Confident Eaters

Why you still want food when you're physically satisfied with Haylin Alpert
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[00:00:00] Hey, they're confident eaters podcast, listeners. Welcome to this week's episode. I'm Christina, and we are bringing back Haylin Alpert for another great conversation discussing the most frequently asked questions of not only his gym members at core principles, but also questions we hear from our one-on-one clients regularly. First up is the topic of sugar. Is sugar going to kill us prematurely? And is all sugar created, equal, such as sugar from fruit versus added sugar? Is it as harmful to eat a banana, for example, as it is to eat a Snickers bar? You're going to find that out in today's episode. Next up is if you're someone who has tried every diet you've ever heard of, and have not seen long-term success. But you're also still kind of on the fence about whether you think hiring a nutrition coach would be worth it. Listen at Georgie and Haylin discuss how hiring a coach, one that deals beyond meal plans and macros, can actually bring you more freedom than signing up [00:01:00] for another diet.

Next up is the topic of cravings, habits, and feeling out of control around food. What if you really want that third slice of pizza, but you don't at the same time. How do you make the best decision for yourself in the heat of the moment? If you're someone who feels like their cravings are just out of control or that you can't stop overeating, then you'll want to stick around until the end of the episode, because we talk about how to overcome the habits of nighttime, snacking, and overeating. Even though it feels impossible. You're going to hear some evidence-based actionable strategies that you can start using today to become a more confident, sensible eater. Check it out now.

Georgie: Welcome to the Confident Eaters podcast, where you get proven methods to end overeating, emotional eating, and stressing about food. We're heading for harmony between your body, food, and feelings. [00:02:00] Hosted by me, Georgie Fear, and my team at Confident Eaters.

Haylin: Hi, Georgie.

Georgie: Hello.

Haylin: I got an email from another gym owner that they send to their clients and it was regarding sugar.

Georgie: Okay.

Haylin: And The nutshell summary is how absolutely terrible. Sugar is for you. That consumption of sugar, any kind of sugar, including fruit will kill you, prematurely kill you. So can you, can you share from your point of view, maybe some counterpoints or draw down the alarmist level of this message that you probably won't die from eating some sugar. And should it be everyone's goal to eliminate all sugar from their diet.

Georgie: Totally. Yeah, there's a lot of questions in there, but I get the gist of it, which is like, do we really need to look at sugar like it's poison? Like, is giving my kids a cookie the same as like, pouring them bleach [00:03:00] to drink? No, is the short answer.

You know, we are all going to die, not because we ate sugar. There certainly is some merit. You know, I personally try to watch the amount of sugar that I eat and reduce and minimize it, but there's a such an important contrast between minimizing and reducing sugar and swearing it off in a sort of, alarm based zero tolerance sort of thing.

So the difference between a low sugar life, and I absolutely forbid this stuff to cross my lips, and I won't eat ketchup because it has two grams of sugar in it, sort of mentality. There's no real health benefit from going to, from a low sugar diet to a no sugar diet, and there's a whole lot of neuroticism and stress involved for a lot of people . Yeah, so I encourage people it's definitely helpful in a lot of ways to reduce your sugar intake and be aware of the foods that have a lot of sugar added to them.

Not all sugars are the same. You know, there's some foods that have naturally occurring sugars, [00:04:00] milk being one of them, fruit being another one of them that are not associated with the same health detriment as added sugar to hyper processed foods. So like a Snickers bar is worse in the sense of like the added sugar than a banana.

So even if you look at them and you say, well, both of these have the same amount of grams of sugar Health recommendations from global organizations recommend that we reduce the added sugars and don't worry so much about the sugar that's in your fruit and actually health Outcomes of a high added sugar diet are very different than the outcomes of a diet that has a lot of fruit in it So we see an increase in cardiovascular disease cancer diabetes and a lot of other problems in a high added sugar diet, but a diet that has a lot of fruit in it and not necessarily devoid of milk products, which also have some natural sugar is actually associated with improved health.

So like eating lots of fruit is unequivocally good for us. One of the most effective thing you can do to reduce your cancer risk is to eat [00:05:00] fruit. So I don't know if I answered all of the questions, but short answer, I don't think we all have to cut out sugar. I don't think it's deadly.

