Confident Eaters

Progress Without Suffering with Chelsea
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Georgie: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Confident Eaters Podcast. I am Georgie Fear, and today I'm going to share with you a call I had with my delightful client, Chelsea. Chelsea is a great example of a few different things that are valuable. She's somebody who has always taken a very easygoing approach to meeting her goals, and her goals are to lose body fat and weight while still enjoying her life and having a good time practicing for competitive dance, which she engages in regularly.

She's also a great example of somebody who always says it like it is. So if I open her tracker and she says, oh, it was a treat fest and I ate baked goods all day, like I know I'm getting the truth from her. So what you'll hear on today's call is me conversing with Chelsea about the last couple weeks of her life since we've last spoken, and we'll talk about some of the challenges that she has faced. Recently, she has been dealing with some allergy symptoms that are really stubborn. She's also had a birthday celebration and a road trip. So [00:01:00] those of course brought in meals that were not home cooked and some more treat foods. We also talked about making exceptions and how making exceptions doesn't cause a problem as long as they are the exception.

So for example, in the call that we have today, we talk about the last two days over the weekend, which were very much exceptions, where she ate a lot more, treat foods, a lot less nutritious foods, but those were proceeded by 12 days of very nutritious, regular, goal-oriented eating. And I think that's a nice thing to remember that we don't have to get flustered or upset if we have a couple days that are not reflective of our nutrition ambitions.

As you hear right from her own lips, she has made so much progress without suffering because she has been patient, because she's allowed the process to take the time that it takes. She's improved her habits and her body has changed, and she knows that it will continue to change without suffering. You can hear she's not [00:02:00] distressed.

Another thing that I think is helpful is what to do when you feel like not cooking. When you just don't have the energy, the days when you're tempted to door dash or just pick up something on the way home or go through a drive-through and I'll talk with Chelsea about how she can be in that state and still get nutritious food without necessarily forcing herself to cook.

I hope you find the call enjoyable and that there's some tidbits in it that you can apply to your own life. I'll see you in the next episode. 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.

Hey, Chelsea.

Chelsea: Hello. How are you?

Georgie: How are you? I'm good. I'm good. [00:03:00] How are you?

Chelsea: I, I have been better. I actually sound pretty okay today, but I have like a hell of a cough that knocked me on my butt.

Georgie: That sucks. I'm sorry. When did that start bothering you?

Chelsea: Actually the reason why I was a minute late is that I was literally just getting off the phone with my dad because, I think this is allergy related. Like I just kind of miraculously get bronchitis last week of March, like every year, year for my whole life. And I've just never had a doctor who connected the dots. Like, they'd be like, oh yeah, that's just weird that you have some kind of cold right now, whatever. Or like bronchitis.

That sucks. And finally I was like, why does this keep happening this time every single year? So I'm like now trying figure out like, is this, is this some kind of bronchitis related to allergies? Could it be like asthma related? 'cause apparently [00:04:00] that usually gets involved anyway. So that's the long and short of what's been going on.

Georgie: Yeah. Sounds like you've been doing your homework and learning some stuff.

Chelsea: Yeah. Yeah, it's certainly giving me things to research.

Georgie: I think that's how so many become experts on medical conditions when we or someone in our family has them, we start learning all about them.

Chelsea: For real. For real. Ugh. So Yeah.

Georgie: So has that made it harder to eat nutritiously having the, the cough?

Chelsea: Yes. Yeah. This, it kind of threatened like a week ago and I thought I was keeping it at bay. And then I like accidentally skipped meds one night, like I guess Thursday or Friday night and woke up the next morning, actually woke up in the middle of the night.

Georgie: Yeah, like you can't breathe.

Chelsea: Yeah. So it's been a lot of like tea with honey. Some amount of like ice cream or just something to like cool things off. I know the dairy's not really ideal, but yeah. [00:05:00] Between,

Georgie: not if you're not allergic to it. I mean, some people don't have any negative reaction whatsoever to dairy.

