When to Start and Stop Eating for Weightloss

Hello, everybody, and welcome back. Today, we're going to talk about when to start and stop eating. Plus, we're going to cover emotional hunger and physical hunger, which is, I don't know why I find this topic so hilarious. I think it's because we bullshit so much when we do these podcasts, and I feel like today we're like in class. Today's the day that Kathy Hartman's going to teach us something. Oh, my goodness. But I'm letting her go on a drug cast. Well, yeah, well, what was funny is we were sitting around and just, you know, chatting before we got started and making notes and stuff like that. And she had this concept she wanted to talk about. She kept on and on. I said, "Will you please quit talking about it to me?" Like we should really be just recording. I said, "So don't say anything else. I want it to come out all natural." So that everybody can be like, "Oh, my God. She's dropping the mic over there." Oh, goodness. Yeah. Well, did you have a good week? I did. I had a great week. We tried somewhere new for dinner last night. Yeah, how that goes. You know, my son, I think I've mentioned my son's getting married. So we're on the rehearsal dinner hunt. Oh, speaking of, so she texted me a picture and you said, "I forget how you said it, but it was something like, 'Oh, he must really love her.'" Yeah. And I thought, "Well, I'm glad now you have all this proof because it's an engagement picture." Yeah. He does love her. Yes, he does. It's really how it keeps you. It's a very sweet picture though. I know he's my youngest. So I don't know if you have multiple kids sometimes, you think about that youngest one is just going to stay youngest, at least 25 years old and he's engaged and he really likes her. And I think that that dawning of awareness there was kind of weird. He's going to be a husband. That's hilarious. Honestly, like looking at your face, like she literally looks like, "Oh, my God. My son's really going to get married even though she has one that I've never seen before." It has what? Two kids and the number on the way. Yeah. You don't know what reality is. We went to this new place last night and let's just say my husband and I are beer and pizza kind of people. I mean, we're just, that's just us. We're laid back. We went to this place last night that's, you had to make a reservation to go to and dress up. You know, you didn't go to. I read the drama in your journal about it. We ended up spending a lot of money on dinner. We've established on a tightwad. Exactly. But it turned out okay. It was fun. I'm not sure it's the right place. Yeah. But it was neat to try something new. So I busted through a little bit of that, all that chatter about, is this the right place and it's too foofoo and it'll be too expensive and said, "You know, we're just going to go anyway." I don't care where you pick. Well, thanks. You know why? Because I don't get to go. No. I could assign you a job at the wedding. I don't want no job. I want to be at your table at the wedding reception, getting hammered and embarrassing the fool right out of you. Don't just get in. I keep teasing her though. I keep saying like, you know, "Oh, we're going to, we're going to dance and we're going to get rowdy. We're going to be that embarrassing table." I think you said, "Is there an open bar?" Yeah. I don't know if there's not. We'll put drinks in our car. We'll just, it ought to be good. All right. Well, let's get down to it. I am excited for you though. I know that, sending the baby off, you've always talked about this. He's your, like, kind of your quiet one and all that kind of stuff. So it's a big, big thing. All right. So let's start with when to start and stop eating. We don't teach counting calories. What we do is we teach you how to listen to your body and we teach you a system to where you start eating when hunger starts and you stop eating when you're satisfied. So we have a scale and we do all this kind of stuff, but it's really important. It's, I think, like, for me, I think so many women want to do the calories and want to do all this other stuff and it's like, it disassociates you from your body. And what I want you to do is learn how to actually start listening to our body. One of the reasons why we get overweight is we are spending a lot of time trying to escape our body. And then we just add on the pounds, add on the pounds. So we're escaping our emotions that are in our body. We are escaping the physical cues that are in our body. So we start teaching you how to actually dial in. Now, that's a scary prospect for a lot of people. And when they first start, they're like, oh my God, I am broken. Like nothing works. I can't hear anything. And what I want to tell you is when you first start doing this work, that's very normal to think. And all it is is where you've spent so much time not listening. You have, it's always tell people it's like, it's like your death. It's like I gave you a hearing aid. Mama, you got to turn it up. Like you just got to turn your hearing aid up and eventually you start hearing it again. So I guess what I want to start with is like when you start eating, it's when you're getting those whispers. And I think that that's scary for a lot of people because