481. How to Lose Weight for the Last Time with Jenn Pinnell

I have been getting so many messages from all of you saying how helpful it is to learn about the tools and strategies that I’ve used over the past year to get healthier, to get leaner, to lose 20 pounds, to get my A1C down to a healthy level. And I’m still using to make sure those changes are permanent. 

A few weeks ago, I brought on one of my other coaches, Brittney Zeedik, who talked to us about the biology side, especially we talked about insulin resistance. Today, I have my other coach, Jenn Pinnell, who I’ve worked with for the past year, who has helped me so much in the psychology side. I wanted to share her with all of you. So welcome to episode 481, How to Lose Weight for the Last Time with Jenn Pinnell.

This is Better Than Happy. I’m your coach, Jody Moore. And on this podcast, my objective, just so we’re clear, is to change what you’ve been taught and have likely believed about yourself up until now. Here’s what I believe about you. I believe that what you think is real is mostly imagined And what you imagine is actually creating what’s real. I believe that in the ways you desire to achieve, you 100% have the capacity to succeed.

And finally, I believe that joy, love, and miracles are your God given natural state of being. And any time you feel far from them, the way back is much simpler than you think, but that’s about to change. Are you ready? Let’s do this.

Hello, friends. I decided in September of 2023 to focus on my health again, because I could tell I was in a healthy spot and ready to do it. Here’s what I mean. I had a girls trip coming up in January. We were going to be going in January of 2024, I should say. We were going to be going to Mexico. And I just decided casually one day, maybe I’ll lose five pounds before we go to Mexico.

This was in September, right? So I knew that to give myself from September to January to lose five pounds was a totally reasonable amount of time. I wouldn’t have to do anything drastic. I’m not willing to do anything drastic at this point in my life because I know that is not sustainable and I’m not interested in temporarily losing weight only to gain it back.

I wasn’t making the goal because I hated my body and wouldn’t be able to be in a swimsuit in front of my friends or anything like that. I knew five pounds, nobody else would even notice but me. That’s how you know you’re in the right head space. Okay? And you can get yourself there if you’re not there.

But my point is, at that point, I found and hired Jenn Pinnell to coach me because I’m a believer in coaching, obviously. And Jenn and I are still working together and have been working together for now a full year. And I am so grateful for the things that she’s taught me.

I’m now down almost 20 pounds from when we started, I was able to get my A1C back to a normal level. And again, I talked about the biology side of that, which I think is important to address. I think you have to pay attention to areas where your body needs to be healed or re-regulated. And that’s what Brittany Zeedik and I talked about a few weeks ago.

But the psychology part is equally as important. If you don’t get your head straight, then it’s going to be hard to make those changes long term. And I just have so enjoyed working with Jenn. She’s really helped me get my head into a healthy space and she continues to do that. So I wanted to share her with all of you today.

Now, before we get into my conversation with Jenn, I decided in celebration of the one year anniversary of this whole change and journey that I’ve been on, I wanted to invite those of you who feel like it would be helpful for you, who have similar goals or somewhat of a similar situation to me, to come and join me. And I’m going to guide you through exactly how I did it. And I’m going to coach you through it.

And I’m going to give you – I’ve given you a lot of the tools here on the podcast, but I’m going to give you even more. And I’m going to give you some specifics around how to, and I’m going to be there to hold your hand and coach you through it.

So we’re going to be doing a four month deep dive into making peace with food, October, November, December, and January. That was, again, the start of my journey and it really set me up for success because I did it through the holidays and deep into the new year. And I feel like the timing of it, even though I didn’t choose it intentionally, was really helpful because if you can manage yourself through the holidays, the rest of the year is pretty easy.

So for those of you in The Lab, you’re going to be getting that program. It is part of what we’ll be doing in The Lab. We will have other courses happening too for those of you not focused on this, but for those of you that want the help, we are just wrapping up the four-week mini version of Make Peace with Food. Some of you have been in there and gotten a taste of what it’s like to work with me. If you want to go all in, set a goal, work with me for four months, make sure you’re in The Lab.

The doors are open right now but will be closing very soon. I think within about a little over a week after this episode airs. So you got to head to jodymoore.com/join. It’s your last chance to get in there and get the full four months of Make Peace with Food. All right, let’s go to my conversation with Jenn Pinnell. Here we go.

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Jody: So thank you so much for coming on the show. So happy to have you. I can’t believe I haven’t had you on before. 

Jenn: I don’t know. Maybe it wasn’t the right timing yet.

Jody: Maybe not. We had you in The Lab. We did call you in for The Lab for everyone but we need to share you with the bigger world. Okay. So Jenn Pinnell, let’s just start with basic introduction. Tell us a little bit about yourself, how you got into doing what you do today.

Jenn: I got into health coaching mostly just out of passion. I really enjoyed my weightlifting class in high school and the Body for Life book that came out like so many years ago.

Jody: I read that. I did that, a fistful of protein and a fistful of carbs.

Jenn: There was something about that book that spoke to my soul that I just, I mean, I don’t come from a family of like super health nuts or even exercise fanatics, but just taking that class and reading that book and practicing a lot of myself. I have five babies, so I got pregnant and did the whole pregnancy thing five times and obviously wanted to get back to a good healthy weight when I was done. And so I’ve always enjoyed exercise.

