476. Make Peace with Food

Raise your hand if you love food. You can’t see it but my hand is up high, I love food. And I think being able to enjoy good food is an amazing part of our human experience that we should cherish. But what I have hated is the way I felt like food controlled me my whole life, the chatter in my head about food, the noise about food and the power that food had over me. If you can relate to this, I have some amazing breakthroughs I want to share with you about how to make peace with food. You can do it and it may not even be as challenging as you think. This is Better Than Happy, episode 476, Make Peace With Food.

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.

Oh boy, here we go. We’re going to talk about everybody’s favorite and least favorite topic, how can we get ourselves to eat better? How do we control ourselves around food? Well, today we’re going to dive into what I call making peace with food. Now, of course, it includes also making peace with your body and making peace with yourself. There’s a lot to this. But I like the idea of focusing on making peace with food because from peace with food, you have the ability to create any other result that you want to.

Maybe you want to lower your blood pressure or cholesterol. Maybe you want to lose some weight. Maybe you want to gain some muscle. Maybe you love the way your body is and it’s healthy and functioning as you wish but you want to maintain it or maybe you need to gain weight or whatever is going on for you. Making peace with food is a challenge for most people I know, and yet it is doable. So that’s what we’re going to do today.

Now, I do want to be totally upfront with you. I’m going to tell you five reasons why making peace with food has made such a huge difference in my life. And then I’m going to tell you how I am doing it because I hate to say I’ve done it, I’m done, I made peace of food. I think it might be a lifelong thing. I think that I always have more room to improve, but I feel I’m in a different place today than I’ve ever been before. I hope that’s the case. And I want to share with you some of my experience about that so that you can take anything that’s helpful to you and run with it.

And I hope that by the end of this podcast episode, you will have at least one thing, just take one thing that you want to try because really all of this is about becoming empowered and showing yourself that it is possible. But if you decide you want more, I’m going to tell you how to come and get some continued help from me because in, I don’t know how long this episode will take, 20 to 30 minutes, we’re probably not going to solve it all.

Again, I would love for you to take one thing and I know that’s possible, but we’re not going to solve this problem. So, stay tuned to learn how to come and work with me for four weeks to really implement what I’m going to teach you here today about making peace of food. Making peace with food is probably the hardest mental work I’ve had to do. And second to that would be the work I’ve done around money and third for me would be the work I’ve done around other people having negative emotions in just general relationships in my life.

Now, that’s not true for everybody, that’s just for me. I know it’s interesting, that some people have an easier time with health and food, and then a harder time with building their businesses or something like that. I feel we all have certain areas where the work that we’re doing here of trying to manage our thoughts, manage your minds, comes easier, other areas where it comes harder. For me it just happens to come the hardest around food and my body and my health, so just full disclosure.

So, I have lost weight before in my life. I’ve dieted and focused and lost weight. And I don’t view actually any of my attempts at dieting and weight loss as failures. I think that they’re all wins because I definitely grew a lot each time I lost weight. And I learned some additional things about myself, about my body, about food in general, about nutrition. And so, I really do view them all as wins.

Back in 2020 during the pandemic I had a little bit more free time, like a lot of us did. So, I hired a coach and lost a bunch of weight and that was really game changing for me. I learned some life changing things about food and my body. And when I say learned, I mean none of it was, what, I’d never heard that before. It’s just, I was able to implement and execute them with the help of a coach in such a way that they became skills that I could go to any time. But I did sort of get to my goal weight and then I didn’t really stick it out long enough to learn how to maintain that for a long period of time.

I probably maintained it for about a year, and then I just slowly started putting some of it back on, not all of it, but some of it. And so last fall, fall of 2023 I decided, I think I’m going to dial in again and just lose a few pounds here that I’ve put back on. I want to execute what I learned last time about how to lose weight, but I want to also add on this time the maintenance part and the long term sustainable changes because I can do this temporarily, but I still didn’t master how to do what I need to do over the long run.

So that’s where I started out, with just pure vanity, let’s just say. I was like, “I like myself better when I’m about 10 pounds lighter. I like how my clothes fit better. I feel better. Let’s just do that.” And so, I did, and I feel like I was in a really healthy headspace because I wasn’t hating my body necessarily. I was doing all the work to really love and embrace myself as I was. So I was in a pretty good space that way. And I was just like, “Why not though? I know I can do this.”