Chelsea: That's true. I, I notice I tend to get kind of phlemmy.

Georgie: Okay.

Chelsea: Which probably isn't like really helping, but yeah, there would just be moments where I was like, really craving the cold of it, so yeah. Between like getting sick and then yesterday was my girlfriend's birthday. Oh. So there was a lot of just like, oh, like you know, let's have a friend over and we'll just have like a low key pajama party type thing.

But. Yeah, it was kind of like a confluence of, oh, it was really difficult to eat nutritiously.

Georgie: Yeah. I see. Just a wild treat day. Start to finish there on Saturday.

Chelsea: Yeah. Yep.

Georgie: Okay. So Saturday and Sunday we're sort of , not organized eating. Mm-hmm. And just chilling, trying to recover from your sickness and enjoy treats.

Chelsea: Yeah.

Georgie: Okay.

Chelsea: Yeah, pretty much it.

Georgie: And then, is today feeling like it's different so far? Does your eating feel a bit more organized and intentional today or are [00:06:00] we still in wild treat mode?

Chelsea: No, it's still a little bit more organized today. Part of the like exacerbating factor for all of this is that we had planned on road tripping for the weekend, which we did.

Georgie: Oh, okay.

Chelsea: Because I didn't really start feeling rough until we were already like, on route to stuff. So it was a combination of like, I have none of my typical food and I just want something that's easy or I don't have a lot of energy to dedicate to like seeking something out. That would be what I really want. So now that we're back home it is just a little bit easier to be normal.

Georgie: Yeah. How's the food supply at home right now?

Chelsea: Funnily enough, so I usually have like meal prep on hand and I do not have any meal prep right now, so it will be a little bit trickier this week especially 'cause I don't necessarily have like a ton of energy to do some of that stuff [00:07:00] myself. So it's probably going to be at least a couple days of. Door dashing.

Georgie: Yeah. And so are there places you can DoorDash from that you do feel like are supportive of your goals?

Chelsea: Yes. I think the only challenge will be like avoiding it, feeling too repetitive and just being like, oh, I've had this. X number of meals this week, why don't we go and get something else?

Georgie: Got it.

Chelsea: Yeah. That would be the only potential roadblock.

Georgie: Well, it looks like the last two weeks that sort of like block off time. For meal planning at the start of the or was that block off time in your calendar for meals?

Chelsea: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Georgie: The latter,

Chelsea: yes.

Georgie: But not planning what they latter but blocking off time for them. Okay. And so is that a recurring thing or do you need to do it every Monday?

Chelsea: You know what, I could just go ahead and like officially set it, it, yeah. I should be able to just officially set it

Georgie: Okay.

Chelsea: To be recurring every week. [00:08:00]

Georgie: Like, I have my lunch in my calendar for an hour and I have dinner in there for an hour because I sometimes see people in the evening. So I'm trying to reduce that. And I can always drag it if somebody's like, I can only make this time. It's like, oh, I can eat lunch early. I can eat lunch late. But then it different, it never disappears.

I try not to delete it. I try to just

Chelsea: mm-hmm.

Georgie: And I can shorten it to a half hour. I don't need a whole hour. Like I can still fiddle with it, but that way it's there as the placeholder.

Chelsea: Yeah. Yeah, that sounds like a good plan, and I can just go ahead and take care of that.

Georgie: Cool. All right. And you've been really good at stopping work at 5:00 PM most days.

Chelsea: Yep. That's gotten easier.

Georgie: Nice. what do you think made it get easier over time?

Chelsea: I would love to say that it's just a matter of me being cognizant of it, but it was also just the realization that thinking about it past 5:00 PM was like not making anything better or more specifically that like. [00:09:00] Focusing on just doing constantly was like actively harming everything and improving nothing.

Georgie: Mm-hmm.

