episode 203: my favorite tip for eating dessert

Nov 11

How often do you find yourself caught in the all-too-familiar cycle with dessert? You crave it, you enjoy it… and then, almost immediately, you’re left feeling overstuffed and guilty. Sound familiar? In this episode, I’m talking about a small yet powerful shift that could completely change your experience with dessert, empowering you to enjoy sweets without the uncomfortable aftermath.

Here’s what I’ll be covering:

The surprising reason why dessert can feel so hard to control (hint: it’s not about willpower!)
A simple strategy to help you enjoy dessert without feeling overstuffed or regretful
Practical ways to navigate holiday sweets while still feeling good in your body

And if you’re feeling stressed about holiday photos, join Photo Freedom. It’s my holiday gift to you: five days, five practical lessons to help you feel less stressed about how you look in photos. .

203
[00:00:00] 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. Hey friends, episode two and three of The Diet Diaries. This is gonna be a super short episode, which, I don't know, I love super short podcast episodes. Um, really quick before I dive in, just a reminder that Photo Freedom starts a week from today, Monday. I almost said August, November 18th and runs through Friday the 22nd.
This is a freebie, my holiday gift to you. Five days, five lessons, five simple assignments to help you stop stressing out so much about how you look in photos. Um, the skills are really [00:01:00] simple. They are things that you can practice. like easily day to day. And then what I share kind of at the very end is when you walk away from those five days is to kind of pick one to two of the skills that resonated the most with you and focus on those over the four to six weeks of the holidays.
And then come back to the others afterwards. Yes, this is holiday focused, but these are skills for life. Um, so these are going to be really practical, doable assignments that are going to help you start to slowly shift the way you think about photos and the way you think about how you look at In photos, which is a huge source of stress and anxiety for so many of us, or really all of us in the age of social media and selfies and iPhones, where we can literally take 100 pictures in one minute.
Whereas, you know, 30 years ago, we took a picture and you didn't see it for 30 minutes. If you were lucky, two weeks when you picked it up, um, at the photo place. So link in the show notes in Instagram and all of that to sign up for that. And again, it is free. So here's what I want to [00:02:00] talk about today. I'm recording this on Friday, November 1st.
Um, it was the day after Halloween and I was talking about Halloween on social media this week. And I said something that's like, stupidly simple, but I'm like, wow, I, I'm, I want to talk a little bit more about this. And I was kind of talking about sort of my thoughts on Halloween, which have evolved over time.
Um, I've talked a lot about Halloween over the last four years since I've been coaching three and a half years. And I think what I shared three, four years ago is going to be a little bit different than what I shared today, which I think makes sense, right? Because we're not kind of evolving the way we think about things over time and getting a little bit more nuanced.
Um, Then, I don't know, I just think, especially as a coach, um, it's really important to be kind of constantly asking questions and reconsidering things. And it doesn't mean throwing out, you know, the baby with the bathwater, so to speak. But I think becoming more nuanced, um, and a little bit more kind of reflective on what works and what doesn't.
Anyway, I'm getting a little [00:03:00] philosophical. I digress. What I said in one of my stories. was don't eat Halloween candy when you're hungry. And I think for some people, they'll be like, duh. Like, yeah, obviously. And I think for a lot of people, because I had a client say this to me, people will be like, what do you mean?
Well, why wouldn't I eat it when I'm hungry? Because I think we, Think that in order to have like a dessert or candy or whatever it is that we shouldn't be full because then we're overeating But here's the thing if you eat Halloween candy when you are hungry you are going to overeat it because you are going you're it's not gonna fill you up the way that like a Nutritious meal would with a protein a carbon of fat and fiber.
So you're gonna keep eating it And you're going to eat a large amount before you start to feel full, and then you're going to be like, Oh my god, I'm out of control. This is why I can't have Halloween candy all around. I have to throw it out. Like, no, that's not what's happening. What's happening is that you're using [00:04:00] it at the wrong time.
You're using it for the wrong job. Eat Halloween candy. I'm talking about Halloween candy. What I really want to talk about is dessert. So I'm going to replace Halloween candy because I started off what was like the genesis of this idea. Dessert. Don't eat dessert when you're hungry. It's really like the punchline of this.
This is like if there's one skill, if there's one thing that you practice around dessert, let it be this. Do not be hungry when you eat it. You want to be full when you have dessert. And I know that you might think that I, I sound weird and then I'm like contradicting myself. Cause then you're thinking, well, and then I'm going to be too full.
I'm going to stuff myself. But if you're hungry when you eat it, you're going to overeat it. So there's, there is, there's a little bit of like a fine line here where you don't want to be stuffed when you have dessert, right? If you're stuffed. Desserts, like, probably not gonna feel good, maybe not in the cards that day.
If you are full, there's [00:05:00] gonna be a little bit of room, a little bit of space to have some dessert. Because that's the thing, it's like, we wanna be able to have some dessert, we don't wanna have tons and tons of dessert, one, because it doesn't feel good, and two, because it's just more than our bodies need of that type of very calorie dense food, right?
