episode 207: the biggest game changer for my disordered eating
Hey there. This week’s episode is all about…breakfast. Yup, the meal we’ve been told for years is the “most important of the day”—but not for the reasons you might think.
We’re diving into:
Why eating as little as possible at breakfast might actually backfire—big time.
The sneaky way under-eating in the morning impacts your hunger, cravings, and even your choices later in the day.
How making a single change to my breakfast transformed not just my mornings but my whole relationship with food.
This isn’t about forcing you to eat breakfast if you’re not a morning eater—but if you’re someone who skimps on breakfast to “save calories,” this might be a game changer for you.
I’ve got 2 coaching spots open and I’m offering them at a loyalty rate of $300/month. Rates are going up in January so this is the last time I’ll ever offer this rate—a great time to start if you’ve been thinking about it! Click here to book a consult.
Grab your coffee (or your breakfast bowl) and hit play—this one’s full of insights you didn’t know you needed. 🌟
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207
[00:00:00] Hey everyone, thanks for listening to Diet Diaries. What episode are we on? Let's see, 2 7, crazy. Um, let's see, this episode's going to come out on Monday, December 9th, um, so we're in like full I mean have been in full holiday mode and really quick announcement. So I'm recording this Monday, December 2nd, and literally I know it's going to seem like this is some cyber Monday thing.
It's not. I honestly decided this just last minute this morning. Um, I'm going to be increasing my rates in January for new clients. Um, which I don't, um, the last time I increased my rates was, will have been a year before. Um, and so I decided to open up and offer two one to one coaching spots at my current loyalty rate.
Um, and the fine print there is that you would need to get started by the end of this month, by the end of December. So if you are interested in taking advantage of a rate that is literally never going to be [00:01:00] available again, um, book a consult. There's going to be a link in the show notes and then we can chat, see if it's a good fit, all that good stuff.
So there's no obligation. The consult is free. It's a chance for us to get to know each other, for me to hear what's going on with you and for me to kind of talk through, um, the coaching process and how it could potentially be supportive to you if it's the right fit. So if you've been wanting to work together, um, Now is a really good time to do it, um, if, if, um, the financial side of things is something that is a big consideration for you.
So just wanted to let you know about that. And then today I wanted to dive into something really, really specific. Um, I've got a whole lot of podcast ideas right now, so I'd written down these notes a couple of weeks ago. And I wanted to talk specifically about breakfast. And the reason I wanted to talk about breakfast is because And this is not about breakfast being the most important meal of the day.
And this is not me telling you that you have to eat breakfast. This is kind of a personal anecdote [00:02:00] story, but that I'm going to link back to kind of some bigger kind of skills and concepts and challenges that a lot of us have faced. And the reason I want to talk about breakfast is because when I started making changes to breakfast, I feel like I have said breakfast 10, 000 times already.
It was the single biggest game changer for me in terms of That's a pretty big statement because there are some other really, really big things. But this kind of set the stage for those other things to happen. And here's why. So I would always try to eat as little as possible for breakfast. Um, I remember back in high school, which was really before any of my disordered eating started.
My really, really severe disordered eating started my freshman year of college. I was a little bit in high school, but nothing like what showed up in college. Um, I would have like, like Entenmann's, if you, if you live on the East Coast, you're familiar with [00:03:00] Entenmann's, like a baked goods, like packaged goods brand.
Made these like breakfast bars, and I would eat one of those for breakfast, because I was leaving for school, like, I don't know, like 6. 45 in the morning. I didn't really eat a lot. I remember eating like toaster strudels and stuff like that, like and not thinking anything of it, like whatever. Um, not generally eating a lot, like never had like eggs and toast and bacon for breakfast.
Um. Just really didn't grow up eating that kind of stuff for breakfast, like maybe on the weekend sometimes. And then I remember in college eating egg whites dipped in ketchup for breakfast. Like this was a thing. Me and my best friend at the time, I remember sitting in the dining hall and doing this and just eating the egg whites dipped in ketchup.
Um, and the reason that I did that and then continued to follow through on behaviors like that, which maybe wasn't egg whites, but would be fat free yogurt or a smoothie with like just like frozen fruit and protein powder. Basically, the idea is to eat as little as [00:04:00] possible for breakfast in order to save up calories for later in the day.
