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Table of Contents
Meet our guest
I’m chatting with Certified Intuitive Eating Coach, Brooke Spendlove. Brooke helps moms get off the diet roller coaster for good and tap into their intuition to guide them and make peace with food.
What she actually does is help her clients to love what they see in the mirror so they can stop hiding and start showing up in their lives. Her mission is to help other women to find the freedom to live without constantly thinking about how they look.
Brooke is a certified Intuitive Eating Counselor and NASM Certified Personal Trainer and the owner and creator of Spendlove Coaching.
Her own wellness journey led her to getting a Master’s Degree in Health and Wellness Coaching, where she realized that her obsession with tracking, weight and doing everything “right” was escalating and she knew something had to change.
She discovered Intuitive Eating as a way to improve her relationship with food and her body and now leads other women on the same journey.
For many the first step is getting off the diet rollercoaster…
Connect with Brooke Spendlove
Key Takeaways
- A common motivator to join the ‘wellness industry’
- “If you didn’t think you would lose weight at all what would you still be willing to do?”
- Is your healthy lifestyle secretly a diet?
- Intuitive eating vs dieting
- Is there a right way to do Intuitive Eating
- Breaking the Restrict – Crave – Binge cycle
- Are you “addicted” to sugar?
- How do you know if Intuitive Eating is “working”?
- Can weight loss ever be the goal?
- Confronting your own internalized fatphobia
- Why do we want to be smaller?
- The 3 questions to ask yourself when you’re struggling with the urge to diet
“Getting off the Diet Roller Coaster with Intuitive Eating” Episode Mentions
- Intuitive Eating (AMAZON) by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch
- Anti-Diet: Reclaim Your Time, Money, Well-Being, and Happiness Through Intuitive Eating (AMAZON), by Christy Harrison
Episode Transcript
Welcome, everybody. I’m here talking today with Brooks Spendlove, who is a health and wellness coach, an intuitive eating counselor, and a certified personal trainer. Now, Brooke’s journey sounds very similar to mine. We’re gonna talk more about this, but she spent more than a decade working in the tech world before switching lanes and joining the health and wellness industry and finding an audience that she resonates with.
So Brooke, I want to talk a bit about your background because so much of this connects with me. You left the corporate world to join health and wellness, and you said in your- in your bio that I read that it was due to a desire to help clients fix and-” fix themselves and hit their ideal weight and size”, and I- I hear this.
Can we talk a little bit about just that part, like when you decided to kind of leave where you were and- and- and join the health and wellness industry?
Sure. So my undergrad was in health education, and so even though I was in healthcare IT, there was always that desire to- to teach and to help people have the right information when it came to taking care of their health. And for me, being in healthcare IT was really convenient, (laughs) but it wasn’t necessarily something I was super passionate about. I definitely appreciated the fact that we could help get data in the right hands, um, to help doctors make better decisions and reduce duplicative tests. But for me, I knew when I kind of looked at what I wanted to be when I grew up, the one-on-one connection was a lot more impactful, and really, I looked at when I- when I was thinking about going back to grad school, I thought, “You know, I see people, I see doctors who are seeing people when it’s almost too late.” You know, they- they’ve already had this journey, and they’ve gone too far, and they’re not healthy. Wouldn’t it be great if I could work with them before that and get them to a place of- of overall better health and- and do that from a one-on-one perspective? And so coaching was just really, it just drew me in, um, that idea that I could- that I could do that and- and help, uh, help individuals that way. Um, to your question is, you know, I wanted to help people lose weight and hit their ideal weight.