And when the time was right, I took some nutrition courses to kind of learn a little bit more in terms of nutrition and applied that to myself, which in turn I thought it was really fun. And I had people asking me, you know, like, “Oh, what are you doing?” And then, you know, a little bit of help here and a little bit of help there and a few more classes and really started health coaching because I came at a crossroads with having to go back to work because I got divorced when I was 38 and I needed to get some income.

I also needed a path and it was pretty much the best – not the best, but it was my passion and it was something I wanted to follow anyways. And I just really lucked out finding a good company that was hiring somebody that didn’t have a lot of experience and six years later, here I am.

Jody: That’s so awesome. So it has kind of always been something that you’ve been drawn to and practiced in your own life as opposed to like some kind of transformation personally, right, for you? Is that what you’re saying?

Jenn: Yeah, I would say that I’ve always been kind of connected to the body and health and feeling good. It’s always been something that, I wish I had a big story of like a transformation, but it just has been ingrained in who I am. And like I said, it wasn’t raised in a family that was, you know, big fanatics. It just spoke to me and I think it’s been my path for a reason because I’ve been able to coach and help so many other people.

Jody: I actually like that. Sorry to interrupt you, but I think that’s great because sometimes I know we have some coaches that listen to this podcast, all different kinds of coaches, and sometimes it is our own transformation and journey that then we go on and help people with.

But there are so many things that for any one of us kind of come more naturally that don’t come naturally to everybody. Like, I know in the life coach school world that I am, you know, pretty exposed to, there’s a lot of people who are trying to stop drinking. And I, having never been a drinker, you know, was like, “Well, I can’t coach people on how to stop drinking because I never was a drinker.” But then I realized, wait, it’s just so natural for me.

I hear the mass questions like, “But what do you do when you go to like a work Christmas party and everybody’s drinking?” You just say, “I don’t drink.” Like, it’s so basic to me, but to them, it’s like, people will think you’re weird. I’m like, “Yeah, they do. Some of them, mostly they don’t care actually, but a few of them do, and it’s fine. You just let them think you’re weird.” 

Sometimes it’s those things that are so innate, or, you know, I know you focus on it too, and I don’t mean to undermine the work that you put in, but like, it’s more natural for you, and that’s also a great thing sometimes to teach people. So, anyway.

Jenn: I do think it’s been a gift, I do. I really believe that it’s been a gift that I’ve been blessed with because I’ve been able to use it in such a big way in my life, especially supporting my family, my cute five kids, you know, over time. I feel like God really did give it to me and I’ve been able to use it and I think that’s what talents really are for.

Jody: Yeah, totally. I love that so much. Okay, so Jenn, we’ve been working together for almost a year now, I just realized. 

Jenn: I know. It’s so great.

Jody: It’s almost our anniversary. We should celebrate with cake.

Jenn: I’ll come visit you again. How does that sound?

Jody: Okay. Yeah, let’s do that. Because I was just having this memory of last year, these friends that we used to live nearby always did an adult Halloween party every year for couples, and everybody dresses up. So it’s a couple weeks, a week or two before Halloween usually. And I remember going to that party and everybody brings, of course, like a treat or some kind of food to share.

And I remember telling my other friend who was there, like loading up my plate and telling her like, “Yeah, I’m just going to eat all this food because I’m going to talk to Jenn next week.” Or no, I think I was joking, like, it might have been the time when you were like, “Just write down what you’re eating. Don’t try to change your habits necessarily. I just want to get a feel for what you normally eat.”

And I’m like, I got to eat all this because I just need her to see what I normally eat. We’re kind of joking about it. But I was just thinking how cool it is that it’s been a year and just on the one hand, part of me wants to be like, look at how much weight I’ve lost and go, that’s all you’ve lost over a year?

But on the other hand, it’s definitely, I’ve made so much progress in, in all the ways that matter. And what I told you was I’m not interested in just losing a bunch of weight really fast. I want to like lose weight and be able to maintain this forever. And so I love that that’s what we’ve been doing this year. So I wanted to, I wrote down a handful of things that either like in my experience have been challenging and I’m guessing that I know that they are for many people.

And I wanted to share kind of what my experience has been and what our work has been like together and have you speak to it as well. But then also my experience is not the only experience out there and you’re exposed to all kinds of people.

So maybe you can fill in gaps about what else you hear and see that would be helpful to our listeners who are struggling. I mean, I had this experience the other day where I saw a friend of mine online and she looked like she had lost some weight and gotten healthier.

And I still want to go, “What did you do?” As though it’s like one thing. And maybe it is. Sometimes it is like some kind of a surgery or a drug or something. But in the end, I’m like, why do we still feel like we’re going to ask that? And I think it’s not because I necessarily think there’s just like one magic thing, but it’s like, how did you get yourself to do all the things that we need to do.

Jenn: It’s curiosity. It’s curiosity, don’t you think? I’m a coach and I see people who make transformations and I’m like always so curious because different things work for different people. So I get curious about what actually hit them and what is working for them. And so I, that’s my word. when you said that, it was just curiosity.

Jody: Curiosity, yeah, you’re right. And that’s what I’m hoping we’ll do on this episode today is like share with people. I want to share what I’ve done, but also like I want you to share on a broader spectrum, like what people do that other people might try out that might help them achieve their goals. So first question I have for you, what do you think is harder for people? Losing weight or maintaining the weight loss?

Jenn: You know the answer too, right?

