into your metabolism at any given moment on any given day. And this is true for the naturally slender. So we know then that for them, as for all of us, metabolism varies constantly. So the question is, if their metabolism or their burn rate is varying constantly, how is it that they are the same weight? Well logic tells us that they’re the same weight if their metabolism varies, their bone rate varies, then their intake amount must vary. They must somehow be matching what they eat, the calories that they consume with the calories that they burn. And they’re doing this without the aid of little packs that we strap to our arms and special testing; they’re doing this automatically, naturally. They naturally match their intake to their burn rate. So what is the amazing mechanism that allows them to do this? Specifically designed by Mother Nature herself, we have a built in mechanism to do this matching for us so that no matter what our metabolism does we’re eating an appropriate amount. And that mechanism, see if you can guess… Yes, you have it? Hunger. Hunger has been designed carefully by whoever does the designing out there to tell us when we need more food and when we’ve had enough. You’ve probably known some people, some little old ladies for example, who eat like a bird. They have a very slow metabolism, and yet they have a very low intake, so they’re slim. You may also have seen if you’ve ever been to a competitive sports event like one of these 10k races or marathons, you’ll see those people finishing mid and back of the pack who are overweight who are still doing an incredible amount of exercise.

Renee Stephens: I had a client come in recently, a new client, who completed an Iron Man. And if you don’t know what an Iron Man is, that is running a marathon, swimming two miles in the open water’s what she did, and cycling a century, over, slightly over a hundred miles all in one day. This took her, I don’t even remember what it was, something like 12 hours of continuous  aerobic exercise, and she would train sometimes nine hours a day for this event for months. And you know what? She gained weight while she was doing it. And that’s why she came in to see me. She said, “I figured if I could do that much exercise I’d automatically lose weight.” Well I’ll tell you what, the same thing happened to me. I had the same brilliant idea. I trained for a marathon. Raised money for charity, trained for a marathon, 26.2 miles, I ran the thing and I finished after all that weighing about two or three pounds more than I had when I started. I was confounded. I thought, “Well, enough of that.” I haven’t run a marathon since. However, I will say that it was a great experience and I’m really glad I did it. There are a lot of other benefits to doing this kind of event, but losing weight wasn’t one of them for me. Some people will lose weight when they amp up their exercise and some of us won’t. So it’s not about having the perfect metabolism, about doing enough exercise. I see this a lot in parents with overweight children. They get them to do extreme amounts of exercise, hours a day sometimes, hoping that they’ll slim down, and it doesn’t often work. They get really fit, which is a wonderful thing, but really it’s all in the matching. Not in increasing the burn rate, it’s in your ability to match your intake with your burn rate. I want to say that again because this is really important and very few people understand it. We keep on wanting to say it’s about the metabolism. We want to blame somebody or something that’s out of our control. It’s not. It’s about your ability to match your intake rate with your burn rate. And the mechanism that the body has to do that is hunger, okay. So your hunger is there to tell you when your body needs more fuel, and your fullness or satiety is there to tell you when you’ve had enough. So eating when you’re hungry and stopping when you’re satisfied makes a whole lot of sense.

Renee Stephens: Now before you start thinking, “Well wait a minute, I don’t know if I can do that” or “I don’t know if that’ll work” or “I’m always hungry”, let me say a few words about that. I have worked with many people who are always hungry. Their appetite is way out of whack. And they may not even be able to distinguish whether or not they’re truly physically hungry or emotionally hungry. In fact, it may feel exactly the same to them. And so because they’re always feeling hungry, they’re always eating. I’ve worked with others who never feel hungry. These people eat so much, preventative eating I call it, that they never let themselves feel any hunger. And so how do the decide when it’s time to eat? When foods available, when someone offers it, when it’s lunchtime, when it’s dinnertime, and you can imagine in our culture with the amazing availability with food anywhere, anytime, that you’re going to be overweight if this is your strategy. So how do you reset your appetite? We’ll be talking about this more in future episodes, but let me give you a few tips to start off with before we go into the naturally slender eating strategy. The first one is follow a plan. Sometimes we’re so out of whack with what we think is a normal portion, with what our stomachs are used to eating, that we need to do it manually. What do I mean by that? We need to determine an appropriate portion for ourselves manually. This is a tried and true method, it’s the counting calories and points or weighing and measuring, and it is in fact what I did back twenty something years ago when I lost my weight… I think it was twenty years ago. Boy, that was a long time ago. Anyway, you can follow a plan, you can weigh and measure, and after a few days of discomfort and adjustment, your stomach is going to adjust and your appetite is going to adjust. The body’s pretty amazing this way. So that’s one way you can do it. Another way, which you can do as well as following a plan or instead of, is simply intend to. Have a chat with your body and intend to adjust your appetite, to reduce your appetite. This may seem kind of silly and small compared to the size of the problem that you have, but intent really is a powerful thing and if you just open up to it. You might be surprised at the results. And in addition to that, there’s one more way. I’ve actually got a journey called ‘the appetite adjuster’, which is designed to help with this very thing. And if you’re interested in this, I’ll create a link on the blog page where you can find out more information about this particular guided journey.