And again, I hired a coach to help me and it was going okay, like it always does, a little up, a little down. And then in January, my doctor, I went in for just a routine check-up with the doctor. And he did some bloodwork and said, “Hey, you’re pre diabetic.” So, then I thought, well, I need to get that under control. He was like, “We should probably talk about putting you on metformin or something”, whatever drugs. And I thought, okay, I’m not opposed to that, but first of all, I am really focused on my health right now.

I’m in the process of losing weight. I wonder if I could just at least do everything I can on my end to manage it, first of all, before we do that. And he said, “Okay, let’s give it three months and then I want to run your A1C and see where you’re at.” And I said okay. So fast forward to now, it is August of 2024. So, by the way, when he ran my A1C, it came back normal. So, he’s like, “Wow, good job. We’re not going to put you on anything right now, but keep watching it. Keep eating well and exercising and doing the things that you’re doing.”

So, my motivation today is higher than it’s ever been to be healthy because I feel so empowered around it. I feel so confident that I can do it. And I feel so unattached to the scale and I love my body. Yeah, it’s nice to lose some weight. It’s nice that I’m down a couple of sizes of pants and I feel stronger than I have in a very long time and I feel more energized. I feel better in my body. All of those things are nice, but more than anything, I can’t get over how I don’t even recognize myself, I don’t mean visually. I mean when it comes to the way I feel about food, the way I behave around food.

I never thought it was possible for me to become someone who didn’t give food so much power in my life and it feels like such a relief. That’s the best way I can describe it, is for food to not be taking up so much space in my head is such a relief because it frees my head up for other things that I would much rather be thinking about. And it’s freed me from so much shame and guilt and just weird behaviors and all or nothing actions around food. I just feel lighter. So that’s what I want to offer to you today.

Now, like I said, I’m still a work in progress, I don’t know, maybe I’ll gain all that weight back that I just lost again. But I can tell it’s different this time because I’m not afraid of that. I was always a little bit like, “Oh, I hope I don’t gain this weight back.” But now I’m kind of like, “Well, if I do, I’ll lose it again.” But I don’t think I will because I’m just in a different headspace. And that comes from working on it for a long time. And like I said, I’ll have to keep working on it.

But here’s what I want to suggest to you is available to you when you make peace with food. So, I kind of alluded to this already, but I want to give you five things.

The first thing is that I have made food so much less powerful in my mind. Now, this goes both ways, first of all, I don’t make food so bad. I don’t villainize food anymore. I don’t talk about to myself or even think about any kinds of food as being so terrible, because that gives it a lot of negative power. But I also don’t think about and talk about food as being so amazing, so good, so tasty. Now, don’t get me wrong, that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy food, I do. I enjoy food. I enjoy good food but not to the level I used to. And that has freed me up a lot, to not make food so powerful.

Food is no longer the hero in my life. It’s no longer the thing I look forward to, although I do indulge in good food at times. It’s not the highlight of my week or my day. And it’s also not the villain that I’m afraid of any longer. And I can tell that because I have so much less emotion around food. So that’s the first thing. It’s so amazing to not let food have so much power.

Number two. I have removed the shame that I used to carry around with food and I will tell you why that’s been so amazing for me and how this might be useful for you if you can relate to this. I was talking to my health coach the other day about just where my head is at now. And she was asking me some questions about what I’ve noticed is different in my behavior with food, and especially with other people. Because social situations tend to bring out certain sides of us when it comes to food.

And she said, “Do you notice that you don’t say to girlfriends, “Let’s go get a dessert or whatever like you used to or anything like that.” And I was like, “No, I think, for me, it’s actually the opposite. I think I used to hide it.” I wouldn’t say, “Let’s go get a treat”, because I felt kind of bad about wanting a treat or I knew that I had already had a lot of treats or wanted to eat an excessive amount of the treat and I was embarrassed of that. I was ashamed of that. And so, I kind of hid it and I still would eat it in front of other people, but now I’m actually much more open and free about saying, “Hey, let’s go get a treat.”

And that’s because most of the time I eat really well and I take care of my body. And so, I don’t feel bad about having a treat, not to mention the work I’ve done in step number one of not making food so powerful. And so, what I used to do is what I call booty calling my food. Can you relate to this? Remember in college when you’d have a booty call, some guy would call? I hope my kids aren’t listening to this. Some guy would call you late at night to come over and you’d go make out or whatever and then come home and be kind of ashamed, and probably shouldn’t have done that.