Jody: I mean, but it’s not the answer I used to think. So I want to have you speak to it.

Jenn: 100% it’s maintaining the weight loss that they keep, that they get off. We’ve talked about the dopamine hit that you get from seeing the weight go down and seeing the scale go down and people saying, You look so good, what are you doing?” And your clothes are fitting, right?

Those are all things that we gain from losing weight. But when you’re in maintenance and you’re not getting the dopamine and people aren’t noticing you’re losing weight or you’re not seeing big changes anymore, there is something uncomfortable about that.

And people tend to go back to eating the way that they did before, or they adopt, you know, we adopt new habits through losing weight. And we try to hold on to some of those habits. And in maintenance, we try to maintain those habits and not go too far back to our old habits or pick up new bad habits.

But maintenance just feels, I would say people describe it as boring, you know, it’s repeating the same things, drinking your water, doing your exercise, moving your body, trying to be mindful of your choices, and that you don’t get that same sort of hits. And I mean, you tell me.

Jody: I remember, it must have been like seven years ago was the first time I hired a coach to help me lose some weight. I started losing weight and, and I was like – so it was kind of the first time I’d like really focused on it with a coach, really taking it seriously, not just like feel bad about it, you know? And I was so amazed that I was doing it.

I was like, “Oh my gosh, look at this. I’m doing it. Like I’m losing, I’m losing weight and that’s so hard for people to do.” And it had been hard for me to do. And I had no idea that maintenance was going to be actually the hardest part.

You know, it took me several times of losing weight and gaining it back to realize that. And it’s interesting when you say it’s harder because of how boring it is, because we don’t have, I feel like there’s, there’s not the motivation anymore. Like I can get committed and go, “Oh, that’s it. I’m dialing it in. I got a few more pounds, let’s go,” and get focused and then see the progress from time to time. 

And it’s, there’s like, something to grab onto almost versus maintenance, it has definitely, again, in the last year, that’s been really our focus. So we talk a lot about that. Like, what is this going to be like when I’m not in a calorie deficit.

So I’ve had a lot of opportunities to practice that, but I can see even when you talk about the water, right? Like drinking all the water, I don’t mind drinking all the water. I just hate that I have like – every store that I ever go to, I know where their bathroom is because I always have to go to the bathroom. And that’s just annoying. It’s just annoying. It’s not hard, but I’m like, wait, that’s going to be the rest of my life. Really?

Jenn: Unfortunately, if you continue to drink water, I mean, hopefully you get used to it at some point.

Jody: I know. I have actually.

Jenn: And when you’re not trying to lose weight and you’re not trying to always feel that – you know, there are days when you will and won’t, you know, there’s a lot more, it’s more or less the consistency. And I do want to say that for those people who are struggling to lose weight, that part is hard too. I don’t want to discount that the weight loss isn’t hard, because I know some people who come to me and we work together and the weight loss part, they want to get to the maintenance part because the weight loss part is hard.

From my experience in people who have lost weight, I love what you said, there’s lack of motivation, you get to a point where you feel better, where you’ve kind of checked off all those boxes, and you don’t, you know, you don’t need or you don’t feel the need to continue to do the same things.

And I try to reiterate that to majority of my clients, because my goal is for you to lose the weight, however much that is that you decide along the way, and you feel better, and that somehow we adopt some routines and habits that maintain so that you can keep that and not ever have to go back and lose that weight again.

Jody: Okay, so one of the things that helped me, but as I was preparing to talk to you today, I wanted to, I was like, I don’t know if I’ve ever asked Jenn’s opinion on this, and I’m curious about it.

Because the other thing that gets in our way is this all-or-nothing thinking, or sometimes people call it diet mentality, which to me is kind of the same thing. It’s like, I’m temporarily going to go all in and then I’m going to throw in the towel and we just go back to old ways, right?

I heard someone say once, another weight loss person that I follow or health person, and she said, “I’m not willing to do anything when I’m like trying to lose weight that I wouldn’t be willing to do long-term.” And sometimes I question that because I’m like, well, if you’re trying to lose weight though, then you’re in a calorie deficit, which is not, we don’t want to do that long-term. Or maybe you’re trying to gain muscle and then you might be like eating extra fuel or whatever is required. I’ve never really actually done that. 

But I think there are some things that we do that we’re only doing temporarily, but overall it did really help me to think about it that way. Like, wait a second, am I just in my head thinking, “Okay, I’m going to do this for a little bit, but I’m not going to do this forever.” And I’m just curious your thoughts on that, that comment.

Jenn: I think what she’s referring to is some of the extreme ways that people go to lose weight. You know, she’s not willing to go down an extreme pathway that will lead to weight loss, but that is not really part of her lifestyle. So if I could take myself for an example, like the way that I eat, very much an 80-20 individual, I love healthy food. I love vegetables. I love fruit. I love to focus on the way that I feel and feed my body.

But then there’s 20% of me that I’m going to talk about. I love ice cream and chips and salsa. And there’s days when I overeat a few cookies because they taste really yummy, you know? But if I were to say, let’s say I wanted to lose some weight I would take what I was doing right now and I would just cut maybe 20% off of the top of that. I’d still probably eat the same foods. I might cut something back here or there.

I might cut back on a little bit of my treats because those are more calorie dense. I might focus on a little bit more voluminous foods because that’s a little easier to be in a deficit, but not much of what I would personally eat would change.

