Confident Eaters

Letting Go of Diet Perfectionism with Client Jamie
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Christina: / [00:00:00] hey there confident eaters podcast listeners. My name is Christina and I'm one of the coaches here. Today is a really special episode for me because we're joined by one of my former clients. Jamie. Jamie and I worked together for several months starting last year, and she was gracious enough to be willing to share some of her experience of coaching with all of you. When I asked her, if she'd be willing to share her story, I was so excited when she said yes, because I think it's going to resonate with a lot of you listeners out there. Jamie, like many of our clients came into coaching with a lot of nutritional knowledge. Often people won't reach out for coaching because they think they know enough to make the changes that they need to make. But the information is not the problem that most people have. It's taking that information and turning it into action. jamie is an independent self-sufficient hardworking person with a demanding career while also raising a family. She is a self-described DIY-er. She had [00:01:00] all of the information she needed, but really felt like she wasn't getting anywhere. Through our work together, she was able to really evaluate what was important to her, to simplify her approach, learn how to adapt and overcome challenges because we all face them, and ultimately build a life that she loves.

She wanted help focusing on the things that mattered most and to develop and hone the skills that would make the biggest difference with the capacity she had to work on her nutrition, health, and just generally taking care of herself. Let's listen to the conversation to hear more of Jamie's story. /

Georgie: / 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 [00:02:00] Eaters.

Christina: Hi, everyone. Thanks so much for joining us. I'm here with my client, Jamie, and we are just gonna hear a little bit more about her story and her experience with coaching and I appreciate your time so much and just being willing to share your experience with us. Jamie today. How are you doing?

Jamie: I'm great. Thank you for having me. I feel like it's the least that I could do to kind of give back after you and Georgie have done so much for me. So I'm proud to be here.

Christina: I think a lot of people are going to resonate with your experience because it wasn't just smooth sailing all the time and it rarely is, but we want it to be. And I think hearing from other clients experience, it seems to be an encouraging way for people to know that their, their journey, even though it is unique to them, is going to have some bumps in the road and.

what it looks like to keep moving forward and keep supporting yourself. And you've done an excellent job of that. So just to start off, I want to hear a little bit [00:03:00] more for the audience a little bit more about yourself. Like what's your dieting history? What's your background? Where are you hailing from as much as you're comfortable sharing?

Jamie: Sure.

So my name is Jamie. I'm 37. I live in the southern United States in middle Tennessee. I have two little girls, a seven year old and a two year old. I'm married. We stay pretty busy, but that's life for most people, I think. So as far as my dieting history I feel like I want to say I've tried everything, but I would say that was like younger Jamie has tried everything and then the last maybe 10 years or so, maybe a little less than that.

I've kind of backed up from that and tried to rework my relationship with food. And

then the more recent years when I was trying to lose weight, I would use either a meal plan or macro counting. So I haven't done like keto or crazy fasting or things like that recently. Those things just don't interest me anymore.

I'm in [00:04:00] a different place in my, in my weight loss journey now.

Christina: I remember when we first started, you had tried a lot of different things and you were very motivated to make changes, but not in the ways that you had

tried previously. You're kind of done with that.

Jamie: So when I was preparing to talk to you, I actually went back and read like my journal entries from when we were working together. And one of the things that I talked about the week before I actually reached out to you was how I was kind of struggling with body image, but I felt like I had done a lot of work on my relationship with food and I didn't want to go backwards in that regard.

And I just, I, I was emphatic. Like I'm not going to do a restrictive diet and I'm not going to do those other kind of things that.

felt like self harm, you know, like starving and you know, when you just push it too hard. I just was really wanting a different way.

Christina: Yeah. And which is totally [00:05:00] understandable because those kinds of ways of eating are, I guess, popular. And Effective in the short term, but at what cost a lot of times it costs your mental space and your social life and peace around a lot of food and things like that. And I know that was something that you had shared just in our early days that there were a few different reasons for wanting to reach out for coaching, but describe for me, if you can a little bit of the challenges that you were having before we started working together.