That’s what I would do with food. It was like, I’m pretty hungry, I’m just going to hurry and eat this thing and I hope no one sees me and I’m going to do it in secret and then I’m going to feel bad afterwards and not tell anyone and hope that nobody sees. So, I don’t do that anymore. If I’m going to eat a treat, I just eat a treat and I don’t make it a big secret or a big deal.

Now, I’ll tell you the way I got started on doing that, if you’re like, “I want to try that. How do you do that, Jody? I stopped beating myself up and having a bunch of negative self-talk after I eat some kind of junk food. Let’s say I ate licorice because I love licorice, you guys know this. I used to be like, “I shouldn’t have eaten all that licorice. It’s so bad for me and there’s so much sugar and the red dye and now I feel sick”, or whatever.

Instead of that I went, “Mmm, that was pretty good.” I would talk to my past self, kind of like, “Did you enjoy that? That was fun. Just so you know, I feel terrible now. I’m paying the price for what you did 10 minutes ago, Jody, but it’s OK. I love you. I’ve got you. I hope you enjoyed it. That was pretty fun.” I just shifted it away from how terrible I was to just, that’s what I did and I kind of regret it now because of how my body is reacting but not going to be mad at me about it. Licorice is good, I get it.

And there’s something about just taking away the shame and the guilt that then neutralizes it. And the next time it’s around, it’s less powerful and I’m more likely to say no from that place. Things that are forbidden are extra appealing to us.

The third thing that will happen, at least that has happened for me when I made peace with food, is that it’s allowing my body to heal from some of the damage that I’ve done to it over the many years of not really taking great care of it. And for me specifically, the area I’m most aware of anyway, is with regards to my insulin resistance. I was so insulin resistant. I still am a little bit actually, I still really have to watch it and I’m still working on becoming more insulin sensitive.

And they say 50%, I think that’s the latest stat, 50% of people in the country, maybe it’s even higher, are insulin resistant, which just means that insulin is there. It’s trying to do its job of moving sugar out of your bloodstream and into the cells where you then feel the energy from that, but your body doesn’t respond to it. The cells don’t open up to allow the sugar to come in. And so, you have extra sugar in your bloodstream, but you also don’t have the energy you should have, which makes you want to eat more food.

So anyway, I’m trying to become more insulin sensitive and I have become more insulin sensitive. And I’ve used some tools to help me to do that, that I’ll be teaching in Make Peace With Food. But I’m just so amazed at the body’s ability to heal itself. And again, I’m not against using medication or any kind of treatment that helps you to heal your body. But our bodies really do have amazing capacities to heal themselves and you can reverse insulin resistance. You can even, in most cases, reverse type 2 diabetes by applying some strategies.

And again, some tools to help, I’ve found to be very useful, so that’s pretty cool. I mean, I’m 49 years old. I’m going to be 50 on Halloween this year, and I feel I’m healthier today than I’ve been in a decade, for sure. So that’s pretty cool.

Number four benefit of making peace with food, and this is one of my most favorite ones, it’s just self-respect. I feel good about myself because again, I’m not sneaking around eating a bunch of food that I hope nobody sees and feeling bad about it and eating behind my own back, which is not even a thing. I’m not creating all this drama around food. I just feel more authentic and more real and this was interesting.

So just today there was a brunch activity at somebody’s house in my neighborhood. Now the kids have gone back to school, all the moms decided to get together for brunch. And brunch is some good food. Usually you’ve got some salty foods, some eggs and things like that, and you get maybe some fruit. And then you get a lot of my favorite pastries, donuts and sweet bread and stuff like that.

And so, I went to brunch and I did eat some of that good food, but I used to would go to something like that and be really looking forward to the food. And the food would have been kind of the highlight of it, if I’m being honest. And I always liked people and I like to see my friends and everything, but the food was kind of the highlight. Whereas this time the people was the highlight, the conversations, the friendship, the connection. And that is not about the people, that’s about where my head is at. I did eat a little good food, but I didn’t overdo it.

And I wasn’t constantly looking over at the food table thinking, I really want more of that, but I shouldn’t eat it, people will probably see and I probably shouldn’t. I’ll make myself sick. I’ll gain weight. That kind of chatter is just quieter, which makes me more available to listen to the people I’m meeting and get to know people and connect with people and have great conversations and that’s what I want my life to be.

I want to look forward to things like meeting people rather than look forward to a donut because a donut doesn’t really care about me. And I do still look more to a donut. It’s just not the highlight of the event. The people are the highlight, and I really am appreciative of that. And it really does just make me like myself better if I’m being honest.

