episode 145: the key to behavior change for eating, negative body image and fat loss
What if the key to your healthiest, happiest self was not in the latest diet trend, but in connecting with your future self?
And here’s the amazing thing—I have seen client after client discover this concept on their own as they work through their obstacles around negative body image, body confidence and disordered eating. Why is that? The answer is in today’s episode where I share how you can start using the idea of your future self to make behavior change easier and reach your goals around fat loss and self confidence.
I’m also sharing a little bit more about Project Plate Plan, my 10 day self guided course that will teach you the skills you need to lose weight without counting calories, macros or points. Doors open September 26 and we start October 4. Investment is $29 for skills that will change the way you think about food and give you skills to lose weight and keep it off, for life.
Take a listen to episode 133 of The Diet Diaries for my 3 favorite skills to help make changes to body image and eating habits.
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Welcome to the Diet Diaries, a podcast where we have candid, heartfelt conversations that will help you figure out what, why and how to eat so you can feel amazing in your body, because it's time to break the all-or-nothing mindset of yo-yo dieting, food obsession and feeling ruled by the scale. I'm your host, body image and nutrition coach, Jordana Edelstein. I'm so happy you're here. Hi, friends, it is episode 145 of the Diet Diaries. If you are listening on the day this gets published, it is Monday, september 18th. I think today's going to be a shorter episode and, before I dive in, just a quick announcement, kind of just a reminder, that Project Plate Plan is coming. The 3Ps PPP Registration is going to be open next week, a week from tomorrow, so Tuesday September 26th.
00:59
Next week's episode, on Monday the 25th, is actually going to be kind of all about this, what it is, why it's helpful if it's for you trying to kind of answer any questions that people have asked or that I think might come up. But just a reminder this is coming and this is going to be a 10-day self-guided course. This is going to come via email and everything is going to be in that email. This isn't where you have to like log into like a separate platform and sit and watch endless videos. This is very, very turnkey. I want you to be able to read these emails and immediately go off and take action. Otherwise, to me, self-guided courses are a waste. I've bought a million of them and never done them. You guys said you wanted one, and so I want it to be set up in a way where you're actually going to use it. We are all humans and we have good intentions and we buy things and they sit there and it's not helpful for me if it sits there. It's not helpful for you if it sits there. It's only helpful if you're actually able to do it.
01:49
This is going to be around the four key skills you need to work on fat loss without dieting, without counting calories, without counting macros, without counting points, without doing one of these diet programs where it's like pre-packaged food and bars and shakes, two or three meals a day. This is about eating real food that you actually enjoy and learning how to figure out what portions you need and how to use efficient sources of protein to really help fill you up and get your body in a place where it can lose fat. More info coming next week. Registration is going to open. It's $29. I priced this really affordably. I want this to be a no-brainer for you. If you've been looking for support, if you're ready to make a change, I want this to be like a go-to for you. Let me know if you have questions in the meantime and more coming soon on that.
02:42
Okay, so today I wanted to talk about something that has come up with so many of my one-to-one coaching clients over the past couple of years, and it's not something that I have brought up. It's something that so many people have kind of realized on their own through this work together around behavior change, around food, and that is the idea of your future self. I actually had a client last year get a bracelet engraved with this and she wore it for a period of time as like a reminder. Like that's how powerful this idea can be. We are so wired for instant gratification. I've done episodes around this. I talk about this a lot. Our brains are kind of naturally wired for that.
03:27
But now we live in a culture and a society where that's everything right, like you can order food and have it delivered to your house, online shopping, amazon, on-demand TV, instant information right? I mean, how often are you sitting, like watching a show, and you see someone you recognize and then you're all like IMDb, looking up who it is Like we think of something or need something and we instantly can get that fulfilled because of the internet and social media and technology, and part of that is amazing and part of that is disastrous. It's both and as always. And because of that, when it comes to food, as soon as we get an urge for something, we usually just react to it and we eat the thing, we do the thing. This is why so many of us struggle with emotional eating, mindless eating, overeating, because we get an urge for something and we don't have the skills to kind of slow down. We need that urge fulfilled immediately, because if we don't, it feels really uncomfortable. We have to kind of sit in that.