So I think what she’s saying is that sometimes people think that they need to go to an extreme measure or do something that’s maybe out of the ordinary in order to get the result. But if you’re not willing to do that long-term, that result tends to be, it’s almost like you’re disconnected because you’re not connected to that way of living for the rest of your life.

Jody: I love that. And one of the things I’ve loved about working with you is you’re really good at like getting into my head. We spend a lot of time, like sometimes I’ll say something and I notice you go, “But why?” Like, I can tell you’re trying to understand, like, is that coming from a healthy place? Or is that coming from a problematic place?

And I’m thinking with what we’re talking about here, like if somebody says, “Okay, I’m going to lose some weight, so I’m not going to have ice cream for the next month.” That’s not a bad strategy, but what are you looking for in people? How do we help people who are trying to determine on their own? Like, what kind of temporary changes do I need to make here? And how do I know if it’s something that I could then sustain in the long run? Do you see what I’m saying?

Jenn: Well, I’m going to use you for an example. So after you found out about your blood work, right? And you realized that you were insulin resistant and you were a little bit borderline diabetic, right? You decided and you came to me and you said, “I want to do intermittent fasting.” And I was like, “Great.” Like that’s a strategy. That’s a tool, right?

Jody: Actually, you were like, “Really? Are you sure? Let’s talk about this.” No, I’m kidding.

Jenn: I know. It’s a struggle because I have personally never intermittent fasted, but I have people in my coaching practice that that is a tool and it’s actually a practice that they really enjoy and they love and I don’t tell people how to do things. I just guide them through their own journey.

But we talked about your all-or-nothing mentality and how that would affect your all-or-nothing mentality. And you stated, told me that you’re like, “Okay,  I want to intermittent fast. I want to try the Feel Great system. I want to apply that all to my journey.”

And I was like, “Great, that’s awesome. But I also want you to recognize that if you are hungry in the morning, and you want to eat breakfast, that you should just say I want to eat breakfast.” And you did that. You came back to me several times after that and said, “You know what, I am fasting.” I don’t remember what majority of the time, but sometimes you were like, “But sometimes I eat breakfast,” and that resonated with me because that really worked you away from the all or nothing, like I have to intermittent fast. 

But that was a tool and a strategy that I have tried that I really, it does not speak to my soul. Like it does for my body and the way that I function, it doesn’t work, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work for other people. And it doesn’t mean that it’s a bad strategy.

And I think that’s where people, you know, when you look at, you know, people are eating keto, I have a couple clients who prefer to eat a higher fat, higher protein diet and lower carbohydrates. And that really resonates with them. And they’re able to stick with that.

In fact, they’re like everybody in their house eats that way. And so that environment dictates that kind of behavior that’s healthy for them. And so when people walk down paths like that, and they talk to me about things like that, I’m not opposed to people having strategies and tools that work for them, it’s the same rules that apply for weight loss.

You still have to find a way to be in a calorie deficit. You still have to figure out how to keep your blood sugar levels stable. You know, the same thing, some of the principles that you have talked about.

Jody: And yeah, it does go back to not trying to be a perfectionist necessarily about it. Okay, I wanted to hear your thoughts on how you talked with your clients about the way we sort of villainize food, or I feel like we even use like moral terms to describe food, like good, bad.

And I don’t know if you find this on a broader scale, but for me, in my journey with all this, it’s helped me to neutralize food. And so could you maybe give us, how do you describe to your clients the healthiest way to think about food in general?

Jenn: Well, I love you talking about neutral. I know you have some real things you put out there about the apple and the muffin, right? You know, there is no good or bad food. It’s just that different foods actually work inside of our bodies a different way.

So 100 calories of an apple and 100 calories in a muffin, they’re different types of nutrients. And in learning to fuel and feed our bodies, we have to, at some point, understand that our bodies need certain specific nutrients. And a lot of us have been taught that it’s all about calories. 

We look at food based on how many calories are in that food. And so we may choose something less nutritious because it tastes good, that’s a lot less food than if you filled up on a whole bunch of food that’s, you know, way more nutritious.

I tend to talk to my clients about how does food make you feel? Sometimes food, you eat food because it makes you feel a little happy, right? Like you do choose like the muffin, because at times that’s a better choice. But I would say that if you’re looking for overall health, choosing foods that fill you up and make you feel good, your digestion feels great, your energy feels great, there’s a lot of foods that people are neglecting in their diets because they quote unquote, either they don’t taste good or they don’t sound good because that’s how we’ve been taught to actually choose our foods.

So when we look at that and we stand back and say, “Well, sometimes I choose foods based on that reason.” And I would say the majority, my 80% is based on foods that are nutritious and that fill me up and that make me feel good. And then there’s like that 20% of foods that I sprinkle in that are fun and enjoyable. And sometimes when I’m emotional and I want to eat that, I do that. I try not to guilt or shame or like you talked about, add judgment to that type of a food.

I just know that different foods give people different results. And if we judge ourselves based on those decisions, that judgment I think is the hardest part about teaching somebody food is that even when I’m teaching a client how to track or not track their food, I would say the majority of clients who don’t want to track their food don’t want to see it because they judge themselves very harshly on the foods that they’re eating.

And when you learn not to judge yourself, when you learn that it’s just data, and it’s just information, and it will help you kind of get to your goals, you kind of back away from that judgment and you just see it as what it is and what you need to tweak and change a little bit to get the result that you want.

