Episode 57 - How to Eat , Part I

Transcript

Renée Stephens: Welcome to inside out weight loss, I’m your host Renée Stephens, and together we are accessing and adjusting the control panel of you’re mind-body system, bringing ease and joy to you’re weight loss journey, and fullness to the rest of your life.

Renée Stephens: On today’s show how to eat, and the comfort of structure, plus enjoying your holidays more than ever before.

Renée Stephens: Tune inward to that tiny light that glow that resides inside; focus on that flicker of life force energy that radiates within. The pulsation the rhythm, the beat, notice how that light can grow brighter, it’s brilliance strengthening just by being aware, notice how it expands as you focus, increasing and extending without quite knowing how, you find yourself falling into that light, surrounded by Il-luminosity, let yourself just be.

Renée Stephens: I think that should be the headline in the papers for a change. Can you imagine rather than bad news, it would be, being naturally slender actually discovered to be more enjoyable than over eating.

Renée Stephens: Woo Hoo! [Laughter]

Renée Stephens: Ok let’s get serious again, because this is a very serious program, and I want to talk to you about something, that a lot of people don’t think is very fun but actually, is pretty cool.

Renée Stephens: If you eat at random times and highly variable amounts, you eat a huge meal and then you don’t eat for a day, you eat a huge meal then you eat like a bird for awhile. You eat for a bird and then you eat a medium meal and then a big meal, and then another big meal, you got mayhem, you’ve got complete disorganization, complete unpredictability to your eating schedule.

Renée Stephens: A special welcome to new listeners to the show, we’re so glad you found us, you might take a moment to notice what you’re hoping to find here, you’ve come here for a reason.

Renée Stephens: Jump right in to today’s episode, and I encourage you to go back, to the beginning and start there by listening to the prologue, where you’ll hear my personal story. There’s a progression to inside out weight loss, and you’ll certainly benefit from building a strong foundation by starting at the beginning, then take your time to digest each episode each concept each tool, also consider joining the yahoo group to support and be supported. There’s a link available at my blog. www.personallifemedia.com\renee
R e n e e, if you like what you hear you may want to go even deeper, by purchasing the three guided journeys available from my site: Mindforbody.com, Mindforbody dot com.

Renée Stephens: Now, let’s all take a moment and drop inside and become present with ourselves, as I share a moment of bliss courtesy of blisstrips.com. Tune inward to that tiny light that glow that resides inside; focus on that flicker of life force energy that radiates within. The pulsation the rhythm, the beat, notice how that light can grow brighter, it’s brilliance strengthening just by being aware, notice how it expands as you focus, increasing and extending without until without quite knowing how, you find yourself falling into that light, surrounded by Il-luminosity, let yourself just be.
Enjoy a few moments of clean clear brightness, of being one with that brilliance that emanates from within, and open your awareness to the presence of the fellow travelers listening to this show, open you’re heart to them by sending them you’re compassion and acceptance, and feel their comradery their support come back to you magnified many, many times over.

Renée Stephens: Let’s go ahead and set our intention for today’s episode. Allow a word to arise that will guide you to that feeling that you so much want, perhaps it’s that feeling of having what you want, perhaps it’s a feeling of peace or feeling of lightness of energy, allow that feeling to come to like a gentle breeze, swirling around and in you releasing your guilt, your worries, your fears and filling you with that magical comforting feeling, that both satisfies and lightens, perhaps in a way you never even dreamed possible.

Renée Stephens: My intention as always is to enable you to achieve yours, and of course to end the weight struggle on the planet enableing you to share your soul’s gifts.

Renée Stephens: I’d like to add a note on intention, for today now that were in the full swing of the holiday season.  Many people are worried about gaining weight, some people even plan to gain weight during the holidays, and you might consider setting your intention this holiday season, how would you like to most enjoy it? And to get an idea of that I’d like you to allow yourself to drift foreword in time to January, allow yourself to drift foreword in time to January, and in January looking back, at December, how is it that you would like to feel about it in January? How would you like your body to be in January? Just think about that, is your goal to maintain your weight? is it to loose weight over the holiday season? is it simply to be naturally slender over the holiday season?

Renée Stephens: On that note, I’d like to share a comment from a listener named Elizabeth who wrote in to share some of her experiences with me. She writes: Hello Renée this podcast has completely redefined my relationship with food and your naturally slender eating strategy has done so much more than just help me loose weight, it taught me how to enjoy food, enjoy being hungry, and enjoy my life so much more, it’s awesome! I’ve actually lost the weight I wanted to lose, but I continued to listen regularly to the podcast, and the wonderful guided journey’s I purchased from your site, the sabotage self sabotage, and compulsion blowout, because I find they help me achieve non weight related goals as well.

Renée Stephens:  She continues on and later in her e-mail she writes: that she knew she had hit a landmark she writes, when I had my birthday in October, I remember crying after eating too much at my birthday last year, but this year despite having my birthday party at an Italian pizza place I found that I was only in the mood for a salad and that I really just wanted to enjoy being with my friends. Most importantly I’ve maintained my weight loss, and I’m confident that I’ll be able maintain it through the holidays, and I’m way more excited about seeing my family, than about the food that will be on the table. I share that with you to offer you an idea as you set your intent for the holiday season, for this next month.

