Aline struggles with the types of issues many women deal with during midlife. She’s going through menopause, has gained weight and can’t seem to drop those last 10-15 pounds. She eats relatively healthy and exercises regularly, but the tricks she used to lose weight in her thirties no longer work in her late forties.

While it is tempting to credit hormones for the extra weight she is carrying, there is more going on for Aline at this stage in her life than just a slowing metabolism. She’s also experienced a slowing of her work life and her children are older and need less of her attention. Aline has noticed that she often turns to food to fill in the gaps left by these changes.

As a mother, Aline prioritizes her family and wants to be a good role model. She wants her kids to see that it is important to practice self-care and knows that feeling guilty for doing things that bring her joy does not set a good example. Yet she feels conflicted because she believes she needs to compensate for her changing hormones with an even stricter diet.

This dynamic along with a few other subconscious limiting beliefs have left her feeling stuck and unsure how to improve her healthstyle at this stage of life.

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Related links:

Home Court Habits: The Secret to Effortless Weight Control

Limiting Beliefs: The No.1 Thing That Prevents You from Changing Your Habits

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With her first pregnancy, Sarah felt a lot of pressure from her doctor to restrict her eating to avoid weight gain and other adverse consequences to her baby. However, she found that abiding by these rules was virtually impossible for her, given how her body responded to hunger and fatigue while she was pregnant. This led to both extra stress and shame.

Even though she was warned she might have gained too much weight, Sarah found that losing weight and making better food choices was much easier after the baby was born. So when her second pregnancy came around, she decided to take a less strict approach.

This mindset shift enable Sarah to reclaim her ability to manage her own health (and sanity) on her own terms and at her own pace. While this may sound small, it is an incredibly empowering act that snowballs into a successful healthstyle.

When guilt and shame are motivators and you feel like you can never do enough, most people will respond by doing less for their own self-care, not more. Sarah’s approach bypasses this shame cycle and enabled her to lose her baby weight in a way she could manage.

Sarah also has some Jedi mindtricks for getting her kids to eat what she serves them, along with some great tips and tricks for keeping her own healthstyle on track.

Wish you had more time to listen to the podcast? I use an app called Overcast (no affiliation) to play back my favorite podcasts at faster speeds, dynamically shortening silences in talk shows so it doesn’t sound weird. It’s pretty rad.

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Nicole loves to run, and has recently upped her training to include half and full marathons. While she has never run with the goal of weight loss, she has noticed that when she trains for longer races she has a tendency to gain unwanted fat around her midsection that she isn’t happy about.

Nicole’s hypothesis is that the extra fat is a result of the additional refined carbohydrates (e.g. bread and pasta) that she eats during training periods. She said that she has tried to fuel her workouts with foods that contain fewer carbs, but that she notices a negative impact on her performance.

After some investigating of her training and eating habits, Nicole and I conclude that this theory is inaccurate and that most likely culprit isn’t the pre-workout carbs but the post-workout hunger and subconscious overeating that results from intense training.

Extensive training both increases the body’s calorie demands and hunger, while weakening willpower and normal social constraints on overeating. The end result is a subconscious tendency to eat more calories than you actually need to refuel and subsequent weight gain. Achieving balance in this case is uniquely challenging.

This leads to a detailed discussion of the optimal ways to fuel her workouts and plan her post-training meals and snacks so that she doesn’t inadvertently eat more than she needs to recover and feel satisfied.

Wish you had more time to listen to the podcast? I use an app called Overcast (no affiliation) to play back my favorite podcasts at faster speeds, dynamically shortening silences in talk shows so it doesn’t sound weird. It’s pretty rad.

Related links:

Better Than Before by Gretchen Rubin

Mindful Meal Challenge

How Can Julie Stop Overeating at Dinner Parties?

Home Court Habits: The Secret to Effortless Weight Control

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Jason is an old friend of my husband’s who also happens to be the editor of this podcast. Since he’s started listening to the show he’s become more and more health conscious, and when I launched the Mindful Meal Challenge he decided to give mindful eating a try.