That was probably more of a personal thing because I was on that journey myself at- at one point, and, you know, being the mom of four kids, you get to that point where you think, “Oh, well, I want my,” quote-unquote, I’m using air quotes here for the- (laughs) for the audience. “I want my body back, or my pre-body- pre-baby body back.” And so that was more of a personal journey, and I thought, “Okay, I’m gonna figure out the solution,” again, air quotes for that. Air quotes, yep. Yeah. (laughs) Yeah. “The solution, and I’m gonna then help other people do the same thing.” And obviously, that’s not where I ended up (laughs) overall,
I say that I resonate with this so much because my background is, you know, computer science- Right. … software development, and then when my- when I got remarried and relocated, I started my online personal training and health coaching business. Um, and again, it was because I felt I always had this interest in working out and- and doing all these things, and this is some way that I can help people. Um, but so many of us, and I think you’re gonna talk about this in a minute, I feel it coming on. So many of us who get into this work find that we have our own problematic relationships with- with our bodies and with food and what we’ve kind of been indoctrinated with, like, in terms of, like, what health means, again, with the air quotes. Um, you know, with- and so a lot of this, like, diet culture, we’re- we’re- we’re indoctrinated. So then, of course, like, having this kind of, we’re looking to help, but the way we’re going about it is- is not really helpful, but it’s not our fault because so much of this messaging is just unavoidable. Um, and we feel like we can help others do, like, get these results, again, air quotes, and then, um, but then you said you, as you work with clients, you saw a lot of weight rebounding, which is totally normal. Um, and is that what brought you to explore intuitive eating and the focus on more of, like, healthier habits and behaviors for long-term health rather than focusing on that- that quantitative outcome? Yeah. And again, it was also a m- a personal journey as well. Uh, I was, you know, you name it, I did it when it came to the different levels of popular restrictions. I don’t even want to name some of them, to be honest with you. (laughs) Let’s not. Let’s not. We won’t even give them- we won’t even give them the attention- Right. … that they want. (laughs) But, you know, if you think of- if you can think of them, I probably tried it in that never-ending attempt to hit what I thought I was supposed to look like, or the number on the scale, or the- the measurements, whatever it was. And I- I found that I was- that- that goal was never attainable. Even when I thought I would, you know, I was at my lowest or whatever, I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t satisfied and something, I just kept trying. Nothing was working. It’s a moving target. Yeah. And- and the air quote’s “working,” and so I got to a point where I realized I was willing to do things that I would never coach someone to do, and then I really had to take a step back and say, “What does long-term health look like?”
And so it became a really introspective journey that got me into the world of Health at Every Size and intuitive eating, and really that health is not a particular look. It’s not a particular size or weight, and that there really is so much work to be done in removing that stigma to our sizes and our weights, and just a focus on health-promoting behaviors, and whatever happens to your weight-… we don’t know.
Your weight could go up, it could go down, it could stay the same. That’s what I usually tell clients. I’m like, “It can go three ways.” But there’s no disadvantage to adding these health-promoting behaviors into your life. And so let’s focus on those. If you didn’t think you were going to lose weight at all, what would you still be willing to do? To- You are speaking my love language. Okay? (laughs) All of this is, like, just music to my ears. I love this. Um, let’s talk a little bit about body respect- Mm-hmm. … and how we use that to get to body positive. Yeah. This is one of my favorite concepts to coached around. So I do a lot of mindset work in my coaching just because our minds are so powerful and so connected to our bodies and what we’re able to do.
And so, you know, based on cognitive behavior therapy, the idea that our thoughts can create feelings and actions and results, the things that we want in our lives. So the women that I gen- tend to work with, we’re talking decades often, maybe just years, but (laughs) years, maybe decades of being dissatisfied with their bodies. And so if you go from, “I, I don’t like my body, sometimes I even hate my body. I, I wish my body were different,” and try and jump to, “Oh, I love my body and my body’s fantastic,” it’s too big of a thought jump. It, your, your mind will say, “That’s not true. You know you don’t believe that,” and the work’s not gonna be… it’s just not gonna work. And so what I work with clients to do is to k- to take that middle ground where that is where you get to body respect. And so we talk about how if you respect something, how do you treat it?
You know, whether it’s just an item, you know, I respect a person or I respect another thing, I’m going to treat it with care. I may not be to the point where I am loving it completely, but if I respect my body, there’s gonna be different choices that I would make and then that’s just kind of our middle ground. I call it a bridging thought that can get you over to the point where you’re body positive. So sometimes body respect can be almost neutrality. Just, “This is my body, this is how it is right now, and let me respect my body in this space.” And it’s a, you know, it really is a journey to become, to really get to a point where you’re loving your body and just so grateful for everything it does. And so this is just part of that journey to help them get to that, get to that place.
Excellent point because I know when, uh, when I do, you know, coaching and just, just in terms of, um, you know, better habits and things like this, a lot of people do affirmations. Mm-hmm. Right? And affirmations is kind of, you know, speaking something to, like, about the, the person you’re, you’re striving to be and speaking as if you are, but if that future state that you’re, you’re, you know, you’re working towards is so different than where you are right now, your brain cannot make that jump and you’re s- you know, subconsciously you’re resisting any of that because you know in your hea- you, you know that that is not how you really feel and it can sometimes work against you.
