36: Jenna's Real Story "Before intuitive eating, I thought I would binge eat forever"

Jenna
 0:00:00
 Hello, this is the No Wellness Wankery podcast. My name is Jenna D'Apice and we talk all things wellness wankery. It's a great time. We're very glad to have you here. And I'm joined by my co-host, Lyndi.

Lyndi
 0:00:47
 Hello, it's Lydni Cohen here, dietitian nutritionist, and I'm excited for today's episode because I'm speaking to Jenna about her intuitive eating experience so far. So Jenna, you were a chronic dieter for how many years?

Jenna
 0:01:00
 Since I was born. Like, I can't remember anything else. I remember, and I, like, I went to the first dietician when I was like eight.

Lyndi
 0:01:10
 Young, wow.

Jenna
 0:01:11
 Very young, and like, put me on like an eating plan and all of these things.

Lyndi
 0:01:15
 Why? Like how?

Jenna
 0:01:17
 Why? I think it's because, and me and my mum have talked about this, I have no ill feelings towards my mum. I understand she was only doing what her mum told her and it was just passed down. It's just she could see me, even the first time I noticed it was in our kindergarten school photo, I was the biggest girl in the front row and dancing costumes were always mid-drifts and I had a bigger belly and little things like that and I feel like mom was so worried that I would keep getting bigger and she was trying to nip it in the bud when obviously we know now that you need to do the opposite of that.

Lyndi
 0:01:54
 Yes, and in a way like parents are trying to protect you from the pain they've felt in existing in a body that they've always thought is wrong. So she was trying to protect you, came from a good place, but as a result she kind of did everything that you shouldn't be doing and probably created way more issues around food than had she just left you to eat when you were hungry like you were already in the

Jenna
 0:02:17
 eating zone. Exactly. I remember eating in secret when I was really, really young. Like if mum had brought a cake or something to have for afternoon tea, like I would always be like going back and eating more of it in private from when I was really young. Like younger than a kid should be like feeling shameful about

Lyndi
 0:02:39
 eating. That's common and that is that is something that happens as a result of these really tiny messages that we absorb around the sense that this food is bad, we shouldn't be having it, that we are only allowed a certain amount. It's comments our parents make that we pick up in passing and then we think we have to squirrel away the food so that no one knows that we're doing this really bad thing. So if this is something that's affecting you and your family, we can talk about this in another episode. But so we got to this point where you're eight years old, you go to the dietitian, she gives you a meal plan and so starts your decades long pursuit of trying to weigh less through restriction and multiple different types of diets.

Jenna
 0:03:14
 Multiple different types of diets. I remember- What have you tried? Go through the list. Okay, I remember I had to get permission from my doctor to go on Weight Watchers because I was so young.

8
 0:03:22
 Jeez.

Jenna
 0:03:23
 Like, I was really young to go on Weight Watchers. I don't even remember how old I was, maybe like 13 or 14 or something. So I've done Weight Watchers, I went with my mom and my nan. The three of us went together.

Lyndi
 0:03:35
 A bonding experience.

Jenna
 0:03:36
 A bonding of trauma around weighing ourselves in front of everybody.

Lyndi
 0:03:41
 There is a lot of research around this, by the way, the way that women have traditionally connected over pursued weight loss. Yeah, like we have our little cards where it literally wrote our weight on there and there's this whole thing at Weight Watchers where if you, I don't know if it's the same now, but you had to be under your weight or lose weight

Jenna
 0:03:59
 or stay the same, otherwise you had to pay.

4
 0:04:02
 More?

Jenna
 0:04:03
 Like you had to pay.

Lyndi
 0:04:04
 Oh, it was free if you lost weight, but if you didn't, then you had to pay.

Jenna
 0:04:08
 Yeah.

Lyndi
 0:04:09
 Wow. What a weird way to add some shame to the fact that...

Jenna
 0:04:11
 So you've stood on the scale in front of everybody, you've put on weight, then you've got to pay for the week because you didn't lose weight.

Lyndi
 0:04:18
 That's a really hard experience, especially when you're really young and you've got your mom there, your grandma there. That's a lot.

