Latest / Empower Your Menopause / Episode 43: Breaking Food Guilt — The Mental Load No One Talks About

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Episode 43: Breaking Food Guilt — The Mental Load No One Talks About · Empower Your Menopause

• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: Hello and welcome to Empower Your Menipos.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_01: We're actually on episode 43, which is a huge achievement.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: And we noticed the other day we've got more than 1300 downloads.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you all very much for listening.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: Hopefully, by now, then you know that this is a podcast that helps take you back take back control of your healthier home and your happiness, one honest conversation at a time.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: So today I'm James Ellis, and with me as usual, I've got my Fabers beyond for Junior.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: Here in the UK, it's Mental Health Awareness Week, and we wanted to spotlight a part of mental and emotional well-being that often flies under the radar, maybe especially for women in midlife, and that's the issue of food guilt.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: Now, before we even start, just want to make it clear we are not counsellors or therapists, but as coaches, we do work with women every day who are exhausted from this whole idea of fighting with food, giving themselves all the time, and trying to be invert commas, if you're watching on YouTube, good around eating.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: So this episode is not intended to be a replacement for professional mental health support.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: But through our coaching process, we do help women build healthy relationships with food and themselves.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um so we thought it was a really good subject to look at, but it does hover a little bit on the boundary.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um so let's dive in then.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's a big journey for many of our clients.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: So, Julia, let's just start off with a simple definition.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: What exactly is food guilt?
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I suppose just how does it differ from other food challenges that people might face?
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um women especially deal with this.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it isn't only a woman issue, but it's more common among women, and it's basically feeling shame or judgment, whether that's from others or ourselves, or even anxiety around eating.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: And it comes, we'll explain where that comes from.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it it's different than than having like, let's say, cravings or um specific food tastes or cultural issues.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: Food guilt really is uh an internal thing that we feel that that adds stress to to being around food.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: So we might use common phrases like, oh, I was really bad today, I ate this thing, or oh, I I'll be good tomorrow, or I I was really good today, I ate well, so I can have this treat, right?
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: Or I ate one cookie, I've ruined everything.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: These kinds of this kind of self-talk is is very common with people who deal with difficult relationships with food.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: And especially for for midlife women, midlife women, I mean, we live in a diet culture.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't talked to anybody recently who's not on some kind of a diet or health plan.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and we do find that there's an interesting statistic.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: The average woman will have tried 126 different diets in her lifetime.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's just staggering.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: Can you think 126 throughout, let's say, a hundred years?
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: That means there there's really no period in a woman's life when she's not feeling restricted or obsessed or thinking about dieting or you know, have some kind of concern about food.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so when we get into midlife and our bodies are changing, it really makes it really makes a big difference.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: So when we get all focused on food restriction, we feel a lot of self-judgment and guilt around it.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: And we also get a lot of mixed messages about food.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, there's there's like food morality, right?
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: The marketing from the food industry, they spent billions of dollars on research to understand how to manipulate people psychologically to want to buy their food, to feel like we need to buy their food.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: So we get taught things like hunger is an emergency, right?
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, don't let yourself get hungry.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, our bodies are very capable of going long periods of time, but women we talk to all the time, and I was guilty of this for a long time.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we pack snacks in our in our handbag, we have snacks in our in our desk at work, we have you know, convenience everywhere that where am I going to get food from as if there's if we're going to starve.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: Our bodies can actually go quite a long time.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: And the worst thing that happens when we get hungry is well, we get hungry, maybe a little hangry too.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's okay.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: But we're just taught that we can't ever let ourselves get hungry anymore.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: As a matter of fact, I remember one of my favorite phrases, eat now in case you're hungry later.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's just it's crazy.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's all this conflicting information.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like, oh, you should eat every five or six hours and graze throughout the day.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: And then on the next, in the next breath, you hear, well, you shouldn't snack between meals.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, how about don't eat in the morning, wait until later to eat your first meal?
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: And then on the other hand, we hear breakfast is the most important meal of the day.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: Intermittent fasting isn't good for women.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: Intermittent fasting is the best way to manage your weight and on and on and on.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: So it's really hard to know what we're supposed to believe.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: And when you add on all of the changes to our body throughout menopause, it it gives us this additional pressure to try to control food and to control our bodies and control ourselves around food.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: So it it can really play with our psychological and mental health.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I mean, don't you think?
