Confident Eaters

Chelsea: Being Overly Busy Helps...Kind of
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Georgie: [00:00:00] Hi, and welcome back to the show. As always, I'm your host, registered dietician, Georgie Fear, and I have a real life client session to share today on the podcast. A few listeners have told me how much they really like hearing these episodes because they find the client calls really relatable. If you agree, please do let me know.

If you don't agree, also please do let me know. Today I'm talking with Chelsea and like many of our calls, we start off by looking at her tracker where she has recorded her practice since our last session by checking off the behaviors each day that she practices. While treats like sugary hot beverages, cookies, and fried food have been a bit of a sticking point for Chelsea lately, we've tracked them over months and she's had noticeably fewer this most recent two weeks. I asked for her input on how that happened. She said she was busy, possibly too busy, too busy to pay attention to, or really savor meals. Too busy sometimes to even finish a meal, and definitely too busy to socialize.

But being so busy did make it easier to avoid eating fun foods just out of boredom. So while constant motion may have its benefits, it can also cause problems if it lasts for more than a short time. In Chelsea's case, nonstop productivity mode kept her away from snacking, but then she did have some sneaky, unhelpful thoughts creep up.

Like you haven't had treats all week, you should eat some. So in this call, you'll hear how we waded through this oh, so familiar, relatable situation. Other topics we touch upon in this episode include ways to garner your partner's support and easing back into exercise, rather than going full bore when you're getting over being sick.

We also did some preparation planning for her upcoming trip, like looking up restaurants near her hotel where there were items on the menu that [00:02:00] sounded both satisfying and healthy. Thanks to Chelsea for sharing and thanks to you for listening. If you're enjoying the show, you might enjoy our other show, breaking Up with Binge Eating, where we talk about the psychological side of eating well and having a balanced relationship with food.

Enjoy. Welcome to the Confident Eaters Podcast, where you get proven methods to end overeating, emotional eating, and stressing about food. We are heading for harmony between your body, food and feelings, hosted by me, Georgie Fear, and my team at Confident Eaters.

How are you today?

Chelsea: I'm pretty good. Pretty good. I think I'm kind of getting like a handle on the work stress, which is good.

Georgie: Has the stress changed or is the way you're handling it changing?

Chelsea: I think, I wonder if this is as true as I think it is. I think I found the solution to the stress, which I know like. I'm just thinking about like Emily Nagoski's book _Burnout_, like handling the stressor doesn't really mean you're necessarily handling the stress.

Georgie: So true.

Chelsea: Yeah. So I think I've been very proactively handling the stressor in like a reasonably productive way. I don't know that I've like wildly changed how I'm handling the stress itself.

Georgie: Yeah.

Chelsea: But I will say like a big, like, just behavioral difference in the past two weeks especially. Like the first of, not like this past week, but the week before.

Georgie: Yeah,

Chelsea: like the week after our last check-in. I was so just like booked, like every minute of the day was booked that I was always hungry before I ate because there wasn't time to eat when I wasn't hungry.

Georgie: [00:04:00] Yeah.

Chelsea: And similarly it just made it like kind of difficult to have extra treats and stuff like that because if I was really hungry and I would start with like, what's actually nutritious, I would just get full and then not really want for anything else after that.

Georgie: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, I can tell that's I can see on your tracker lots of hunger before eating. Eating three or four times with no snacks, and then it does look like fewer treats overall.

Chelsea: Yeah. Yeah. This past weekend was like a lot of socializing with like, we're getting together or doing a birthday party for somebody, or we're going out to like, we're all going out together and everyone's getting ice cream kind of stuff, which. Like slowed down the momentum a little bit, but it also, I don't know if this is a sabotaging thought or not.

Georgie: Okay.

Chelsea: Or if it's like a productive, healthy thought. But it does feel nice to say like, Hey, I've been really avoiding the treats. Like I can still be on this journey and like have treats or like if someone's having a birthday or if we're having a get together with friends and everyone wants to get ice cream, I don't need to like stand there and be like, no, none for me, thank you. I don't know. It feels weirdly helpful to kind of force myself to remember that it's like a about balance and not just the only way to do this is to be super rigid and like type A and try and get an A in eating.

