“You have to rig the game so you can win, set yourself the lowest minimal bar to do something. That was really the key to my success.” – Sarah

It happens to the best of us. You get a little older, your life changes, you start moving less, maybe have a kid or two, and before you know it the extra pounds have slowly crept on. And when you finally realize something needs to be done about it you find you can’t lose it as easily as you used to.

This can be a crucial moment in a person’s life. Do I hop on a diet and get back to my target weight right away or do I look at my lifestyle and start thinking long-term? The latter can seem like a daunting task and you may lack confidence in your ability to do it. But it is the only way to achieve lasting success.

This insight was the key to Sarah’s success. Having been raised on whole foods she found Summer Tomato and immediately identified with the philosophy of using Real Food to lose weight. She knew dieting was not the answer.

Exercise was a different story. Sarah knew that developing a consistent workout routine would be crucial for her success, but that it would also be her most challenging obstacle to overcome.

In this episode Sarah explains the very small yet critical mindset shift she made that enabled her to not only build an exercise routine, but to look forward to it every day.

If you hate exercise and have been trying to develop a routine for years without success I invite you to try Sarah’s approach. It’s a game changer.

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:

In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto by Michael Pollan

Foodist: Using Real Food and Real Science to Lose Weight Without Dieting by Darya Rose, Ph.D

You Never Regret A Workout

Home Court Habits: The Secret to Effortless Weight Control

The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg

MyFitnessPal

Mindful Meal Challenge

Zero – fasting tracker app from Kevin Rose

No, You Don’t Deserve That Indulgence Today

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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.

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:

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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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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If you’d like to be a guest on the show, please fill out the form here and tell us your story.

Serena had always enjoyed cooking dinner and it was a Home Court Habit she highly valued. Then when her schedule got a little crazy her cooking habit fell by the wayside. While struggles like this are pretty normal when life gets busy, what stumped Serena was that her cooking habit never resumed even when her schedule got back to normal.

Often what stops you from maintaining a healthy habit is that you view it as a chore rather than as something you enjoy, but this wasn’t the case for Serena. She truly did love to cook and felt very strongly about all the ways it positively impacted her life that were now missing.

So what happened?

It took some digging, but Serena and I ultimately discovered that she had lost one of her Supporting Habits––meal prepping––that gave her the edge she needed to maintain a regular cooking habit. It turns out that meal prepping is the difference between whether making dinner is easy when she gets home from work or feels like a big project she doesn’t have the energy for. We then took a look at her current schedule and found a way to fit meal prepping back into her week so she could start cooking again.

This episode takes you through how to go about identifying and reinstating Supporting Habits that are necessary for maintaining your Home Court Habits and long-term health.

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 Kitchen

Decision Fatigue

Zojirushi rice cooker

Farro recipes

Listen:

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If you’d like to be a guest on the show, please fill out the form here and tell us your story.

Moving to an entirely new city is the ultimate test in building habits. If you had asked me in San Francisco what the core Home Court Habits are that keep me healthy, I would have smiled smugly and cited eating breakfast, cooking, working out, walking my dog, and meditation. I got this healthstyle thing down, ya know?

But those are just the surface level, obvious habits that give me the results I want. What’s easy to forget is that there are also several Supporting Habits that are necessary for my Home Court Habits to remain functional. For example, it’s really hard to cook dinner at night if you don’t have any food in your fridge or pantry. That makes grocery shopping an essential Supporting Habit.

If you’re struggling to form a new habit, it can be helpful to take a closer look at the actions surrounding that habit. Pay attention to the exact moment you decide to not take the action you had intended and ask what you could have done earlier to make your new habit easier. Sometimes a simple new Supporting Habit can be the secret to creating a successful new Home Court Habit.

Here are some essential Supporting Habits that often get neglected, but keep in mind that everyone has different needs and resources so you have to figure out yours yourself.

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Photo by Robert Gourley

Earlier this year my husband and I celebrated our one year wedding anniversary. If you were following along, you might remember that we didn’t get to have much of a honeymoon after our wedding since my book was scheduled to launch just four weeks later. (Yes, I regret these events being so close together. C’est la vie.)

So for our first anniversary we felt we deserved a real break, a relaxing trip with no friends, family or even Toaster. We took five glorious days off and chilled on a beach in Mexico, making a point to spend more time in the spa than in the gym.

As you might expect we felt a little doughy when we got home, so we immediately called our local juice company and ordered a 7 day detox cleanse to make up for it.

JUST KIDDING.
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For many newly minted foodists, the upcoming long holiday weekend will be the first real test of your new anti-dieting healthstyle that embraces real food and enjoyment.

Although it can be a little challenging to get started, switching from a dieter’s mindset to a foodist’s mindset is fairly straightforward when we’re in the comfort of our normal lives. But when confronted with a situation where we have multiple days of sun, fun and celebration, fear of sugar, fat and binges can easily seep in.

Can we really handle all this freedom?

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Have you ever searched all over your house for your phone or your keys then realized they were in your pocket (or worse, your hand) the entire time?

Sometimes we are so focused on solving a difficult problem that the simple, obvious solution eludes us. This is how I felt when I discovered the solution to my life-long battle with food and body weight.

Since food caused me so much stress I assumed it was the primary cause of my problems. It took me nearly two decades to realize that since I couldn’t fight it, my only choice was to embrace it.

Now that I’ve spent over six years as a foodist the way I eat and deal with food seems so obviously correct that it feels like commonsense. Still millions of people struggle with these issues daily, searching desperately for a fix that’s right under our noses.

A foodist knows that food is the answer to, not the cause of our health and weight issues. Eating is essential to our survival and our innate drive to do it is too strong to override for long. The solution lies in constructing habits that work with us, not against us, balancing our needs for both health and happiness through food.

While there are many different paths a foodist can take to optimize our healthstyle, the most successful rely on seven core habits that have the biggest impact on our long-term success.

You might notice that none of these depend upon a specific food or nutrient.
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I’ve mentioned before that cooking isn’t exactly my favorite pastime. I cook regularly, but more often than not my mission in the kitchen is to get food on the table as simply and quickly as possible. I’m like busy and stuff, ya know?

Over the years I’ve developed several techniques to optimize my time in the kitchen, but lately I’ve come to realize that tips and tricks aren’t the only factors that determine how much work it is to get dinner on the table. It turns out the choice of vegetable, and even the varietal, can play a big role as well.

Whether I’m feeling too busy, too lazy, or a bit of both, these are my go-to veggies to save time and effort in the kitchen.
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Photo by *sean

This time last year I introduced the healthstyle Recalibration. Recalibration is an excellent way to help reset your healthstyle (especially if you were a bit derailed by the holidays) and troubleshoot stalled weight loss, but it is not intended as a method of prolonged weight control. For that you need something that lasts.

No human on earth can eat perfectly healthy for every meal of his life. And if you think about it, that shouldn’t even be your goal. Food is too good and life is too short to deprive yourself all the time of things you enjoy. Besides, nobody has an endless supply of willpower, so even if you try for perfection you will likely fail.

What’s awesome is that you don’t actually need to eat perfectly all the time. To achieve and maintain your ideal weight, all you need is to eat healthy most of the time. In other words, the secret to long term weight control is not restricting certain foods or ingredients, it’s changing your habits.

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