Hi and welcome to the Mindful Shape podcast. I’m Paula Parker, and I’m a life and weight loss coach. I thought I would do this topic today because it’s been coming up a lot lately with my clients. When we explore their thoughts about eating food that doesn’t serve their weight loss goals it often comes down to their thinking that food is so fun. So if you’re like, I totally relate - food IS fun - that’s the truth, I want to explore how that COULD be getting in the way of what you REALLY want - to feel good physically and be at your natural weight. How can we still have the same amount of fun in our lives, maybe even more without food as fun getting in the way. That’s what we’re talking about today. Because it’s totally possible. 

It sounds innocuous in and of itself - that food is fun. Popsicles, pretzels, popcorn - even the names of these foods sound fun. Most of us want fun. For some of us it could even be a core value even. It’s something that’s important in our enjoyment of life and we like that and we definitely don’t want to have less fun. So you can see how this could become an issue. If you’re thinking that cupcakes are like a 10/10 on the fun scale and you want fun, you’re naturally going to resist saying no to the cupcakes and having zero fun, ESPECIALLY when everyone else is having cupcakes and having all that fun.

What if you could have the same amount of fun in your life without overeating? And for our purposes overeating is eating more food than you need to be nourished and release excess fat from your body. Here’s what I truly believe is possible for you after you finish this episode, you will have just as much fun as you have been, in fact MORE fun, WHILE losing weight and not eating all the things. If you are interested in that, if that sounds good to you - stay with me.

 

What does it truly mean when you’re thinking food is fun. Have you even stopped to question that? What makes eating a food fun? The taste maybe, the experience, the act of eating it. But when eating this fun food stops us from feeling good in our bodies and reaching our weight loss goals, that fun is very very temporary.

So let’s define fun. What are we really talking about here? Fun is a feeling. That’s really important to know. If fun is a feeling then it’s not possible for food to be fun because food is food - it’s a thing. So it’s our thoughts about the food and eating the food that makes it fun. My level of fun eating a cupcake is maybe 2 whereas for my mom it’s at a 9 I’m guessing. So cupcakes and all other foods aren’t inherently fun. This is great news. Because if you want something to be less fun or more fun, we can change how we think about that.

Right now you might be like what? No, I don’t think I can change that I think salted caramel icecream is fun, nor do I want to. And honestly you may not want to remove fun completely from food and I don’t even encourage you to do that. But if you’re overeating and not getting the results you want, you might want to take the fun factor down a few notches. Not gone completely, but reduced so that it’s easier to have fun without it in your life. 

I know this is a tough concept to wrap your head around so I want to give you some more examples. I know there are things in your life that you used to think were fun that are no  longer fun. I grew up in a small town and when I was in highschool the fun thing to do was drive around. For those of you in a small town, you may have had the same thing. There was just nothing to do really. We didn’t even have instagram - we barely had the internet! Wow I feel a bit old saying that but it’s true. We basically drove laps through town. It was always the same loop - through town (which was one street) and down the hill to the Reddi Mart which was a  gas station. Then back up the hill and through town again, over and over. That’s what everyone did. It was considered fun. Pop in the Destiny’s child cd or better yet, that song Pony by Genuwine - times that fun level by 10. What you thought of as fun, what WAS fun for you as a teenager is probably VERY different than it is now. Why? Because you don’t THINK it’s fun anymore. 

I hope that example helps you get on board with concept that food is only fun because of your thoughts, not the food in and of itself. 

Okay, quickly moving on here.

I listen to a podcast called The Next Big Idea and they featured a guest named Catherine Price who has recently written a book called, The Power of Fun. In this interview she defined Fun as having three characteristics: Connection, Playfulness & Flow. Connection is either feeling connected to yourself or others. Playfulness is self explanatory but you can think of being light hearted, not very attached to the outcome - levity/novelty and maybe even surprise falls into this. And Flow state is when you’re so engrossed in something somewhat challenging that you lose track of time. 