Georgie: Yeah. So I guess you're saying that you feel comfortable with having several treats a day and you're not sure if that's a good or a bad thing?

Chelsea: I don't know if it's like compensatory, like I don't want to feel restricted, so I am intentionally eating not as well over the weekend so that I can compensate for like, just how not treat focused the past week was.

Georgie: Sure, yeah. I get it. So one thing that it occurs to me to say is that [00:06:00] emotions are not really preventable, nor are cravings or feelings of deprivation. Like you can overeat to the extreme and still feel deprived the next day.

Chelsea: Yeah.

Georgie: And conversely you can, I won't say you can eat next to nothing and still feel abundant 'cause that's not true.

Chelsea: Right? Yeah.

Georgie: But you can eat exactly what you need. Or an amount that's, you know compatible with weight loss and still feel like, wow, I had everything that I wanted.

I had lots of different flavors, you know, I enjoyed my food and not, feel like zero deprivation.

Chelsea: Mm-hmm.

Georgie: So I guess specifically I'll say deprivation is not necessarily preventable. But we can definitely set ourselves up for it.

Chelsea: Yeah.

Georgie: You know, so like you, you are onto something very truthful that if you make certain choices framed in certain ways, you are likely to feel deprived and resentful, and that can lead into a runaway dessert night. But I also don't think, like the way, the way that you said, it sounds like it's still in a very reasonable mindset.

Chelsea: It definitely wasn't the, like, I'm in the middle of the week and i'm going to eat these cookies alone because I need a cookie. It was like, Hey, we're with, like, we had an unusual weekend where like Friday, Saturday and Sunday we're all, like all day we were with people. Going out and getting a meal at like a special restaurant or celebrating someone's birthday where there was cake and ice cream or at a potluck.

And it was like. Someone like made this cake special or like, it's really nice that we're going out for ice cream after this and yeah, like maybe, I don't know. I know this won't be the greatest dessert I've ever had, but it's kind of nice to just sort of be with them and like sharing it.

Georgie: Yeah. You're choosing the experience. You're not trying to medicate an emotion.

Chelsea: Yeah. Yeah.

Georgie: Which sounds good. And also you, you get to choose on any given day, obviously what you eat, [00:08:00] but you can choose to not lose weight on certain days and still have a weight loss week or month.

Chelsea: Yes. Yeah. That was so hard this week or these past two weeks because like my scale was blue for like all of the first chunk and then like, I'd say like the past five days or so, it's been like teal and I was just like but it feels so good for it to be blue.

Georgie: are both a downward trend in your weight, right?

Chelsea: Yeah. Blue. I think blue is more steadily like you're at a pound a week.

Georgie: Okay.

Chelsea: I'm guessing. And that's, it's anecdotally, based on what I've seen the numbers do. It's like if you're trending towards substantive weight loss, it's blue, and if it's teal, it's like slow, but steady. And then green is maintaining.

Georgie: Maintaining. Both of those, you know, blue and teal are moving closer to your goal. Yeah.

Chelsea: Yeah.

Georgie: So when people ask the question like, is this too much? Is that too much? You know, if we're talking like purely respect to weight loss, we can look at the scale and we can see is this

Chelsea: yeah.

Georgie: Too much to make progress or this is not too much to make progress? Similarly, when people say like, I know I'm eating in a deficit. Why is the scale not moving? It's really tricky to be on my end of the conversation and be like, it feels like you're eating a deficit. Maybe you're eating less than you were before, but biologically, the scale has to go down eventually.

Chelsea: Yeah, yeah.

Georgie: If you're in a deficit yeah. So we, we need to remove more calories or get comfortable maintaining at this weight.

Chelsea: Mm-hmm.

Georgie: So, yeah, I think, and it doesn't sound like anything's wrong there to me.

Chelsea: Okay.

Georgie: If you ate that way every day, you probably wouldn't enjoy all of those as much. If every day had, you know, three or four small treats, it probably would just be less special.

Chelsea: Yeah.

Georgie: But especially after, you know, a week and a half at least of very functional eating and lots of work without tons of recreation or socializing. 'cause if you don't have time to eat when you're not hungry, I'm sure you're not socializing either.

