episode 166: how to stop feeling guilty around food
I remember growing up hearing the language “oh that food is so fattening.”
It made it sound like eating that food would make you fat, which was, of course, the worst thing that could possibly happen (please hear the sarcasm).
What people really meant is that the food had a high calorie density.
What does that mean?
And how does this contribute to disordered eating?
That’s exactly what I’m talking about in episode 166 of The Diet Diaries.
Here’s what we’re talking about today:
A framework to change the way you think about food
How to feel less emotional about certain foods
Why this impacts the guilt and shame you feel after eating “bad” foods
The role this plays in body image issues
Why using the term “fattening” is a sign of disordered eating
Take a listen to episodes 149 and 155 for two client stories about how they recovered from body image issues and disordered eating. And check out this blog post which is a great resource with more specific skills to help you stop feeling guilty around food.
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[00:00:00] Hello, everyone. Thank you for listening, for taking time out of your day whenever it is. The day this podcast comes out, which is going to be Monday, February 19th. Could be a day, a week, a year, or who knows, five years later. Whenever you're finding this, thank you for listening. Um, I'm recording this. I'm still in my pajamas.
[00:00:23] It's 10 o'clock on Monday morning. It happens to be the day after the Super Bowl. Um, if you are a football fan, then you will know that It was only the second Super Bowl game to go into overtime. And obviously it was obviously like the Taylor Swift Super Bowl. I personally was rooting for the 49ers. I'm a huge football fan.
[00:00:41] I love watching the NFL. Um, and we were with, um, a whole bunch of families watching the game and all of the girls were obviously rooting for the Chiefs and all the boys are rooting for the 49ers. A super, super exciting game. The first three quarters of the game were really boring, and then the fourth quarter it got interesting, and then it went to overtime.
[00:00:58] Anyway, all this to say that it's ten o'clock, I'm still in my pajamas, um, I haven't eaten breakfast, I haven't worked out, I I think I brushed my teeth. Izzy's still sleeping. Um So I decided to do things kind of in backwards order today to get some work done this morning And then I think I'm gonna try and work out this afternoon And we're expecting snow tomorrow So anyway, it's kind of weird for me to say all this because you're gonna listen to this like a week after all these things That happened, but whatever that's the way podcasting works.
[00:01:23] So I'm excited about this episode. I laugh you listen to last week's episode around exercise I said I was gonna do an episode about something and this is not that episode. So just a heads up Um, I just really wasn't in the mood to talk about that today, real talk. So I'm talking about something that I am in the mood to talk about.
[00:01:39] This is how I continue to show up and publish a podcast every week. I don't put pressure on myself to have to do a certain thing. I try to give myself flexibility that I'm going to show up. I'm always going to record something that's going to be helpful, but it may not be something that I had planned in advance.
[00:01:54] Um, that's a skill that applies to so much. That's how you stay consistent is by having structure. and giving yourself flexibility at the same time, right? I know I'm going to publish a podcast every week, and I may have a plan in place, and that plan may change at the last minute, for many different reasons.
[00:02:13] Um, so what I'm going to talk about today, I'm going to kind of talk about, this is a skill, almost as always, this is a really important one, and I'm going to talk about a really important skill for rethinking kind of the good bad Mindset around food, um, or even like the clean eating or I'm being healthy.
[00:02:34] Um, anything where we are sort of applying judgment or morality or, um, worthiness as people to what we are eating. So, you know, we've all kind of grown up. The language I wanted to actually kind of really talk about, which I grew up hearing and we've all grown up hearing, is the idea of like something is so fattening.
[00:02:57] Right? And typically foods that we would be referred to in that way would be like things we would call junk food, right? Desserts, um, and then, you know, pasta and French fries and bread and foods that we typically overeat, um, that might be seen as being unhealthy because we overeat them. And foods and we would, they would be called fattening because we would see them as foods that would make us gain weight.
[00:03:25] Right? There's so, there's like so much problematic stuff like wrapped up in all of that. Um, and the first thing I want to say, which is actually not what this podcast is about, but it's super important and related, is that unless you are allergic to a specific food or have a medical contraindication for whatever reason, there is no single food that is a problem.