Jenna
 0:04:23
 Yeah, so I've done weight watches. I remember this crazy diet me and my mom did once where I didn't know what it was called. You don't need to know because you don't need to look it up. It was something where you basically remember I just ate like processed like meats and ham and then like once a day I had like a teaspoon of

Lyndi
 0:04:42
 like psyllium husk so I would go to the toilet. And you know that doesn't sound right.

4
 0:04:47
 That's like logical.

Lyndi
 0:04:48
 We've all done it, those silly, crazy diets.

Jenna
 0:04:51
 Silly, crazy diets. I've done light and easy. I've done Jenny Craig. I lost a lot of weight on Jenny Craig once.

Lyndi
 0:05:00
 Only to regain all the weight?

Jenna
 0:05:02
 Yes. What else have I done? A lot of low carb. And then when I was like 16, I really wanted to lose weight, which I ended up losing like 20 kilos. And that was just, I went to another dietitian, got a meal plan, went to the gym every day, and was really strict on the meal plan.

Lyndi
 0:05:22
 Can we talk about this? Because you did all these diets, and most of them, if not all of them, were successful if you consider them from a weight loss perspective. You lost the weight you wanted to lose.

Jenna
 0:05:32
 But I always put it back on.

Lyndi
 0:05:33
 And then what happens?

Jenna
 0:05:35
 And then I'd have to find a new one.

3
 0:05:36
 Yes.

Lyndi
 0:05:37
 And so it was kind of like this constant process of you gaining weight and losing weight. So when you started your intuitive eating process, was there a part of you that was like, I have to accept that these failed me, that these weren't the solutions? Or do you still have moments you're like, well it did

Jenna
 0:05:51
 work? Yeah, well to be honest, when I first started, when I first met you and I started looking at intuitive eating, I was looking at it as another way to lose weight. I was like, I can get this in control and I'll stop eating when I'm hungry and then I'll lose weight and everything could be really great. And that was my mindset for the first little while I was doing it. And I was saying it to my mom as well and my mom eventually kind of stopped doing it because she was like, didn't lose any weight. So it's like that kind of thinking, it was like, this is just another diet.

Lyndi
 0:06:26
 That does feel like another diet. Yes. Yes, and I think sometimes you can create intuitive eating to, I can only eat when I'm hungry and it's not, sometimes people lose weight, sometimes people don't lose weight from intuitive eating, it just is what it is.

Jenna
 0:06:39
 But I think there was a big part of me when I met my partner and then I met you maybe like a year later where everything was starting to shift because I'd never been around him and his family that don't have as many dieting hangups as my family did. So it was like, we do things like it was the weekend and he just wanted KFC. And I'm like, well, I've never really had KFC before, but I would eat like a packet of biscuits by myself the next day, but I wouldn't dare eat KFC in front of everybody. So there's like little things like trying things like that and I worked a lot with my psychologist on these things like eating something like KFC and then be like, well, did anything happen? Like, did you explode?

Lyndi
 0:07:21
 Are you fine? So you finally had this food environment where food wasn't created as a shameful experience. It was like, especially the food that was like delicious as you know, that was enjoyed by everyone in community and not something that you just had to go and do in private when no one else could see you. That's pretty game-changing to have that permission around food that you've never had before.

Jenna
 0:07:44
 Correct. And little things I know, like, I remember once when I was really young, like, I would eat things, like, I remember my mum had, like, Portuguese tarts in the freezer and I didn't have time to cook them, so I ate one frozen. Like, I ate a frozen bit of food because I wanted to eat it so badly and I didn't have time to put it in the microwave because someone would find me. And to think that that's where I once was to now like the other day I went and we walked to the coffee shop and I bought a coffee and a real Portuguese tart. And I'm like- It was cooked.

Lyndi
 0:08:16
 It was cooked and like ready for human consumption.

3
 0:08:20
 And you ate it in public.

Jenna
 0:08:21
 And I ate it in public and I loved it and it was fine. So just, I think when you're in such the depths of disordered eating, you don't ever think that you can get out of it unless you lose weight. You're like, okay, I'll just be really thin and then all of this will go away. But it doesn't.

Lyndi
 0:08:38
 Even when I was really thin, I still felt the exact same way. How did it feel when you lose the weight on a diet and you start to get those comments from people being like, you look fantastic, oh my goodness, did you get those comments and how did that make you feel?