So I love this point of kind of gradually moving that needle to saying, “Okay, maybe I don’t love it today. Maybe I’m not looking in the mirror and, and, you know, hearts everywhere- (laughs) … but I definitely, like, can respect it and treat it with care and do the things I know I need to do like move it and drink some water and maybe throw a vegetable in there or something. Like, just do the things that I know are gonna long term be beneficial even if I’m not madly in love with my reflection or the way I feel about it or anything like that.” So I love that. Right. It is also the eighth principle of intuitive eating, so it, it goes nicely with the concepts that I teach in my program because that is one thing you do have to, to work on is respecting your body.
Because in reality, like you said, feeling neutral, you have a far better chance of eliciting happiness than feeling hatred or self-loathing. So it’s just really that first step towards body positivity. When it comes to, you know, history of, uh, chronic dieting, you know, we’ve kind of reinforced a lot of negative self-talk or negative just thoughts and have, we’ve kind of grooved in that, you know, he- we’re, we’re not even aware that we’re talking to ourselves like that. How does that kind of work in with, um, the body respect process and just trying to undo kind of th- these loops of, of negative self-talk? That’s a great question.
One of the exercises I like to have, actually there’s two exercises that I like to have clients do and the first is a dieting history almost. You do a download of diets that you’ve done, um, and a lot of times people are like, “Well, that wasn’t a diet.” Any time you’re looking for outer, external factors to tell you what to eat, when to eat, how much to eat, that’s a diet. Let’s just make that clear. Are we, are we sometimes in denial that what we’re doing, you know, we call them healthy lifestyles, but- Lifestyles, yeah. (laughs) Yeah, yeah, it’s get- I love the idea that if it’s a, if it’s something that you cannot maintain for your entire life, it’s not a lifestyle.
So if it’s anything that you do for a little while and then you have to back off because it’s too much or it’s too restrictive, that’s not a lifestyle. That’s still a diet- Mm-hmm. … even if you don’t call it that. So I’ll go, have them go through that and, you know, kind of list out how long they did these different diets and the results and so they can see that, yeah, there’s a history of needing to always go back on one and what are the results that came out, whether it was a lack of confidence because, oh, the weight came back on or I don’t trust myself, I couldn’t, I could only eat this amount of food, some of the feelings that come up when you’re doing those, those, those diets. Um, now I’m… totally forgot your question. (laughs)
Oh. Well, it was about, it was about the, um, the negative self-talk and the loops and how we kind of have conditioned… like, our subconscious just- Right.Okay. Got it. (laughs) The, the constant negative, like- Uh-huh. … messages that we tell ourselves when we fail on a diet, or we couldn’t- Mm-hmm. Like you said, you do like a diet list and they- Right. … have reasons like, “Well, I, you know, I, I lost weight, but then I had to go… I, I fell off the wagon.” And they blame themselves, right? So then when the diet doesn’t work long term, which it’s not supposed to, it’s not designed to, and they blame themselves for not making that the lifestyle. Right. Do you see a lot of that too? Definitely. And thank you for bringing me back. Um, yeah, there’s the feeling of failing.
And that’s one thing I love about the concept of intuitive eating versus dieting is dieting, there’s a very black and white, “I have failed. I have, you know, I have not met my goal,” or like you said, “I fell off the wagon.” There’s a right and a wrong way to do a diet or do whatever type of restriction you’re doing. And with intuitive eating, it’s just learning. There is no right or wrong way to intu- to do intuitive eating. You take whatever lesson learned and then apply it and go, “Okay, I learned from this. I got too hungry in this instance and I ate past the point of being comfortably full, and now I can look back and go, what should I have done different?” There’s no right or wrong. You don’t… There… You can’t fail at intuitive eating. You can just continue to learn and adjust.
And so that’s a big mind shift for most of my, my clients is you can’t fail. They’ll be like, “Am I doing intuitive eating right?” And I’m like, “There’s no right way (laughs) of doing intuitive eating. It’s just learning more about you and about your body’s cues.” Um, just to go back to the, the thoughts and kind of where those thoughts come from when you’re talking negative thoughts with dieting, an act- another exercise I love to do is have clients look at, um, the root cau- like when you talk about like functional medicine, a lot of times they’ll talk about root causes. So what’s the root cause of this symptom? What… Or what have you. And so it’s also helpful to do with your thoughts. And so I have this exercise that actually has a tree (laughs) on the picture and it has the roots and then also has the branches.
