Hi, and welcome to the Mindful Shape Podcast. I'm Paula Parker, and I'm a life and weight loss coach. So this topic is kind of related to intuitive eating, which is better listening to your mind or your body when it comes to food and eating when you are trying to release. Some extra pounds off your body.

So I remember being so confused when people would just say, you know, listen to your body. That's all you have to do when it comes to eating. And your body will reach its natural weight on its own. That seemed very unlikely to me, and this is just a very simplified version of intuitive eating that really does appeal to many of us, right?

The basis of eat when you're hungry, stop when you're full. It seems very straightforward, but many times it's not actually that. Simple. If you've ever thought about trying to eat intuitively, but you were really scared that you'd overeat and just put on a bunch of weight, or you've maybe tried it and it didn't work for you because either it created much more mind drama than you even had before.

Or it simply didn't make a difference on the scale. Then in this episode, I'm going to help you get clear on when to listen to your brain and when to listen to your body when it comes to eating for your natural weight. So when you're trying to release weight, how do we do this? Because it's not as straightforward as we would hope, especially for those of us who have been down the dieting rabbit hole for a.

I think this is going to be a really fresh take on the idea of intuitive eating and specifically as I mentioned, when to listen to your body and when to listen to your mind, and I think it might be something you've never heard before, so I'm really excited to share it with you. Okay, so let's get started.

I think the main problem when we attempt to try anything like intuitive eating for weight, or listening to our body is that we're going into it without trusting ourselves or our. So when that's not strong, likely from years of past failed attempts at trying to lose weight or trying to listen to our body and eat appropriately, how can we possibly expect to blindly trust our intuition when it comes to food?

How can we trust ourselves and our bodies when we haven't? Even built up that trust, we just don't have that foundation. So what I'm going to share with you today will help you start building that trust with both yourself and your body so that you know exactly when to listen and when to ignore , basically how to eat intuitively, but also reach your weight loss goals.

So if right now you're thinking that might be a pipe dream , then I will reassure you that it's possible. The main strategy for building trust with yourself and your body that I want you to have is this. Rely on your mind ahead of time. Rely on your body in the moment with exceptions, which are very important.

And I'm gonna address them in this episode because usually that's where we. . Okay, so let's start with listening to your mind. So what do I mean by relying on your mind ahead of time? I mean, the decisions you made with a clear head, thinking about what's best for you and what you truly want. So for example, you might be deciding ahead of time how many exceptions you'll have that day, right?

When I talk about exceptions, I talk about foods that are really gonna spike your glucose and your insulin and put you in fat storing. You might be deciding how much hunger you're gonna allow your body to feel before you decide to eat or even deciding how you wanna feel by the end of your meal, right?

That will help you determine on how much to eat and which foods to choose. So I'm gonna do a whole podcast episode on planning in which I'll go into much more detail, but for now, just know that when I say planning, I'm talking about a continuum in which your plan has either broad strokes and lots of flexibility to a plan that's very specific in which every meal is planned ahead of time.

there are successful ways of doing both, sort of depending on your personality and your schedule and what works for you. So neither is right or wrong. We can really use both to help us release weight, but even if you don't consider yourself a planner and you like a lot of spontaneity, there's usually some level of planning involved.

For example, today I'll eat only when I get really hungry, and today I don't wanna over. I wanna feel satisfied, nourished, but also light and comfortable in my body. That can be your plan, right? It doesn't have to be super complicated or very detailed. Okay? So let's talk about when to ignore your mind. So you'll want to ignore your mind when in the moment it starts offering up justifications.

These will sound very familiar to you. Justifications like this won't make that much of a difference. I can start fresh tomorrow. . It's the weekend that my brain loves that one. It's the weekend. Everyone else is eating it. I've had a hard day, right? Or I just want it. I just want it, and it creates a lot of desire.

I just want it. Or I have a client who hers is. I deserve a treat. It's been a hard day or life is hard. I deserve this. I deserve some pleasure. I deserve to enjoy food. These justifications will derail your weight loss efforts, especially because in the moment they do seem valid and they also seem.

Insignificant. They seem very harmless. The degree to which you stop those justifications is the degree to which you will see results on the scale, I promise you. So I think this is so important that I created a PDF to go with this episode that lists 34 of the most common justifications that I hear that will keep you from seeing results.

Remember, these are simply sentences that your brain offers up that you can listen to. or ignore. So you can download that for free and access all of my free resources by going to mindful shape.com/resources. So take a look and see how many your brain uses and think of how many times that particular justification has gotten in the way for you.

You might be surprised to see how many you have. So I really encourage you to start noticing which justifications come up for you the most often so that you can spot them in real time and stop them from hijacking your brain. So really the first step is awareness. Even noticing that you're having a justification thought.

It is only a thought, a sentence in your brain that has no more power or control over you as any other thought that you would have at any. Now this won't happen automatically. You will believe the justification thought is reality. I can start fresh tomorrow. That seems very real, right? It's true, and it's simply a thought.