[00:03:47] Or unless you don't like it, obviously. There is no single food that is a problem. It is the amount of foods that causes issues. So every feeling that you have around certain foods that you've labeled as bad, or junk food, or not clean, or unhealthy, is not because there's a problem with that food itself, it's because You, we, collectively, society, don't have the skills to eat those foods in an amount that actually works and makes sense, um, for your preferences, for what your body needs, for your lifestyle, for your overall health and well being.
[00:04:24] And so this is what I'm going to talk about today, is one specific skill that kind of addresses that. Um, and what I want to talk about, and I've shown this a lot visually. And I actually thought about doing this a while ago as an Instagram post. I should probably do it. There is, I do have a blog post that kind of references this, so I will actually link that blog, blog post in the show notes so you can see the visual.
[00:04:46] But I want you to picture a grid, like an X Y axis grid. Go back to middle school, high school algebra, which Ben is learning right now, right? X is across, Y is up and down. So you have four quadrants, four squares. And on the x axis, or the horizontal axis, you have, um, calorie density. So on the right is going to be more calorie density, and on the left is going to be less calorie density.
[00:05:11] And I'm going to talk about calorie density in a second. And then the y axis, the vertical axis, is nutrition, right? More nutritious is going to be up top, less nutritious is going to be on the bottom. And it actually doesn't matter which axis you put which thing on.
[00:05:27] This gives us a way to objectively look at what foods are from kind of almost like a scientific clinical standpoint, which is a skill that helps us remove the emotion and the morality and the attachment and the assumptions and the lived experiences that we have around these foods. It gives us a way, a new framework with which to look at these foods, right?
[00:05:51] If you can only look at a pint of Ben and Jerry's ice cream sitting in your freezer as bad, as threatening, as scary, as stressful, as problematic, as weight gain, as being a bad person, as being out of control. This podcast episode is going to give you a way to look at that differently, which is how you start to change your thoughts.
[00:06:11] It is how you change your relationship with that food. It is how you get to have that food in a way that actually feels good without. feeling out of control, without gaining weight, without um, feeling like you are prisoner to this food, right? If it's in the freezer you're going to eat it and you have no control and you have no willpower, right?
[00:06:33] This is a skill that helps you move away from that and it takes practice over time. So I think nutrition Nutrition density is pretty obvious, right? A food that is, you know, more nutritious, more, has more nutritional density, has a lot of nutrition, right? Has vitamins and minerals, has fiber, has either protein or a carb or, you know, maybe more nutritious fats, like unsaturated fats.
[00:06:57] And foods that are less nutritious or have lower nutritional density don't have a lot of nutrition, right? And those are foods like Cookies and sweets and baked goods and french fries and some breads, not all breads. Um, they have less nutritional value, but they have other purposes. We're going to talk about that.
[00:07:16] So we've got nutritional value and then we've got, um, caloric density. And let's talk about this one because I think this is, this is a very important concept. Calories are a unit of energy. From a scientific clinical standpoint, they are a unit of energy. More calories is not bad. Less calories is not good.
[00:07:33] It is an objective fact. Like, it is 84 degrees out. Not today. Obviously, it's like 34 degrees out. It is a statement of fact. It is 34 degrees out today. There are 200 calories in this slice of bread. It does not make the slice of bread bad. It simply means there are 200 calories. So again, that becomes a skill when you look at something and you read a label and you see how many calories it has.
[00:07:56] Your brain, if you were listening to this podcast, this is going to be likely your brain, is going to immediately make a judgment that if you see a high number, this is a bad food. If you see a low number, this is a good food. And I want you to notice that thought. That is the immediate thought that your brain is going to push out.
[00:08:12] You won't, it'll happen before you even have control of it happening, because this is so deeply ingrained. What happens is when you notice that thought, it's like, oh, there it is. Jordana was right. Yay. There it is. How can I respond to this? I can respond to this by saying, calories are a unit of energy. You could say that.
[00:08:32] Or, and, or you could say, more calories aren't bad, less calories aren't good. That's all you do. You respond to the thought with a statement that over time with repetition and with practice starts to change the way your brain functions, starts to rewire these connections and these thoughts. in a way that supports you and helps you feel better and have less stress, feel less on edge.
[00:08:56] That's a term I've been using lately, feel less on edge around food. So back to kind of like a little bit more about calorie density. A food that is calorie dense very simply means that there's a lot of calories packed into a small amount of food. A less calorie dense food means there are fewer calories in a larger amount of food.