I think when we're going to like diet, I have to get like I was doing this in that webinar. You have to get hangry. And you do not have to get hangry. And I think they hangry. You're dieting. You have to stay hangry. Like you got to be hungry all the time. And I'm like, no, that's bullshit. Don't even think about that. If you, especially if you got a lot of weight to lose, I think one of the most important things is to really start learning how to allow a little hungry. Most people that I come in contact with, myself included when I had a hundred pounds to lose, have not practiced like ever getting hungry. We get like, I don't know, we lose the full feeling. So then we eat back to full. So we're always, it's almost like riding around in a car with a full tank of gas. And the second you go like 14 miles, you stop at the gas station and let it spill over a little bit. Yeah, because you're afraid to run and out of gas. Yeah, that's what happens. So every 14 miles, I'm going to take a break and I'm going to get some gas. Right. And so you end up just like, and that's how you get disassociated. And then you stop eating when you get satisfied. So I think a lot of women, what they want to do is they want to top the gas tank off or they need to just run it all out. It's like, I think diets and calories and meal plans and stuff have just ruined it for us. They've only taught us to don't listen to your body at all. You know, I don't care if you are hungry. You don't have the calories for it. I don't care if you're full. You need to eat this many calories or you need to eat this meal plan and stuff. It's like really learning like how to listen is Uber Uber key. It's taking responsibility of your own body, not giving that responsibility to a meal plan or an exercise plan or a trainer or something else. It's all you. Yeah. And you know, that's a scary prospect for people. And I just tell them like, Hey, it's the best thing you could ever do for yourself. One of the reasons why we love teaching this method too is it goes everywhere with you. I can tell you how many people will tell me like, well, you know, can I start your program? I'm going on vacation. I'm like, yeah, you ought to do it because then you don't have to ever worry about counting calories on vacation and stuff. You're your stomach and your brain, you know, they're long for the ride, no matter what. So if you're going on vacation or trips or work things or whatever, when you really learn how to eat for your body, you really learn like even if like, because in the beginning, I, we don't teach. I mean, this is how I do it, but we don't even teach them to change their food yet. People are always shocked when they first start. They're like, well, what should I be eating? I'm like, what you normally eat right now. The only thing I want you like thinking about is when am I starting to get hungry and when am I satisfied? That is plenty of work for most people, plenty. And the more weight you lose, you can lose a lot of weight just doing that until you then. And this is what I think happens is that you get good at it and you start saying results, you naturally want to start eating better. Yeah. You start feeling better. You want to put better fuel in the tank. So you move on to the next piece because this is where you were like, so I've explained like the start and the stop and intellectually, that sounds wonderful because I mean, if you think about like, if there was no emotions involved, we'd be like, okay, this is good. Stop when you know, when I'm starting to get satisfied and I'm just going to start eating when I get a little hungry, but that's not the problem. Yeah, what's so interesting to me is the emotional versus the physical side of when to start eating and when to stop. Yes. We talk an awful lot about really evaluating, are you really hungry or do you just want something to eat? Right. And that's the emotional physical side of hunger. But I had a client in my one-on-one coaching program this week talk about how she doesn't like to stop eating or doesn't know when to stop eating. And I asked her why and she said, I just love my food. I don't want to stop eating it. Yeah, even if it's like, we teach our girls how to eat healthy and love it. Yeah, but that's a common thought. Like your husband is one of them. Oh, sure. Yeah. And Mr. Happy Stormy and this is a good client. You know, it's not like she was, you know, loving hot fudge Sundays and didn't want to stop. She was loving, you know, good lean meats and green beans and, you know, whatever it was, she fixed that night that was good healthy food and didn't want to stop eating. And so I talked to her about emotional versus physical fullness, you know, or satisfaction. You know, we don't, we, we try and teach folks not to go directly to full overstuffed, right? Right. Heavy bowling ball feeling in our stomach because that means we've eaten more than our body needs. Right. But she didn't want to stop eating because she was loving her food. And so I told her, you know, think about why you don't want to stop eating. Is it really because you're loving your food? Is it because you don't want to waste your food? Is it because you don't want to throw anything away? You know, right. What's that other side