There's room to have a cookie or a Snickers bar on occasion. I would just try and keep them to accessories of your meal and not actual meals made of sweet foods.

Haylin: Got it. So there is a place for them. They shouldn't be the central component of your meals.

Georgie: Exactly. Yeah. And you know, different organizations draw the line at different places with how much is healthy.

Like different organizations have said 5 percent of total calories from sugar, 10 percent of total calories from sugar. With my personal clients, I will usually say 10 percent of total calories from all treat foods, meaning fried foods, alcohol and desserts. It makes the math fairly easy, too, if you think the average person needs between, eh, maybe 1, 500 and 2, 500 calories a day.

How much of that can I have from just pure fun food? [00:06:00] Be like, somewhere around 200 calories a day. So it gives you something you can wrap your brain around. It's not a dozen doughnuts, but you know, it's one. So it gives you an idea of scope. And I think it helps to think about saying yes to some things and no to other things so that we don't end up with too much low quality stuff in our diets.

Haylin: So I'll oversimplify and summarize by saying You absolutely should have cake on your birthday.

Georgie: A hundred percent. Yes. Otherwise you end up older. All right. What else you got for me?

Haylin: Let's talk about nutrition coaching in general. So in getting people to try their hands at nutrition coaching or using a nutrition coach to help them solve Some of their weight loss and perhaps body image. Most folks are not reluctant to try another diet, even after they've tried many and even if they haven't had much success with them, but [00:07:00] in my experience, people are considerably more reluctant to be open to the idea of working with a nutrition coach. So one, I'm curious to hear why you think that is.

And what might you say to someone who's had the experience of like trying a bunch of diets, not feeling like they've had a success, a lot of success. What might you say to open their mind to try working with a nutrition coach?

Georgie: Sure. You're right. The most people are like totally comfortable trying out a new diet themselves.

Partially it may be an old stat, but it's something like the average person tries four and a half times a year to lose weight. Ha ha ha! And almost none of them are actually using a professional to help them. Some of the reasons that I think people are hesitant to work with a nutrition coach would be that they don't want to give up control.

Choosing what we get to eat is one of, like, the biggest pleasures for most adults. Like, I want to eat what I want to eat. I don't want to eat what, I don't know, some [00:08:00] person told me I have to eat. So they may have this incorrect impression that working with a coach means that they don't get to make their food decisions anymore.

Second, and it's, like, sort of related, they could have worked with someone in the past and had it be, like, a horrible experience because the person gave them a meal plan. You know, I worked as a personal trainer before I worked as a dietitian, and the horrible things that went on in the gym that I worked at, with like trainers writing meal plans out for clients on scraps of paper and giving it to them, and it was all just permutations of like rice, broccoli, and chicken, and like nobody's gonna actually eat that.

So they could have had a terrible experience with somebody in the past and not realize that, you know, they didn't really get the cream of the crop when it comes to somebody helping them. And then I think the reason that working with a coach is beneficial is also the third reason people are hesitant to work with a coach.

And that's because involving another human totally changes the dynamic, right? So, [00:09:00] on the positive side, If I know I'm meeting Haylin for my workouts and that I'm going to talk with Halen about my nutrition each week, I'm going to think twice about some of the things that I might do that aren't ideal, or maybe aren't in line with my goals.

Because I'm thinking, I'm going to have to explain that to Haylin. I don't know how much I want to explain that. And so it can actually make us kind of have an added layer of restraint when it comes to doing things that We might just give ourselves a pass for, be like, I'm just going to forget about this, nobody knows but me, sort of thing.

So it's helpful to have that external accountability, and yet we fear it, because most of us are worried that we're just going to disappoint somebody. if we have too many pints of beer, or if we fail to do something that we told them we would do, if we have a meal that's cereal and a fruit roll up because, like, we had no other groceries on hand.

So I encourage people to think about how beneficial that accountability could be to [00:10:00] them. If they're working with a coach who isn't going to judge them, who isn't going to you know, belittle them or act high and mighty and superior because the best coaches that I know, don't do that, you know, we're all like, yeah, we've totally, you know, eaten soup out of the can, it's no big deal.