So now that we have this model of fun, we want to start brainstorming on how to incorporate these features in our lives so that we don’t need to rely on food for all our fun. 

If you reflect on the last couple of weeks, how much fun did you have? Was it less than you want or about right? How much did food factor in and how much do you want food to factor in? If you recall one of the funnest times of your life, I’ll bet it wasn’t about the food so much as who you were with, what you were doing and how you were feeling. It probably had one or more of the features of connection, playfulness and flow.

Something I’ve been considering lately isn’t even changing things to add more fun, but instead changing how I’m relating to what I’m already doing to make it more fun. So for example, let’s talk about one way we can make weight loss more fun. 

Now we have a recipe: we need one or more of the features: connection, playfulness and flow. 

One way I’ve been incorporating more fun into my protocol is to REALLY get curious about how my body feels physically with different foods and different types of foods. So I’ve created a Satiation Scale for how sated I’m feeling while I eat and to help me measure how satiated I am after my meals too. So imagine 0% is not satiated at all and 100% is overally full. This helps we know how much my body needs for nourishment and prevents me from overeating during meals, which I can be prone to do. Maybe you’re in the habit of eating the same thing for awhile and do it on auto pilot whichout really checking in with your body. This was my experience. I was eating the same thing every day for my first meal and when I did this exercise I realized I was actually overeating a bit. I could tell because I didn’t feel how I wanted to feel in my body afterwards. I felt a little too full and not energized. A bit sluggish actually. Sometimes it’s hard to know if we’re overeating right? But when you use this Satiation % it can really helps your brain identify when that’s happening. 

So how does this tie into having more fun. How can eating LESS be MORE fun you might be thinking. But here’s my experience and you can try it for yourself and see. It was really fun for me to connect with myself and listen to body while I was eating and think about the satiation %. Am I at 50%? How about now, 60%? For me I’ve discovered that 70% satiated is my sweet spot - it’s where I feel satiated but still light and energized. So that’s what I aim for during my meals and when I’ve hit that I know when to stop. Notice there’s a couple of fun features here: Connection - connecting to myself and Playfuness - exploring with levity what the food feels like and what number I’m at on the scale. 

This satiation scale is very helpful when it comes to those “fun” foods too. When you are really paying attention to yourself while you’re eating you MAY find that you don’t need to eat as much of it. That half an icecream bar is enough. You don’t give yourself or your body a chance when you mindlessly eat. You know what’s really fun - eating half an icecream bar and throwing the rest in the garbage. That’s fun. It’s fun to be a bit irreverent right? It’s fun to feel that control - that you can legitimately not want more of something because you’ve decided ahead of time for yourself how you feel best. It’s very fun to know you have the power and not feel at the mercy of food. 

Now you may not WANT to stop because the food tastes great. That’s totally normal right, our brains want pleasure, but the first step is this awareness piece. Then when you know what it TRULY feels like in your body to be at a 80 or 90% you won’t feel good and you’ll be present for that experience and you’ll be less likely to go there next time. If that’s really challenging you know you have some thought work and some emotionally processing work to do here. For example, What negative emotion would you experience that you are trying to avoid by eating more? Sometimes that’s simply desire. So then your work is developing the willingness to allow that desire. 

Another strategy I’ve used to make things more fun is to imagine it’s the very last time I will ever do something. So for example, we go to the park a lot and my son LOVES the swings - can’t get enough of being on the swing. And I’ll be honest - I love him more than anything and he’s the cutest little human I’ve ever seen on a swing and SOMETIMES it doesn’t feel super fun to be at the park that entire time. Maybe I’m tired or a bit bored. How I make that experience fun is by imagining this is the last time I’ll be able to do this - maybe that’s a bit morbid but it can be as simple as what if they closed the park or the swing broke. OR you can also imagine this is the very FIRST time you’ve ever done this thing. How does that change your experience? Notice all we’re doing is redirecting your thoughts. 