And some days itmight look a little crazy and some days you’re going to eat so great that you’re just going to be so excited. But I try to talk to my clients about food in that way and I do find that it’s really helpful when you continue to reiterate those principles.

Jody: I get pushback sometimes on this when I teach it this way because to me it just makes sense and it gives me more peace. And I feel like food is less powerful in general when I don’t make it good or bad, but I get pushback sometimes from people, like, especially they’ll tell me that they’re nutritionists or whatever, and they’ve studied this and they’re like, “No, there is food that is bad.”

Like my son was just asking me the other day, my fifth grader, he’s like, “Mom, isn’t true though, that we all need some sugar? Like we need some sugar every day.” And I was like, “Not necessarily like you need carbohydrates, you need energy. And you can get that in the form of fructose or sugar or whatever. But if you went your whole life without eating like refined sugar, your body’s not going to suffer.” 

So that that’s the kickback I get sometimes. They’re like, “No, there are foods that are ‘bad.’” Yes. They’re giving you a temporary burst of energy. And I don’t know if you would agree with that statement or not, but that’s the kickback I get.

Jenn: I personally believe that people have demonized a lot of food. And I don’t think psychologically it does much for us as individuals when we demonize food. There are specific foods in my vocabulary or foods that I would look at and I would I probably demonize them, and I probably won’t eat them, but I’m not going to talk about them so that other people feel bad about their choices.

So I do think nutritionists and people who are scientific and do a lot of research, they’re smart. They have done a lot of studying and so they have an opinion and their opinion is fine. They can have that opinion, but I personally believe it doesn’t do anything for us people us that are just trying to make good choices.

It just makes everything look bad or good and then people are so confused about what to eat and then they walk down rabbit holes in places they don’t even want to be just based on somebody else’s opinion. And I personally believe it comes back to connecting with yourself and, you know, understanding your body well enough to know that you’re feeding it the good things.

And that if you want to eat something that is ‘bad,’ you’re not eating it every day. Your mind might not only be eating it once a year, but if you think it’s ‘bad,’ you may never come near it because it’s been demonized.

Jody: Okay. That’s interesting. I like that. The other thing too, that helps me as I just remember, like one of the things that I never feel good after I eat is red licorice. And I’m sure it’s like red dye and the sugar and whatever.

Jenn: That’s so ironic because back in the day, I thought red licorice was like the treat to eat because it was low, no fat.

Jody: It was fat-free. Oh, me too. Yes.

Jenn: Fat-free. Yes.

Jody: Yeah. Oh, I used to eat so much in college. This is fat-free. I can just eat whatever I want. But I don’t know, just in the last however many years, I’ve noticed that I just, even if I only eat, you know, three pieces of red vines, I just feel terrible afterwards. And so I have in my mind been like, not that I’m not going to ever let myself eat it, but it’s, I’m going to regret it after if I eat it, it is genuinely ‘bad’ for my body.

But the way I get out of giving it all that power and like – because I just can’t be afraid of it. Otherwise it does have some kind of power and it becomes more appealing for some reason is I remind myself, “Okay, but you ate some licorice. You didn’t like – you’re not robbing banks or harming babies. You know, you ate something that your body doesn’t like and it doesn’t serve you and it’s not good for you. Okay.”

And that’s kind of the next thing maybe we could speak to is when you do make a choice that isn’t ideal, that you didn’t want to be making, and maybe it’soutside of your 20% window even, or you know, you have a day where you just throw the towel in or whatever.

You alluded to this earlier, but let’s expand on this idea of like, when we feel bad afterwards, why is that so problematic? And what do you say to clients that feel like that’s the only option and how do you not feel bad after?

Jenn: So last night, my daughter made pumpkin chocolate chip cookies and we had dinner. It was great salmon bowls that she made, and they actually didn’t turn out that well, which is ironic. They tasted great, but they just didn’t turn out that well.

Anyways, I ate one. It was really good. And I went back for a second. And then I ate a third. And it was really funny, because I don’t rarely eat like three cookies. And so I was doing a little coaching on myself. And I was like, “Jenn, don’t feel bad. They weren’t that good. And you normally, you know, you don’t really don’t do that.” And then at the same time, I was like, I reminded myself that I do that in order to remind myself why I don’t want to do that.

So every once in a while I’ll overeat and I’ll go, “Oh, that was a good reminder of Jenn why you tend to stop at one or why you’re good at being like, no I don’t want any or I’m done.” So what I tell clients is that self-compassion is I would say the key to unlocking your relationship with food when you can really tap in and work on progression and instead of saying, “Let’s start Monday or let’s start tomorrow morning,” I like to think finish the night strong.

Last night I actually drank a bunch of water. I know it was right before bed, but I wanted to kind of flush that all through me. I always feel better when I drink some water afterwards. And so if you’re not shaming and guilting and berating and belittling yourself, there’s a lot of motivation that can come from the kindness and the compassion where you go, “I was hungry and it tasted good and I wanted three so I had three and tomorrow, it’s a good reminder that tomorrow I’m going to drink some water now and I can let those cookies sit there now for the next few days. I don’t need to have any more.”

And what I find with weight loss is that when I’m coaching a client and they can work on that self-compassion or they can work on starting fresh the next meal or ending the day really strong and focusing on the things that you’re doing better at rather than maybe the little mishap you had in the day, people don’t give up.