Chelsea: Yeah, that, so that's the other thing is like for the first of these two [00:10:00] weeks that we're talking about, I was in this really weird place of like, oh, on the one hand I feel really encouraged 'cause everything has kind of been sitting around main maintenance for like a couple months, which I'm not super upset with. Or I shouldn't say I'm really upset with it at all. Like I know that's a good thing.

Georgie: Sure.

Chelsea: But it was like, oh, finally I've like tapped back into what's moving things in the direction that's exciting. But on the flip side of that was like, oh, this is on a week that feels like so grueling and I feel so run down and I really don't wanna pair being this run down with work.

Georgie: Yeah,

Chelsea: with weight loss. Like, damn, can this not just happen in a week where everything feels really good? and then I can actually like really psychologically pair these two things and allow that to facilitate more of the progress that I want.

Georgie: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I know what you mean because it would not be crazy to think like, yeah, but if I'm losing weight on this week where I'm like barely holding it together, this is not sustainable.

Chelsea: Yeah.

Georgie: And I agree that that super packed schedule, while it can make it easier to eat less. It is not the way we want to eat less forever.

Chelsea: No, exactly.

Georgie: But then you can imagine like if I were on a break from work and I had the most relaxed, fun week ever and ate exactly the same, I still would've lost weight.

Chelsea: Yeah.

Georgie: So the busyness helped you with, you know, not eating that many treats, et cetera, only eating when you are hungry.

Chelsea: Mm-hmm.

Georgie: But I think with practice, you can get there where you're doing it, even if you're not super busy.

Chelsea: Yeah, I like that idea. And the idea of like shifting to like that being the next thing to tackle, like how to make that kind of the norm.

Georgie: Hmm. Yeah. I know we talked quite a few months back about like the real life treats.

Chelsea: Mm-hmm.

Georgie: Things that we do to bring some pleasantness and enjoyment into our day. Instead of grabbing a piece of chocolate or [00:12:00] an ice cream or a baked good.

Chelsea: Yeah.

Georgie: And that habit is really easy to fall out of practice, so it's very easy to like, stop doing that and just slide back into like, oh, I grab a chocolate when I wanna pick me up.

Chelsea: Mm-hmm.

Georgie: Do you think there's potential to, like, would it be good to bring that back as a focus maybe the next couple weeks?

Chelsea: I like that idea. I know. So I'm sitting here looking at like, I have all my things to do, my nails sitting out on the table next to me, and that's been like, I will fix like one nail a day.

Like there is not a day where I'm not kind of tinkering with something or maybe like a new polish or a new design on like, like a fake nail to try out some nail art. That has been really consistent and really lovely. I have also been, when we were talking about like sleep habits and like listening to an audio book or a podcast or something that like, I only get to listen to before bed. I wasn't good about sticking to that rule, but it right at that time I started listening to this audiobook series. It's eight books long and it's like 30 hours a book. And I just finished the eighth book.

Georgie: Okay.

Chelsea: And it was like giving me such good company. And so between like the nails and the audio book and doing things like sourdough or she really likes Tate's chocolate chip cookies. And I was like, please let me figure out how to make this at home so that we don't need to go out and buy these things. I don't know, she didn't give a shit one way or another. She'll happily just eat, or she would rather just be able to go to the store and buy them. I'm like,

Georgie: yeah,

Chelsea: no, I wanna make them So they're special and I also know what's going in them. And. Yeah, like I've had a lot of fun baking projects and it's been really nice for that to feel like a much bigger part of my life overall. So I think the question, it's not actually that I think these things have like fallen off. I think it's a little bit more. It very much is like wake up, have like a [00:14:00] nice hot beverage. Dive into the workday. Wait until I'm hungry again and then have like actual breakfast and then pretty much like work nonstop until five, which like, I don't know where I'm finding the extra work from. I think this is me solving the work stress is why there's been extra work.

And then have like a hard cutoff at five and then it's go to the gym, go to dance practice somewhere in there, shove in lunch probably before the exercise. And then have dinner, like after dance is over and there's just like, not a lot of time for other stuff.