Chelsea: Yeah,

Georgie: things become easier. I'm sort of trying to look for a pattern here. Perhaps not only refrain from doing them for at least an initial period of time, but recognize how much harm that prevents. When we are able to change something earlier, like sort of upstream in the,

Chelsea: yeah,

Georgie: "I don't like any of these things" chain of events.

Chelsea: Yeah.

Georgie: Cool, cool, cool. What what things have improved as a result of stopping work by five?

Chelsea: I think it's kind of just the mindset of like, there is no work, police who's going to come and yell that something hasn't been done. Like, today's a good example of that. Like there's not anything urgent that really needs my attention today. And there's basically no benefit of me like working while sick. I should just rest really. Like there's [00:10:00] a couple emails that I'll send, but like that's really all that benefits from getting done so.

Georgie: Right. So you sort of may have had an assumption in the past that working late would help you get more done.

Chelsea: Mm-hmm.

Georgie: And so it sort of made you push back and question the validity of that assumption and you're realizing, no, I'm actually not getting much done if I'm like burnt out and sick and have been working for too many hours in a row.

Chelsea: Yeah. Yeah. And any kind of like interactions with people would probably be better if it's just like scheduled and time limited versus ongoing and time consuming.

Georgie: Mm-hmm. All right. Good job there. Feeling hungry. 30 to 60 minutes before eating. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. 75, a hundred percent, a hundred percent, a hundred percent.

Two thirds. I realize I just in the past couple days. So the last two days were not your norm, you were also, and honestly, it's okay to make, I mean, I'm not the, the voice of like the authority on [00:11:00] what's okay, but like, I think it's okay to make exceptions. Most people also feel like it's okay to make exceptions. It's,

Chelsea: yeah, the past couple days it's just kind of been a lot of like grazing on like hot soup or something like that, partially for the steam or the, like, I'm taking mucinex, so having something on hand all the time to make sure that like I'm not gonna run out of water in some form is pretty helpful. So yeah, I know the past two days are like, I'm not gonna somehow snowball into that being what happens. That's just, yeah.

Georgie: Yeah, no one's gonna behave like they're sick once they get better.

Chelsea: Mm-hmm.

Georgie: Because you realize like a lot of the reason you're behaving that way is because you're sick and it doesn't feel appropriate anymore once your energy comes back and you're, you get tired of the couch at some point.

Chelsea: Yeah, exactly.

Georgie: All right. Eating three or four times with no bites in between. Also looking super, super good. 3, 4, 3, 4, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3. Treats observation. [00:12:00] Just from your perspective, how do you feel like treats have been going other than the last two days?

Chelsea: Yeah, if I take the last two days out of it, I feel like it's actually been pretty lovely. like my scale for the past two weeks has been solidly teal and I feel like I've gotten to genuinely eat whatever I wanted. Like. Even though it was very belated, like one of the, let's see, what night was it? Actually a couple of these were birthday dinners with family that like just happened to come late.

And then my girlfriend's birthday also being very close to mine. And yeah, I didn't feel like I had any weird food rules or I couldn't have one thing or another. I just,. You know what's cool when like you're actively getting closer to your physique goal while also just getting to enjoy life and not feeling like you have weird restrictions on [00:13:00] stuff. That's how the past two weeks have felt.

Georgie: That sounds pretty positive.

Chelsea: Yeah.

Georgie: A lot of people would say that's not possible. You can't get to your goal while being comfortable

Chelsea: without like sacrifice. Yeah. Yeah. I've been thinking that specific thought like several times over the past couple of weeks for that exact reason. And just kind of again, took me back to like, man, I wish more people knew you or worked with you or read your book or anything else because it makes me really sad, just kind of seeing what people have normalized.

Georgie: Hmm. In the sense of like suffering for weight loss, being normalized.