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, absolutely.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think for me, one of the biggest challenges and why I think it's very important at this time of life, it's it's a couple of points really.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: The first one is absolutely agree, this idea of being on a constant diet or trying to stick to a number of food rules, or you're labelling foods as good and bad, all these things come at a time of life which is already naturally pretty stressful for women, right?
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: Because not only are their bodies going through changes, and that can be quite a scary thing, there are societal changes that are taking place as well, both within a woman's sort of like close society, so within her family, you know, kids are growing up, parents are getting old, there's all those kind of things, but then there's all these societal pressures to look in certain ways and act in certain ways and and be certain ways, and I think when you add all those things together, it's just adding adding more and more layers of stress on an already stressful time, and of course, you know, the idea of those family dynamics as well can cause other challenges as well.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: You have children who might be in inverted commas fussy eaters because they're still trying to discover flavours and tastes and things like that.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: You may have a partner who wants to eat a totally different way from what you do if you're a woman and you're the one who's preparing the food in the house, and so lots and lots of other stresses as well.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: And the truth is that those 127 diets that you talked about that women go through in their lifetimes, yeah, it's that constant dieting and obsessing about food just keeps stops people from actually tuning into what people's bodies need, and obviously what people need will differ per individual.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: One of the biggest things that we hear people coming to us and saying is, well, this worked for my friend X or my sister or my cousin or whoever else it might be, and that doesn't take into account at all what your own body makeup may be and what your own genetics are.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there are genes that actually transcribe coding that some people will do better on carbohydrates, some people will do better with more protein, some people will do better on a higher fat diet, and so there's all those challenges that are thrown in as well.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: So if somebody start throwing in a load of rules that are constrictive rules aimed at a general population, or even worse, based on whatever the motives of the person saying they these are the rules might be, and we know that you know big food organizations come into that and all kinds of different things, then it's no wonder that people are confused, and that confusion creates more anxiety, it creates more stress, and it also creates these labels of things that are good, things that are bad, and really all that leads to is a huge drain on a person, and in this case, a woman in midlife's emotional capacity, trying to negotiate these food rules all the time, trying to work out what is appropriate to do socially, if you're going out, if you're eating at a restaurant, if you're eating at a friend's house.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so it's a real real challenge.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: And then, of course, you know, I know it's slightly beyond our our remit to talk about, but that can then be linked into this idea of binging and restrictive cycles, uh, which adds other issues in body image issues, and and the truth is is that whether an eating disorder is present or whether it's just food anxiety, a lot of this is based around low self-worth.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it's not just about disordered eating, there's almost like this normalized idea out there that things are a little bit crazy, and so many rules, so many regulations, so many things that are good, so many things that are meant to be bad.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: Where does someone start and how much anxiety does that create?
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: I'm glad that Bill, your dog's joined us, by the way, for a couple of that.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: That's quite all right.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: So I wonder it's a good way to bring an end to quite a sort of like heavy opening, I suppose.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: So tell us a little bit, Julie, where do you think you know what's the underlying thing that gets uh that drives some of these anxieties then?
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: We've talked about some of the some of the bigger things from a societal perspective.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: What about on a personal level?
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: What's going on there?
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, this is a really it's a it's really interesting to me.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: I think a lot of it starts in our childhood because we're conditioned in a certain way, right?
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: I grew up in the clean your plate club, um, where I there I actually have pictures of myself sitting and sleeping at the dinner table because I wouldn't, I wasn't allowed to leave the table till my plate was empty.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, rather than teaching, rather than learning to tune into our into our bodies.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there's a lot of we use food as a reward, right?