And so it’s helpful to look at anytime you’re thinking, “I need to go back on a diet,” or, “I failed at this diet,” what are your root thoughts in that? And it’s, “Okay, maybe I think I should look different. I think I should weigh different.” And so it’s a lot of, I should appear different kinds of thoughts and that creates these root or these branches that then, you know, affect how you react or how you act. And so it’s, it’s always helpful to look at why am I acting a certain way? What are the thoughts that are taking me there? And can I change those thoughts?
Because I don’t want to be dieting anymore, so I need to address the thoughts that encourage those, those actions. I love that. And I will say based on, you know, my own experience with, you know, chronic dieting and going to intuitive eating and knowing other people who are also kind of struggling to, to break that cycle and, and, and move forward, um, having the shoulds, the should, those should thoughts, like, “I should look this way, I should…” And a lot of this is the media, and social media hasn’t really helped a whole lot with that, right? Because we, we’re seeing everybody’s highlight reel- Mm-hmm. … um, and we’re starting to kind of get these, these negative… It, it reinforces the negative shoulds that, that we’ve kind of- Yeah. … um, been programmed. Let’s talk about when we talk about dieting, right? It’s, it’s, it’s conforming to a certain, you know, either a food list or times we can eat or how much we can eat or what we can eat and things like that. So breaking that restrict, crave, binge cycle, right?
Because, uh, l- like you mentioned, falling off the wagon with the air quotes- Mm-hmm. … which is a natural, your body’s natural reaction to restriction. Right. And there’s so much self-blame when that happens. Could we talk about that a little bit? Yeah. I love to use the analogy of a pendulum. So anytime you pull a pendulum back and you let it go, it always is gonna swing wide the other way. And eventually, if you let the pendulum… if you leave it alone, it’ll settle in the middle. Unfortunately, when you’re talking about a restrictive behavior, like restricting eating of a particular food category or just a particular food, when you restrict it and then you let it go and you swing wide the other way, and so that’s where you kind of overeat and there’s that fear, the, the swinging back to get to neutral is scary because there’s that feeling of I should be controlling this better. And so to break that cycle, that restrict, crave, binge cycle, because like you said, it’s a physiological reaction. You know, I love the idea that Evelyn Tribole of Intuitive Eating will say, “When you hold your breath for a really long time, and then you finally allow yourself to take a breath, if you’re taking gulps of air, and no one ever tells you you’re binge breathing.” (laughs) Like, you shouldn’t be breathing like that. Oh my gosh, I’ve never heard that, but, oh, wow. Right? Like that is, that is… Seriously- Do you ever… Do you ever hear that? Well, you sh- … binge breathing. Shame on you for binge breathing. Not- No, I don’t think that one’s fair and right, yeah. Oh my gosh.
So whenever I talk about a food that someone feels very nervous around because they restricted it and they always say, “Well, I can’t, I can’t allow myself to eat it-” Sugar. … because that trust is, has been broken, um, there has to… there’s, there’s either two feelings when it comes to those types of food. It’s fear or excitement. There are elevated levels of feeling around food. And when you allow those foods in your life and you get past that fear, and l- again, let the pendulum even itself out, you get to neutral and food becomes just food. And you can look at every opportunity when that food is presented and say, “Do I actually want it?” And that’s a really powerful place to get to when a food doesn’t scare you anymore. And you realize- That’s great. … hmm, do I want it now? And then you’re able to, to tune into your, your body’s cues of, well, now I’m done and I… you know, I know I can have it maybe tomorrow or another, another opportunity will come up that I can have it and I don’t need to eat it to the point where, you know, I’m never gonna have it again.Do you… Uh, so in my own experience w- with clients and things like this, the number one thing that, that people are afraid of, that they’re addicted to, that they cannot control themselves around is sugar. Mm-hmm. And I h- I would hear so much, “Well, I’m addicted to sugar. I can’t have it. I can’t trust myself.” And then when they would restrict sugar, they would, they would see physical, you know, results, they would lose weight, and they would say, “Oh, this is the answer. If I just don’t eat sugar, I won’t have this problem,” quote unquote. “My body will look the way I want it to. Oh, here, that was easy. Like, why didn’t I just do that?” And then what happens? Right? Right.