Renée Stephens: What if, because after all my job in some ways is to help you imagine what’s actually possible, so lets dream pie in the sky here so to speak here, what if, you went through the holidays and enjoyed them more even though you ate less? How can that be? That just doesn’t seem to make sense, but just imagine it for a minute, what if you got through the holidays and enjoyed them more, by eating less, in other words you were naturally slender.

Renée Stephens: So what does that mean being naturally slender? Well yes there’s a way of thinking that’s naturally slender there are the steps that I outlined in an earlier episode, that naturally slender people take when deciding on what and how much to eat, there’s all of that piece, but even more than that there’s what Elizabeth writes in her email, which is focusing on something other than food, focusing on friends, on family, on meeting new people for example, focusing on the interpersonal interaction and perhaps even setting your intent to really and thoroughly enjoy it, to enjoy it to make a meaningful connection with someone.

Renée Stephens: I’m sure I’ve shared with you on this program before, the game that I like to play at events which is, try to find someone that I can do something for, someone that I’ve never met or someone that’s there, hmm is there someone I can do something for? That makes me feel great it makes the other person feel great, it keeps me entertained during an evening where I might be having some social anxiety. It’s a wonderful way to go so just allow you’re self, to think about that, how you would like to experience this holiday season, perhaps you’d like to have some of the food that is available perhaps you’d like to taste it, perhaps you’d like to be really focused however on something way better, something that makes you feel good not just in the moment, certainly in the moment, and also into the evening, into the next day and all the way in to January, and of course if you go to a party or an event, or someone brings something to the office and you eat more than your happy about, there’s always the redo that you can do. You can always go back and redo the experience in your mind.

Renée Stephens: So, there’s some food for thought for you, and actually it’s already time for us to take a break to support the visionary sponsors of this show. This is Renée Stephens and you’re listening to Inside Out Weight Loss, on Personal Life Media.

[Commercial Break]

Renée Stephens: We’re back now, before the break we were talking about setting our intention to glide through the holidays enjoying them perhaps more than we thought possible as we’re naturally slender. A client in my private practice said to me, a couple of days ago, she had decided to stalk her kitchen with food, which is something she had never done before for fear of overeating, so she baked homemade bread and she went to the grocery store and bought lots of healthy food for herself, had it all stalked in her kitchen, and she was actually enjoying it. She was enjoying eating like what she calls, a normal person, in other words in meals rather than binges or mouthfuls of food snuck here and there, and she said “you know, actually it’s really enjoyable, in fact I enjoy it more, eating this way. And I thought that was so great! Who knew? Who knew? That being naturally slender could be in fact more enjoyable then overeating. I mean doesn’t that turn everything we know about dieting upside down? That it’s supposed to be a struggle, that were supposed to sacrifice, that we’re supposed to control ourselves, and it turns out that being naturally slender is actually more enjoyable

Renée Stephens: I think that should be the headline in the papers for a change. Can you imagine rather than bad news, it would be, being naturally slender actually discovered to be more enjoyable than over eating.

Renée Stephens: Woo Hoo! [Laughter]

Renée Stephens: Ok let’s get serious again, because this is a very serious program, and I want to talk to you about something, that a lot of people don’t think is very fun but actually, is pretty cool.

Renée Stephens: I want to talk to you about structure, boy isn’t that a sexy topic, doesn’t that get you excited to think about structure?

Renée Stephens: Ooh Hoo! Wow, alright here we go, what is the big deal about structure? Why do we care? So many people have asked me how to eat, because If you are in a pattern of overeating of binge eating, or say you just graze all day and you feel completely out of wack with your eating behavior completely disconnected from your body that’s certainly where I was.

Renée Stephens: When I started I remember when I went off to college and I finally had Full Control over my diet, and I thought wow well, who says I cannot have an all sweet diet all the time, no body says that, so I tried it for awhile, my goodness you wouldn’t want to be around me and my mood swings at that time I can tell you that much, lets just say I learned a lot from that particular experiment.

Renée Stephens: Alright, well I want to share with you how I eat. Yes, I want to share with you exactly how I decide what and how much to eat, beyond the naturally slender eating strategy, because we already have that piece, this is an extra piece on top of it.

Renée Stephens: And first I want to describe why structure matters, why do we care? And if you have children or have been around children, or even if you have pets, and we just got a new puppy in our house, so I’m very in tune with what young beings need. And you will know how children thrive on structure, go to any pre-school go to any school for that matter, and you’ll find a very structured schedule, you’ll find that there is a certain time of day for play, there’s a certain time a day for snack, there’s a certain time of day for rest, that there’s a time of day for each particular thing.

Renée Stephens: Why do they do that at pre-schools? Why do nannies do that? Because it is so much easier, in that structured environment the children are able to thrive, they feel a sense of security and comfort, and predictability in their lives that for some is extremely important and for all is beneficial.