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: If you if you clean your room, I'll take you for ice cream.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: Or we fall down and skin our knee.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: Mom gives us a cookie, and it doesn't take very long for us to associate cookies with feeling better.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: So we we need to really pay attention to what our food beliefs are because we pass those along to the other people in our lives, especially our children.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and food judgment does start early.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, there's a lot of shame, especially with girls, like boys with big appetites.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's a really good thing.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: Look at him, he's gonna grow to be big and strong.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: But a girl with a big appetite, oh, you don't want to get fat.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that's that's not good.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: You need to be dainty and and more careful.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so there's a lot of childhood conditioning that we don't even realize is happening, or that we're passing on to our children, or that is is buried in our subconscious mind that we've carried with us all of these years.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's a lot of social pressures as well.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever been out with your friends and they say, oh, come on, just have just have one, or give it a try, or I don't want to have cake.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: If you're not going to, I'll feel bad, you know, like there's something wrong with them enjoying something that you don't want.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: And one that that I hear a lot is, you know, just a little bit isn't gonna kill you.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: Let yourself relax.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: You've been so good, you know, enjoy yourself.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: Like like eating healthy food is some kind of a punishment.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: And and it couldn't be further from the truth because I know when when and I know from our client experience, when they start to change their habits around food, they feel so much better and so much lighter and so much more energized.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: And interestingly enough, back to the marketing industry, have you ever noticed that most pictures of healthy eaters, and that's in air quotes, or healthy food, will show you pictures of women smiling or laughing with a salad.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's you know, there's so much other food that we can eat that is it is good for us and makes us feel really good, that tastes delicious, but doesn't have to be a salad.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: So, but we have this impression that healthy eating is is only living on salads or or those kinds of things, but it's a lot of again, a lot of marketing.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: So when you get that to this midlife period and we start peramenopause all the way through to postmenopause, this constant change in our body, our weight is changing, the way we store fat and distribute it around our body is changing.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: So we get into a little bit of a panic about eating because things we used to do aren't working so well for us anymore.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: And um, the reason is that our bodies need different things during this time of life, but unless we learn what those are, unless we're willing to be a little more open and curious and accepting of the fact that food and nutrition for us is going to look different now, we can get really, really stressed about it.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I know I've also been hearing a lot about research that shows levels of resilience because we have so many things going on, competing demands for our time, you know, demands from the kids and schedules and taking care of everyone and everything else first.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: We feel like we don't have time to shop and prepare healthy meals.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: And we all oftentimes end up eating on the fly.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: And most convenience foods are not designed for health unless we've prepared them ourselves.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: And we get into this cycle of perfectionism, right?
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: We're we're all or nothing.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: We either on program or off program, one of these 120 some odd diets, we're we're either good or bad.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: And and we want to people please.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: So again, we're out in these social situations, we want to take care of everybody else's needs.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: We don't think about ourselves until the end of that day.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: And when we're at the bottom of our list, most of the time we don't we don't get to ourselves, we don't get to meet our needs, and so all of those competing demands will will drain our energy.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: And then again, it's oh well, I'll just grab this whatever because I didn't have time to to make myself a healthy meal because I was busy taking care of everybody else.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: And then we feel bad.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I was I really wanted to cut back, I really wanted to lose weight, I was on this diet or whatever it is, and we end up losing trust in our ability to do those things for ourselves.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: So it becomes this vicious cycle.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, it's a it's one of those things we get into, but there are a lot of different ways you can you can tell if this is something that you're dealing with.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, first of all, if all of this sounds a bit familiar to you, um, that's a pretty good sign.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but um, you want to talk about some ways to recognize this?
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so uh I think the the easiest one, the one that I hear and see most common, not just in clients but in friends and family as well, particularly mid midlife women, is this idea of feeling good or bad based on what you eat.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: Now I don't mean necessarily feeling as in makes you feel ill, but more as though you're feeling as though you've been good.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: So you're giving yourself, you know, I've been good today, or I've been bad today, said in sort of like some kind of hushed whispered tones.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: So that is one of the things, sort of like allowing what you eat to dictate how you feel as though you've been on the good to bad scale of you know, 10 out of 10 is I've been perfect, and zero out of ten is I've had a terribly evil day, and I need to beat myself up and uh you know never speak to myself again.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: So that is number one, I think, is is it's associating good and bad feelings depending on whether you think you've had a good or bad food, and again, you know, using those inverted commas of labelling foods or categorizing foods as good or or bad.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we've got good carbs and bad carbs, we've got good fats and bad fats.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, food isn't inherently good or bad of itself.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: The challenge is to try and eat in a way that you think serves your goals and serves your your purpose without anything necessarily being off limits, unless it's obviously something that might be casidic or something like that.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that is one another of the things is this labelling of your good and bad foods, and then getting very obsessive over food choices.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: I know that when I first started my own weight loss journey, I was massively, massively over obsessed over what I what I chose.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'd have my fitness pile open all the time, I'd scan every barcode, I'd record every every morsel, and then you know, if I got to the day in my calories for that day were meant to be 2,300 and I'd 2100, I'd reward myself with 200 calories of chocolate because I had to be bang on that 2,300 calorie mark.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: And that's behavior that we see a lot in clients, right?