And we don't judge people for having difficulty because we know what difficulty is and we've had it ourselves. So, yeah, I think more people should give a nutrition coaching with a human being a try. And I think that added accountability from another person can help you gain a stronger sense of accountability for yourself going forward.

So you actually become more independent as opposed to reliant on somebody else over time.

Haylin: Good nutrition coaching doesn't take control from the individual at all. It just maybe helps them shape the decisions that they want to make, but right, they should be in full control of the decisions they make.

Georgie: Totally. Yeah. I feel like, you know, the skills that we give people [00:11:00] actually give them more choices.

I use the acronym Yahoo when people say I had to, I'll write back Yahoo, which is you always have other options because like, no, binge eating is not your only option. Getting fast food is not your only option. And, we're all guilty of this, I am too, like we get ourselves into these like ruts of the way we make choices and the choices we see may be limited, but if you have a coach who's pointing out like, there's also option Q, and let me teach you how to do option Y, and so now you don't just have A or B, but you have Q and Y, and you have more things to think about and more freedom really.

Haylin: Awesome. Well, it brought up another question this concept of. Wanting something, someone wanting something and also not wanting something at the same time. Talking about pizza here. You want that you've had two slices and you really want this third slice, but also at the same time, you know, you're kind of feeling satisfied. You probably know you probably won't [00:12:00] feel good, like physically won't feel good if you have this third slice and you know, it'll throw your balanced meal that you've already had out of whack, but you still want the darn slice of pizza. Tell me a little bit about what's going on here and how you help folks work through that.

Georgie: Totally. Okay, so it is a really interesting thing why we can still want food even if we're aware of our body being physically satisfied. So one thing that I find is really helpful is just to investigate a little bit more about what that want is and where the want is coming from.

Because sometimes it's about the pleasure of the pizza. I love pizza. It's one of my favorite foods. So sometimes it's like, no, I just want the enjoyment of having that. But sometimes it's actually even a little more out of left field. Something like I don't want to have to go fire up TurboTax and start filing my taxes.

I want to stay here and keep eating pizza. Or you want it because you're angry that someone said something [00:13:00] to you, and you didn't say something back. You held your tongue, but you're still angry, and you're going to take it out on that third slice of pizza. So doing a little reflection about like, why do I want this third slice of pizza? Can be Really handy.

A lot of times I have found that people who are dealing with this at the very end of the day, like dinner or snacks in the evening, have been almost not generous enough with themselves during the day. So, the really strong want for something and, and feeling averse to exerting willpower, they're just like, no, I don't want to have willpower, I just want to eat it.

Is because they've been exerting willpower and restraint all day. They've been holding their bladder until they could go to the bathroom between classes. They've been holding their tongue when a student cursed at them and they, you know, had to retain composure as a professional. Or they're putting their needs last so they can make sure they get the dinner that everybody else wants on the table, even though they don't really like that food.

So you may [00:14:00] find if you have like a really strong compulsive urge to eat a particular food, that being a little more giving to yourself during the day, taking breaks, giving yourself the things that you want for meals, expressing your opinion where it's professionally responsible to do so can be super helpful.

Another thing discussion that I like to have about that hypothetical Situation of the third slice of pizza is that we can, there's nothing wrong with you for wanting the third slice of pizza, you know, wanting things that are sensory pleasures is the most normal thing in the world. But what we don't want to do is focus only on the benefit that you want.

So like taste of pizza in my mouth, that's the benefit. That's what I want. But as you brought up, there's also some downsides. There's some cons. Like, if I'm lactose intolerant, I could have a really rough time from having that much cheese. Or, you know, I've been trying to eat more vegetables, and there's not going to be any room for vegetables if I eat that third slice of pizza.

Or, I've been trying to lose weight so my blood pressure comes [00:15:00] down, and I know eating past my body's needs is going to move me away from my goal. So now we've got like, a bit more information to help us here. It's not like if the car salesman was just only telling you the strong points of a car, you'd be like, I don't feel like I have all the information.

I also want to know like, what are the shortcomings of it? Cause everything's got some pros and cons. And so once you've fleshed out both sides of the choose the food sort of decision, you can also think about, what are the pros and cons of the alternative, which would be getting up and clearing the table and getting a glass of water, because then we've got some different pros and cons to the alternate choice.