Like, how are you feeling with all that stuff?

Jamie: I was so frustrated. So I had started at least four months before you and I started working together, like consciously working on fat loss and I wasn't getting anywhere. I was losing the same 5 pounds over and over and over and I just felt really defeated. I'm a healthcare professional. I know a ton about nutrition.

I know a ton about exercise. And I thought, [00:06:00] I have all of the information that I need. Why can I not do this? And so I almost felt hopeless. Like,

Christina: Hmmm.

Jamie: If more information is not the solution, then what is? And so I went looking for what that different piece could be, because reading another book wasn't it.

Let me tell you, I have read a library of nutrition books, and that wasn't it. So, I wanted to try something different.

Christina: yeah, I definitely remember that to you came in with a lot of nutrition knowledge, a lot of information, like you said, and sometimes we have too much information to where it, it can stall our. Process and getting started on something or we can overthink things because we know about nutritional quality of food and how often the recommended exercise is and being healthcare professional.

I know that weighed into your mindset as well. It's like wanting to.

Jamie: I wanted to do [00:07:00] everything perfectly, and it

turned out I wasn't doing any of them well enough to equal fat loss. And that was my main problem.

Christina: Yeah. And those feelings of frustration and defeat, it's something I hear from a lot of people who are wanting to get started, but kind of on the fence still deciding if it's right for them, but. There was a period of time where you got from frustration, defeat, hopelessness, and then you were ready to reach out and say, okay, I need some support here.

So what was going on in your mind that was like, it's, it's time for me to reach out. It's time for me to get some support. I know you have been a long time follower of Georgie's work. And, but tell us just about that period of time when You were like, it's, it's time to reach out and get

Jamie: I think I just had clarity that, like, doing the same thing over and over is not going to get me different results, and I accepted that I did not know what I needed to do differently to get the results that I [00:08:00] wanted, And so I also, I think I realized that I needed a more customized solution.

Like reading the book and trying to do 20 things well, did not work for me in this phase of life. You know when I was single, before I had kids, that sort of diet perfectionism was much more attainable. But now I really needed a streamline, like. These are the three things, do the three things that I could wrap my brain around.

And I just wasn't I just wasn't willing to let any more time pass, not feeling well, not feeling like myself. I like enough was enough and I was ready to feel like myself again. So I, I went ahead, I tried something different.

Christina: Yeah. And I think that it's so, it's just so important to know that that ambivalence of, I know what I need to do and wanting to try it on your own. And many people do things on their own, but then having that extra support to [00:09:00] facilitate and accelerate the progress and find out what is the gap between the information, the knowledge.

And personalizing it for you because you're totally right. There are people who will say, Oh, everyone has the same 24 hours in a day. But to your point, a single person who doesn't have the same responsibilities as a mom, who's working and all these other things that you had going on. There's a difference in capacity and learning how to personalize that information. And the books are great. The resources are great. It's there. It's available, but sometimes we have that knowledge gap or the gap between knowledge and action and I think the books are really designed to give people a starting place. It's more, I think I've heard Georgie describe it as like a Walmart Moomoo, it's like a one size fits all.

But what coaching allows for is more of that custom, like tailored to you, [00:10:00] perfect fit kind of thing. And. We can,

Jamie: it makes it simpler and more because we just got rid of all of the things that didn't apply to me that I was still trying to pay attention to.

Christina: right.

Jamie: And that was really what made the biggest difference is when we're just able to be like this, the small, the smaller list made a huge difference. Yeah.

Christina: If you only have capacity to do three or four things or two or three things, you want it to get the most bang for your buck. You want the efforts that you're putting in to take you somewhere rather than doing all these other things that can be helpful for some people.