And here's what happens. This is like a self fulfilling prophecy. If you eat as little as possible so that you can save up calories for later in the day, Not only, not only are you going to need those calories that you saved up, you're going to need a hell of a lot more than those calories to catch up with the self induced hunger that you have created.
And so it will backfire every single time. That's the great irony of this very poorly thought out strategy. But I did this for years because it felt, it felt scary to use up Too many calories early in the day, at 7. 30, 8 o'clock in the morning, or whatever it is, to use up, you know, 400, 500, 600 calories, you'd be like, oh my god.
It would be like this scarcity panic, what am I gonna do, what am I gonna be able to eat for the rest of the day? And it would really like, In some [00:05:00] ways, the food noise would go like ratchet up to like level 10. Either way, right? Either way, you're ratcheting up the food noise in this situation. And so, but that was kind of, that was how I lived for a really, really long time.
And what happens when you save up calories, not only do you end up using them and using more, you are hungry. You walk away from that first meal hungry, and you're setting. the stage for your day in like a really shitty way. You end up being hungry kind of all day. You can't catch up with it. You end up snacking a lot more.
So you are basically setting yourself up to end up eating a lot more food than if you'd had a bigger breakfast to begin with. And now I'm not saying that me just kind of saying that is going to flip that switch in your brain for you. What I'm hoping this will do is to get you noticing and paying attention to what are your eating habits in the morning?
Are you someone who eats breakfast? If yes, Cool. If not, why not? Not saying that you have to, but just questioning why don't you eat breakfast? Is it something to do with what I'm [00:06:00] talking about or is it because you're someone who just has no appetite? Okay, fine. That's fine. If you are someone who eats a lot late at night or tends to eat a lot later in the day, sometimes that can be linked to not eating breakfast.
Um, that's just like a little bit of a sidebar. So, um, As you start to think, I just lost my train of thought. As you start to kind of think about this, it's like, okay, if I am eating as little as possible at breakfast, and then I'm constantly hungry and I'm snacking more, and I end up eating more than I would have if I had just eaten breakfast, well, what would happen if I ate more at breakfast?
That brings up its own type of discomfort that's a totally new and unfamiliar form of discomfort, right? That's the thing about a lot of disordered eating is sometimes even when we can start to see that what we're doing is not healthy for us. We are so, it's so familiar and we are so comfortable with that specific discomfort that it's very hard to try something else.
And I fully recognize that. That's why I'm not saying this is going to flip a switch and you're just going to be like, aha, I get it now. But I'm [00:07:00] hoping this will give you some things to pay attention and think about and how can you slowly maybe start to make some changes. So if you were to eat a bigger breakfast, what would happen?
You would be full after that meal and not thinking about food. You would not need a snack in between breakfast and lunch, and you would not get so hungry by your next meal and over the course of the day that you wouldn't be able to catch up with it and therefore you wouldn't eat as much as you would when you're trying to catch up with that hunger.
And part of that is eating, quote unquote, the right things for breakfast. And by right things, I mean food that's filling, right? I'm not suggesting that if you are currently eating one fat free yogurt for breakfast, that you go and eat a stack of pancakes every day. Pancakes are wonderful. But they're not going to fill you up, right?
You're going to end up being hungry probably a couple of hours later. I do. That's why I tend not to eat, um, kind of like sweeter type breakfast foods. Not because I don't love them. I do, but because when I do eat them, they're not filling for me. I have to eat so much that it's more food than my body [00:08:00] needs.
It's more food than what really feels good and it doesn't have any longevity for me. So if you were to have a bigger breakfast with more protein, more volume in the form of, of berries, um, and add some more fat, what would happen? Right? So when I started making the breakfast bowls that I share now incessantly on social media, it literally changed everything for me.
And not that we have to get into a big conversation about calories, but I will share that prior to that, I was probably eating like. 200 to 300 calories for breakfast and now I have not tracked calories on my breakfast bowls in quite some time, but I know that they are in the 500 to 600 range. And you know what?
They keep me full for four to six hours. Most days, of course, there's some days where I get hungry and I need something as I'm a human. Most days are keeping me full for four to six hours. So I do not need a morning snack and I get to lunch and I'm not starving. I'm just kind of like a regular amount of hungry, which means I can.
Prepare [00:09:00] or figure out something for lunch without being ravenous and I can eat an amount of food that's not crazy because I'm so hungry that it can't catch up and This was like literally a game changer for me. I stopped thinking about food so much. I stopped being obsessed with food. I stopped thinking about like, oh my god, how many calories do I have left?