Chelsea: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Georgie: Yeah. Roland my husband and a friend of mine who is staying here, and I all had this conversation this morning about like the lengths that people go to that involve so much suffering for things like bodybuilding competitions or figure competitions, let alone people who are non-competitive and [00:14:00] just really desperately want to be in a different looking body.

I think we, we all have a bit of like the Yeah, yeah. Retrospect.

Chelsea: Yeah. I follow a couple of bodybuilding subreddits and especially for like bikini and fit model competitors, and I see, I see what they will talk about and I probably see a post from there like once a day and yeah. I like often have the same thought of like, wow.

It's like really? Hhhhh It's just like a shame how normalized the suffering of it is slash I'm glad that that's not how I am operating, even though obviously it's very impressive to see what people can do. But I'm also just excited for like, I don't know, maybe it's just like a slight shift in that culture.

But then again, [00:15:00] bodybuilding is also like actively killing people as a sport. So may, I don't know. It's a whole nother conversation.

Georgie: It's interesting to me that you can enter that tank for even limited periods of time and not soak it up.

Chelsea: Yeah. Yeah,

Georgie: it's pretty good. You know, it's a nice thing to, to notice. I have limited tolerance for I'll say calorie anxiety.

Chelsea: Yes,

Georgie: and like I've gone to, I've been invited to a lot of different, you know, healthy living or weight loss groups and I do like to check them out. And sometimes you find like, like-minded people or, or other professionals that are doing really, really good work.

And so I like to accept when they invite me to their group and you know, potentially meet people who might be referrals or colleagues in the future. But a lot of the time it's not people running the group most of the time, but a lot of times in the group there will be very distressed posts from people who are finding that the calorie references for sweet [00:16:00] potatoes are 10 calories higher, per hundred grams on this site then that site, and they don't know which one is accurate and they're like losing sleep over it.

Chelsea: Yeah. Ugh. God, a lot of what I am taking in now is either competitors who like, aren't really talking about dieting. It's just very clear that they are tracking based on like whatever they're posting.

But I think that sort of the tougher one is being on more like weight loss subreddits in general. Which most of the content I ignore, but if someone is like my height. Like once a week, maybe I'll see someone who has like a really incredible transformation. And I like looking at those, but it is, it is just like a bummer because basically 100% of them functionally are doing it through calorie counting and like a pretty controlling, restrictive [00:17:00] approach.

Which is, yeah, it's really frustrating. I think if I had been like closer to it. It would be maybe triggering in some way. I think like I've had enough distance that it doesn't really do that, but Like, man, I just can't wait until it is more about like. I don't know. I don't know. I keep thinking like I, I can't wait until we talk about what happens when you move away from ultra processed foods and you learn to listen to your own hunger cues, but it sounds like on a surface level, so similar to like the clean eating craze. So I don't know, there's just like not a lot of room for nuance online, but.

Georgie: But it would benefit a lot of these communities. I agree. Yeah. 'cause people can take any guidance or aim or aspiration and take it to a rigidity level that becomes psychologically unhealthy. Like you can be the same about like, I will let no ultra [00:18:00] processed food, cross my lips mm-hmm.

And feel guilty if you have, you know, a bottled salad dressing and, and go through all of the same exact mental torture then that people do when they set a calorie limit and then they exceed it. So I think the key with whatever we're finding successful is like having that flexibility to say it's okay to be flexible.

It's okay to recognize that like two days out of 14 out of even more than that because, you know, even in the prior weeks before our last phone call, like there weren't days that looked like that with fried chicken, ice cream, wild treat day, tea with honey all day long. That's a true exception.

Chelsea: Yeah.

Georgie: And our exceptions don't make our physiques. It's like the, the habits that we do regularly, day in and day out are.

Chelsea: Yeah. So I think that, I guess brings me to maybe like the big task at hand. So my meal prep service is [00:19:00] paused. Because the person who's offering it had to like change up something in her business model. So that means I have to change something, so I make sure I have food.