We know what happens. (laughs) Um, yeah. Yeah, exactly. It’s like, you know, a sugar avalanche and then you’re… and then you can’t control yourself and then it’s all your fault, and then it’s that cycle of, you know, guilt, shame, further restriction, and then on and on it goes. So what would be like one of your, your top tip or top suggestion for somebody who’s kind of in that mind frame right now with, with something specific like sugar? Mm-hmm. Well, I love to talk about the concept of self-limiting beliefs. Um, I’m not sure if you’re familiar with that, but just the idea that you wanna get curious about those beliefs that you just accept as fact. So someone who says, “I’m addicted to sugar,” they think it’s true, and they are scanning for evidence of, well, this is true. And so like in the example that you gave, when they restrict and crave and binge, well, binging is a sign that it’s true, right?
So, it’s always helpful to take a step back and just challenge those, and get curious. What if I’m not addicted to sugar? What if I could eat it and then know when to stop? So, that’s usually the first step, is just challenge that belief that you accept as fact, because it may or may not be true. You know, obviously, I don’t believe it’s true, but I… you can’t always change someone’s mind right away. Um, and then I always find that it’s helpful to do an experiment and just try something out. Now depending on the, the client, if there’s something that they’re very anxious about, we don’t necessarily go with that one. So you make a list of foods that maybe are considered forbidden and choose one that they feel comfortable trying out, and, and do an experiment with it. Do an experiment of habituation with it, which is allowing that unconditional permission to eat that food, but just doing it in a more controlled environment so that they’re not feeling like, okay, I’m gonna eat everything. So we’re just gonna deal with this one food. It is fascinating to watch this with my children, (laughs) who, you know, being the, the, the health coach that I was, being very disordered eating, there was a lot of things I restricted for them. And having to let go of those and relax around foods, sugar cereals, things that are really highly palatable, you know, my kids would go just crazy about them.
And when I started to buy them more, which seemed so counterintuitive at the time, (laughs) like, I’m gonna buy them. I’m gonna have them in my house. I’m going to experiment on my kids almost. And it was amazing to watch my kids return to the intuitive eater that is all always inside of all of us so quickly. I think it’s easier for them because they’re younger and they’re n- they don’t have the years of disordered eating under their belts, but I could watch them have the sugar cereal and as they saw that there was another box there, it’s like, eh, okay. And then they recognize, okay, well, that food taste good for like a bowl. And then I have my 10-year-old requesting regular Cheerios more often than anything else. And he has habituated to, well, the sugar cereal is there when I want it. Then I can choose when I actually feel like having it. And the amount that they eat has regulated quite a bit as well as a result. So those would be my, my tips of, of just challenging those thoughts and then opening yourself up to just experimenting maybe with one particular food that you feel like you can do and get to a place of neutral with it. I love that. So our audience is mostly women. Mm-hmm. Um, probably, you know, 30s and up, who wanna move past diets. They’ve, they’ve done the chronic dieting. They’re over it. They’re done. They know that this is not the way to live. They wanna make peace with food and their body. And some of them come to intuitive eating as a way, a non-diet approach, to normalize their weight, which to help their bodies reach their healthy weight.
Again, that’s in air quotes. So how do you kind of approach this where we know that intuitive eating is not… it’s not a weight loss approach. It’s not a tool for losing weight, right? So how do you… what do you say to people who are, who are maybe thinking of intuitive eating as, um, you know, as the non-diet weight loss approach? Yeah. You know, there, there’s a lot of ways to approach this, but I think the first step, and I always emphasize this, is we have to put weight loss on the back burner. If… And know that’s a process. It’s still even a process sometimes for me. We live in a world of a, you know, $75 billion diet industry that wants you to question that. So it doesn’t mean that you don’t ever want to lose weight and, you know, that desire has immediately gone away, but the reason that you need to put it on the back burner is that if weight loss is still your main focus, you will always struggle to make peace with food. That fear will persist, and the diet and the restriction will win. It’ll eventually win over. So to put it on the back burner and put your health on the front burner, put that as the focus. What health-promoting behaviors, you know, can we add into your life? Um, and of course now I forgot what my second thing was, but… (laughs) That’s probably the, the first thing that I would say to do is just really look at, okay, how can I do that?
