Well with Arielle Lorre - 98: Breaking the Diet Cycle + Overcoming Food Fear

Episode Date: February 24, 2021

In this episode I’m talking about how I overcame years of dieting, macro counting and restricting to get to a place of intuitive eating and food freedom. I break down the steps I took to break away from constant diet and food obsession; what components are the most impactful and important when it comes to trusting our bodies and learning to be more intuitive around food choices; what I still struggle with today and how I deal with that and so much more. I also take listener questions at the end! www.helloned.com/BLONDEFILES and use code BLONDEFILES to try Sleep Blend sample at no cost. or use code BLONDE for 15% off your first one time purchase or 20% off your first subscription. www.Sakara.com/BLONDEFILES for 20% off your first order www.Blublox.com/BLONDE for 15% off your order, plus FREE shipping www.AthleticGreens.com/BLONDEFILES to get your FREE year sypply of Vitamin D and 5 Free travel packs today   Produced by Dear MediaSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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We'll get to try the Ned's Sleep Blend sample at no cost. And if you're listening to this episode way after it aired, don't worry, you can still get 15% off your first one-time purchase or 20% off your first subscription purchase using my normal code, blonde, that's B-L-O-N-D-E. Hey, welcome to the Blonde Files podcast. I'm your host, Ariel Lori, and I'm here to talk all things wellness. From how to achieve optimal health and well-being to the best beauty tips and everything in between, no topic is off limits.

I know there is so much information out there, so I'm here to help you navigate it all and live your best life. Thanks for listening. Let's get into it. Hi, everybody. Welcome to the show. Welcome to a solo episode. You and me. I feel like it's been a while since I've done one of these. So it was time. And as usual, I had you send in questions over on Instagram. So I'm going to answer some of those. And honestly, I've been getting a ton around eating exercise, body image, intuitive eating, dieting, all of that. So I want to tackle that today. And I know that I touched on it on the recent episode with Vanessa Rosetto. And I'm also having Evelyn Triboli on the show next week.

week. So that will be coming out in a few weeks. And she is like the godmother of intuitive eating. I believe she coined the term 25 years ago and she's written nine books on it since. So I'm going to save some of the more technical things for her. And yeah, just please remember I'm not an expert on this. I'm just an expert on my experience with this. And, you know, really we're all experts on our own bodies. Some of us just don't know it yet. So I'm going to be talking about myself, my experience. and not talking to you as an authority on the subject, just like as though I were talking to a friend about what I've been through. And I did do an episode last year, the body episode where I went over a lot of this, but I have a lot of new listeners and things have changed a little bit since then as well.

So I will just update you guys on all of that. So to start, someone asked if intuitive eating is essentially just eating whatever you want, when you want, or is it more? about knowing what is best, what will make you feel good, and what's healthy. So here's a definition I found online, I think, on Evelyn Tribbley's site, just so that we can all be on the same page here. So it says intuitive eating is a personal process of honoring health by listening and responding to the direct messages of the body in order to meet your physical and psychological needs. So I think that's a pretty robust, good definition. So, So the bottom line when it comes to eating and finding the right foods and the right approach

for you is that you have to do the work and the trial and error and experience what works and what doesn't because we're all different. And I say this all the time. But what works for me right now might not work for me next month or next year. So the most important piece for me has really been. tuning into my body to give it what it needs. Now in the present moment, not what it needed two months ago, and not what I want it to want, if that makes sense. So what I mean is my dietary needs fluctuate and very constantly. And my old approaches to eating were not accommodating to that. And so I had to

radically change my approach, which I'll get into. But why don't I start with what eating has looked like for me throughout my life? So I always loved food. And, my family loves food and my parents cooked. And so I've always had an affinity towards fresh food. And we didn't really have junk food around when I was younger. And I'm not talking like only fruits and vegetables and nuts. We weren't to that extreme. But we did have a lot of salads and vegetables and fish and stuff like that. And I loved things like goldfish. And I remember I always had baked lays because health to snack on. So I was really fortunate in that way that, you know, I was introduced to healthy food and not a lot of processed stuff. But at the same time, I also loved my craft macaroni and