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: So obsessing over those kind of food choices.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um I suppose that maybe avoiding social events due to food sometimes can happen where people will actually stay away because they don't want to be tempted or they won't go out because you know they don't want this idea of oh, one dessert's gonna throw me off plan or whatever it may be.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's it's really funny, isn't it?
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: Because we've had people come to us before and say, Oh, you know, I went out on Saturday night and I was really naughty.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I had I had chocolate cake for for dessert.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: And the truth is, you know, I know you talked before about the ladies in the advertising who are sat there smiling over salad.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: But if you have salad three meals a day, seven days a week, and you throw in one chocolate bar, it's not gonna change things, just as the same as if you eat chocolate every single day of the week and you have one salad in the midst of it, it's probably not gonna make much difference to your overall health.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: So obsessing over those kind of things where it leads to some kind of a social restriction is it is another thing.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: I suppose the really, really big one that we see is always the I'm gonna start on Monday.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and it could be it doesn't necessarily have to be Monday, it could be, you know, when the kids break up from school for their summer holidays, it could be after that uh a big deadline at work or whatever it may be.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: Setting yourself these false start and finish lines when it comes to adopting some kind of restrictive eating practices that might not necessarily be serving you the best at this time of life, anyway.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's just a surefire indication, I think, that something in the relationship of that person with food is not quite right, and that is not demonizing anybody, you know.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: I've said it myself many, many times.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I'll just tighten things back up as of next week or whatever it may be.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: But it's really um you know, false start dates to something just don't seem to be a good way of doing it.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_01: If you if you want to try and eat healthier, there's no time to start doing that then right now.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, if you do have a cookie for tea, well so be it.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: What difference does it make?
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: You only ask for yourself.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and food is just food, right?
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's not good or bad, it just it just is.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and we're not good or bad for eating it, we've just eaten some food, so it's but I it's hard to get to that point without having some help.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: So how does coaching help then?
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: How can what can somebody like yourself and myself do to help a person who might be challenged by this kind of food anxiety?
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: Well, a lot of it starts with with being aware.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I I there's a particular client who comes to mind in this um who was really doing a lot of binge eating and comfort eating and had a terrible relationship with food and and her body.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so over time we we brought brought in more awareness, and I think having someone who can help you see, you know, someone who's objective, who's outside of the emotions of the situation, who can help you see.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: The patterns and what's going on because the first thing we have to do if we're going to change something is become aware of what it is and when it happens.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: So somebody, a coach, will be great in assisting to bring that awareness, to kind of hold that space as you learn how to reframe things and think a little bit differently.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's a good way to learn permission over restriction, because of course, dieting and all of that is all about restriction again.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: And when we learn to be freer around food, that we don't have to restrict ourselves around food because it's more than just nutrition.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: Food is about culture and it's about celebration and it's about enjoyment.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we should we should should food should be about joy as well.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: And a really big one that a lot of our clients struggle with is just tuning into internal cues.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: So am I actually hungry rather than oh, it's this time of day, therefore I should eat something.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's okay if your body doesn't subscribe to a specific clock.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: It may be different from day-to-day based on your activity levels.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so learning through coaching, you can learn how to see those cycles and learn how to tune into those things.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: And again, you know, we while we're not therapists, we do help our clients a lot with different habit-based behaviors, you know, how to establish those healthier habits a little tiny step at a time.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: These things don't come as sweeping changes.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's one of the best things that coaching can do is sort of help you slow your role rather than trying to change everything all at once.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we learn there's a hierarchy, right?