The other thing, again, when you’re talking about the difference between a diet and intuitive eating is with a diet, there’s a really easy way to see that it’s worked. Okay, the, the number’s gone down on the scale. Um, my size is smaller, or, or whatever is working for that particular diet. With intuitive eating, because there’s no, it’s wor- you know, there’s no number, there’s no obvious evidence necessarily that it has worked, each client gets to decide, what does success look like with intuitive eating? And the answers really are so personal, and they’re beautiful, to be honest. Um, to hear people say, “Okay, I was able to be mentally present at a meal instead of doing the numbers of the calories or the macros in my head and just be there and just eat.” Or, “I was actually able to go out to a party or out to dinner with friends instead of staying home because I was feeling more comfortable because I had more control over my food.” Basically giving themselves the permission to show up in their lives instead of, “Well, it’s just easier to stay home.” So putting weight loss on the back burner would be number one, and number two would be deciding what success looks like for you in intuitive eating that has nothing to do with a change in your size or a change in your weight. I lo- I mean, I’ve got a little over clump there, okay? (laughs) That was… I love that.
So I assume you know who Christy Harrison is? Yes. Mm-hmm. Okay. Love Christy Harrison. Yeah. Um, and she talks a lot about how, you know, weight loss really can’t ever be a goal. Right. Like, and we kno- we know this because there are no safe and effective long-term ways to lose weight and keep it off in a way that’s healthy, right? Because the, the weight cycling is actually more physically harmful than carrying the extra weight. Mm-hmm. Um, what do you tell people? And maybe I’ll delete this after, but this is my own curious answer because- (laughs) … this was my… this was something that I struggled with and, uh, we all, uh, uh, anybody who’s done this journey is like, “Can I ever think about weight loss? Can I ever… Can that ever be my goal? Is it wrong to, to want to lose weight?” You know, where… how, how do I safely and, like, does it make me a bad person to want to lose weight? You know, all of these things around this topic because we do live in a, in a world which is very, um, y- you know, favors people in smaller bodies. Mm-hmm. And if you have a larger body, then you are… you’re living in a different world. You’re stigmatized, yeah. You’re stigmatized. You are suffering, um, and because of it. And, you know, can this ever be something that we work towards? That’s a great question. Uh, and you laid out… I mean, basically, you laid out the answer because we know that… I’m hoping you have a better answer. (laughs) I was hoping I had a better answer.
Okay. Well, I don’t know that I do. Okay. I think sh- what I usually… and this is, like I said, this is a journey. This is something I still grapple with here and there because you, you write, it there- it is stigmatized. So what I have personally had to do, and this is what I tell clients to do, is I curate my social media feed. I… if, uh, things start to pop up from ads or different things, I report them from different diets and things like that because what you see as normal and what you see as applauded, it go- it’s going to cloud your judgment and cloud your view of what is good and what is right. And so that’s the first thing that I did when I really started this journey was I needed to unfollow all of the people that I had been following and really take a step back from what I felt was, was good and healthy and, and start f- and then start flooding my social media feed with different body sizes. People that look and, and are proud of their different sizes. Mm-hmm. So it was changing what I saw and then also confronting, as, uh, we probably all need to do, our own fat phobia. Mm-hmm. Why do I think this different size body is bad? And as I have done that, I have loosened my grip, my idea of, well, weight loss will always be still, you know, on that back burner for me. Will it always be there? And it has started to come up less and less for me, but I’m talking years into my journey. It’s just, it’s still there, so I have to keep, keep facing it. So I know that so much goes into our weight and as we age and go through different experiences in life, our bodies are just going to change. So my goal has shifted from w- you know, that original, I wanna help people get to their ideal body weight. I want to show someone what health looks like all along our lifespan and that it changes how it looks. I do not look like I did when I was 20, but I’ve had four kids.
One of them was a set of twins, you know? Um, (laughs) I love your eyes light up. Um- Yeah, when they start coming out two at a time. (laughs) Yeah. So, you know, I really… I have to say, okay, I want to be an example of what health looks like and that it changes in our lifespan. And that’s been my journey. Other people will have to go… and they may always have weight loss kind of on that back burner, and no judgment. I think because of the world we live in that it’s gonna be there.
But as I add more goals in, it gets quieter and quieter and quieter for me.
So you’re kind of crowding it out.