Renée Stephens: So, notice those words I’m using, security, comfort, predictability. Aren’t these the things that so many of us look for from our food when we are over eaters? Exactly, structure can bring security and predictability and comfort in the routine, in the rituals that we create in our day. And what is a ritual? A ritual is anything that we do on a regular basis that we imbue with meaning that we find satisfying. That’s my definition that’s not a dictionary definition.

Renée Stephens: So, we want to have rituals, we want to have structure partitions in our day, within which we have freedom, because the secret is, that those partitions that, that structure and predictability allows us an environment in which our freedom, our creativity, our enjoyment can thrive.

Renée Stephens: So lets talk for a minute about metabolism and structure. What does one have to do with the other?

Renée Stephens: If you eat at random times and highly variable amounts, you eat a huge meal and then you don’t eat for a day, you eat a huge meal then you eat like a bird for awhile. You eat for a bird and then you eat a medium meal and then a big meal, and then another big meal, you got mayhem, you’ve got complete disorganization, complete unpredictability to your eating schedule.

Renée Stephens: So what does the body do? The body doesn’t know what’s coming, when? What happens if you have a regular eating schedule? The body adapts incredibly quickly. The body says oh, I always get a meal at twelve o’ clock, at noon I always get a meal. And so the body anticipates that meal and says let me get started on the digestive process early, because by getting started on the digestive process early I can take full advantage of the nutrients available to me in the meal.

Renée Stephens:  So, gastric acids will begin to be released, enzymes will begin to be released, we may even salivate, and this in fact is the reason that if we don’t get a meal at a predicted time our stomach will grumble, it’ll make noises because it is expecting something that doesn’t come.

Renée Stephens: And I’ve had people be alarmed at those noises, they’ll say “oh my gosh, my stomach is grumbling I must be really hungry.” Well really it means that your stomach is grumbling, because your body is a little bit confused, because it doesn’t know when to expect its next nutrition.

Renée Stephens: So, if however you eat your meal at twelve-noon every day, that you have that regular schedule, or say within the noon to one o’ clock hour, or whatever it is, within that, that range, then your body is secreting those enzymes, it’s secreting those digestive juices, and is prepared for the food once the food comes into the body, you chew it well, which is an important part of digestion as well, because it begins when we chew, when we’re chewing our food we want to chew it well, because that begins the breakdown of the food so our body can extract the nutrients.

Renée Stephens: Why do we want to extract the nutrients apart from the obvious that we need them? Because it is much more satisfying to get nutrients from the food that we eat than it is to not get nutrients from the food we eat. So if we eat our meal at our regular time then we take better advantage of the nutrients and we find them meal more satisfying nutritionally as well as comforting in its predictability.

Renée Stephens: This is why so many diet programs recommend a specific schedule for eating. So the next obvious question is, well what the heck does that mean about eating when you’re hungry versus eating when you’re not hungry. What if your regular meal time comes up and you’re not hungry? Or the classic, oh I never eat breakfast because I’m never hungry at breakfast time. Should I eat it anyway? And therefore really go against my bodies hunger signals? And the answer is to understand what is causing you to not be hungry at breakfast time.

Renée Stephens: Typically, now I cant speak for everyone, but typically, people are not hungry at breakfast time for a couple of reasons, one is there not used to eating at breakfast time, so that there body doesn’t secrete those digestive enzymes so it’s out of the habit. And the other reason the more important reason perhaps, is that, if you have a habit of over eating at night you will still be digesting what you ate last night by the time breakfast rolls around.

Renée Stephens: So therefore you are not hungry at breakfast because you over ate at dinner or after dinner by snacking in front of the T.V. or whatever it was that you were doing. And a lot of people don’t make that connection between what they did the night before and how they feel the next day.

Renée Stephens: So, what is a naturally slender person to do, if you are in that position? You never eat breakfast your not hungry at breakfast. Well there is no way except in the context of creating a structure for your meals throughout the day.

Renée Stephens: Now, we’re out of time for today’s episode, but on the next episode of Inside Out Weight Loss, we’ll talk more specifically about what that structure can be and how much benefit it can bring you, and not only that I will as promised share with you exactly how I personally do it what really works well for me, I cant wait to share that with you, that brings us to the end of the show today, thank you for being present.

Renée Stephens:  As you’ll know you’ll get many, many more times out of this show what you put in, but you must put in to get out. Join the Yahoo group, support, and be supported. Go to I-Tunes put in Inside Out Weight Loss in the search box, and add you’re five star review the more we have the higher the profile, and the more people that together, we reach.

Renée Stephens: Also on the blog at personallifemedia.com\renee there are loads of blog entries there where I’m asking for you feedback I’d love to hear what you think and what your experience has been, so feel free to put your comment on the blog so that others can share as well, and as I’ve mentioned earlier there is also a picture of my puppy up there, so enjoy.

Renée Stephens: This is your host, Renée Stephens and I am on a mission to eradicate the weight struggle from the planet, enabling you to share your soul’s gifts, join me as we evolve the world by evolving ourselves take good care.