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of times if you change one thing, it has a cascading effect on other things.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: So we look for those small wins we learn how to celebrate and change that that those behaviors.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: Now, you know, if someone has a serious anxiety or an eating disorder, that's the time when a therapist needs to get involved because that's way outside of our scope of practice.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: But eating disorders and disordered eating are very different things.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: And eating disorders do need um clinical, clinical help.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, we can we can start with small steps, and that's usually the best place to start.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: You want to talk about what those might look like?
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: Well, just before we do that, I think it's worth saying as well that you know a good coach can recognize or help someone recognize just when that qualified mental health provider needs to be brought in, and often has a network of counsellors and therapists around them who can who they can refer somebody somebody to when that comes.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so some first steps then just to start thinking about this.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: Have a think a little bit maybe about what kind of language you use around food.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: Do you use words like cheat?
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: My most hated word in the whole fitness industry is a cheat day.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: Make it sound as though you're uh you're actually fully breaking the rules there, yeah.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: So cheat, good, bad, those kind of terms, naughty, nice, um, you know, uh, I was evil when you're talking about food, or I did something that I shouldn't.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: That kind of language is is really not appropriate and is and is a sign that things aren't that there is some anxiety there.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's always worth asking yourself when you're eating something, when you're talking to yourself, is it a choice that comes from you actually caring about yourself or you're trying to control what's going on?
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_01: Control is obviously one of those words that exerts a lot of power, I think, and is it is a real challenge.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: You could try just having something that you enjoy without any any guilt and just reflecting on it and see see how it how it made you feel.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I know you tell a story and you've told one in the past about just allowing clients to just sit there and stuff themselves silly on whatever it is that they want that they think is their bêt noir, and then seeing what the results of that that are, and just saying, just go ahead and eat eat the full bag of chips and see see how it makes you feel.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I think also doing some journaling around this is really really important.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_01: What do I believe around food and how true are some of those beliefs that I that I hold around around it?
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I think there's some steps just to start trying to recognize it, and of course, you know, if you need any help, then reach out, whether it's to us or or somebody else.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think I think the key thing to to highlight in all this, because we've talked in quite generalized terms about a lot of this as well, but when it comes back to midlife women, your body is challenged by the fall in falling estrogen, is challenged by higher stress levels.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, your blood sugar management management is challenged by the fall in estrogen, cardiovascular systems uh challenged by the falls in estrogen.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_01: So adding on either more stresses, either from a mental point of view, or trying to restrict yourself from certain food groups that might actually be beneficial to you, are where the challenges lie and where I have most of my concerns around this area when it comes to our specific client group rather than just society in general, because it is a challenge for society in general as well.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's not just menopause or women that have food anxiety.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I think you know, the the bottom line is if you're dealing with these things, it's okay, it's very normal.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um because it's been part of our society for so long.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: Now, because it's normal doesn't necessarily mean it's healthy for you, but you've been taught this, so therefore you can unlearn it.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: These are things that take practice.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: So, as I said before, we need to first raise our awareness and become aware of what's going on.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: And once you do that, um, it's amazing how many things that you can change.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: So if we've said anything here today that resonated with you, you feel stuck in the cycle of food guilt or food shame, or you have that all or nothing thinking, or you're on your 112th of your 120 some odd diets.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, there there are plenty of things that that you can do.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: So if if you'd like to try something different, of course, reach out.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: We're here for you, be happy to have a conversation.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: We also have a really great resource we'd love to offer you.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's called Um Our Happy Hormones Guide.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: And this is a free download that's going to be packed with lots of different tips on how to fuel yourself better in a way that supports your energy and your hormones and your mood throughout this time of life.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're interested in that, you can go to happy hormones.fabulousbeyond40.com and uh you'll find the link to download it also in the show notes below.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: So any last thoughts before we sign off?
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I'm good, I think, really.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: So go ahead.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_01: Let's do the outro line and end this episode.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: Excellent.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we'll look forward to seeing you next week.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: And in the meantime, we're coaches James and Julie of Fabulous Beyond 40, reminding you to stay strong and stay fabulous.