[00:09:18] You'll hear all the time, what weighs more, a pound of lead or a pound of feathers? A pound is a pound. It's how much space it takes up, right? Lead is very dense, so you'll have a very small piece of lead that'll weigh a pound. You need a whole bunch of feathers. Those feathers will take up a lot more space.
[00:09:33] The same thing applies to food. So I'm gonna give you an example right here. We're gonna talk about peanut butter, and we're gonna talk about strawberries, okay? And we're gonna use a hundred calories. A hundred calories of strawberries. is around two cups of strawberries ish, right? Give or take. It doesn't really matter.
[00:09:49] Peanut butter and strawberries are different enough that the exact amounts don't even really matter. I want you to visualize two cups of strawberries. It's a lot. It's a lot of food. It's a lot of volume. Okay? A hundred calories of peanut butter is one tablespoon. So go get a spoon from your kitchen, not a teaspoon, a tablespoon, and look at it.
[00:10:11] That's a hundred calories. And now think about your two cups of strawberries and your tablespoon of peanut butter. The peanut butter is calorie dense, the strawberries are not. You get a lot more volume, a lot more quantity of food. In less calorie dense foods, this does not make less calorie dense foods good.
[00:10:28] It does not make more calorie dense foods bad. There are lots of many calorie dense foods, which are also very nutritious. There are lots of calorie dense foods that are non nutritious or less nutritious. Again, that also doesn't make them bad. They have a different purpose. podcast about that, trying to be kind of keep this really specific.
[00:10:46] But as you can see, there's stuff that overlaps and it's all really helpful. . So when we are able to look at this peanut butter, nut butter isn't bad. You're not out of control. You know, I used to, in my, you know, peak days of disordered eating, I would eat peanut butter straight from the jar, but I would eat like half a jar of peanut butter, like in like a day.
[00:11:07] Um, because I wasn't eating other meals, or I would eat that and I'd be like, well, now I can't eat other meals, or I'm gonna eat this in place of meals. Like it, like really? You know, and you, you. It's a problem for so many reasons, I'm not gonna get into that, but that doesn't make peanut butter bad. Just because I didn't have skills to know how to eat it at that time, now I have a jar of nut butter sitting in my fridge, and I couldn't give a shit about it.
[00:11:27] I really couldn't care less. I actually rarely eat nut butter. I use it in a smoothie, and that's pretty much it. Because that's just how I like to use it, and I have other foods I use for different purposes. It doesn't make that food bad. It just meant that I had no skills at that time. Now I have the skills, so now it's like a non issue.
[00:11:42] Um, And it doesn't make strawberries good because they have fewer calories and you get more volume. They have a different purpose, right? They are going to be more filling because they have strawberries in particular happen to have fiber in them, a fruit that has more fiber, and they have water in them, right?
[00:11:57] The fruit is made up a lot of water and you just get a lot more. So they're going to take up more space in your stomach. It's going to help fill you up. One tablespoon of peanut butter is a very small amount of food. That's not going to fill your stomach. That being said, fat does help provide satiety. It can be satiating.
[00:12:12] it works differently, right? There's kind of mechanical fullness, which is like the volume of food that fills your stomach. And then there's what I call like chemical, for lack of a better term, fullness, where your body responds and reacts differently to different foods. And that provides satiety. Um, and that is kind of the case with fat.
[00:12:30] Um, and with protein also, there's actually, um, Uh, nerve endings in your gut, in your small intestine that, uh, know, like respond to and attach to, I mean, or notice, know the presence of amino acids, which is what proteins are made of. And it sends a signal up to your brain to trigger fullness, which is so fucking cool.
[00:12:48] Um, so you've got this visual in your head of a tablespoon of peanut butter and two cups of strawberries, right? Both are important. Both are delicious. If you like them, if you don't pick another food, whatever. Both have a place. They just have different jobs, right? If you are starving, and you need a snack, or probably more likely a meal, and you like go get a try to go get some peanut butter, like you're gonna have to eat so much peanut butter in order to fill that hunger.
[00:13:18] Whereas if you took a bunch of strawberries, you've got some fiber, you've got a water that fruit has a lot of water, you've just got more volume. That's gonna fill you up a lot easier. And this isn't to say that peanut butter or strawberries are complete snacks and certainly not meals. I'm just, you know, a little bit of, you know.