of it? And sometimes I think too, what, you know, because that sound, like that sounds nice. Like, well, yeah, but now I'm eating so healthy now and I just love it, but I've noticed I'm still eating too much. It's really figuring out, well, why are you choosing to eat too much? Well, healthy or not? Why do you want more? And I think sometimes what happens is that we tell ourselves but it's healthy, right? And that's one, I think wasting food is huge for a lot of people. Like I forever have been a member of the Clean Plate Club, like I think I might have been the founding president, like seriously. And it has been the work of my life. I still fall into it. I noticed myself, you know, I had years of where we were just broke and we always over ate for fear of when the next meal was coming. I finally drop all that bullshit. Then I go into food prepping on the years that I would prep food and then I'm like, yeah, but that's how much I allowed. Yeah. And then I go to Sunday, like I know on Thursday, if I'm going to be satisfied or not on this, you know, there's just like all these multiple layers of where your brain can go. Right. But I think for some people when they like are just truly loving the food stuff, I wonder sometimes it's like, okay, so you're having this experience. You're loving the taste, you're enjoying it. But if you stop, what's after that? Right? You know, is there something waiting on you, like loneliness? I get back to work. I got to get back to, you know, dealing with my kids, my husband, like life. Life is on life is after the last bite. And I think for a lot of people, you know, it's looking at that piece on the emotional side. So like when you are, you know, when you're hesitant to stop, whether it's good for you or not good for you, on that emotional piece, say, what is it that I'm going to do next? And do I love that? And if I don't, why? That's your emotional eating problem right there. And sometimes it's distracted eating. Oh my god, yeah. Sometimes it's, there's all this food here and I'm just going to eat it while I watch TV or I'm going to, you know, while I'm talking to my family or something like that too. Because if you end the meal, does that mean that the interaction stops? Right. A lot of people will associate how long they eat with, how long they get with their kids for instance. Right. How long we have at the table together. Yeah. And so they just keep eating to extend that when exactly. Yeah. And those are the things like I think that, well, one, I think that totally separates our program from everybody else in the world. Just saying, ladies, but I think that's one of the key things that I notice when we are working with our clients, our people on losing weight. So much more than the meal plan in the calories. It, we don't even do those things like we teach you how to plan. But what really is going to be a game changer for everyone is always being willing to figure out why am I eating? If you are ever eating outside of what your body needs, there is a problem, some kind of problem. It may not be deep rooted, terrible, long term damage problems, but there might, there's some problem like you don't know how to connect with your kids outside of that meal. Right. You know, I mean, that's not a mega problem, but it's one that you're just probably not even aware of that's happening right now or even your husband. You know, I think that like just going personal here, I have been working in Kathy's, Kathy's my coach. I know people like, you know, if Michael Jordan needed a coach, I know Karenda's, but Kathy coaches me a lot. When I need somebody to tell me stuff and like to see it from a different level, I usually call her. And one of the things that has been huge for me is understanding because my joy comes with wine. That's like always my, like that's the one I want to have my pleasure. If I'm going to plan my joy, that's what I want to have. It was a lot of work for me to understand that I was totally associating time with Chris was sitting and having drinks and noticing that I had decided to like, I figured out what my thought was, if we don't drink, all we'll do is work. If we don't drink, we won't have time together. You actually called it your connection time. Yeah. You had to drink with Chris to be connected. Yeah. I had made that like a total like, this is how we do it. Right. You can't argue like, oh yeah, Judges Judy would believe this one. Yeah. Well, you argued with me about it. Oh, yeah. Yeah. But it takes forever to really see sometimes like you have to, but you have to be willing to look at it. And I think that's what we're talking about here is when it comes to the emotional side of hunger, you got to be willing. If you want to fix your weight and you want to fix it, the very first thing you have to be willing to do is to figure out what is broken. Most people don't want to do that. They don't want to see that stuff because once they see it, they can't turn it off. That's right. And if we were talking before we, we were just talking about our own personal lives and we were talking about this whole concept. It's called awareness. So it's like the light switch gets flipped on of all the shit you do that's not working basically. Just the lights on the bulb. It's