A justification that creates desire and permissiveness and then overeating. That's why it's harmful. It might be true, but it's really just not serving you right? So this doesn't have to feel very heavy and very dark. I have a client who. I just thought, this is such a good example because she just has a very lighthearted attitude when it comes to foods that tempt her.

Her phrase is so funny. Her phrase is like, not today, Satan. Right? . She just laughed. Right? Because it doesn't have to be heavy and serious. We can kind of have a fun, lighthearted approach to this, which is like, look at what my brain is offer. She sometimes says, I had just talked to those crackers, you know, I just talked to them and tell them, not today,

So I wanna offer that to you, that it can, you can bring some humor into it. You can bring some levity. I want you to imagine what it might be like, what results you could create on the scale and in your clothes if you started spotting all of these justification thoughts. So every time you had. Instead of feeling like they were in control, that you had to listen to them.

Instead, you watched your brain with fascination. , you were like, look at that brain of mine telling me yet again, it's the weekend and it won't matter if I eat this . That's all you wanna be noticing your thoughts. The difference is now you are the one in the driver's seat. You're aware of the justification, and instead of listening to your mind in that moment, you will have a much higher chance of honoring the decisions that your mind made beforehand.

So action steps. Download the justifications PDF and go through and identify yours, see if I missed any, and you can let me know on Instagram. Just send me a dm. Let me know if I missed any, and I will add them . Then start noticing when they come up, see how often they come up in the day. When they come up for you.

Tell yourself, oh, this is one of those justification thoughts that only has power. If I listen, connect to the truth that there's so much you have control. And you'll be amazed at how powerful this is. Once you start noticing those thoughts and really just identifying them as only sentences, don't underestimate the power of that and how much agency that will give you in terms of a.

Allowing urges to pass through you in terms of managing cravings and that kind of thing. And if it helps, think of this analogy. Maybe you have a friend or a family member that's constantly giving you unsolicited advice. , do you have them in mind? , it doesn't seem to matter what you say. They have an opinion on that topic, and they also have an opinion on what you should do, and they offer it up freely.

Most of the time you don't listen to that advice. Imagine there's a part of your brain that is just like that person just constantly offering up unsolicited advice and you can nod and smile and completely. And here's what might happen after you do. You might feel really empowered, grounded, self-assured.

You might feel amazing. You might feel expansive in control. You might feel like a goddess who's now an advocate for her body and in total alignment with herself and the universe, . Or you might feel like crap. You might after choosing not to listen to the justification, feel, just a barrage of negative emotion and corresponding physical sensations, like perhaps a sinking feeling, like your energy's getting drained through your body, like your head and your body are really heavy and you're moving through molasses.

It's not fun, does not feel good. Or you might fall somewhere in. But just rest assured, no matter what experience you have, after you ignore the justification thought, it's totally temporary. So good, bad, neutral, it won't last. Okay, so far we've covered when to listen to your mind and when to ignore it. Now let's talk about when to listen to your body and when to ignore it, whereas you use your brain ahead of time.

It can be really helpful to listen to your body in the moment. When it comes to listening and relying on your body in the moment, there are three main ways. That you can do this one is really noticing your hunger cues so that you're only eating when you're really hungry. The biggest problem I think that we see is that we're just constantly eating simply because out of habit or because other people are eating or because of timing, right?

So say we're on a schedule and we've stopped listening to whether we're actually even hungry. We just eat because it's time to eat. Okay. in terms of when you listen to your body, you really wanna start noticing those physical sensations of hunger and allow hunger. Because when you allow hunger, you're gonna start your body's gonna start using the fat stores that you have on your body as fuel.

That's what we want when we're releasing weight. So you wanna allow some hunger. You want to only eat. Physically hungry and get really used to what that feels like in your body. Okay? So that's when you can trust your body. It will tell. Another thing is you want to be looking at your satiation cues.

So what do I mean by that? How do we know when to stop eating? So you wanna be paying attention to what your body feels like in the moment. So as you're eating and after you eat, you wanna take notes. That food felt good in my body. That amount of food, of that particular food felt great. I always give the example.

Nuts and cheese. I can easily overeat in the moment cuz as I'm eating I'm thinking, oh, I'm not very satiated. But then an hour later I feel terrible. Why? Because I've overeaten so that food in particular, I really have to slow down and I might want to be thinking, okay, even when I'm eating these. I'm gonna feel less satiated in the moment.

That's okay. Versus maybe something lighter like a salad with lots of veggies or something so you can listen to your body in terms of how much food does your body actually need. You wanna be paying attention when you eat and after you eat. . And then the last one is really a balance of macronutrients.

If you are listening to your body, you might notice when your body really needs more protein or it me needs something that's like more starch. So I urge you to listen to that. So I kind of watch my toddler cuz it's really interesting. What I notice is he will kind of have sometimes mono meals. Like he will be really one night he just, all he wants to eat is like fruit and vegetables and like carbohydrate.