Because I was so focused on, and this would happen at lunch, too. It wasn't just breakfast. I would eat as little as I could, kind of leading up to like mid afternoon, dinner, and after dinner. So I was trying to save up calories for basically the back half of the day. And again, when you do that, you're gonna need them and you're gonna need more, even than you saved up.
It is not It has a backfire effect. Our human biology does not fit with that strategy. You will eat less overall if you eat more filling meals. I talk about this all the time in different situations, I'm talking about it now very specifically to breakfast. And I wanted to talk about this because it's such a, it's so [00:10:00] specific to one meal.
It's a personal story that I'm sharing with you, and I think it's a habit and a behavior that a lot of us struggle with, with this like idea of saving up calories for later in the day. Um, Transcribed by https: otter. ai It's, and I get it. I get why people do this. I did it for a very, very long time, and I understand that.
And what I'm, again, hoping this will do is to get you, if you're doing that, to look at that behavior and see, like, is that really serving you? Are you really getting out of it what you think you're getting out of it? And how can you start to make some small changes in the front half of your day to slowly shift that?
Right? You may not be ready to jump from whatever you're eating for breakfast to having like 500, 600 calorie breakfast, but maybe you can change one thing, right? Maybe you can increase a serving of your protein. Maybe you can have a piece of fruit. Maybe you can add some fat, like having a handful of nuts with your fat free yogurt, if that's the thing that you're eating, right?
You can do this slowly and start to feel better. [00:11:00] a shift in the, in the intensity of that hunger that catches up with you, in the amount that you are snacking, in the power, the powerfulness or the intensity like of your cravings, right? Because depriving yourself at breakfast, which is what you're doing, is impacting your entire day.
And again, if you are someone who's just not hungry at breakfast, I'm not talking to you. I'm talking to people who are hungry in the morning and are deliberately and specifically under eating in order to save up for later in the day. Um, because I get it. I lived it. I know there's many of you out there who are doing it.
I have worked with many clients who have done this and it has been a game changer for them. You might not even consciously realize that you're doing this. Some of you might realize you're doing this and some of you might not, because it might be so ingrained that it's just what you do. It's so autopilot and so automatic that you're not even realizing that it's impacting things.
And so again, that's why I wanted to talk about it. Like We don't know what we don't know. [00:12:00] You might not even know that this is a thing for you, but I'm hoping that this might shed some light on that. And you might be like, Oh my God, wait a second. I think that's what I'm doing. Hold on. Is that, is that why I'm like starving by lunch?
Is that why I'm having 10, 000 snacks every afternoon? Is that why I'm thinking about food like all day? Maybe, maybe this is the thing or one of the things. And when I said at the top of the episode that this was the single biggest game changer for me, and then I kind of said that there were some other big things.
Those, one of the other big things was giving yourself permission around food to have it tomorrow. Right? I remember my mom's birthday cake one year and taking a piece and putting it on a plate and eating it slowly and enjoying it. And that sense of urgency being gone, but the reason that I was able to be so mindful and present with it was because I wasn't walking into it starving.
I hadn't saved up my calories and said, Oh my God, now I can have two and a half or three pieces of cake because I didn't, I saved them up. Right? So [00:13:00] that foundation sets the stage for a lot of these other behaviors to take place. If you're saving up your calories and you know that you're having a big dinner out or you're having birthday cake or whatever.
you are going to overeat that thing, right? You are going to not be able to pay attention to how much you actually want, and you're going to overeat it, one, because you're hungry, and two, because it's your chance because you saved the calories. So when you start to set yourself up by shifting the attention away from the calories in that way, and by eating foods that are more filling and more satiating and more satisfying to you, you then don't have to think about those other events in the same way.
You are in a much better situation to be able to make more thoughtful choices, to be able to practice those skills. I'm not saying you're automatically going to want less cake and will be magically be able to have just one piece of cake. No, but you'll be in a much better position to be able to practice the skills that will help you learn how to do that.
If you are barely eating breakfast because you're saving up calories and you're starving all day, you're every [00:14:00] other skill is going to feel nearly impossible to practice. So that's really why this one was such a game changer for me. Um, that's really what I wanted to share today. So again, if you're interested in starting coaching by the end of the month, book a consult, we can talk.
And, um, thank you for being here. Hope you have a great day whenever you are listening to this and I'll see you next week.