like it's a 40 year bulb. It's not going to go out. You're seeing it everywhere and it feels terrible. Like all of a sudden you're like, oh my God. Seriously, I have been thinking this no wonder I'm overweight, no wonder, you know, my job sucks, no wonder, whatever, my relationships are terrible. But one of the things I wanted to tell you guys that I think is key is sit in it, let it be terrible, but don't judge yourself over it. Oh, that's so big. And that's where we want to go first. We want to say, like, I can't believe I'm so broken because I'm having all these terrible thoughts or whatever. And then we stew out that, but if you sit there and you decide that you, there's something wrong with you, you will go back to the behavior. That is the quickest way to start overeating again is to make it mean that you are a failure. And I just tell people all the time, like when you find out whatever your emotional triggers are, be willing to just look at it and just be like, you know what, I don't have time for a shame game. All I've got is time to look at it, see all the places that it's not working. And then all of a sudden it's like when you're not busy shaming yourself, because to me, that's almost like a distraction tool anyway, because it's preventing you from doing the work you need to do to fix it. When you don't do that, then you allow yourself to be like, all right, I really see this isn't working. Now I crave something better, right? And you go into changing it from a place of like, I want to change this, not I have to, I'm scared, I won't change, you know, all the shitty feelings. You go into it, like we talk about this all the time. The only way to get a positive result is to have a positive feeling. If you want to change, it's got to come from a place of positivity. You've got to want it. You've got to desire it. You've got to be committed to it. You've got to be willing to feel anything in order to get it. And I think that's just huge when we're talking about, I mean, and this is such a simple concept, getting a little hungry is not when you're satisfied. But this is where the work is. Yes. Yeah. And sometimes I'll point this out to sometimes you really have to have someone else show it to you. Oh my God. Sit in that mire of muck all day long and not realize that you're sitting there. Right. Right. Until somebody comes up to you like my husband does to me, you know, that's a thought. Right. And you're like, shut up. Exactly. But you know, it's very true because a lot of people have just, it's like me and the whole idea of, this is how we connect. I mean, this is what we do. We enjoy it. It becomes so ingrained in you that you don't realize you're choosing it. You just think this is the way it is. That's your habit thought. Like, yeah, if you think you're, you know, too, like if you think you're too fat to stop eating or you think you are too, like what is some of the bullshit we, we like say to ourselves, I'm too, I'm too broken. So I can't lose weight. Like we literally start telling ourselves this so much that where it feels like it's actually real. And that's why it is important sometimes where you've got to have somebody to look at. and just help you break that shit up. And that's the beauty of this podcast. I think for a lot of you out there, you won't need a Kathy in a career. You just need us in a podcast. You'll hear this and be like, "That's me." And now I can do some work. You never know how much awareness you're gonna need. So, but anyway. So let's do the physical side. So we've talked about how do you identify the emotional? Like you start asking yourself. And on the other end too, guys, I just wanna say there's emotional pain that comes along with the allow yourself to get hungry. So many of our girls will say, "Oh my God, Crann, if I get hungry, that just means I will overeat." - Oh, yeah. - I get the given. There's a fact. - Yeah, exactly. And it's like, "No, you don't have to, but I guarantee you, if you keep repeating the story when I get hungry, I overeat." Hey, guess what? You don't allow yourself ever to get hungry and you don't lose weight. Boom. (laughs) - So, y'all just be really careful about what you're thinking and what you're saying out loud. How many of our girls say that out loud all the time? - Oh, I hear it. Seriously. - Seven times a week. I hear it a lot. - I know, I hear it myself. - I hear it myself. - That's why I wanted to say it to you. I mean, I'm like, watch what you say. Like, y'all, if there's a golden moment, this is the one. The words you say out loud, it is like your brain just heard it 1,000 times. So, like, if you're sitting there and you look in the mirror and you say bullshit to yourself out loud, if you, you know, if your husband wants you to go someplace and you're like, "Oh, no, I'm too fat to go there," or, "I know we keep talking about like one of the other podcasts." If you haven't listened to the "I'm Too Fat" episode, go back and listen to it. But seriously, watch what you say out loud because it's bad enough when those thoughts are running around in your head. They're doing enough damage verbally. They're gonna kill you. That's why we have our girls when they're working on changing their thoughts, we make them say that shit out loud. Like, you