And then the fifth and final thing that I was just thinking about today, because I am in a calorie deficit right now. I am going to lose just a little bit more weight here before I just go into pretty much maintenance. And so being in a calorie deficit means a little bit of hunger. And I was just thinking about how far I’ve come in my relationship with hunger. Even just a few years ago I was afraid of being hungry. Hunger felt like a crisis that I needed to solve right away. Whereas I now know that hunger is just information.

And I don’t want to be hungry all the time, I don’t think that’s healthy, but a little bit of hunger is fine because I’m still eating food every day, right now unless it’s a fast Sunday or something. But for the most part, I’m eating food every day, but I may not eat breakfast. I may intermittent fast. Most days I intermittent fast or I may eat a little bit less food because again, I want to access some of my own body fat. I want to eat food off my own body a little bit here for a minute.

But I used to not be able to tolerate hunger, I just couldn’t. Whereas now I’m like, “Oh, good, I should be a little bit hungry.” That’s a sign of a healthy metabolism, actually. A lack of hunger is a sign, can be a sign, I should say, of a lack of metabolic health. That’s true with all kinds of things, your digestion and all sorts of other things I won’t go into today, but hunger is actually a healthy thing.

And part of the reason I think that I’m less scared of hunger now than I used to be is because of what I talked about with insulin resistance because there is a difference between low blood sugar and hunger. Often they come at the same time, but not always. This is what I’ve discovered as I’ve watched my body and I’ve worn a CGM which is a continuous glucose monitor. I’ve really studied my body and I’ve realized they’re not always the same thing. And low blood sugar does feel like an emergency and it is something that you should answer right away.

But interesting, you’d think being insulin resistant would mean that you would only ever have high blood sugar. But I’ve found that for me anyway and for many others, it’s just a lack of being able to regulate your blood sugars. So, you can have very high blood sugar and you can have very low blood sugar more frequently than somebody who has a healthy pancreas and ability to utilize insulin. So low blood sugar does require kind of immediate attention, but hunger doesn’t.

True hunger is just your body going, maybe we should eat something. I kind of need some energy and if you don’t answer it with food, then it can go get something off of your body. It can go access your fat. That’s what it’s there for. So, I’m just really appreciative that if I’m hungry, I’m just like, “Well, I am going to be eating dinner in about an hour or so. I should be getting hungry right about now. It’s cool, no problem.”

So, I’m sure that you’re going to have your own set of benefits when you make peace with food and I want you to. I want you to have your own goals and get what you want out of it. But I love coaching people on this topic. I love helping people with this topic because of the personal growth that comes as a result of it because of how it requires. I’ve never seen anyone be successful with this long term without working on liking themselves better and learning to talk to themselves nicer and having compassion and true curiosity for themselves.

Rather than beating themselves up and being full of judgment and shame. I just don’t know how to do it authentically and long term unless you work on your relationship with yourself. And that has a ripple effect in every other area of your life. I’m just so grateful to myself for doing this work, and I plan to continue doing it. And I want to invite you to come and join me for this work.

The way that you do it, I’ve basically broken it into eight topics that I think are really essential to understand and be able to execute. And we’re going to be doing this together in the four week challenge I’ve put together called Make Peace With Food. We’re starting on September 16^th and it runs through October 11^th. So that’s four weeks and it’s $29. I would love to get this out to anybody who wants to attempt to make peace with food.

And in all honesty, I also have a four month program because like I said, I started last November and I’m so glad that I did. It actually was the very end of October I want to say because I remember being at a Halloween party and going, “I should eat a treat today because next week I talk to my health coach and I’m diving right in.” So, it was end of October, beginning of November. Anyway, I’m so glad I started then because that’s right before the holidays.

And it was really powerful for me to have the holidays to be able to practice eating more intentionally and deciding ahead of time, hey, I’m going to a holiday party. I want to let myself eat more indulgent food than I normally would. Or I’m not going to and I’m going to practice being at a party and enjoying the company more than the food. Or I’m going to notice the chatter in my head or I’m going to notice whatever things. The holidays just give us lots of opportunities to practice making peace with food.

And so, in The Lab, we’re going to be doing this work together, anybody who wants to join me, for four months. So, if you’re in The Lab, you’re already going to get this four month Make Peace With Food program that I’m going to be doing. We’re going to work on it October, November, December and January all the way through into the second month of the New Year, I want to take you to with Make Peace With Food. And then of course I’m available any time you want coaching on it, but we’re going to really dive into it.