Yeah. So that eventually it goes from the back burner into the freezer, where- And it’s- … into the freezers where we put it when it, you know, when we’re done with it. Yeah. Back in the freezer- And it’s got freezer burn and we just throw it out. It’s got freezer burn and then we just chuck it ’cause we, we, we pull it out. We’re like, “I don’t even know what this is anymore. I didn’t label it.” Chuck it. Right. That works also. (laughs) And it goes back to the mindset and the cognitive behavior therapy.
Most people can’t go from “I will never want to lose weight.” having that be a goal for so long for so many women-… to, “Okay, it’s not a goal. I don’t care,” that’s too big of a shift.
So it’s a process. It’s a step to where, you know, why do I want to always be smaller? That was probably the first question I started to ask after I really got into intuitive eating, is I saw women, I’m like, they are amazing women that I look up to in every way. They’re serving others. They’re so loving. But they always just want to be smaller. And why is that? And so that, that question really got me towards, you know, addressing my like, why do I always want to show up physically smaller? It’s the patriarchy, hint hint. I know. I don’t want to say it, but it’s true. Oh, we all know. We all know. Yeah. Let’s just, let’s just put it out there. (laughs) Put it out there. Yeah. They want us, they want us to shrink down and, and be seen and not heard. So… And why do I want to, you know, bend to that? I don’t. Exactly. And I don’t want other women to do it too. So it’s all about rewriting that narrative around our bodies so that, you know, the next generation, my kids don’t have that on their shoulders as much as I have. I love this. Oh my gosh, this has been amazing. So I know I asked you, I was gonna te- I was gonna ask you for three top tips, but you kind of already like went through them. If you wanted, do you have like three that you want to leave? Okay. Yeah. Then we’ll do that. Okay. So let’s, we’re gonna wrap up here. This has been an amazing chat and I’m just, there’s so much to unpack here. Um, but let’s end this with, what are your three like top tips for setting and reaching, you know, healthy goals? Okay. So I may have answered this a little bit different, but my tips are more like three questions that I have clients continue to ask themselves on those days or those moments when you’re doubting your thinking. Is this working? You know, maybe I should just start dieting again. It felt easier to just hand over my control to someone or someone else. And so these are three questions that I like to keep in my back pocket and I like to have my clients ask themselves when they are struggling. And the first one is, what if, you know, it’s questioning that, that thought again. You know, what if I could love or accept my body like it is? What if I could? What does that look like? The second one is, what do you value about your body or what has it done for you today?
And that, the underlying thing on that is, if we’re basing our self-esteem on how we view our body, it’s gonna go up or down because our body looks different in different lights and different clothing and different views. But our value, if we’re basing it in our value, that’s a lot easier to get your mind around and to feel confident in and to feel secure in. So what do you value about your body or what has it done for you today? And then the last one is, what does honoring or respecting your body look like today? That was probably three big tips, but the reason for that last one is, honoring your body each day is gonna look different. Some days it may look like changing what you’re wearing because you’re just uncomfortable in that particular outfit. It could look like having a, you know, doing a really hard workout because you wanna get stress out or it could be just not working out at all because you’re tired. And respecting and honoring your body like it is in that moment is what’s gonna build that trust with your body back that you’ve lost. So I’ll repeat those since they were really long. What if you could, what if you could love or accept your body like it is? What if you could? What do you value about your body or what has it done for you today? And then the last one of what does honoring or respecting your body look like today? And usually those three questions and the thoughts that come out of it help me turn my, my day around and help clients make, you know, have a better day and see like, okay, I can see where the thoughts were coming in that might have had me start spinning and thinking I need to start dieting again. Those are amazing. Those, I mean, I got a little choked up there.
Like, I, I’m, I mean, I wish I was exaggerating. I’m not. That’s- (laughs) That’s, that’s, that’s an incredibly powerful tools to have on days where you’re, you’re having those moments where you’re slipping back into the thoughts, you’re looking in the mirror and you’re like, “Ugh, I’m not, not loving this.” Mm-hmm. You know, and you start to play that loop, right? So those are amazing and I’m definitely gonna be keeping those handy. Brooke- (laughs) This is great. Um, I know personally I’m gonna be listening to this over and over ’cause there’s just so much in here that you have provided to our listeners. And I really appreciate the time that you took today to come and talk to us. I imagine you will be back on here soon. (laughs) Thank you, Laurie, it’s been a pleasure.