Normally, if I hadn't been sick, I would've said like, yeah, probably today would be like some kind of meal prep day. Being sick on top of not just having food waiting means it's probably gonna be like a little while of just door dashing stuff until I like have better stamina. But yeah, I need to figure out something.

Georgie: Yeah.

Chelsea: Oh, and the other thought that I had on our previous topic was like, I think the thing that I was missing beforehand in my journey was.

It'd be so easy outside looking in to maybe see what I'm doing and thinking that it's like clean eating adjacent I mean, not based on the last couple days. But I think the thing that like I wish people understood or I wish I could have understood [00:20:00] way back when is that I genuinely am enjoying everything.

I am eating every bit as much, if not a lot more than like the food I used to be eating.

Georgie: Cool.

Chelsea: And that was kind of the interesting thing about the treat days the past couple of days is like we got fried chicken while we were on the road. I needed to just like get some food at a road stop. And there's just nothing. The food options are truly limited. And yeah, the amount of times where I was just like, yeah, this is just mediocre. Yeah. And that's being like pretty generous. Like the fried chicken, like the chicken itself doesn't really have any flavor or taste. The breading isn't actually that flavorful either. It's just like a little bit better.

Georgie: Yeah.

Chelsea: I kind of had that thought about a lot of the treat things and was sort of in this weird limbo of like, all right, well I'm not gonna drive myself crazy looking for a [00:21:00] place that we can stop on our three hour drive.

Georgie: Yeah,

Chelsea: that has a decent salad. Like I just need to eat something. But it also like just doesn't have the same hold over me.

Georgie: Yeah, that's great. That's great to notice. There's different rewards to eating different types of foods. We know there's like some taste, bud sensory nostalgia, dopamine- linked things that happen with ultra processed foods, but those aren't the only rewards.

There's also meaning and pride and feeling nourished and fiber and steady blood sugar, and all these other things that feel really good about unprocessed or minimally processed foods. And so I think a lot of times. That experience that you are having is recognizing like, well, I've, I've kind of steered toward receiving more of the latter type of reward and like I'm kind of enjoying that, I'm digging that flavor right now as opposed to the

Chelsea: mm-hmm.

Georgie: You know, the deep fried, sweet dopamine reward.

Chelsea: Yeah. [00:22:00] Yeah, for sure.

Georgie: So you mentioned DoorDash will probably be a helpful support this week. Do you get groceries delivered as well?

Chelsea: Yeah, I do.

Georgie: What store?

Chelsea: I can do it from a number of places actually, and I do have a. Thankfully, I'm not contagious.

I can go pick up groceries and I have a lot of places really close to me, so I definitely have some options. I think it's the DoorDash might be helpful in the immediate term, just for sheer maybe lack of energy to just be like standing in the kitchen to do. More in the way of meal prep. But yeah,

Georgie: so the grocery stores in my town, like I can go on there and I can order like one of their pre-made salads.

Chelsea: Mm. Yeah.

Georgie: And feta and chicken and berries and get that. Or if I'm sick of that, I can get the Southwest chicken salad, which has greens and chicken and black beans and corn and salsa. And

Chelsea: there's a really good Mediterranean place that's just like five [00:23:00] minutes away from me that. They're not a grocery store per se, but they have like, so they have probably 20 different salads that you can choose from and you can get them in like quart containers.

So I was thinking that maybe gonna pick me up a poke bowl for dinner after she goes to the gym without me. And then tomorrow that I would go to the Mediterranean place and like pick up a few like quart containers of salads to tide me over for a little while.

Georgie: Totally. And if it's one of the more energy dense oily or cheesy or pasta e salads, you can always just put it over a bed of spinach or romaine, which you can buy in a bag pre-washed and pre-chopped.

Chelsea: Yeah. So that sounds good.