So, if you come to this four week challenge for $29 and you like it and you want to join me for the four month challenge, then we’re going to let you apply your $29 towards that. And I’ll tell you about how all that works on the Make Peace With Food challenge. So, it’s at jodymoore.com/food if you want to join me. But here’s what we’re going to do. These are the eight topics that I feel we need to master.

First topic is called food is neutral. So, I talked to you a little bit about that today, about how we don’t want to villainize or make food the hero. We want to neutralize it just a little bit. You can still enjoy it, but we want to remove some of the power that food has over us.

The next topic I teach you is called, food as fuel and joy. And I have you make intentional decisions about the role that you want food to play in your life. And you can let it be joy for you, that’s okay, it’s not wrong. We’re just going to decide intentionally, obviously food is fuel for all of us. So that one’s kind of got to be a given. But whatever other roles you want food to play in your life, we’re going to decide intentionally. We continue on with that whole topic in a lesson that is specifically called, decide what you want from food.

So, we’re going to get off of the emotional roller-coaster and we’re going to decide how food can best serve us in our lives. And then this is a really important one, it’s called navigating cravings and urges. You must learn how to navigate cravings and urges. You don’t want to resist them and push them away. I’ve found that I can’t do that. I can’t do that long term, I should say. I can do it temporarily, but not long term. And we also don’t want to be giving in to them all the time because that actually just makes them stronger again when they come back.

So, what do we do instead? We’re going to understand both the biology and the psychology of cravings and urges. And like I said, I’m going to be introducing you to some of the tools I’ve used to help manage my cravings and or just make them less powerful in my life.

And then the next lesson is called, when you fall off the wagon. So, newsflash, there’s no wagon, but this is something that we say. I hear people say it all the time. I say it sometimes too, “I totally fell off the wagon.” And what that is indicative of is that our brains are still in a space of all or nothing thinking about this. And a lot of people when they ‘fall off the wagon,’ then just give up for at least the rest of the day, if not the week or the month or the year, and go back to eating unconsciously.

And so, I want to talk to you about what to do because you’re not going to be perfect at this and you don’t need to be, I’m not and you don’t need to be. So, what do we do then when we fall off the wagon? And the same goes for the next lesson, which is called, when you’ve been really good. This is the other thing I hear is, people are like, “Well, I got on the scale and I was down a little bit and I have been eating really healthy and I’ve been ‘really good.’ So now I should get to reward myself with ice cream,” or whatever.

So, again, I’m all for you eating ice-cream if you want to, but if you’re doing it as a reward, you may sabotage your overall efforts. And so again, I’m going to teach you what to do instead so that you can still be very proud of yourself and acknowledge yourself and have plenty of joy and rewards in your life without sabotaging what you’ve done in the past.

The next lesson is called in it for the long game, because even though we’re going to work together for four weeks in this challenge and four months, if you stay with me. That’s not going to be long enough to make the lifetime changes that I know you want to make. So, we’re going to talk a little bit about what that looks like and how to slow down the rush that our heads want to get into of hurrying and getting to our ideal weight or whatever it is.

And then the last lesson I give you, I’ve called Jody’s favorite thoughts about food. I have been collecting thoughts that help me in all kinds of situations. When I’m on vacation, when I’m meeting out, when I’m with friends, when I’m bored, when I don’t have groceries in my house, when I moved to San Diego and there’s the best tacos everywhere and donuts and ice-cream. And I want to try all of it and enjoy all of it. At the same time, I don’t want to sabotage my health goals. What thoughts do we go to, to help us, I’m going to give you all of them.

So again, if you want to join me, head to joymoore.com/food, it’s $29. Come and work with me. You’ll get those eight lessons. And by the way, those of you who are already in The Lab, you’re going to get all the lessons already in the library. We’re going to post them in there for you so you don’t need to worry about it. But if you’re not in the Lab, come and join me for this. And then you’re also going to get live coaching calls with me, where I’m going to be there as you execute this, to coach you through it and take your questions and help you navigate it.

And that’s a very important part of the work we do. That’s why I still work with coaches and I would encourage you to have a coach. I would love to be your coach if you want to come and try out, Make Peace With Food. Jodymoore.com/food, I will see you there. Thanks for joining me today on the podcast everyone. Have a beautiful rest of your week.

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.