Jason is a perfect test subject for mindful eating, because as he was already trying to get his healthstyle in a better place he already has a set menu for breakfast and lunch. This means that what he was eating didn’t change, so any change in his eating habits can be directly attributed to mindfulness.

He found that his morning three egg omelet was in fact larger than he needed to be satisfied, so he has now cut back to two. He also found that even though he found himself consuming less for breakfast, he wasn’t as hungry when lunch and dinner came around.

Simply by eating one Mindful Meal per day in the morning, Jason lost 4 lbs in the first week of the challenge.

Although he is still trying to figure out the best healthstyle for himself moving forward (which I help him troubleshoot in this episode as well), mindful eating is now a major part of his weight control strategy.

Wish you had more time to listen to the podcast? I use an app called Overcast (no affiliation) to play back my favorite podcasts at faster speeds, dynamically shortening silences in talk shows so it doesn’t sound weird. It’s pretty rad.

Relate links:

Mindful Meal Challenge

Foodist Kitchen

Simple Gourmet: Roasted Beets With Fresh Mint and Chèvre

Aeropress coffee maker

Hamilton Beach toaster oven

Blue Bottle Coffee

“The reason you’re suffering is you’re focused on yourself.” -Tony Robbins from Tools of Titans, by Tim Ferriss

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Amy has been working on her healthstyle for over a year. Slowly she has changed her eating, exercise, sleep and mindfulness habits, and she finally feels like she’s in control of her health.

Now she’s waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Amy is a natural worrier, always ready for something to come along that negates all the hard work she’s done. She knows this is a tendency of hers, yet it’s hard not to feel like there’s some truth behind her fears since even successful diets have always left her in a worse place.

Her question for me today is what: does success look like from here now that everything is great?

This is an educational episode whether you’re a seasoned foodist or a newbie finding your path, since it will give you an idea of what the endgame looks like. Your brain judges success by what it expects it to look like. One great way to know this is by listening to someone who is already there.

Wish you had more time to listen to the podcast? I use an app called Overcast (no affiliation) to play back my favorite podcasts at faster speeds, dynamically shortening silences in talk shows so it doesn’t sound weird. It’s pretty rad.

Related links:

Mindful Meal Challenge

The Worst Thing You Can Do if You’re Trying to Lose Weight

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Over the past nine months Agata has had some success in being healthier, but is disappointed that she hasn’t lost much weight. She started slowly by being more active and noticed she had more energy and looked more toned.

Despite the benefits she felt, her wedding was approaching and she still hoped to lose some more weight. Agata decided to focus more on her diet, although she didn’t want to be too strict, so she started eating more vegetables and cut down on processed foods. She enjoyed this and didn’t feel deprived, and proceeded to lose five more pounds.

Her wedding came and went, and she was happy, but she’s still wondering why she hasn’t had more success with weight loss.

She called to ask me, “Am I doing something wrong?”

Agata’s impatience with weight loss is something I hear often from new foodists, particularly those with a history of dieting who expect rapid weight loss.

In this episode I help Agata reframe her disappointment with her results as what it is––success with room to improve––and help her identify new target habits to build on the progress she’s made so far.

Wish you had more time to listen to the podcast? I use an app called Overcast (no affiliation) to play back my favorite podcasts at faster speeds, dynamically shortening silences in talk shows so it doesn’t sound weird. It’s pretty rad.

Related links:

Foodist book

Home Court Habits

How Being Too Productive Can Lead to Overeating (and How to Stop It)

How Yoga and Mindful Eating Helped Sherry Lose 16 lbs Without Effort

Foodist Kitchen

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After a move from Chicago to California, Mary found herself slowly gaining weight to the tune of 1 pound every 3 months. After awhile she was dismayed to find she was up 15 lbs, and wanted to find the reason.

She tried several things to cut back a bit on calories without any luck. Her last resort was her evening routine of drinking several glasses of wine, a habit that’s proving more difficult to break than any of the others.