cheese in high school like everybody else. And my personal favorite was Far East boxed rice pilaf with Hidden Valley ranch dressing. Seriously, you guys, it's a delicacy. I can taste it now. And Crystal Light, Strawberry Crystal Light is the flavor to my carefree teen age summers. That stuff was the best. So I did have that stuff, but I never really had like ultra processed food. And I credit my parents for raising us to incorporate, you know, a lot of variety and cook and all of that. And somebody asked actually recently if my parents could have helped my relationship with myself and with food. And I honestly don't think they could have. I think what happened to me was that I was influenced by diet culture and my friends were

influenced by diet culture and then we influenced each other. And it was way different back then and way less toxic, I think, like in the early 2000s than it is now. I cannot imagine being like a teenager and having social media, but it still had a way of infiltrating my mind. You know, I remember I loved 90 supermodels and I had all my teen magazines and MTV and I remember hearing things like the cabbage soup diet. And I distinctly remember. I remember hearing like the really skinny, popular, gorgeous upperclassmen in my school that were doing it. And this is probably around like 14 or 15 years old, mind you. I was a rail. But I also remember like where I was sitting in school, who I was with, what I was wearing when I first noticed what my

stomach looked like when I sat down. And like my friends and I were comparing our stomachs. And again, we were tiny. So I think a lot of this is just what girls go through as a result of the images and the articles and the narrative that were fed. And I bet that you listening, can remember the first time you were aware of your body, or the first time you were aware that there were things that you didn't like about your body or when you first decided to diet or try the cabbage soup diet or watch what you ate. You know, isn't it? It's just crazy. It's so crazy to me to think about it. I feel like we all have that vivid memory, but my body image awareness, let's call it,

and my eating got more disordered later in high school. So I started taking Adderall for a period of time and I loved how thin I got and then later it evolved into bulimia, which was very tied up in my alcoholism and my addiction and the underlying emotional issues that I was covering with substances. And that's an entirely different episode so I won't go into that. But to get more current, I was very lucky in that my real eating disorder, my bulimia, it got really bad for a few months when I first got sober seven years ago. But then it went away. when I got into therapy and found a solution for my alcoholism, and luckily it hasn't come back since. So that's all the context that you need. Where my story gets relevant is when I started my Instagram account as the Blonde Files back in February 2016. So I was a few years sober, and I wanted to get in shape, which at the time meant that I wanted abs. And I started doing BBG. And at the time, I thought, actually I don't really remember what I thought. I don't think I had my own thoughts about how to quote unquote get healthy when it came to my diet. I wasn't eating terribly by any means, but I remember

having intense cravings all the time and snacking all the time and living off coffee. The OG followers will remember my cashew milk lattes. And I was eating a lot of kind of diet foods. And I looked at two others in the space to see what they were eating, which at the time was like a lot of quest bars, a lot of assaibals, a lot of halo-top ice cream, stuff like that. And obviously, there's nothing inherently wrong with any of these. And if you like these things, please don't feel like you're doing something wrong or that it's bad. It's just, I can look back now and see how I was trying to restrict so much, like restrict carbs and fat. And then I would fill my diet with these things and I never felt satisfied and I was always crashing and then having cravings and binging.

So, for example, I would have a quest bar for like a post-workout snack in the morning and then white knuckle my way through my day, maybe having a salad for lunch, then like chicken and veggies for dinner, which was usually late because of my work schedule back then. And then at like 10 o'clock, I was famished and I would eat a pint of halo top with like another microwaved quest bar and all this shit added on top. And I would still be hungry. And I don't know if I've talked about this. Maybe I have. But there were times when I would go to bed at like 11, 1130, feeling so gross and miserable. And then I would wake up an hour later from hunger and have another protein bar or like crackers because I then wanted something salty. And, you know, of course I would

feel terrible in the morning and need tons of coffee to have any kind of energy. And this cycle just went on and on and on. So counting macros was the big thing to do at that time. So I thought that would help me lean out and maybe get my eating under control. This is kind of indicative of where my priorities were at the time, clearly. You know, I was mostly less concerned about how I was feeling like shit and I was more concerned about my body. But it makes sense because at the time I was also getting this external validation for like my before and afters on Instagram and my changing body. And, you know, I was doing this intense exercise at the time. So even despite my eating, things were changing, but not in the way that I really wanted them to. So I had my

macros calculated. And for those who don't know, it's basically how many grams of protein, carbs, and fat you can eat for whatever your goals are. And at first, it was really great for me because I realized I could eat so many more carbs and fat than I was eating and still reach my goals. So I do kind of credit that with learning about actually how much food I could actually eat for my body. But it's an incredibly flawed approach, at least it was for me, because it's so easy to get obsessive about it. It's so easy to kind of get wrapped up in this intense fear about not hitting your macros and eating something that you hadn't planned and like going out to eat was basically terrifying. and I learned how to manipulate the numbers to eat less and less but not really feel hungry. And, you know, the numbers followed me around for a long time after.