Try this when you’re eating a so called boring meal of salad or veggies - what if it was the first or last time you ever ate a salad? How would that change what you noticed, how much you appreciated it? I’ll bet it will feel different. 

The other thing we can do is reduce the amount of fun we place on food by just being real about it. And again, if that freaks you out - like dont’ take fun out of food - know that you’re always in charge here. You take what works for you and leave the rest. But if you want to reduce the fun you get from food and focus on getting fun out of your life, listen in.

Let’s talk about how food and overeating is NOT fun. A lot of these foods that we think of as fun typically don’t feel great physically in our body after we’ve eaten them. I love apple fritters but I know that when I eat one - especially a whole one to myself I may need a nap and I might even need to take an antacid. I used to say I love popcorn but it does not love me. I find especially as I get older, there are more and more foods that my body just says no to. I get rashes, I get mouth ulcers - I don’t feel good at all. Typically these foods cause our energy to spike and then plummet, they cause us to crave sugar. None of this is fun in the short term not to mention the longer term consequences of weight gain and other health issues. 

So I’m kinda bumming myself out here so I'm going to switch gears but you get the idea. We know there’s a not fun part that our brains really tend to forget in the moment. So get clear for yourself which foods are fun for you but that you want to be selective and really conscious about eating and not just eat them to have fun all the time. 

So often we overeat or eat foods that don’t really serve us because we want that immediate gratification - our brains want that reward. So if we want to change our response and NOT eat, we can utilize this system by focusing on the immediate gratification we get when we don’t eat the food. 

Is it the same intensity as eating a donut? Maybe not, but it’s still very fun. Here’s what I’ve discovered, but if you want to take away some homework for this week, it could be discovering for yourself the immediate rewards that come from allowing an urge when your brain is telling you to eat the fun food.

Here’s what’s truly fun and rewarding:

• Feeling in charge

When you realize the autonomy you have over your own behavior, and you get to see yourself changing in real time by saying no to the food and saying yes to allowing all those thoughts and feelings to come to the surface, you get enjoy feeling in complete control of yourself

• Feeling good in my body

• Knowing the truth

• Easier to connect with my goal

If you want to make losing weight more fun and more enjoyable here is the key - you will not be able to coast. A requirement of making your experience more fun and enjoyable will be to actively, purposely with intention MAKE it fun. 

When you lose half a lb - celebrate that! When you have a bad day at work, get in the shower and cry your eyes out instead of eating everything in the pantry - tell yourself you are doing AMAZING when you do that. Because most of us don’t. Most of us withhold a lot of that praise and reward and it’s not as fun or enjoyable. 

Okay quick recap:

Check in with yourself about how much fun you are currently allocating to food. Know that food is not inherently fun but it’s how we’re thinking about it that makes is fun, super fun or not very fun at all for us. You are in charge of how much fun you want to allocate to food, always. 

You can think of fun as defined as having 1 or all 3 features of connection, playfulness and flow. Knowing this we can start incorporating those elements into our weight loss journey like exploring the Satiation % during and after meals which helps you Connect with yourself and your body and adds a little playfulness in using the numbers - having fun deciding for yourself what those mean and where you want to eat to. 

You can increase the fun in your life and you can also reduce the amount of fun you place on food by getting real about the not so fun aspects of the so called fun foods. 

You can also focus on what IS fun about eating in a way that serves your body - how you want to feel in it and your weight loss goals. There is instant gratification in allowing urges - UNCOVER what that is for you because it’s so powerful when you do. 

And lastly, amplify your fun by celebrating or simply acknowledging all the work you’re putting in. Reward yourself internally for everything you’ve accomplished. For me it helps to remember there was a time when I didn’t have a dog and wanted one. When I didn’t have a husband and wanted one, didn’t have a house or a baby or a coaching business and wanted those things. Now I have them because I created them. You have created a lot that you didn’t have at another time in your life. Now you have those things - isn’t that amazing? You did that. Don’t miss out on how awesome it is by forgetting you did that.