So if I decide to just get up and get away from the table, I've got some pros Like, I'm moving closer to my goals of lower weight and lower blood pressure, no stomach ache from the lactose, etc. I can envision feeling healthier, sleeping better, all of those good things, the reason that I [00:16:00] don't want to overeat.

And then the cons would be, I don't get to have the taste of pizza for, for more minutes, you know. And so now you've kind of got like pros and cons for each of those two decisions. That can really help you see there's no right or wrong decision. You kind of select the column of outcomes. that you want.

So it's not about the behavior, but think about selecting the outcomes that you want, because it's like a package deal. You can't have the taste of the pizza without the calories and the lactose or the heartburn. So often I'll kind of talk that through with clients and it sounds super academic and artificial.

Like, how can you use that in real life? I'm not going to stop and like draw columns and be like pros and cons of, of each thing here. But when you do it in the, the practice mindset or in a discussion with a coach and you get to practice looking at each food decision as not only yes or no, but like infinite shades of [00:17:00] gray, you could cut half the slice of pizza.

You could do a lot of different things and that there's no right or wrong, then that makes it a lot easier to, you know, make a choice that gives you the outcomes that you're happy with. Does that clarify a little bit for you or give you some ideas for things to talk with your clients about?

Haylin: That is helpful.

And it's probably worth noting, You don't have to come to the same conclusion each time. It can be the same pros and cons, right? But you can have, you can draw a different conclusion every time you do that little analysis.

Georgie: A hundred percent. Yeah. It's not like there really isn't a right and wrong because there's nothing wrong with choosing to exceed your calorie expenditure on a particular day.

Like even people that are on a mission to lose weight can still have days when they don't make progress toward the goal and still get there. You can, you can take a day off. You can, you know, you can choose to have more of a calorie deficit on days when you feel able to handle that. And then on other days when you feel like, you know, I'm going to go for weight maintenance [00:18:00] today. Given everything else going on, that's the best I got. So yeah, you can, sometimes you have two slices of pizza. Sometimes you have three.

Haylin: So part follow up part transition to the next question is we know it can be hard to like hit the pause button in the middle and the heat of the moment when you want that third slice of pizza, it can be challenging to actually do the pros and cons as you just mentioned.

So the one of the other concepts that has come up recently, a couple of clients mentioned is like feeling out of control around food, like not really wanting it, but not being able to stop themselves.

Georgie: Sure, yeah, it's It's as distressing as being in a car where the brakes fail. I'm used to being able to slow this thing down So I can understand why that sensation like in particular really upsets people Now there, the difference between the brakes failing in your car and feeling like you can't stop around food is that the feeling that you can't stop around food is what we call [00:19:00] emotional reasoning. You feel like you can't stop, but that doesn't mean in reality. You are, it's impossible for you to stop. So I never want to minimize it and be like, all you have to do is stop and like, make it sound like it's the easiest thing in the world. But reminding yourself, no one else is controlling my arms and legs.

So if somebody walked in the door and put a gun to my head and said, you stop eating, I'm going to blow your brains out. You'd be able to stop eating, but of course it's very difficult when you're in that state, so it can feel like it takes some extreme motivation, but we're just going for possible. Like, is it possible for you to be in control of your arms and legs and put the food down and get out of the building if it was on fire?

Like, yes, it's possible for you to stop. So once we've achieved, like, the agreement that it's possible, then we have to look at, like, why is it so darn difficult? Cuz It's anything but easy, even if it's possible. And so, some of the reasons that people find that it's incredibly difficult to stop [00:20:00] themselves around food often have to do with either biological factors that are driving them to eat, such as they've been under eating all day.

And if you've been on a crash diet, or you're eating hardly anything, or you skipped two meals in a row and, you know, just had coffee all day, you get home for dinner, Yeah, there's some really strong impulses coming from the primordial parts of your brain that are like, EAT, EAT, EAT! And so, it takes a lot of work from your rational brain to be like, Whoa, slow down.