Sometimes it is their thing, their struggle, but that's, I think where the coaching relationship can be really beneficial. So, We worked together for several months. Tell me what life looks like now for you, including, you know, any specific things that you can pinpoint, like, this is different due to the work we did together

Jamie: Well, goodness [00:11:00] gracious. So in the time that we worked together, I lost about 10 pounds total. and I know you know, pounds lost are not the main thing that we're focusing on. I also got rid of all that, like diet chatter in my head. I can wing it a little better. I feel like that's the theme of my life right now is winging it, but I can eat on the fly, I can put a balanced plate together.

I can know when I'm going to feel hungry again without so much stress and like feeling like I have to control every last thing. I also was able to identify like the, the four or five habits that I need To have dialed in if I want to feel my best and have my best athletic performance and then I also know the three habits that I need to work on when I want fat loss And so i'm clear about my goal if it's you know, I just want optimal health right now this is what i'm working on if i'm ready for fat loss these are what i'm working on and that's invaluable to me that clarity So the other thing that you and I did was a [00:12:00] lot of work on like the mental part, which I feel like is also another huge benefit of coaching.

So one of the things that we did was self kindness, which that was not a part of my framework before coaching. I remember our conversations about that. I was like, you want me to what? You want me to be nice to myself?

Christina: at your mug. It says, be kind

Jamie: Yeah, to other people, other people, not to yourself. Yeah. So that was really huge. And then the other thing that we did was sabotaging beliefs.

And so one of the, like the diet perfectionism, getting rid of that and focusing on resilience and how to get back to baseline as fast as possible. that was a huge reframe for me besides just trying to do it perfectly all the time, which is where I was coming from. We, I learned to accept the ups and downs and how to do that better, how to do that faster, how to get back on track sooner.

And that's a skill that, that I will take with [00:13:00] me for sure. And Oh, and emotional eating. I feel like those were skills that I didn't translate out of a book well. The delay distract decide has been really big on cutting down my emotional eating and identifying the factors that are causing all that stress and then adding self care.

What's that? Hello mothers. Self care is a real thing. So that was helpful. And The other big thing was moving away from the scale as, like, my sole measure of progress. So I have kind of shifted my goals more towards athletic performance and strength training and things that are not so, like, cut and dry.

The scale isn't my best marker of progress and letting that go. Then once once I kind of was able to let that, that scale go and deal with the stress and, and take bigger bigger picture view of my life [00:14:00] and the things that I wanted we decided to make some big changes. My husband and I make some big changes and our family structure.

So I'm gonna become a stay at home mom this summer, which is huge. I'm very excited about that. So Yeah. it was like, this is like a really big path for me. It started with fat loss and then it went to like optimal health. And then it went to walking away from the scale and, and now we're going to be a stay at home mom. All because you asked me some questions.

Christina: Right. And it really has been like a collaboration because like you said, sometimes it isn't just about the food. It rarely is about the food because those are the simpler changes to make. It's about the mindset. You mentioned perfectionistic thinking, which is super common with people that I talk to all or nothing.

It can really hold us back from making consistent progress because we can say, well, if I didn't do it perfectly, then what's the point. And then we get into that head space. And [00:15:00] I think you also mentioned just learning how to anticipate challenges because life isn't always smooth sailing. There are things like kiddos getting sick and work being extremely high stress and demanding and, and lots of other things going on that have nothing to do with food, but we need food to function in a certain way to achieve these other things. But then food can be a source of comfort and it can be a source of stress relief. And that's more common than I think we even realize.

Jamie: Yeah.

Christina: So how to take care of yourself outside of using food. It's not that it's wrong to use food, it just sometimes can stand in the way of these other things that you want to see happen and there are other effective techniques, but like you said, as a mom, it's very easy to self-forget. I hear that from moms all the time, time, it's like "well, everyone else has to be taken care of at the expense of my own needs and care. [00:16:00] And that can cause a lot of distress. And we will seek other things like food or whatever to escape, to take a break. And I'm not a mom, but I work with a lot of them and I think they have similar Situations, the way you're talking about, So there's so many different things we worked on that focus on overall health.

It's your emotional health, your mental health, your physical health. Yes. But it's not just the food stuff. It's also, are you sleeping? Are you recovering? Are you exercising and moving your body in a way that feels good for you and learning how to fit all that in, in a way that makes sense for your life and not Like you said, having this perfectionistic or comparison thing going on.