04:33
So when you start to use this idea of your future self, that is a tool to kind of help you pause, to help you slow down, to kind of help you pull back out of the kind of urgency of that present moment and think about hold on a second. This might feel good immediately in this moment, but what's going to happen in five minutes, in five hours, in five days, five weeks, five months, five years right, and you don't always have to think about it that far out. You could think about five minutes from now. Right, if you are sitting at a table with a group of friends. You're out to eat and someone orders like fries for a table right, and you take a portion, you put them on your plate, you finish them, you're like, oh, I want more, and they're sitting there in front of you, so you just start eating off a plate. You're eating more, you're eating more, you're eating more. And then suddenly you're like, oh my God, I'm super full. I feel disgusting. Why did I do that? Why would I always do this? So if you put that portion on your plate and then you get the urge to take more and you have a skill ready to go, a skill around your future self, and you can say, okay, hold on a second, how am I going to feel in five minutes? How's my future self in five minutes going to feel if I eat these fries? You're going to know you're going to feel pretty shitty because you've done it enough times before that you have the evidence, and pausing and thinking about yourself in the future can be super, super helpful. Is it a skill? Does it require practice? Yes, yes, it does. Like I'm not saying the first time you do this and it's going to be like, oh boom, it works great. It's something you have to get used to doing and you have a practice doing.
06:01
I also see this as a form of self compassion when we stay kind of connected to ourselves. Right, we know our past selves because we've lived it. Sometimes we have a hard time connecting to our future selves because we're thinking more about what we need in the moment, not what we need in the future. But the more that we can think about our future selves, I think, the more it starts to cultivate that feeling of self compassion. It's like how do I want to be taking care of myself in the future? How do I want to feel in the future? Again, the future is five minutes from now, the future is 30 seconds from now, right, and how do I want to be showing up for myself? And is what I'm doing right now, in this moment, going to serve that future self or not? And so I mentioned this, like a minute or two ago in the past Pausing is your greatest tool for behavior change.
06:52
I sent a couple of emails about this last week and I'm talking a little bit about it today in the context of future self, because that kind of is a skill, because it is a way to kind of pause right. You get an urge for something If you've had a shitty day at work and it's 10 o'clock at night and your kids are in bed and you're like, oh my God, I just need some cookies or ice cream or chips, whatever your kind of food of choice is. You get that urge. You're walking into the kitchen and as you're pulling open the freezer or the pantry, you pause and say okay, hold on a second.
07:20
Before I do this, how am I going to feel in five minutes?
07:23
Am I going to feel better?
07:24
Am I going to feel worse? Am I going to feel the same? Just pause and check in with yourself and be honest. If you think you'll feel better, great, go for it. If you think you'll feel worse or the same, maybe not so much. And if you decide that you're going to feel worse or the same and you decide not to eat that thing, you're gonna be like well, now what? I still feel shitty. I still had a shitty day at work. How do I make that feel better.
07:46
There are a lot of other tools for that, not to necessarily quote, fix it or make it feel better, but to give you a way to cope and to move through that in a way that's actually productive, versus eating, which can sometimes be productive right, I will never say that all emotional eating is bad, but if it's on a regular basis that you're doing it and it's your only go-to coping mechanism, yes, then it's problematic. But just pausing and thinking, how is my future self gonna feel? What would my future self want? How can I take care of my future self? Right, those are kind of three different articulations of this. Maybe one of them resonates more than the other.
08:23
And keep that, put that. That becomes like a skill. Maybe you keep that in the notes section of your phone, maybe you have it on a sticky somewhere in your house so you can be reminded of it, cause, yeah, sometimes it can be hard to remember to do these things at first. Even if you only remember one out of every five times, that's great, that's progress. This isn't like you go from never doing it to doing it every single time. Start doing it one out of every five times, then it's every two out of every five times, then it's every other day. We slowly progress, changes on a spectrum, changes on a light switch getting flipped on or off. So just sit with this. I think I'm gonna leave it at this. That's it. I have some other notes that I've thought about sharing, but I think I'm gonna save it for a separate episode. I want this to be really short and to the point, so that you can take action on this. How can you think about using your future self to make more intentional, thoughtful choices around food, so that you are not reacting. You are responding with awareness, with attention, with presence. That is behavior change. This is what behavior change is all about. Yeah, that's it.
09:32
Thank you for listening. Thank you, guys for being here, as always. If you're listening to this first episode, fifth episode, if you've listened to all 145, amazing, thank you. You're a super fan and I love you. I appreciate it all. And if you're able to share this episode, if it resonated with you, or the podcast, the diet diaries with a friend or someone you think would benefit from it, you're incredibly grateful. Your word of mouth, references and referrals are everything to me, more than you know. So, thank you and, as always, I will be back next week. We'll see you guys next time.
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