Georgie: Mm-hmm.

Chelsea: So I'm trying to think of like how I could build more of the good stuff into the day to day. I wonder a little bit if I could make, my main thought is like, how can I make the workday feel less stressful? But a lot of that stress is just the fact that I'm going constantly and the going constantly prevents the boredom eating. So I know like, I'm like, oh, I need to solve that problem.

Georgie: Well, you could allow yourself to get bored and then steer yourself toward the nail art or looking up a copycat Tate's recipe. Like you could actually invite the boredom in so you can practice doing something else in response.

Chelsea: That sounds good.

Georgie: A lot of people will say. I don't have time to read a book or listen to a podcast or play a song or anything. But they're grabbing snacks during the day.

Chelsea: Yeah.

Georgie: And so my, my answer is sort of like, I don't wanna sound too blunt, but like, if you have time to snack, you have time to do something else in those same minutes.

Chelsea: Yeah. And funnily enough, today was like the first workday in a while where I ate something I didn't. I'm not gonna say I didn't want to.

Georgie: Mm-hmm.

Chelsea: I made a choice that I like, don't feel good about because I was like so pressed for time and I was hungry. Was like, I'm going to Chick-fil-A, do you want something?

[00:16:00] And last time she like got a salad from there. I was like, the salad doesn't even taste like anything like. I'm stealing your nuggets and your fries anyway. Just get like the nuggets and the fries and yeah, that came from a place of like not having enough time and not having lunch blocked out.

Georgie: And I can understand not wanting a flavorless salad that does not sound appealing. Do they still do grilled nuggets?

Chelsea: They do. Frankly, I'm not really like a Chick-fil-A person. Like it's kind of just as easy for me like not to have anything from Chick-fil-A. But it was definitely just the, like I have a work deadline and I'm kind of stressed, and this would be like nicer than saying like picking up Chipotle for like the eighth time this month? I don't know.

Georgie: Okay.

Chelsea: It was, it was a little bit of like revenge treat, but frankly I would rather just have something else versus like a healthier Chick-fil-A meal. If, if that makes sense.

Georgie: Sure. Sure, sure. So let's say you gotta a redo and you can

Chelsea: mm-hmm.

Georgie: Just redo that whole situation. Just rewind. What would you like to do?

Chelsea: Okay. One, I was having meal prep delivered and I didn't actually know what time it would get to me. So I could have just checked on that to see if I would have meal prep in time and like could have had a piece of fruit or like a little bit of bread or something to tide me over and just like wait for meal prep.

Georgie: Okay.

Chelsea: That would've been probably the most elegant solution, but I could have said, yeah, can you like pick me up a poke bowl or something, which is right next to the Chick-fil-A.

Georgie: Cool, cool. Cool. You could potentially say something too, like, Hey, next time I'm impulsively getting Chick-fil-A. Why don't you offer me a poke bowl?

Chelsea: Yeah, yeah.

Georgie: Save me from myself .

Chelsea: And she will too.

Georgie: Totally.

Chelsea: Yeah.

Georgie: Totally, you guys support each other.

Chelsea: Yeah, and normally she actually is really good about, about doing that just 'cause she wants to not, 'cause I've even like asked, but today she's like, I'm just going to the place that's like the fastest.

And it just, like [00:18:00] opened the door for me to be impulsive. 'Cause normally I think she would've said like, why don't I pick you up something you actually want to eat.

Georgie: Mm-hmm.

Chelsea: Yeah.

Georgie: Nice. That's like strong expert level partner care there.

Chelsea: We're very good at that. She's very good at that.

Georgie: Okay. So you would have preferred to have something and wait for meal prep to come or ask her to pick up a poke bowl?

Chelsea: Yeah, or you know what? If I really was gonna feel like left out because she was getting fast food and I was like scrambling to finish a slide deck for a presentation today. I could have said like, can you just order like a bigger version of what you're getting so I can like, have a couple of fries and that way I can have that without it being a whole meal.

Georgie: Yeah.

Chelsea: Yeah.

Georgie: All right. Did you get your meal prep?

Chelsea: I did.

Georgie: Alright. So does that set you up for the rest of this week?