And it's important to know that everybody's on their own journey. It's easy to look at other people who seem to be, you know, doing so much [00:17:00] better, but they're not you. They don't have your story and they don't have your life situation. And through that experience of, okay, now I need to deal with the emotional eating. I need to deal with the self kindness in a different way, which for those of you listening, it can seem like, well, that seems like a, not a, nutrition coaching related thing, but it plays a big role in a lot of the clients that I work with. so I appreciate you sharing all of that because I know. You came in seeking one thing and it did change over time. And that's again, where just having someone in your corner who can ask questions for you to reflect further on what is most important to you? What are your values? And we can get distracted by the number on the scale, but at the same time, there was a lot of noise and there is a lot of noise when we're weighing ourself as like the main source of progress, but there were so many other things you were working on that the scale, there was no way the scale could say like, yes, you're making progress [00:18:00] in all of these other things.

for overall health, which is, I think what a lot of people want, it's I want to lose weight and feel better, but it's what I think I'm going to achieve and feel like when I get to this goal, weight what is on the other side of that? What does life look like? And taking the time to reflect on that is not something we do naturally.

Because we're like, no, it's just this number that I've attached a lot of meaning to. And you associate feelings with. And I know that one of the motivations coming in was you mentioned specifically fat loss and then the other was this mental chatter, this feelings and thoughts you had beliefs about food and how much brain space that was taking up.

And then there was this aspect of what does this look like for my daughters who I am trying to not pass on. insecurities or food [00:19:00] noise and you were very conscious of that, like throughout our coaching. Like I'm very careful not to do certain things or to make sure I do certain things and the impact that that's had in your family too. If you don't mind sharing a little bit more about that, I'd love to hear your process with all that.

Jamie: think When you're raising little girls, like, they start to be exposed to diet talk and have thoughts about their body as early seven. Well, I have a seven year old, so I did not want this to be like a weight loss journey where she felt like, Ooh, there's something wrong with my body, or I need to lose weight too.

So when we talk about these things in my household, we talk about from a framework of optimal health. We talk about the things that we need to include to be healthy. And we try to, like, shy away from any sort of weight loss talk, or changing your body talk, or anything like that. And that has been forcing myself to, to say those things and to be on on message, [00:20:00] I guess, with my kids has really helped to reframe my internal dialogue as well.

Cause it's back to sabotaging thoughts. We, we spent a lot of time on that I can identify those thoughts almost immediately and be like, Hmm, that's, that's not a value of mine. That's not something that I want to profess and then reframe to something a little different. but yeah, we, I talked to the girls about hungry and full.

I talked to the girls about balanced plate. I talked to the girls about protein foods, energy foods, fat, and what all that does in the body. We talk about vitamins and minerals and, and food diversity. And so these are all things that you can teach your kids how to have optimal health from an early age without the calories and all that business, that i s not helpful.

Christina: Exactly. Yeah. I appreciate you sharing that. Cause I know That was a big topic. And like you said, the sabotaging thoughts is a big one. And you were able to connect that with something really meaningful, which is what do I want to pass on to my kids? For people who [00:21:00] struggle with that self kindness and just considering yourself, if you can think about it, like, how do I want to explain this to my daughter?

How would I share this with a friend? We can borrow that skill. Being kind to others is easy, but you have that skill. It's just a matter of learning how to turn that on yourself. And for people who are high achievers, highly self critical perfectionistic, which seems to be a lot of people who also have food challenges, it can be a really helpful way to say, I can borrow this skill that I know I have towards others for myself.

And then through that, like you mentioned, you were able to say, well, wait, I can change my own internal dialogue. So it's like, I'm helping myself. I'm , preventing from perpetuating this. And for so many of us and the women I talked to, especially. They grew up with mothers dieting or putting them on a diet from the age of 10 sometimes.