need to hear it. You don't need to just repeat it in your head. You need to practice it verbally so it can take root. Especially for people who are listening to this podcast have probably, like, what I call, suffered with their way all their life. Like, it feels like a suffrage. I know when I was overweight, it felt very suffering. And if it's been long term for you, this is mean you've been saying this for so long, you need to speed the work up. The best way to speed up, changing how you think and believe about yourself is to just start saying things out loud. So, golden moment for everyone. You know, my go-to thought was, I can't let myself get too hungry. Yeah, I said that one all the time. Yeah, I better get a snack 'cause I can't let myself get too hungry. Right, I better go ahead and eat 'cause I better, you know. I know, yeah. We do it. We say it out loud and we say shit. And then next thing, you know, we're believing it. All right, so there's also just the physical side. What we wanted to really cover was the distraction eating, distractions and like the things that you can do to start. I like to focus on, I mean, I think you guys can handle hunger. I want you to start telling yourself, I can handle being a little hungry. Just get a little hungry though. Don't get concerned with I need to like, you know, be eating the carpet, you know. Just get to where you're just slightly hungry. Practice allowing that a little bit. But the big piece is not overfill in yourself. Yes. And I think that that's probably where just watching our girls, that's always the harder end. We can get them, it's really easy to get somebody to understand hunger. Right. You know, skip breakfast today. Let's see how that goes. Yeah. Oh, wow. Now I know what hunger feels like. You know, I've just not skipped breakfast in a long time. But when it comes to like the physical side of knowing when you're satisfied, you had awesome tips. So give us, is it Gail? Yeah. Great. Gail, you're getting a shout out. That's right. He's been bragging on your butt. [LAUGHTER] When Gail's at a restaurant, when she thinks she's approaching her satisfied level of fullness, you know, not, you know, too full, she gets up and goes to the bathroom. She separates, physically separates herself from the table in order to evaluate and give herself time. Because you know, when you eat, you know, it takes a minute for it to leave your mouth and hit your stomach. So a lot of times people will stop when they think they're satisfied and end up over full. Yeah. So what Gail does is she stops when she sees satisfied coming up and then gets up and physically removes herself from the table. And I thought that was just genius. I think it's genius, too. And I actually have never heard it. I mean, this is like a new tip for me. So I mean, I think that's excellent. Yeah, look at you, Gail. A new tip for the mind. Oh, my God. Well, I'm not going to like give her a call or something. But one of the other ones that I know that-- I don't remember who in our tribe does this, but we've talked about it for a long time. Like when they-- especially when they eat out, they look at their plate and they decide ahead of time, this is all I'm going to eat. Like, I'm eating this much, whether it's half, three-quarters, or whatever, when they're first learning how to-- like just how to stop cl-- because I tell people all the time, like even if you're not good at figuring out your satisfied level, what if we just start practicing leaving food behind? Because for a lot of people, leaving food behind is like a huge issue. And so the only way to get comfortable with it is to actually start doing it. People are like, well, how do you do that? And I'm like, I don't know, Sherlock. Let's just leave some behind and deal with it, right? So they decide ahead of time, like, OK, my food's coming out. Are they here before? I know what the portions are. I'm going to leave three-quarters. And I challenge you guys not to wrap that crap up and take it home. I think that eventually you can take home to go stuff. But if your issue is leaving food behind and wasting it, the only way that you're going to know that you aren't going to die or get pregnant is by allowing the restaurant to take your scraps. I mean, you just got to do it a few times. After a few times, then all of a sudden you will realize that that was just something that you've been doing for a long time. You can start bringing it home and to go box and enjoy it the next day and stuff. But you want to break the habit and the habit thought and belief that somehow you not eating it all means you have wasted food. What is it that you always say? I can waste it in the trash can or I can wear it on my ass? Yeah. I actually asked somebody in our group that the other day, you know what? If you're going to overeat that, OK, just decide now where you want to put it on your body. Hips, you know, belly, arms, where's it going? Right. Exactly. And that's-- I mean, I don't think people think of it that way. If you don't need the food, somebody in our new group, the other day, was talking about how they pulled out the starving kids in Africa. Oh, I heard that all my life and blah, blah, blah. And I said, well, aren't you glad that you over ate? Because I