It was really hard to break out of. And, you know, so I did get pretty lean. And I also got really miserable and exhausted because instead of listening to my body to hear essentially what it needed on any given day, I basically said, you know what? I don't care how active you were today or where you are in your cycle or. how much you slept or your stress levels or any of that, you get X amount of calories today. That's it. And of course, if people seriously have to lose weight, this might be necessary. But I'll let the experts handle that on another episode. Again, just sharing my experience here. So I hit a wall and I had to stop because I

pretty much couldn't function anymore. And that began my journey with intuitive eating and also intuitive exercise. You know, I had to stop punishing myself in the gym and trying to like force my body into what I thought it should look like. So this was three or four years ago and it's not like I've been perfect since then in no way, shape or form, but I can honestly say I've come so far and am at the best place I've been in terms of my relationship with food and my relationship with myself. I do really well with a rock bottom. And I had my rock bottom with tracking macros and calories and dieting and my body image. So really, it cleared the way for a new foundation to be built.

And that's what I've done. Much like in recovery from a substance, I had to be willing to try a different way and feel the uncomfortable feelings no matter what. And over the years, I've experienced a lot of trial and error. And I've found that the missing piece for me was really coming into my. body and slowing down and getting quiet enough to feel my body for long enough to be able to really hear what it's saying. I think we're so distracted now. We can literally go an entire day without being present with ourselves. So how can we possibly know what we need? You know, if I'm looking at my computer

or my phone or my TV when I sit down to eat, which I do sometimes, how can I really feel if I'm hungry or if I'm satiated or if I'm getting full, if my, if my energy is going elsewhere and I have all these external stimuli coming in besides what I'm putting in my body. I can't. So without getting into it, because I know everyone checks out at the word meditation, that was a really big piece of the puzzle for me, just these moments where I can just be in my body and be aware. But if you don't have a meditation practice, that doesn't mean you can't eat intuitively. I really think it comes down to being mindful and to be mindful is to be aware and to be aware is to be present. So whatever you can do to cultivate awareness and presence around your meals, whether that's turning off your TV or computer or the

podcast, even this podcast, and, you know, turning on some music or reading a book. I don't know if reading a book is cheating, but I always feel very grounded and present when I read. And focus on chewing your food. I mean, seriously, I was shocked and appalled when someone suggested maybe I wasn't chewing my food, but of course I was only chewing like twice once I paid attention. So maybe try these little changes and then try to develop a daily practice where you're getting some stillness and do a little meditation. Today I was working at my computer all day and my nervous system was so jacked up. I just felt so anxious and tense and burned out and I wanted to mindlessly eat this whole box of crackers and instead I paused. I went outside. I did my 20 minutes of meditation and literally on a

cellular level. I was a different human being when I was done. I was calm. I was present, attuned to my body, and I was still hungry. It's not like an appetite suppressant. So I had a snack and some water and felt really good, and I didn't just mindlessly try to stuff that anxiety down. I get asked all the time what vitamins and supplements and probiotics I take, how I get all my vegetables in, and so on. And I also happen to live with someone who is like averse to doing all of the above. So I'm going to fill you in on this great hack, and that is Athletic Greens. I am not the type to take a million different supplements and go buy all kinds of powders and potions to mix up every day. And I don't have to because Athletic Greens does all