And like you [00:22:00] said, you start thinking about your body from a young age, you have a seven year old. So I think strengthening your motivation even more and your reasons for wanting to figure this out, because sometimes we do feel like. This isn't worth it. This is too hard. Like I'm giving up. And the really, the only failure is quitting is really just saying like, I'm not going to help myself anymore.

I'm just going to like, stop making an effort. And when life gets hard, we might scale back. That was another thing we talked about is like, what does it look like to scale back? And the whole idea of coaching is to teach you the skills so that you have it for life.

Not so that you're like dependent on a coach forever, but something you can learn how to, and feel confident to say, I know what skills I need to be working on. I know what to pay attention to. I have a plan moving forward. I know how to make this work longterm. So, I [00:23:00] just appreciate you sharing that whole process, cause it is personal, but I also think it's relatable to a lot of other women out there who are in a similar situation. So switching gears a little bit, I'd love to know what is different about the kind of coaching we've done, or just the process of what we've done. You kind of touched on it a little bit versus other things that you've tried or considered trying in the past.

Jamie: So I've never done like a one to one coaching before. I'm very DIY. I think I should be able to read the book and do it myself. So drastically different than anything I've tried before. And I just had to accept that I wasn't getting the results that I wanted. And that was one of the things that you and I talked about over and over and over again.

It's like, I don't want to quit. I want the results. I want to get where I want to be. And I think coaching was the difference that got me there. And Ultimately, the big difference is that we were able to identify what mattered to me and, and shrink the list and scale [00:24:00] to what my capacity is as a, you know, a working, busy mom with a family and just do the big rocks are the way that I think about them and, and let the rest go and to be okay with it, that was huge.

Christina: Yeah. I think that's such a good point. Like, don't major in the minors, focus on the things that matter most to you. And yeah, developing a personalized way of looking at things. So final question, what words of wisdom do you have for anyone out there who is like, maybe in a position you were in several months ago when you were frustrated, feeling defeated, feeling hopeless, but kind of considering or on the fence about coaching, what might you say to or yeah, any parting words of wisdom from your experience?

Jamie: So, I say there's no harm in, in picking up one of Georgie's books and trying yourself, but if it feels too hard, or if it feels impossible, weight loss shouldn't feel [00:25:00] impossible. It is hard, but it shouldn't be impossible. If it feels like you're just getting nowhere, then you're probably missing the support.

That's probably the piece. So I would reach out. I guess that's my, my words of wisdom. And if you're tired of, of losing the same weight, if you're ready to fix it for life, you need to learn the skills. And this is how I did it. I think a lot of other people have been successful too. So I would consider it.

Christina: Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Jamie, for everything and sharing your story. And I hope that a lot of people are encouraged and I think they will be so appreciate you.

Jamie: Yeah. absolutely. I loved working with you guys and I loved, you know, that I came for you to fix what I was eating and instead we looked at so much more and really ended up in a great place. Thanks.

Christina: Thank you for trusting us and me. It's been [00:26:00] really fun to see everything that you've accomplished in this period of time. And I think it's going to make a long term impact on you and future generations. So,

Jamie: Absolutely.

Christina: yay. /

Yeah.

Christina: so, what did you think about Jamie's story? I hope it encouraged and inspired you in your own story. One thing about the process of becoming a confident eater is it won't always be a perfect path to success. Learning to let go of diet perfectionism and understand that there will be setbacks and then learning how to deal with those setbacks with self-compassion is maybe one of the most important skills that you can learn in this process of becoming a confident, sensible eater. We actually have an episode coming out about that very topic next week on the breaking up with binge eating podcast. So stay tuned for that.

If you were listening and this conversation brought up some questions [00:27:00] for you and your own personal journey, then we would love to help. You can ask us questions by emailing Georgie fear@gmail.com. Or you can visit our website@confidenteaters.com and use the chat function to send us a message. / If you found this episode helpful, save it, share it and give us a rating so that we can help even more people on their confident eating journey. Thanks so much for listening. We hope that you have a wonderful day and we will see you in the next episode.