bet all those kids that are starving around the world now feel better. She's like, I never really thought about it like that. And I said, yeah, we don't help other people by stuffing ourselves. That's such bullshit. And it doesn't matter that you heard it all your life. I love it when people tell me all the things that happened in their childhood. And that explains why I eat the way I do today. Oh, it's my childhood's fault. It's like, no, it's your fault today. You're making choices now. I had a terrible childhood when it came to food. We were all overweight. We all ate buffets and stuff, allowing myself to think, well, if only this must be why it kept me from stopping when I was satisfied today. It's an easy way to put responsibility on something else. Yeah, we're going to take responsibility for yourself. This is a thing like before I would ever say, seriously, y'all, if you were sitting around thinking about your childhood and about what you learned and your eating habits and all this other stuff, and you cannot even allow yourself to even think, that's why I did it today. You need to say, no, that's not why I did it today. That was my past. The reason I over ate today was because I chose to. That's right. That's exactly right. That is the bottom line. And for a lot of you, you just need to practice saying that. I swear, I swear I'm a step bench that I'm standing on. And you can see over your cage. Right. I'm a step bench. But seriously, if you guys will just start saying the truth to yourself, the reason why over ate was because I chose to and stop there because that's, that is the reality. When you allow yourself to think anything else outside of that, you are now minimizing the damage. You are like, say, oh, it's that fault. It's the same thing. Your brain will get really used to you owning it. When you start really owning it, you will want to start changing it. And that clearly is the awareness that we're looking for. Yeah. When you say, I chose to over ate, that means you were in control. You may not love that you did it, but you have a sense of ownership. You start feeling the ownership. When you say, I over ate because my mama taught me that starting kids in Africa were blah, blah, blah. And now I said, well, that's out of my control. If my past would change, well, then I wouldn't overeat anymore. Honey, your past ain't ever going to change until you change it. You're the only one that can change it by saying, that's what happened. It's over and done with. Now I know better. - Yeah, the past is the past. It's all facts. Not a whole lot of that you haven't effect on today. It's that story you tell yourself about what happened in the past and how it's affecting today. - Exactly, that's what you change. - Yeah, it's like, and every one of you should feel this way too. (laughing) Thank God for me being overweight all those years. For me eating and drive-thrues, not learning how to cook. Always like learning that you eat all you can, you're supposed to overfill yourself. Had that never happened, there would be no podcast. Kathy probably wouldn't have lost 80 pounds. Like countless people, like none of you would be seriously. But that's the way I look at it. And there's probably some of you sitting in your car right now who have the same upbringing that I did. But you're in the blame stage. You think that that past of yours is the reason why you are today. It is the reason why you are today. You get to decide what that reason is. You get to decide that that is what is gonna make you great or is what is gonna break you. And I just decided long time ago, like, (sniffing) my past is, it has to be the record of what makes me the best version of who I am today. I have to look back at it and just be like, here's all the reasons why I'm able to do the things I'm able to do today. Not get caught up in the shit. I tell people that every single thing they experienced every day of their past is what created what they are today. Yeah, and you know, and I know we have a lot of people that have some pretty broken pasts, but listen, I have worked with clients that have had horrible things happen to them. And they are doing amazing things today. Because it never defines them. They are their own definition. Be careful what definition you decide to write. Anything else you wanna cover on this, Missy? This was your topic. Yeah, yeah. And it kind of went in a lot of different directions, but it was really cool. I liked it. That's why I said, let's not practice this shit. Let's just get on here, free ball. I think the biggest thing for me, honestly, is really paying attention to when your body needs to stop eating. When you need to stop feeding your body, because that's the biggest thing about losing weight, is stopping the overeating. Yeah. And whatever you can do to figure out where you are, is what you need to do. I totally agree. I mean, I think that, and I think that's why, like the stuff we talk about on this podcast is so important, because overeating is more than just like eating too many calories. It's not about that. It's all about the stuff we think about in junk. So I think that was a good one. I really enjoyed this podcast today. All right, girls, we will talk to you soon. You'll have a great week. Bye-bye.