This worries Mary for a few reasons. Obviously she wants to lose the weight and feel back in control of her healthstyle. But we all know alcohol is an addictive substance, so part of her fear is that this may be related to why she hasn’t been able to cut back.

Alcohol is a difficult habit to work with, and as a wine lover myself I can definitely relate. Mary had done a few experiments and is fairly confident she isn’t dependent on the substance. Together we come up with some strategies for her to cut back enough to feel more in control and potentially lose the weight.

Wish you had more time to listen to the podcast? I use an app called Overcast (no affiliation) to play back my favorite podcasts at faster speeds, dynamically shortening silences in talk shows so it doesn’t sound weird. It’s pretty rad.

Related links:

What to Do When Willpower Isn’t Enough (The Power of One)

How to Burn More Calories Without Breaking a Sweat

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For the Love of Food

Welcome to Friday’s For The Love of Food, Summer Tomato’s weekly link roundup. 

This week how your gut sabotages your diet, how to teach your kids to love veggies, and why exercise leads to weight gain.

Too busy to read them all? Try this awesome free speed reading app to read at 300+ wpm. So neat!

I also share links on Twitter @summertomato and the Summer Tomato Facebook page. I’m very active on all these sites and would love to connect with you.

Read the rest of this story »

Overall Libby is happy with her healthstyle. She stopped dieting, focused on Real Food, and cut out most of the processed foods (sugars and refined grains) from her daily habits. Her energy is up, her body is happy, and the chronic headaches she’s suffered from for years have abated.

While she feels great from these changes, Libby has only lost one pound over the last couple of months and in her perfect world she would lose another 5-10 pounds.

This brings up an interesting question: Is it okay to keep trying to lose weight even if you’re already pretty healthy? How can you accept yourself as you are and continue to strive for improvement?

Many people making the move from dieting for external reasons to embracing health to align with your own personal values come up against this issue. From a behavior perspective the actions you take to achieve health and those you use to restrictively diet can look very similar. The subtley is in how you frame your values, goals and actions in your own mind that makes the difference.

It’s a tight rope to walk and there is a lot of nuance in the process. I believe it is possible to accept yourself as you are and still strive to optimize for your goals and values. In this episode Libby and I discuss the importance of psychology in this process, as well as the practical strategies she can use to continue to work toward her goals.

Once you listen to the show I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Wish you had more time to listen to the podcast? I use an app called Overcast (no affiliation) to play back my favorite podcasts at faster speeds, dynamically shortening silences in talk shows so it doesn’t sound weird. It’s pretty rad.

Related links:

Free Starter kit and Myth of Willpower Chapter from Foodist

Fitstar exercise app

Mindless Eating by Brian Wansink

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“With the hustle and bustle of working and being a mom and trying to fulfill all these duties I completely lost myself.” – Rebecca

Although she had never been completely happy with her physique, after having three children within five years Rebecca found herself over 100 lbs heavier than she was before starting a family. It wasn’t until she ran into a friend who had lost 100 lbs of baby weight after working with a personal trainer that she changed her mindset and decided she needed to start investing in her own wellbeing again.

Over a period of eight months Rebecca embraced a new self-care routine of fitness and nutrition and lost all of the weight. The road wasn’t perfectly smooth, and she struggled with some of the struggles that come with dieting including binge eating. Ultimately though, she was able to find balance in her nutrition, stop bingeing and truly enjoy her healthstyle for the benefits it brings her.

Rebecca has also been kind enough to share a before and after picture for us to see her transformation.

Wish you had more time to listen to the podcast? I use an app called Overcast (no affiliation) to play back my favorite podcasts at faster speeds, dynamically shortening silences in talk shows so it doesn’t sound weird. It’s pretty rad.

Relevant links:

Home Court Habits

After ‘The Biggest Loser,’ Their Bodies Fought to Regain Weight

Does ‘The Biggest Loser’ Study Prove That Long-term Weight Loss is Impossible?

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