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who make a daily commitment to their health every day. Again, that's athletic greens.com slash blonde files and get your free year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs today. I don't know about you, but my screen time this past year is like through the roof, off the charts, it's terrible. I'm sure a lot of us are working from home,

constantly on Zoom and our phones and our computers, and it's just, it's a lot of, lot. I wear blue blocks light therapy glasses and I have been for the past year and I am so grateful. I really feel like it makes such a difference in my anxiety, my tension headaches, eye strain and just that overall burnt out feeling after sitting in front of a screen all day. So blue blocks are the ultimate blue light blocking glasses created in optics laboratory conditions. They block out the blue light and unlike other trendy companies who have no understanding of how light impacts help, blue blocks are backed by the latest science and research. They have high

quality lenses for daytime, nighttime, and for color therapy exactly in line with the suggested peer-reviewed academic literature. They have over 20 stylish frames to choose from. Crystal is my favorite. And they come in prescription, non-prescription, and readers. Additionally, they can turn almost any pair of your glasses into custom blue blockers. So if you want to get your energy back, sleep better and block out the unhealthy effects of blue light, go to Blue Blocks today and get free shipping worldwide and 15% off with the code blonde, that's B-L-O-N-D-E, or go to blueblocks.com slash blonde. That's B-L-O-O-X.com slash blonde, B-L-O-N-D-E. Another huge component of this approach for me was acceptance. Accepting my body as it is today for everything it can do.

and not loathing it or wanting to change everything about it. I think right now we can all find some gratitude for our bodies after going through a pandemic when so many people got sick and so many people lost their lives. You know, if it's the least we can grasp to, it can be that our body has stayed healthy, right? So I find that if I approach anything in life from a place of negativity or hate, I'm not going to be successful. It's not sustainable.

Or maybe I'll accomplish whatever I've set out to do. but I'm freaking miserable the whole time. I can tell you from experience that when I look back on old photos and I see where my body was physically when I was at my breaking point, it was my, quote, goal body. But that's not what I saw or felt at the time. I just kept wanting to go further and get that spot in my stomach and the part in my arms and, you know, the goalpost keeps moving down the field and it's never enough. And that's not to say that we can't have physical goals and achieve them and be happy with that

because I feel like that's kind of where I am now. But the difference now is that I do things from a place of self-love or at the very least, self-acceptance. And my motivation is feeling my best because how I look will always be changing and always be fluctuating. And if my condition for loving or accepting myself is solely based on how I look, then I'm going to be in a constant state of fear and dissatisfaction. I shared about conditional happiness the other day, and I read about it in the Daily Stoic. And, you know, I think so many of us do this. We fall into the trap of thinking that if and when X, Y, or Z happens, then we'll be happy. And when our happiness is dependent on something outside of ourselves, we're going to constantly be in a state of fear.

I learned that fear is one of three things. It's not getting what you want, losing what you have, or being found out. And I don't want to live in fear. I don't want to place my happiness on something that is changing. I don't want to try to control things in order to be happy. So slow down, tune in, accept what it is right here, right now, and ask, what can I do to support myself now in this moment? What do I really need? Not how will this make me look? And I know that this is coming from someone who has always been petite, and I know that there are people who genuinely want to or should lose weight, and I don't know what that feels like, but I do know the shitty feelings around food,

when food is the enemy or your body is the enemy, and eating or hunger is this thing to be feared. So really, this is about the feelings and finding a sustainable approach so that we can feel comfortable and we can have goals and go about that in a healthy way. So of course the other component of this is the actual food itself and how do we eat intuitively without intuitively eating the whole box of Oreos? I get this question constantly. So I had to stop restricting, very counterintuitive, but I had to eat whatever I wanted to learn. And yes, I overdid it and missed the mark so many times, but I've learned I've learned what's too much and what is not enough and what feels good and what doesn't.

And something that actual experts have talked about on my podcast is that if you have underlying issues, for example, a hormone imbalance or food sensitivities or gut dysbiosis, then this can be really difficult because you may be craving certain things as a result of that. So if you think you have something like that going on, definitely consult with a professional to figure out what's going on. But for me, when I finally stopped deeming certain foods bad or off limits, I mean literally the forbidden fruit, I allowed myself to have real variety and these intense craving subsided because I really do get a little bit of everything.

You know, if I tell myself no carbs for breakfast, I'm going to be hungry and eat 10 other things to try to feel satisfied when I could have just eaten a bowl of oats or toast or whatever it is that I'm, you know, trying to avoid. And you guys know that I'm into healthifying foods and someone asked me on Instagram if doing this is really eating intuitively or if it's just more restriction. But here's the difference. I know what works for my body and what doesn't. So I will create recipes for like pizza or cookies or whatever it may be that I normally wouldn't be able to eat because dairy, for example, doesn't really agree with me. So that way I can have these things and enjoy them. So it's kind of the opposite of restriction for me.