[00:13:34] Getting a little creative license here. You just have to think about how to use these foods. Again, it's a little bit of a separate topic, but that one isn't good or bad. So if you think about like sweets, like desserts, ice cream, pastries, all that stuff, that's gonna be calorie dense and not very nutritious.
[00:13:51] Again, it's not bad. So when you notice yourself passing judgments around these foods, you can pause and say, okay, These Oreo, I don't know why I always go to Oreo cookies. I always use them as an example and I don't even like really like or ever buy Oreos. It's so weird. Whatever. Oreo cookies. Insert your food of choice.
[00:14:10] It's not junk food. It's not crap. It's not bad for you. Um, it's just calorie dense. And less nutritious. And I know it feels maybe a little cumbersome, and you don't have to like constantly like maybe use that language, but you can pause and notice the language that you are using, the junk food, the crap, and say okay, hold on a sec, it's not junk food, it's not crap.
[00:14:32] It's just has a lot of calories and not a lot of nutrition. Okay, and that's all you need to do, right? This isn't like there's some magical thing that happens when you say this to yourself. Because this is one skill mixed in with many working together that start to make these changes. But it's a very important one because it gives you another way to look at these foods.
[00:14:53] Right now, you only have one perspective around these foods. They're bad, they're junk, they're crap. I'm out of control, I have no willpower around them. That's the only lens through which you see these foods. I'm giving you another way to look at them that is very, very important. Another way to have context around them.
[00:15:09] Another way to figure out how they fit into your life because they do. Because it is not all or nothing that is not sustainable. Right? So to say I have no control around Oreos, I'm not going to eat them, that'll work for like a month or two. And then it won't. Until it doesn't anymore. And then because you haven't developed the skills to know how to have that food around, you're right back to the I have no control, this is why I can't have them around thing.
[00:15:34] It is never the food itself, it's the absence of skills to have that food around. I will, I will say this until I die.
[00:15:45] I am teaching you a skill today. You have to use it. You have to use it a lot. You have to practice it. That's the thing about skills. They require practice. They require use to get better. It's that simple. It takes effort. It takes discomfort. But I You'd actually be surprised how quickly you can start to see changes, right?
[00:16:06] Our brains are neuroplastic. We are capable of so much adaptation and so much change as humans. We are not machines. There's nothing about us that is a machine. Machines can't adapt and change. And I'm talking about like, you know, mechanical engineering type machines, not AI, which is kind of scary. Um, Your brain is adaptable and when you start to follow up those, this is crap, this is bad, this is junk thoughts with, okay, hold on a second.
[00:16:30] It's not actually that. It just has a lot of calories in a small little package and doesn't have a lot of nutrition. That is how you start to change those thoughts. So that over time, the crap, bad junk food thoughts have less volume. They're not allowed in your brain. They come less frequently and you were able to respond to them a lot quicker.
[00:16:47] Which therefore then gives you the space to see, it's not, I'm not out of control. These foods just, this is what these foods are about, and other skills come in. I need to eat them after I've had a filling meal, I need to eat them when I'm sitting down on a plate, I need to eat them when I'm not looking at my phone.
[00:17:02] All these other skills kind of come into play, but it gives you space to know that it's not you. You are not the problem, and the food is not the problem. It's the absence of skills that is the problem. This is super important. So again, you notice the thought, you say to yourself, okay. It's not bad. It's not junk.
[00:17:20] It's not crap. I actually really like this food. And it would be so nice to be able to eat it and not feel shitty and guilty afterwards. I think we can all raise our hands and say that that is a universal truth. This is how you do that. You say, okay, it's not crap. It's not junk. It's a lot of calories and a small package doesn't have a lot of nutrition, which means I need to use it in this way.
[00:17:38] I'm not trying to think if I've done a podcast on it. I feel like I have. And in this way, I just mean that foods have jobs. I know I've done it, and maybe I'll just do another one, because if I can't remember, you guys probably can't remember. Right? So maybe I'll do another. Maybe that'll be next week. The Jobs of Foods.
[00:17:53] Because it's a perfect segue from this. So in terms, you know, I think I'm just going to leave it there today. I think this is enough. It's already 18 minutes. This is a lot. There's more I could add, but I can do that in separate episodes. So that's it. Thank you for listening. Thanks for being here. Whenever it is that you're listening.
[00:18:12] I'm not sick anymore so you don't have to listen to my super annoying nasally voice. It's a little bit of congestion left. It's taking a long time this one. Um, I will be back as always next week.