And then the next morning he won't want anything like that and he'll want like eggs or yogurt or like peanut butter. And he is heavy on the fats and proteins. And I think once we get in tune with our bodies, our bodies will tell us more about what we need, however, , there are gonna be times when you want to ignore your body , and this is really important, right?

So we wanna watch out for a body in the moment, errors, okay? So in the moment your body might send you some errors and you don't wanna listen to them. So this is where we go wrong with intuitive eating. So I'm gonna go over those in detail. The first one is the power of suggestion. Okay? So even the thought of food or seeing.

or imagine going to the grocery store when you're not that hungry and then you get there and you think, actually, I am pretty hungry. , right? This can also come from somebody offering you food. You could, if you read a cookbook or if you're looking at Pinterest recipes, watching cooking shows or cooking tutorials, you will notice that all of these things can stimulate hunger sensations, increasing your desire for food, so your body doesn't actually.

Food. It doesn't need glucose. It doesn't need that as fuel. But be, when you do those things, when you engage in those activities, the power of suggestion will say, yeah, you know what? I can eat. Maybe I am a little bit hungry. Right? So you wanna be really watching out for that. Just know that that will get in the way in terms of.

Being able to accurately know what your body is telling you. The next one is really important too, and that's if your hormones are off so you know that your hormones are off. If you have really huge sugar cravings, if you get really hangry when you're hungry. If you can only go maybe like two hours before you start getting hungry again this is due to either overeating on a regular basis or eating lots of sugar.

Flour can also contribute to this. Okay, so if that's the case, then we just know that your ghrelin is probably being. Overproduce, especially if you're eating flour or other foods that really spike your glucose. When you spike your glucose, then you're gonna see a big dip in your glucose right after, right?

So a big spike. And then a big dip. And when we have the dip, our body creates ghrelin. So this is why you can eat a lot of sushi if you're just eating like white rice and if there's a big glucose spike and then you're like two hours later you're like really hungry simply because there's a big drop in your glucose happening there.

Okay? So also your leptin can be off. Leptin of course, is a hormone that tells you that your you've had enough food that you're full. So that can also get messed up based on how you're eating. And. In that case, you want to basically ignore the body, right? Because it's not giving you an accurate measurement of the foods that you need.

If you're craving sugar, we're probably noticing that that's not the best fuel for your body, right? So you don't wanna listen to your body. How do you balance your hormones? Well, I work with clients and that's what we do in terms of creating a protocol that's really gonna help balance that out, level out your glucose levels and optimize fat.

Okay. I was in Vancouver not too long ago. My husband and I went there. We had a doctor's appointment. and it was really fun because we used to live there. I lived there for I think over 15 years. And so one of the things that we really miss is going to the restaurants that we used to love. And so there's this Chinese food place in Vancouver if you ever go.

It's called Peaceful. There's a number of. Restaurants there now in this chain and it's won a bunch of awards and stuff. It's pretty divey when you go in. It's one of these Chinese food places that on the walls, instead of like having actual signs, they will just write with a sharpie, you know, bathroom here, with an arrow on a piece of scrap paper and, and tape it up.

It's like that kind of vibe. , but the food is amazing. So we're eating all of this food and we over ordered, and actually the surface was pretty bad that particular night, so we over ordered plus things came out really slow, so it forced us to wait. So we ate the first couple of dishes and then we waited a long time.

So of course, by the time the last dishes came, I was not physically hungry, right? My husband was not physically hungry either, but I wanted to eat. Why? Well many reasons. One, the food there is great, it's delicious. Secondly, we don't get to eat there very often. And third, we couldn't save it because we were staying in a hotel that didn't have a a fridge, so we couldn't even save it for the next day.

So we knew that we'd literally have to like throw out these two full dishes of food. We will sometimes want food even when we're not physically hungry. So your body can kind of want food, but really it's your mind. So you just wanna really be able to differentiate what's happening here. So check in with your body.

Have I had enough? Often I have clients who start doing this, and they will ask themselves, am I still hungry? And I really wanna emphasize that that is not the best question to ask because whatever you ask, You will find evidence for so. If you ask the question, am I still hungry? Your body's gonna go to, or your brain, I should say, is gonna go to work to find cues from your body that you are still hungry.

It's why on all of those vending machines you see thirsty question mark, right? Pepsi tuned into this pretty early on. You're walking around, you're not thinking about anything to drink, and then you see a vending machine that says, thirsty, and then you're, there's the power of suggestion. You're like, yeah, you know what?

I am a little bit thirsty. Same idea here. Okay, so instead of asking, am I still hungry, you want to switch that up with, have I had enough? It's a really simple tweak, but what you'll notice is that your body will start looking for cues that you have had enough, and then you will actually eat less. Okay, so that is what I have for you today.

Once again, if you want that list of justifications to help you spot yours and spot some that you might even be having unconsciously that you're not even aware of, go to mindful shape.com/resources and download it for free. Okay, I'll talk to you soon. Bye.