And again, when it comes to eating this stuff or anything for that matter, eating the stuff in two, and not following that signal that's saying to keep going and eat 10 cookies initially came down to being slow and deliberate and mindful and present. And now that it's become kind of second nature, I just usually know when to stop and I feel present in my body so I can feel the cues of actually being hungry or full. Now, that is not to say that I have it all figured out. There are certain foods. I'll give you two examples, Cocoa Love cookies and Nowhere Bakery cookies to be specific that I have a little bit of trouble with sometimes. Like for whatever reason, when I have a bite, my brain does that thing that it did when I drink alcohol where the reward system just

malfunctions and I just have this desire for more that overpowers the signal to stop. I know I've made progress because I'll eat like three cookies versus 10, but still I know it's too much for me. because I feel gross after. So I have to limit having these things around until I figure it out. So when it comes to dessert, because you guys know that I still have dessert daily, I usually just make my own cookies. I guess they're not as good as the other ones. So they don't have the same effect. Maybe I shouldn't be advertising that. Or I'll have like stuffed dates with almond butter and chocolate or just a piece of like Who Kitchen chocolate or something like that. Still satisfying, but not like so freaking good that I just cannot stop.

And then throughout the day, as far as meal goes, you guys know pretty much what I eat because I post it all the time on Instagram. But it's very balanced. I don't restrict carbs or fat or anything. So by the end of the day, I'm not starving anyway. So the real point I want to make, I think, is that we can trust our bodies. You know, for me, and I know this is not everyone's experience and that there's a time and place for this, but for me, tracking macros and weighing my food and all of that taught me that my body

is not to be trusted, but it is. But in order to develop that trust, I have to develop a good relationship with it in order to trust it, you know, just like any other relationship with another person. And that's going to look different for everyone, but we can all start now. We can try these little changes that I talked about earlier. So we can feel grateful for having bodies that do so much for us 24-7 and for the ability to feel hunger cues and the ability to have access to food and be able to feed ourselves, you know, well enough to fuel ourselves to have the energy to live life. So that's my preaching for the day. So I'm going to get into some questions. And again, I'm saving the questions that are outside of my scope here for the experts. And remember,

if you're really struggling, there's a big emotional component to this. So if you can, Try to work on this with a therapist or a professional. If you are inspired to eat healthier after listening to this episode or you're just trying to eat healthier this year, incorporate more plants into your diet, or go fully plant-based, but you're feeling overwhelmed or short on time. Sakara is here to help.

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That's S-A-A-R-A-R-A-com slash B-L-O-N-D-E-F-I-L-E-S or enter Blonde-F-I-L-E-E-S at checkout. Again, that's sacara.com slash blonde files. Very common question here. What do I do about cravings? So cravings happen. They're totally natural. And even though I don't really get loud or intense cravings anymore, I will crave, for example, pizza once in a while, or I'll be a,

quote unquote craving pasta one night. So what I do is I eat it. So maybe I'll make a healthier version, which for me is just as delicious and sometimes more so, or I will just get the real deal. But the thing about cravings, which I kind of touched on already, is that if I try to ignore it, it gets louder and I will eat my way around it until I've eaten everything in the pantry. And I do believe that there are times when craving comes from boredom, dehydration, lack of sleep, hormones, and so on. So I really do everything I can to tune into my body and tune into what's going on and give it what it is asking for within reason and make sure that I'm aware of whether I'm bored, whether I've been sitting all day, if I've drank enough water, if I'm tired, where I am in my cycle, all of that. So the follow-up question to this, of course, is how to differentiate between real hunger or something like boredom, hormones, stress, et cetera. And I wish I had a concrete answer and hopefully the experts I bring on will.