And this isn't morally dessert is bad, I fuckin love dessert, I eat dessert all the time. And also, our bodies don't need a lot of dessert. Like. Clinical, scientific fact, they don't. And so, But the tricky thing is dessert is so easy to overeat. So it's like you're dealing with this very challenging situation where this is something your body actually doesn't need a lot of, except it wants a lot of it and it's easy to eat a lot of it.
So what do we do about that? That's like a conundrum, right? What do we do about that? We have to put a lot of structure in place. And that structure starts with when and how you eat dessert. which is not when you are hungry, because if you eat it when you're hungry, you are going to eat way more than you need and way more than you want to and way more than your body needs.[00:06:00]
So by setting yourself up and, you know, putting a guideline in place that I eat dessert when I'm full after a meal, you are going to eat a lot less dessert in that situation. Maybe you only need to eat then a couple of bites, or maybe you eat half of the dessert, or maybe you eat the whole dessert and that's still less than you would have had if you'd eaten it when you were more hungry, right?
It's all relative. This isn't to say, oh, you can only have three bites. You guys know I don't believe in that. This isn't to say you're not allowed to hell have a whole piece of cake. This is to say that eating dessert when you are full sets you up for success. It's going to be the single most important thing you can do to not overeat something that doesn't feel good.
I mean, nothing feels good to overeat, but especially, you know, You know, desserts because like the, you know, that combination of carbs and sugar and fat and all that which light up our brain and taste delicious in the moment. As soon as you eat too much, you start to feel really crappy and you start to feel really sluggish and you get the fatigue and all of that.[00:07:00]
So,
Practice this. Notice your reaction to it. Are you like, oh my god, I never thought of that before? Are you like, oh yeah, that makes sense? Are you worried that if you eat dessert when you're full, you're going to be too full? There's some experimentation that, that does need to happen here, right? There's, there's an understanding of what are your different levels of fullness, right?
Full is, has a huge variation. There's a little bit full, there's a lot full, there's stuffed, and spaces in between. And part of the work around really, um, developing your skills around eating is understanding those different levels of fullness and what they feel like for you. And what role dessert has at those different levels of fullness, right?
When you're stuffed, dessert probably doesn't feel good. When you're like, you know, a little bit full or kind of like that. I'm going to say that perfect kind of medium amount of full dessert might feel really good. If you're really full, it might [00:08:00] not feel good. But if you are still hungry, if you feel like I could still eat more food of my meal, that's not the time for dessert.
You've not eaten enough food then. Don't be hungry when you eat desserts. And this does bring up a conversation, which I'm not going to dive into, but I want to mention of being able to distinguish between hunger and cravings, right? Because when you want dessert, that's going to be more of a craving. It's an urge.
And that's normal. It is normal to have those things. So if you are still hungry to the point where you're like, Oh yeah, I still want more of my chicken, more of my vegetables, more of my potatoes, whatever, I'm just, you know, throwing things out. Eat more of that. Don't use, don't stop eating to leave space for that dessert because you're going to end up eating more dessert than you want or you need to.
You can be full from a meal and still want dessert because you still have like the taste for it, you still have that urge for it. And then there's also [00:09:00] times where you don't. But starting, paying attention to that and noticing that and being able to distinguish that is really, really helpful. So love to hear your thoughts on this.
Don't be hungry when you eat dessert. I wasn't even thinking about this in terms of the holidays, but I actually think it's like really timely. Um, coming into Thanksgiving and Christmas and Hanukkah and dinner parties and all these things we have. Don't be hungry when you eat desserts. And again, if you notice yourself resisting that, if you're like feeling confused or you're like that doesn't make sense, then I'm going to be really full again.
Like I'm just going to say this, I'm going to repeat myself one more time. If you are hungry when you eat dessert, you're going to eat more dessert than you need or want to, and you're not going to feel good. If you eat dessert when you are full, you are going to eat a portion of dessert that is more in line with what's going to feel good and what your body actually needs, right?
Our bodies never quote like [00:10:00] need dessert, but it's an amount that's going to going to feel more in alignment with what you want to be putting into your body. And that's kind of the crux of it. It's a little bit of like an oxymoron where you think that if, oh, if I leave room for desserts, then I'm kind of like eating less at dinner.
And then I'm kind of filling in that gap with dessert. That doesn't happen. You end up eating more dessert, which is more calorie dense, most likely, almost always, than what you've eaten for dinner. And you end up eating more food and more calories than you would have if you had finished your meal and had Been full and then had a little bit less dessert because you were full.
This is kind of like this. It's the same principle around snacking that I've talked about before and done podcasts about right? Like you are much better off eating a bigger meal so that you don't get hungry for snacks than eating a smaller meal and eating a bunch of snacks. You always eat more when you eat snacks.
Same principle here. You are always going to eat more dessert if you eat it when you're hungry. So I think I made my points. [00:11:00] It's raining in New Jersey right now for the first time in like six weeks. just hearing it outside. Um. Sign up for photo freedom in the show notes or on social media or send me a message and I'll be back next week Of course, thank you for being here