They want to keep going and they focus on their wins and feeling good as opposed to maybe where, you know, they still need a little bit of work or they still need to understand how their bodies work and what their bodies need. And just berating, I mean, you’ve noticed that without the shame and the guilt and the belittling yourself, there’s a lot more progress that can be made psychologically in your mind and your mindset with food. And that leads you to better behaviors over time.

Jody: That’s so true. Like a lot of times we’re overeating because we’re trying to escape feeling something negative, stress, boredom, and then we feel bad about it afterwards. We have guilt and shame. And then maybe that lingers for a day or two, which makes us want to eat more.

It’s so obvious when you think about it, but in the moment it feels like if I just don’t feel bad about this, if I say it’s fine, you wanted those cookies, you were hungry, they tasted good, then for sure I’m just going to keep eating cookies. But it’s actually the opposite, right?

Jenn: I’ve actually been working with a client now for about a year. And at first we worked on weight loss and after a while she kind of hit like a, she had a done button and she just started to just really unload, started binge eating, really started going down an unhealthy direction, but she could let me work with her while we were doing it.

And we’ve spent nine months working on living in the gray zone where, you know, we’re not swinging that pendulum too far into the binging, but we’re not  – I actually didn’t let her go into a cut or try to lose weight until she really understood what it looked like to have that compassion and to be able to eat foods that she loved and eat healthy foods because they’re good for her. 

And once you get to that middle gray area with food, that not black not white gray area, and you start speaking to yourself kindly and stop judging yourself for the choices that you make you really, really, really can start to make progress because you’re not continually swinging from one direction to the other.

Jody: Let’s talk about the tools of awareness for just a minute. You mentioned briefly that you have, I don’t know if you do this with all your clients, but some of them record their food. I know I’m I track my food pretty closely. There’s the scale and then at one point last year, I started wearing a continuous glucose monitor, a CGM even, so I just want to hear your thoughts about paying attention, becoming more aware of what’s happening in our bodies, the power of that. What do you recommend to people? And if they’re just getting started with that, and what are the pitfalls and dangers we should avoid with it?

Jenn: I love data. I actually really love data. And I try to teach my clients to withdraw the emotion from the data, the judgment that we talked about. Recording your food, it just brings awareness. If you’re wanting to be honest and understand your own habits, what it does is it creates awareness.

The pitfalls that I find is that if you’re a perfectionist, and you have a really hard time wanting everything to look perfect, and you don’t know how you go out to eat, you don’t exactly know what’s in your food, or you go to a party, and you don’t know exactly – that’s where a little bit of the tracking can lead to some, like a little neurotic behaviors where people are, you know, really, really struggling to feel good about tracking your food.

And I work with people on trying to step back from that going, “Just do your best.” Like you say, Jody, like, you know, give me some B work, that’ll give us some information. And then we can work off of that information. I think the continuous glucose monitor was something that you needed to teach you a little bit more about your body. And you used it in a very healthy way. You did. And I think you took it and there were some weeks when it was like, “Huh?” You scratched your head. And you’re like, “Something’s wrong.”

And it was broken, actually it was not working, right? And you knew there was something wrong. But it gave you some information, some insight that not – I don’t believe that everybody needs that. I don’t that’s not a tool that a lot of my clients need. But that was really good for you.

The scale is another one that I would say I personally work a lot with women or men on about the scale and about how to remove the emotion from stepping on the scale because it does show some validation of where we want it to show validation of our hard work.

But when I teach them all of the things that go into the scale, you know, their digestion, their fluid, like so many different components that when they step on the scale, it’s just gravity. And I have people who step on the scale and they felt better in their skin and their clothes. And then they stepped on the scale and the pound was up and it totally wrecks the rest of their day. And so it’s talking about that.

And every person that I work with is so different in terms of some of them step on the scale every single day and it’s not an issue. They just are like, “Oh, it’s data, it’s information.” And some of them that we tread a little bit more lightly around it until they can, they may never work themselves up to every day but where they work themselves up to getting it on a couple times a week because if you’re only getting it on one day you’re only seeing like one little snapshot and you have no idea if two days before – I mean I’ve worked with this with people and then like two days before you can see that the scale is going down. 

It just popped back up for, you know, maybe you had a really hard workout and you’re really inflamed and your body has more water in the cells. So you know, you stepped back on it, but you’re actually down in weight, right? You just can’t see it because the scale didn’t reflect it. 

I love the tools. I love the data. I think the more that people can be more honest and upfront with their food and what their behaviors are, and with the way that their body’s functioning, blood work is another good tool to get your blood work done and to get everything checked out and have somebody that you trust go over it and look at it and help you tweak a few things if you need it.

All of those things I think are good tools. It’s just a matter of where people are in their journeys and how much their brains can handle. And sometimes that just takes a little bit more time to get there.

Jody: So if somebody’s just starting out, would you just say, just write down what you’re eating? Where’s the best place to start? Write down what you’re eating.

Jenn: Yeah. I have a lot of people who just write everything down, look at it, be really aware and honest and don’t hide the bites and the licks and the taste, but once you start to really understand your behavior, that’s where the change comes from.

Jody: Sometimes I have to remind myself too, like, just because I don’t write it down doesn’t mean I didn’t eat it. You know, like, oh, one little bite, I’m not going to record that. I’m like, “Yeah, you don’t have to, but also you still ate it.” Like, I don’t know. It’s just, it’s just interesting to watch what our heads do and like you said, to not judge ourselves.

