Hey there, Katy here and welcome back to Rebuilding Trust With Your Body! 

Let me ask you a question…

If I left you alone with a package of Oreos right now, what would happen?

• I’d lose control.
• I’d eat way too many.
• I can’t be trusted around foods like that.
• That’s exactly why intuitive eating doesn’t work.

• Tell mastermind story.
• The irony:
  • You are seeing your inability to stop eating Oreos as proof that you need more restriction…But restriction is the reason the Oreos have so much power in the first place. It gives them charm and power over you, and that’s why they call you from the kitchen and you can’t stop yourself once you start eating them.
• Today I’m going to challenge one of your most deeply held beliefs: That you just need more self-control with food.

Before we dive into our main topic for today, you know what time it is…We’ve got some Wellness Woo to talk about. 

Wellness Woo is the stuff that diet and wellness culture tells us we should do in the name of health, but it’s really based on pseudoscience, exaggerated claims, or just nonsense. 

Today’s Wellness Woo is: Book Always Hungry? David Ludwig – s/o to Cara in NDC!

The premise of this book is that overeating isn’t the cause of weight gain, it’s the symptom of it. (which might be true to a certain degree…but here’s where it goes off the rails…). He then outlines his 3 phase eating plan to “retrain your fat cells to release stored calories.” And the book also includes recipes written by his wife, a chef, so we’re keeping it in the family here. 

Let’s first start with some context for who this David Ludwig guy is…

Dr. Ludwig is an endocrinologist, which is at least a good start. But just like so many physicians who go on to write diet books, there are some red flags here that we’ll get into. endocrinologist, researcher, and professor at Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Ludwig also co-directs the New Balance Foundation Obesity Prevention Center at Boston Children’s Hospital. 

The book Always Hungry? has been criticized for relying heavily on a pilot study that tested his low-carbohydrate diet that ran for only 16 weeks. Ludwig has since commented that the pilot study “was never intended as proof”, however, his book cited weight loss “success stories” from the pilot participants to make very specific claims about his diet and weight loss

The first book he wrote before this one is called “Ending the Food Fight: Guide Your Child to a Healthy Weight in a Fast Food/Fake Food World.”

About his “Always Hungry” diet…This is diet without deprivation. You are empowered to create a lifestyle worth living, in a body that will support you living it.

You don’t just lose weight, we help you create a lifestyle where you:

• LOVE your food
• NOURISH yourself well
• Learn to TRUST your body’s signals (as you make those signals more trustworthy)
• Achieve LASTING results
• ENJOY the process

The Three-Phase Program

• Phase 1 (2 weeks): A significant reduction in processed and high-glycemic-load carbs (like grains, sugar, white potatoes) to reset metabolism, with a diet of 50% fat, 25% protein, and 25% carbs.
• Phase 2: Reintroduction of minimally processed grains (like quinoa, oats) as long as weight loss continues.
• Phase 3: Allows for some experimentation with processed grains and occasional treats, depending on individual tolerance, while maintaining the focus on whole foods. 

At the end of the day, this is another diet book, where a doctor is using his clout and credentials and leveraging it to sell his books. He has an agenda behind what he’s writing. And it’s really just a high fat, low carb diet. Which there’s a lot of evidence that this actually isn’t good for our health. There are also studies that show that eating 40-60% of your daily calories from carbohydrates is associated with better health and less cognitive decline in women in particular. 

And it’s one of those diets in disguise where they are saying all the things we talk about in terms of making peace with food and trusting your body…and he’s co-opting this language to sell his diet, which I take issue with because it’s misleading and it is preying on people who are trying to break free from dieting, by using sciency sounding concepts to convince you to restrict. Now is there some degree of truth to some of what he’s saying in the book – yes – and that’s what makes it so hard with this type of wellness woo because it’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It’s hard for the average person to tease apart what’s true and helpful, vs what’s not science-backed and what’s not a helpful way of looking at this. I think that reading a book like this is only going to confuse you and suck you back into diet mentality because at the end of the day this is a diet, and it’s going to play out for you just like every other yo-yo diet does.

If you have an example of Wellness Woo that you want to share, send it to me at rebuildingtrustwithyourbody@gmail.com. 

Ok, that’s enough of that. Moving on to today’s main topic…What to do if you feel incapable of stopping before you eat the entire package of cookies or chips or ice cream. 

What evidence are you using to conclude you can’t be trusted?

• Usually it’s because you feel like you have no self-control around things like::
  • Oreos
  • Halloween candy
  • The chips and salsa at a Mexican restaurant
  • The ice cream in your freezer
• And because you feel like you can’t stop once you start eating these foods, this is “proof” in your mind that you can’t eat them intuitively. 

The flaw in the argument

• You’re looking at this behavior without putting it into CONTEXT.
• You’re not factoring in:
  • How restricted was I beforehand?
  • How hungry was I?
  • How many food rules was I carrying?
  • How much guilt was attached to eating this food?
• You are blaming yourself, instead of recognizing that your body and your biology are doing exactly what it’s designed to do. 
• Diet culture profits off you thinking that you can’t trust yourself…Because then you need an external set of rules about what you’re allowed to eat and not eat, about what times of day you’re allowed to eat, and how many calories/points/macros you can have.
• But think of it like this…If a person holds their breath underwater, what do they do when they come to the surface? They gasp for air. That’s exactly what happens when you’ve been depriving yourself of these foods, and when you’ve been trying to “be good” with food – and even if you’re trying to “be good” with IE and do it perfectly. 