Hang on, breathe. We maybe don't need to eat the whole thing. So there can be that physical drive that will happen from a large calorie deficit. That'll make somebody feel driven to overeat. More commonly, it's something that's emotional. And so often, the drive to eat, in particular, high fat, high sugar, palatable foods, like chips, ice cream, [00:21:00] cake, cookies, peanut butter sandwiches, the drive to eat those things and then the feeling like we can't stop often is linked to having restricted that food in the past.

And so, we don't actually want to stop because we feel like If we continue eating it, maybe we won't go back to wanting it and have that tug of war of denial, but I want it. Like, if I just eat it until I'm sick of it, maybe I, I just won't have to fight with it anymore. Or we feel like it's just so amazing because I haven't had it in so long.

I've just been dreaming about it and I haven't been able to eat it. Like I talked to people that are on low carb diets that are like dreaming of baguettes and bagels and all these carby things. I'm like, when you're having baguette dreams, it's time to let yourself have some bread. But yeah, if you restrain yourself from anything for long enough, when you finally get it, there's the sensory pleasure plus the emotional of like, finally, I don't have to hold myself back.

I can eat this thing. So that can lead to overdoing it as [00:22:00] well. The third thing that I'll point out is that many times, you know, binge eating, which, you know, we define as consuming an objectively large amount of food in a finite time frame, coupled with that sense of loss of control. As well as regret afterward when people are experiencing that sort of cluster of things.

There's often a phenomenon that we call experiential avoidance. So it's not so much that you are compelled to eat the food, but that you are compelled to get away from something else that's going on. So, the something else can be any number of unpleasant emotional states in our lives, but sometimes it's worth looking at things other than the food and why it feels so important for you to escape it.

Because sometimes that's where the most productive work lies.

Haylin: is there also a habitual piece to this? Like if you every night have sour cream and onion chips at eight o'clock when you pop the show on [00:23:00] and that's just what you do?, It's unconscious at that point, right? So you almost are not completely in control, just happening unconsciously?

Georgie: The urge that the habit can kick up, yeah, it is subconscious at that point. It's not something you asked for or planned on. But you're still in control of what you do with that urge. Like, if I got in this loop where every day I was sitting down after dinner with a bag of sour cream and onion potato chips and I realized that I wanted to change this habit, I might say, okay, what am I going to do with this behavior, or this urge?

So that time rolls around, my mouth is like, sour cream and onion potato chips now, Georgie, now's when we do it. I'm going to be like, okay, I'm going to make some tea. I'm going to drink that instead. I'm going to go take a piano lesson online, do something that gets my brain challenged and do something else.

I'm going to tough it out. I'm going to just sit down and watch TV in the normal spot and just eliminate the chips from the equation. It might be easier if I just don't have chips at home for a while. So it's very [00:24:00] inconvenient for me to go out and get chips. You know, there's numerous things that people can do to break the cycle of a habit.

So, habit tends to be the sort of thing that, like, initiates eating, not so much the, I'm out of control and I can't stop eating, you know, I think there's some different dynamics between, the start eating and the stop eating signals can be very different.

Haylin: Yeah, so there are some really good tools in there for ideas of, how to get themselves back in control or at least try some things that they can try to break the cycle.

Georgie: Totally. Yeah, we covered, like, some questions that people might ask themselves, like, why do I want this? Is there something else stirring beneath the surface that's, you know, kind of coming to light in this as, as a food craving? Or am I, In control, but I feel out of control and making sure that there's the difference there, you know, just acknowledging that it's possible to stop, but that it's difficult.

And if we look, we can figure out why it's so difficult and bring the difficulty down to where it feels doable. And we talked about the kind of [00:25:00] pros and cons about decision making. Now there's no right or wrong that each avenue that we consider taking just gets us to a set of outcomes. And so we really just choose the outcomes that we want.

Haylin: All right, Georgie. That was great. Awesome. Thanks so much.

Georgie: Thank you

Christina: Wow. I warned you.

It was going to be good. What kinds of things did that episode bring up for you? I hope that you found some good takeaways for you to try out for yourself. If you need any support, or if you have a question that you'd like for us to cover on a future podcast episode, send us a message@confidenteaters.com. I'm Christina and we here at confident eaters, hope that you have an awesome day. And we'll see you in the next episode.