I did though – I think I started wearing the CGM because I heard on Huberman Lab, he talked about that he wears a CGM and I had just become aware, like you said, of my condition with my blood work and all that. So I was like, “Okay, I’m going to wear this for a while and try it.”

And one things that they claim, the companies that make those, is that I’d want to say it was 80% of people reduce their glucose spikes by whatever percentage just by wearing the CGM. Like, there’s something about just having the awareness of it that, without even really putting much focus on it, we start to alter our behaviors a little bit. So, even like you said, just writing down my food makes me think twice before I eat the third cookie, knowing I’m going to write it down. It’s interesting, yeah.

Jenn: Very interesting. That’s an interesting thing to say because, or observe, because it does mean tracking your food. A lot of people, I look at their food, so they don’t want to write it down because I’m looking at it. And I try to tell them I’m coming from a very non-judgmental place, but in writing everything down, it almost, it almost makes you free.

It almost, there is freedom in being honest with yourself about the things, because if you’re not looking at it with judgment, you’re looking at it with like, “Oh, I’m gaining weight because of this, gosh, that’s actually a really easy fix. I can just, you know, maybe take that thing out and maybe I would feel better.” People want to avoid because they do a lot of judging.

Jody: Yeah, it’s true. But even with the CGM, like you never were looking at my CGM stats, and nobody was except me. But just knowing that I was going to see it on there. It even changes a little bit my behavior. I mean, it gave me a lot of awareness, first of all, so I learned, like I was really surprised to discover that a donut doesn’t impact my blood sugar nearly as much as like barbecue sauce on my chicken.

Jenn: Yeah. I remember when you said that the Diet Coke, you had actually…

Jody: Oh, one time I had a Diet Coke, totally spiked my blood sugar and not every time, but sometimes. So yeah, sometimes my body responds weird to things like Diet Coke and yeah, it just gave me a little bit more knowledge so that I, like, if I am going to have barbecue chicken, I plan to go on my walk after my lunch or after my dinner because a walk also brings it down so significantly.

So I just learned a lot of things, things that I knew, like, it’s not like I didn’t know that going for a walk helps your blood sugar or that barbecue sauce has sugar in it. Like, I know these things, but there’s something about seeing it in my, really happen in real time in my body, that is a little bit more motivating of like, again, I always think of it like a video game and these are apps on my phone mostly, right?

MyFitnessPal and the, the CGM and like, I’m trying to make everything line up. It’s like Tetris. And I’m trying to keep that blood sugar line from just having little hills instead of huge spikes and valleys. And when you start seeing it in real time and you don’t judge it, then it just becomes like a fun game, kind of, that you’re playing.

And that’s kind of ideal, which again goes back to what we were talking about in the beginning with maintenance. Now I don’t have the game to play so much. Not that I couldn’t still monitor my glucose or even track my food if I wanted, but the gamification becomes a little different and then a little more boring. And so then what’s my motivation to keep on track? It’s kind of interesting.

Jenn: Well, I wanted to ask you, specifically, how did wearing that change your behavior? Like with food, knowing and learning and understanding all of that and how it applied to your body, do you make decisions differently today than you maybe ever would have if you never wore that monitor.

Jody: Yeah, I do. I mean, one of the things is just learning how much fiber makes a difference, like having fiber with my carbs. And so I do still use that Feel Great system and have like a fiber supplement because most of our food doesn’t have enough fiber. And so that makes a big difference in what happens with my glucose.

And then also it’s not so much that I changed what I was eating so much as the timing of it. Because like I said, I was already – you and I had been working together for a while and I was already kind of on track with like 80/20 healthy food. And my 20%, I am a little more thoughtful about when.

Whereas I used to kind of save it to the end of the day, like I’m going to eat healthy and then, you know, then I get to have dessert, a little bit of a treat after dinner or something, or most of my carbs I would have at dinner because then I could just eat with my kids instead of, right?

Whereas now I know that after dinner, I’m actually tired. I’ve probably already exercised for the day. I like to kind of lay around and not do much in the evening. And so I need actually the majority of my carbs or my treat or whatever to be at lunch because then in the afternoon I’m still active and I’m regulating. So it’s like the timing changed more than anything.

Jenn: I love that though. There was something though in understanding all of that that your behavior has followed suit so that you can maintain the weight loss that you’ve seen so far.

Jody: Yeah. Okay, the last thing I had on here and then if there’s anything else you want to bring up, feel free, but I thought it would be interesting to talk for just a minute about hunger.

And this isn’t something that I don’t know that you and I have talked a lot about it, but I just have had kind of an interesting transformation myself, and I’m curious if you’ve seen this with other clients in my relationship with hunger, because, and partly because I’ve had blood sugar issues in the past, and so it wasn’t just hunger, it was like low blood sugar that I would get, which is a much more desperate and immediate crisis than just hunger.

And so as I’ve learned to regulate my glucose, I don’t get blood sugar lows like I used to. I still can on occasion, but nowhere near like I used to. But also there was one time, and this was actually probably back when I was working with Brad, my weight had plateaued for a while and we were trying to figure it out.

And I said something to him like, “But the good news is I’m not really hungry.” He just kind of casually said like, “Okay, well, let’s change this up and maybe have you eat some more this week or whatever. Let’s see if we can get your hunger up again.” 