Renee Stephens: We’re almost out of time today, but before we go I’d like to share with you a way that you can begin the process of tuning in to your body so that you pick up your body’s queues of hunger and satiety, because remember what we were saying just a few minutes ago? It’s all about the matching. It really doesn’t matter at all what your metabolism is. What matters is your ability to match your diet, your intake, your consumption with your burn rate. So if you want to start matching, you’re going to have t start tuning in, and for some of us this is difficult when we start out because we’re used to turning out of our bodies. We have at some point made a decision, either consciously or unconsciously, to not pay attention to our bodies. We may have decided or felt that being in our body wasn’t a nice place to be, we don’t feel good in our bodies, our bodies are sources of pain and discomfort. And so we made a decision to tune out, to not pay attention. Well now it’s time to start tuning back in. And if you feel any discomfort as you do this, as you start paying attention to those sensations inside your belly, inside your body, that’s just fine. Just sit with it and breathe right into it. Have you ever had a feeling that lasted your entire life? I didn’t think so. Because feelings come and go. If you tune in to a feeling that’s uncomfortable for you, if you are present with it and breathe right into the heart of it, you can even breathe in positive energy or white light. You could do this as I’m speaking right now. Tune in and breathe positive energy in your body, and on the out breath you could exhale and let go of any negative energy or discomfort you’re feeling. And just continue to do this slowly and deeply until you feel really comfortable. And here’s what I want you to do; you know how nutritionists and diet plans often suggest that you keep a food diary and that’s often the first thing that they do so they can see what it is that you’re eating? Well I don’t really want you to keep a food diary, you can do that if you found that helpful for you, but I do want you to do is start keeping a hunger diary. Yes, a hunger diary. You’re going to rate your hunger on a scale of 0 to 10 before you eat and after you eat. You’re going to rate your hunger on a scale of 0 to 10 before you eat and after you eat. So zero is famished, zero is I’m fall on the floor hungry, I’m about to pass out. And ten is I am stuffed like a turkey on Thanksgiving. Okay? 0 to 10, zero being famished, ten being stuffed like a turkey on Thanksgiving. And you simply write this down in your Palm Pilot or your Blackberry or your little notepad that you keep with you, and track it. You can even graph it at some point if you’re technologically inclined to see when it is that you are most inclined to eat when you’re not hungry or eat past the point of feeling full. Are there specific times that trigger you? Are there specific foods that trigger you? For example, I read something recently where a binger was saying that, “my binges always started with carbohydrates and always ended with protein.” So perhaps it’s eating those simple carbs that inspire you to eat when you’re not hungry and stop long after you’ve become full. So pay attention to that when you keep this diary. This diary, this hunger diary is a tool for you to identify the times and situations that are most likely to cause you to eat when you’re not hungry or pass the point of being full. So go ahead and begin keeping that diary. Mentally, yes, that will help. If you’re serious about this journey, if you’re ready to make a change, you’ll start keeping it on paper or in an electronic format. You’ll start actually taking a note of it so that you can see the patterns emerge over time. This is very important.

Renee Stephens: That brings us to the end of our show today. Thank you for being present. And remember you’ll get out double or more of what you put into this journey, but you must put in to get out. Go to the blog at http://personallifemedia.com/renee, r-e-n-e-e, and post a comment. Recruit your friends to start a group, meet weekly and hold each other accountable, share experiences and learnings and connect. I’m loving getting the messages from you that I’m already getting on the blog and through my email. I’m so glad to hear that you’re listening and enjoying this journey, because that’s really what it’s all about. And you can email me at Renee, r-e-n-e-e, @personallifemedia.com ([email protected]) or leave a voice message at 206-350-5333, 206-350-5333. I may play your question or comment on the air. For other shows on the Personal Life Media network, please visit our website at www.personallifemedia.com. There’s loads of great content out there, like Meredith Medland’s Living Green, where Meredith and her green guests share easy steps that you can take to live a greener life.

Renee Stephens: I’m your host Renee Stephens, and I am on a mission to eradicate the weight struggle from the planet. Join me as we evolve the world by evolving ourselves, because world peace begins with inner peace. Take good care.