The Oreo Was Never The Problem

The real issue is the charm.

• Oreos themselves aren’t powerful. And I can promise you you’re not addicted to them. 
• Their forbidden status is powerful.

• Think about foods you genuinely have unconditional permission to eat.
  • Apples?
  • Pretzels?
  • Baby carrots?
  • Whatever it is, you probably don’t spend all day fantasizing about it – Because it’s available, and your brain isn’t labeling it as bad or off limits. 
• A word of caution here – just because you’re eating the Oreos doesn’t mean that you have unconditional permission to eat them or that you have peace with them (explain how mental restriction keeps charm going).

The path through requires eating the Oreos

Not recklessly. And not a free-for-all. IE doesn’t mean you just eat whatever you want, whenever you want. That’s impulsive eating, not IE. 

The way I teach this inside NDC is to “decharm” the foods like Oreos that you don’t trust yourself with – which is where we systematically, with structure, have you eat the food on a frequent basis WITH boundaries. 

The swimming lesson analogy

• You don’t become comfortable in water by avoiding pools.
• You don’t become comfortable driving by avoiding roads.
• You don’t become comfortable around Oreos by spending the next decade telling yourself you can’t buy them at the grocery store.

I get that you’re afraid you’re going to start eating the Oreos or the chips or the ice cream and never stop. That fear makes sense – especially when that’s been your experience in the past. 

I’m also here to tell you that if you do this correctly, you will make peace with these foods, and they’ll start to feel neutral to you, and you’ll not only be able to keep them in the house but you’ll sometimes forget they’re there. I could give you dozens of examples of this from clients – a couple of people who literally did this with Oreos come to mind, chocolate is another common one, ice cream, chips. (And the foods that have charm are never the meat or the broccoli…because we’re not labeling these things as bad in our minds).

Why Intuitive Eating Looks Worse Before It Looks Better

Really quick before we go further into what this looks like and how to conceptualize your journey, it’s essential that you know where you’re at and how your brain ticks. Everyone is a little different, and what I have found over the years is that people tend to fall into one of 3 categories with how they are relating to food and what their journey to making peace with food looks like. So what I did is I put together a free quiz where you answer some questions, and based on your answers I’ll send you a custom report for what aspects of IE you should focus on and what your next steps and priorities should be. The quiz only takes about 2 minutes, and it’s kind of fun to take. You can do it at nondietacademy.com/quiz. Push pause and go do it before you forget, and your results will be in your inbox by the time we’re done with the episode. 

Normalize the fear that IE feels worse before it feels better

• This is where people panic…
  • They start allowing formerly forbidden foods.
  • They find themselves eating a ton of them.
  • Their labs might look worse than last time, or they gain weight..
  • They conclude intuitive eating isn’t working…when really, this is a normal part of the process and we have to play the long game. 
• Reframe:

• The increase in consumption isn’t the destination that you’re ultimately going to arrive at. It’s part of the journey and the messy middle, and 99% of people who give up on IE interpret the messy middle as the ending.
• People often quit intuitive eating right before the magic starts happening because they didn’t know what to expect, or they had unrealistic expectations, or they don’t have the distress tolerance skills to sit in the suck. All of this is a LOT of the work that I do with my clients every single day.

The Real Goal Isn’t Eating Less Oreos

The goal is freedom. And PEACE with food. Which gives you the ability to listen to your body. 

Once peace and freedom exist:

• The obsession fades and you get your mental energy back to think about other things.
• You stop bargaining with yourself about whether or not you’re allowed to eat an Oreo today
• The guilt goes away after eating something like an Oreo because you get to the point where you don’t overdo it anymore, and you know + trust that eating Oreos is fine when you’re getting the nutrition your body needs. 
• Mondays are no longer about starting over or “Being good”
• Instead of “How do I stop eating Oreos?” or “How do I only have 2 Oreos?” >> “Do I actually want Oreos right now?”…You go from living in FEAR to living in TRUST. 

Wrapping Up

• Stop using your current relationship with Oreos as evidence for what you’re capable of. Telling yourself the story that you are incapable of stopping before eating an entire row is a lie – and it lets you off the hook for doing the work to make peace with the Oreos.
• I want you to remember that your behavior when you’re still in the diet mentality, or you’re still in the messy middle trying to figure out IE isn’t the same behavior that you’re going to have when you’re a full-fledged intuitive eater. The version of you who can’t stop after one row of Oreos is NOT the final version of you. If that’s where you’re at, that’s ok, it just means you still have work to do – it’s NOT evidence that IE doesn’t work like those people in my mastermind were saying.
• Becoming chill with Oreos happens when you no longer feel the need to resist them because they have no more charm. And THAT’S what IE can do for you. 

Before you leave – make sure you go take the Discover Your Unique Path to Food Freedom Quiz if you haven’t done so already. It’s going to give you the specific principles of IE to focus on and a bunch of tools and resources to support ou in that. It’s totally free at nondietacademy.com/quiz. 

In case nobody has told you today – you are ENOUGH ALREADY. We’ll talk again soon.

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