I remember being like, “Wait, isn’t it good that I’m not hungry? Cause then I can not eat.” And to him it was just a casual comment and he moved on. But to me, I was like, wait, what did you just say?

And then all of a sudden I realized that makes sense. Like if I’m in a calorie deficit, I should be a little bit hungry, not starving, not low blood sugar, but like talk about hunger, if you would, for just a moment. And is this just me or do other people have this kind of weird relationship with hunger?

Jenn: It’s not just you. It’s a lot of people. I think they assume because they’re not hungry, they’re eating enough, right? Like that that’s a sign that, “Oh, I’m full.”

Hunger cues play a lot into metabolic rates and your metabolism and how quickly your metabolism is working. If I have a client coming in eating 1200 calories, and they’re not losing weight, and they’re not hungry, well, their body’s adapted to that 1200 calories, and their metabolism is actually slowed down.

And there’s a lot of things that come into play with that and how much you move. Digestion plays into that. But hunger is a good sign of metabolic rate. Like it is a good sign that your metabolism is working if you are hungry.

And so when in terms of weight loss, how does that really, you know, when I try to coach a client, and I see what they’re eating, if they’re coming from a really high calorie standpoint, so if you’re eating a lot of food right now and you want to lose some weight, then you would maybe take about 20% off of what you’re currently eating.

And you would you would pay attention to your hunger. And you would say to yourself, “I’m hungry, but I’m not starving. Right? My blood sugar level is not dropping so low that I’m like eating the house because I’m so hungry.”

But you’re kind of like, I can feel a little bit – I describe it as like a little bit of buzz, where you’re like, “Oh, things are working, I can feel I’m, you know, I’m ready to eat my next meal.” Or maybe when you go to bed at night, you feel like, “Oh, I probably could eat something before I go to bed, but I’m not too hungry before I go to bed.”

Then you wake up feeling kind of leaner. Like, I described that and feeling a little bit hungry as you wake as a great sign that your metabolism is working. That’s what I would say. And, you know, recognizing you had some blood sugar lows, I actually experienced a lot of that myself where my blood sugar will drop. I don’t love going too long, like maybe three or four hours. I try to eat a little bit of protein and, you know, good balance of macronutrients.

But I noticed that throughout the day, I have a good sense of hunger, so I can listen to my hunger. And I feel full after eating a good satiating meal, full to the point where if I eat too much and I’m overly hungry, then I was like, “Oh, I know that that was like way too much food.”

And there’s a lot of things that play into metabolism and your hunger, how much you move in a day, like I talked about, how well your body’s actually in your digestive system. I know a lot of people who have, you know, gut related issues that they don’t feel a lot of hunger.

And so those are all things that as you look at weight loss and you look at your own journey, it’s something to definitely look at. And if you’re not feeling hungry, you’ve probably adapted to wherever you are in your weight loss, like Brad told you.

Sometimes what I tell you is like, let’s do a re-feed. Let’s give your body a little bit more food for a day or two and, you know, you might see a little bit of scale weight come up, but that will shake things up a little bit and then hopefully your body’s like, “Oh, you’re not starving me. Okay, let’s go back to status quo.” And we’ll maybe, you know, not only see the scale come down, but maybe even see yourself finally coming out of that adaptation or that plateau and losing a little bit more weight.

Jody: And that’s what it is, right? Is a constant sort of game of – beause people do say, “Well, I’m worried if I go into a calorie deficit, I’m going to mess up my metabolism.” That’s what we hear, right? And it’s like, yeah, actually you are going to impact your metabolism. That’s why we’re going to monitor it and not go into too much of a deficit or not for too long to try to get the metabolism to not just adjust, right? So that we don’t get the benefit of that deficit.

Jenn: It’s definitely a game. Yeah, there’s some games. There’s some strategies that definitely come into play and every person’s a little bit different.

I have a cute client right now and she’s down 100 pounds and she’s had a lot of weight to lose. So her metabolism has actually not adapted very – like it’s continually losing weight at the rate that she’s at. But sometimes we feed her a little bit more food and then we get more of a result. But every person is just very uniquely different. And that’s why all of this information, people just have to, I think, connect with the things that really work for them and figure out how these principles apply.

Jody: So awesome. Jenn, I sure do appreciate you. I plan to just talk to you at least once a month for the rest of my life, so.

Jenn: I have sure enjoyed working with you, Jody. It’s been so fun. It’s been my pleasure.

Jody: Where can people find you? Because you’re going to have a whole bunch of people that want to get help from you. Where do we send them?

Jenn: My Instagram handle is @berealstrong. I am not superbly active on there, but you can reach out and DM me. My e-mail address is also [email protected]. So those are the two best ways to find me.

Jody: So it’s @berealstrong, Instagram. And Jenn with two Ns.

Jenn: Jenn with two Ns, yes.

Jody: [email protected], yeah?

Jenn: Yes.

Jody: All right, thank you Jenn. Thanks for coming on today.

Jenn: Thanks for having me Jody.

If you find the podcast to be helpful you’re going to love The Lab. In Better Than Happy: The Lab we experiment with applying all of it in your real life. Whether you’re in the middle of a challenge and ready for some relief or you’re ready to commit to pursuing your dream goals and making them a reality, come join me in the lab at jodymoore.com/thelab. That’s jodymoore.com/thelab.