But again, in my experience, when I can slow down and be present and deliberate and I am eating a lot of variety and balanced meals and staying hydrated and all of the things, then I'm aware of when I'm eating because I'm bored, which I do sometimes. I like eating. It brings me pleasure. And I always know when I'm eating because of hormones. And I allow myself that if I'm PMSing or something. And I always know when I'm eating because of stress, because I'm a stress eater. So doing things like getting outside to walk for 20 minutes or meditate when I'm wanting to just reach for the snack food like I talked about before is super helpful. Okay. So a lot of questions about how I manage eating sweets. So as I mentioned before, there are some that I really just have very little control over. So I like to eat things that I really enjoy, but don't cause that insane craving reaction. I just remembered also Rob Yang was talking about eating chocolate.

And he recommended if you're having like a square of who chocolate, for example, if you let it sit in your mouth, let it kind of melt in your mouth that you can really savor it. You really get the full flavors and all of that instead of just doing what I sometimes do, which is like putting it in, chewing it three times, and swallowing and then reaching for more. It really helps you to feel satisfied by that. And I also find, I don't know if this is evidence-based or science or anything, so take this with a grain of salt, but eating my dessert with a fat makes it much more satiating for me and I don't get a crash or an intense craving for more. That's why I like to have a date stuffed with almond butter and a piece of chocolate or these truffles I've been making

with vegan Dolce de Lace feeling made from full fat coconut milk. I feel like I just went Hilaria Baldwin there with full fat coconut milk and I add a little bit of almond butter, stuff like that. And what else? There's this brand called VPK Iyervita tea. And they have a Vata tea, V-A-T-A, and I've been drinking it for years. It's naturally sweet. And sometimes just having tea like that that's naturally sweet with my chocolate makes me feel that much more satisfied and I don't feel the urge to go overboard. And I've been in a place where I've gone overboard and felt like shit so many times. So it just became less appealing to me to do so. Okay, I got this question a lot and I just want to say I hear you and I'm going to make sure I talk about this

in depth with an expert in an upcoming episode. So what about when you intuitively want to binge eat? And my unprofessional initial response to that is that our bodies don't want that, but our mind wants that. So the impulse to eat everything isn't real hunger, but it's an unmet emotional need or an unattended to underlying emotional issue or it could also be a response to restriction. So I think all those things need to be looked at before really accepting that like, well, my intuition is broken. I just intuitively want to eat everything and I'm destined to never be able to trust myself and my body.

Okay. Do I still keep a general eating routine even though I'm not tracking? I don't. No, I don't. Took me a second there. It really changes a lot day to day and week to week. I do have my meals that I love. So for the most part, I'm going to end up having like a yogurt bowl or chia pudding or oatmeal for breakfast with some nuts and seeds and fruit and granola. That's what I'm liking right now. Then lunch will usually be a lot of greens and vegetables and leftover protein from whatever I had for dinner the night before. Or I like

to just prep a bunch of chicken or something like that and add that to some roasted vegetables. and maybe some rice or sweet potato or cabotia squash or something, some kind of carb like that. And dinner is a total wildcard, which is fun because I used to eat the same thing all the time and I got pretty bored with it. You might be surprised to know that I have had salmon like maybe once in the last month. I'm sure Chuck is celebrating. And then I'll just fill in some snacks as I need to. So I like having a handful of macadamia nuts before I work out. I love go macro bars. I I like Mary's supersede crackers with avocado or hummus or simple mills crackers, the ones that taste like goldfish, or I'll have veggies in hummus. It totally depends on the day.

I do want to add that prepping food, not necessarily full meals, although that can be helpful too, but like having cooked or cut veggies, some cooked chicken or whatever protein or vegan protein you like so that you have it on hand, having fruit and nuts and things like that can be so helpful. And a couple weeks ago, Dr. Tarr was on my podcast. She pointed out that to reduce waste and to make this more affordable, buying frozen fruit and veggies is a great option. It's a great way to stock up and always have that stuff on hand without it going bad. So I just know from experience when I want to eat a protein bar for lunch that will lead me to tons of snacking later in the day from not really being satiated. So it helps to be like, no, I'm going to make a salad with some greens and these leftover vegetables and chicken from dinner last night or something. And I'll throw in some beans and a little leftover rice or whatever else I have on hand. Or make a sandwich or a wrap or whatever. That way, I'm so satiated that I'm not having those crazy afternoon cravings. Let's see. How often do I weigh myself? That's a never for me. I see my weight

if I go to the doctor, but it doesn't really tell me anything that I need to know. Do I ever do? track out of curiosity to see where I am with things. That's also a no. I deleted the tracking app from my phone and it was so hard to break away from those numbers so I just don't want really anything to do with it personally. Did I put on weight when I stopped tracking and started eating intuitively? Yes, I did. Not a ton of weight. Again, I didn't weigh myself, but I could just tell that my body was changing. But I really think I was underweight. Like when I was super lean, I don't think my body is supposed to look like that. I didn't feel good. I didn't have energy. And I remember someone once told me that maybe the way my body wants to look, like where it's the most healthy and the way