Chelsea: Normally it would. It does set me up for the next like basically every meal between now and Wednesday night. But Thursday I'm driving up to DC for a conference and can't really take meal prep with me. Like, I mean, I technically can I'm being unrealistic if I think I'm going to actually follow through on that.

Georgie: Right.

Chelsea: So all day Thursday through Sunday night. It's all gonna be like restaurant food.

Georgie: What shall we do about that? Are there particular things that have worked for you in the past when you've been on vacation or another stretch of time you're eating in restaurants for a while?

Chelsea: I don't think I've like worked out a particularly good system. There are places that do like breakfast bowls, but like, it's basically just like a smoothie. Like, not to sound like Orthorexia central over here, but I'm like, it's kind of like a sugary way to start the day

Georgie: Doesn't sound orthorexia like at all to me.

Chelsea: Okay great.

Georgie: It's also maybe not like that satiating [00:20:00] long term.

Chelsea: Yeah.

Georgie: Nobody's like, wow, that smoothie's held me over for six hours. No, no one's ever said that.

Chelsea: Yeah. Yeah. Like, I just don't think that's like genuinely setting me up for success. And I feel like it's really weird that they're marketed as like this healthy breakfast when the reality is I need something that has like a higher satiety score than that.

Georgie: Yeah. So I know you like real food, minimally processed, pretty plant forward.

Chelsea: Mm-hmm.

Georgie: So maybe we can look at where you're staying and what's nearby.

Chelsea: Yeah,

Georgie: and find places. I spent a few minutes with Chelsea looking up the location of the hotel she was staying at and seeing what restaurants we could find in the area. We searched for things like salads, poke bowls, healthy food, and came up with a short list of restaurants for her to choose from. But I won't drag you through all 10 minutes or so of us doing that. So here's back to the call. Okay. So we did a bit of Google mapping.

Chelsea: Yes.

Georgie: If you're with people, do you anticipate like evening socializing or going out to drinks being a potential calorie temptation?

Chelsea: Yes. I won't drink. But there will almost certainly be going out to dinner with people like most nights. Okay.

Georgie: I assume that's something that you look forward to and you will enjoy?

Chelsea: Yeah.

Georgie: Okay.

Chelsea: Yep.

Georgie: Go out to eat with people

Chelsea: and I have not hesitated in the past if. The food choice is like not inspired to just proactively suggest things that I know I would like 'cause sometimes They'll just choose something out of convenience, but no one's actually enthusiastic. But

Georgie: yeah, totally. Cava. Sweet Green, true Food Kitchen. Got three good solid ones right there. See what you can find for breakfast. My fallback is always Starbucks.

Chelsea: Mm-hmm.

Georgie: Spinach feta egg white wraps are good.

Chelsea: Cool. I'm always tempted by the ham and Swiss croissant when I do like a Starbucks breakfast. So convincing myself to not reach for that would be like a be a [00:22:00] challenge. But at the same time, you know what, I'm going into Starbucks, I'm not even remotely tempted by like all of the thousand calorie beverages. So, you know, maybe a ham and Swiss croissant isn't the worst. Thing that could happen,

Georgie: you could also possibly order on the app and then pick it up.

Chelsea: Mm-hmm.

Georgie: 'Cause for some reason it's e easier to do that sometimes from a distance.

Chelsea: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Cool.

Georgie: Cool. Alright, well good luck with finding some good breakfast stuff. I have faith in your searching abilities.

Chelsea: I actually do too. Thank you so much for your help.

Georgie: Alright. And we are on for two weeks from today on my calendars that still work for you?

Chelsea: Yes. Lemme make sure I have that down. I do. And yeah, that sounds great.

Georgie: Try and squeeze in those little real life treats You may even experiment with taking a break during the day and not going, like breakfast at 5:00 PM

Chelsea: That sounds, yeah, that sounds like a thing that I need to do.

Georgie: Yeah. And definitely on the weekends.

Chelsea: Yeah,

Georgie: definitely on the weekends. So, all right. It was great to catch up with you. Thank you and drop the line if you need anything.

Chelsea: Thank you so much, Georgie. Will do.

Georgie: Take care.