Georgie: Yeah. Even when you're sick or just not feeling up to doing much labor in the kitchen, eating healthy is still totally accessible. You just have to sort of problem solve and think. Many days I will just make sure that I have hummus in the fridge. Mm-hmm. And something two or three of the following, like bell [00:24:00] pepper, snap peas, broccoli, carrots, cherry tomatoes, radishes. Anything that one can dip in hummus and yeah, comes time to eat. And I have zero interest in cooking. It's like cottage cheese for protein, blob of hummus, bunch of cut up veggies, and I'm sitting down four minutes later to eat lunch after just spooning some things in the containers. Bread and peanut butter may be another way to round out that meal if I want some more carbs and fat.

Chelsea: Yeah. They do a homemade like whole wheat pita that they will just give you with anything. And then I have like some sourdough discard as well that I could make some pita that way if I need more starch on top of like the veggies and they have a great jalapeno cilantro humus.

Georgie: Nice. And you can always cook up an egg or two if you like eggs to get some extra protein.

Mm-hmm. Sometimes if I don't feel like cooking any meat, I will use a lot of cottage cheese, Greek yogurt, egg whites from the carton.

Chelsea: Mm-hmm.

Georgie: Protein powder [00:25:00] mixed with milk like with porridge or, or oatmeal.

Chelsea: That sounds good.

Georgie: So, yeah,

Chelsea: man, I'm, I'm hungry.

Georgie: Okay. Well keep yourself nourished is my bottom the core message there. Keep yourself nourished even if you don't feel like cooking. 'cause it's totally understandable to not want to cook sometimes.

Chelsea: Yeah. Yeah. That sounds good.

Georgie: Alright. Do you wanna change anything on the tracker or are you happy with sort of how it has been?

Chelsea: I think it's working well. My thought last time of like just keeping the tracker the way it is. Like that treats would kind of tighten up as well. Wound up like largely being true. Yeah, I noticed it was just easier to go more days where I would have like just a chai or something like that. Which is great. My dance partner slash teacher ruptured his achilles yesterday, so I have no idea what's in store for like dance practices in that training for a little while. But we can, we can talk about [00:26:00] that.

Georgie: Oh. Oh yeah. Has he had it like scanned or diagnosed or imaged?

Chelsea: I think he's probably getting more than one MRI this week and they'll find out more, but his current understanding is that it's, I. They're trying to see the extent of the rupture, but they think it's kind of like hanging by a thread at the moment.

Georgie: That was my, where my questioning was going. 'cause that'll make the difference. If it's like a complete rupture and the calf balls up, you're, you're probably in for surgery. 'cause there's no way to get them to, to play nice.

Chelsea: Right.

Georgie: And it will be a longer recovery. Than if it's any, any degree less than, than full, you know?

Chelsea: Yeah. It's funny because like I'm not super stressed about like not competing and also my desire to like, I don't want to like back off of any of the fitness goals, but at the same time I know that I will probably enjoy a short rest from like just the regular training regimen.

Georgie: Mm-hmm.

Chelsea: And that, I mean like going into the [00:27:00] studio three days a week instead of four or. Us not working on conditioning because it would be really hard for me to get the same level of conditioning practice. So I know that that could potentially change how things look on the scale, but I know that 90% of it is just gonna be determined by what's on the tracker anyway, so Great.

Georgie: Okay, cool. Well, I'll get my fingers crossed that it is an incomplete tear.

Chelsea: Yeah. Yeah, I should know more a little bit later this week. I like, don't feel super weird about it yet, but I'm also, haven't had it like actually change anything yet. Maybe in two weeks I'll be starting to go kind of stir crazy. We'll see.

Georgie: Sure. Understandable. All right, cool. Well, good to catch up with you. Awesome work. I hope you're able to get some solutions for the sort of seasonal bronchitis.

Chelsea: Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Fingers crossed.

Georgie: All right, well take care. [00:28:00] I'm always just an email or a text away if you need me.

Chelsea: Sounds good, Georgie.

Georgie: See ya. Bye.