I want to look are not the same thing. And I was like, whoa. Luckily, I was in a place at that time to receive that well. And I didn't resist it. And I accepted it. I was like, yeah, let's see what happens when I'm really giving myself nourishment in all the ways. And so, yeah, I probably did put on some weight and then leaned out again once I learned how to eat and how to move and how to tune into my body. But it wasn't like this crazy lean thing that I was forcing prior to when I started eating intuitively. Okay. What was my biggest challenge when I started practicing intuitive eating? By the way, I should just say that I don't consider myself like a, intuitive eater. I just, this is just how I eat now. But for the sake of this, we'll call it intuitive

eating. So honestly, all the same challenges that you guys have. I was scared of what would happen to my body. My cravings were all over the place. I didn't know if I was actually hungry and so on and so forth. And it took me a long time. Like, hi, I've been doing this for a few years. And really only in the last year, can I honestly say that I don't think about how what I'm eating might affect me physically and the cravings have really stopped. Like I can't really remember the last time that I really had a craving for something besides being like, oh, I want pizza tonight or I really want some fries right now or something like that. So I guess they're like mini cravings. But back to what I was saying in the beginning, you know, I had a rock bottom with all of this and that really gave me

the willingness to try a new way. I was sick of my own shit. I was sick of obsessive. I was sick of obsessive. over food and sick of how it dictated a lot of aspects of my life, not unlike alcohol when I was drinking. I don't want that life in any way, shape, or form. I want to enjoy food and enjoy the moments around food. And that was really hard when I was constantly thinking about what it meant for my appearance. So if you're, if you're still listening, if you're still here, maybe ask yourself, like, am I sick of this? Have I had enough yet? And really think about it. maybe you're not at a place. Maybe you still want to try different things. So maybe write about it in a journal and just see what comes up for you. Okay. I think last question because I'm over talking about myself here and I think

I've said everything I need to say. But how can I quit calorie or macro tracking? Okay. So this is really hard and I kind of alluded to this earlier when I said that it was really hard getting over those numbers and those numbers really followed me around for a long time. So I'll tell you what helped me. Maybe it'll help you. So I kind of weaned myself off. So I got rid of the app first that I was using to track, but I still prepped everything. So I knew exactly what I was getting on any given day, not calorie or macro-wise, but I knew

what I was going to eat the next day. I wasn't really making like game time decisions. And then I'd prep everything but dinner. So I would have like my breakfast and lunch and see. snacks all prepped, but then dinner, I would go rogue. And after you've been tracking for a long time, this is scary. It's anxiety provoking. So I would decide real time what I was going to make for dinner. Then once I was good with that, then I'd maybe just have my lunch and snacks planned out. But breakfast and dinner, I was on my own. And then I'd do snacks. And finally, I was making actual

decisions daily, different decisions daily, about what I was going to eat and when and how much and what felt good and what maybe didn't and all of that. And it was gradual. And this really helped me to get over the fear that my body was going to blow up. Like my body was out to get me and that it was not to be trusted if I ate outside of my macros. So that was really helpful for me. Maybe some version of that can be helpful for you if that's something that you're struggling with. So I think that's all for today. I hope this was helpful in some way. And again, make sure to check back for when I have Evelyn Triboli on and I'm also having Lisa Hymn, one of my other favorite dietitians on who talks a lot about this stuff and check out the recent episode with Vanessa Rosetto, my other favorite RD, and I will

talk to you next week. I hope you enjoyed that episode. If you liked it and if you like the show in general, please take a second to rate, review, and subscribe. It goes a long way and it's actually the best way to support the show. Also, if you want to see more about each episode, you can head over to The Blonde Files podcast on Instagram. I'm always posting about each episode there or over on my personal page at Ariel Laurie.