Jenna
 0:08:55
 Yes, I always, because I was a yo-yo dieter, I would always, whenever I was thin and I'd lost weight, people would always comment and then when I'd see them again and they didn't comment, I'd be like, oh, I've put weight back on. So it was this cycle of, I felt like I needed comments of people telling me that I'd lost weight to know that I was still going in the right direction. And then once when I did lose lots of weight, then as soon as I did that, then my mum and them, like, oh, now you've lost too much weight.

Lyndi
 0:09:25
 Never acceptable weight.

Jenna
 0:09:26
 That wasn't good enough either. And then when I put weight back on, then they said things like, oh, we shouldn't have said you'd lost so much weight because now we've

Lyndi
 0:09:35
 thrown you off the path. We've changed our minds.

Jenna
 0:09:37
 We've changed our minds again. So it's so hard to hear those comments because then you want more of them and when you don't get them, you're like, I've failed this.

Lyndi
 0:09:47
 Yes. Or the thin comments, you look so amazing but you're now thin, it's endorsing this very disordered behaviour that is leading to these huge fluctuations in your weight. So it's seriously unhelpful. So take me back to when you started dating Duane, that was a few years ago now, you started becoming curious about intuitive eating, you now have this new environment where you're like, okay, this is maybe how things could be. What happened after that? How did you continue on intuitive eating and not get sucked back into another diet? What were you learning?

Jenna
 0:10:18
 So I feel like I was just learning about trying a whole lot of different foods that I didn't normally eat and feeling a lot more satisfied when I ate meals. I think that's the biggest thing. Normally I would always try to have all these really low carb meals and then I was never satisfied and always wanting more. So when I had a more satisfying meal for dinner, then that would be the last thing I'd eat before I go to bed. Whereas previously, the whole rest of my life, I would have a really unsatisfying dinner and then snack all night.

7
 0:10:54
 Yes.

Lyndi
 0:10:55
 So many people have this thing of the uncontrollable snacking, particularly at night time. And they're like, well, I'm not even hungry. Well, physical hunger is one thing, but emotional hunger is another thing. And for the first time in your life, you were emotionally feeling fed by your food as well because you weren't going, it has to be low carb, it has to tick a million boxes. It was what you actually wanted to eat. As a result, you actually kind of end up eating less or at least more satisfying with what you do actually eat.

Jenna
 0:11:21
 And I think it's also a thing, as I said, when I first started Intuitive Eating, I thought I would lose all this weight. And I actually really haven't, but I feel so much better, and that's a side effect that I wasn't anticipating. I wasn't anticipating all this free brain space that I have. Like I used to just constantly be thinking about food, constantly thinking about dieting for an event, losing weight for an event, all of this, I didn't, everyone's like, what are your hobbies? I'm like, I don't have time for a hobby because calories, calories. Weight loss is my hobby, like that's all I think about. So it's that free brain space. The more fun and enjoyment I can have with cooking, knowing not everything has to be coming from a Weight Watchers Cookbook, is liberating.

Lyndi
 0:12:13
 Has your weight remained stable then? Because one of the things that happens when we're dieting is we go up and down and up and down and up and down. So even if there hasn't been weight loss, you get to the point where you're like, I don't have to keep buying new clothes all the time because I'm just like this is my body now and there's like an acceptance around that. Yes it feels really stable I get fall asleep really easily I have more energy and my weight is staying the same. I probably I actually don't I haven't weighed myself so I probably maybe have lost a little bit of weight but I I feel like all my clothes still fit me well I'm feeling very stable. It's a non-issue you don't get triggered by the idea of oh I've gained weight and then you don't get you think that's an issue,

Jenna
 0:12:51
 I've got to fix that because you're not in that cycle anymore. No, and it's also taken me a long time, so maybe like a year and a half, like I've just recently started joining a new gym because it took me a long time to get back into exercising because you go to these gyms and it's all about losing weight for summer and all of that stuff got in there and they want to do these challenges with meal plans and all of that stuff was really off-putting for a long time. So I've just started going back to finding something that I enjoy and it's not for weight loss. I always remember I went to the gym once with my friends and it was a Saturday morning and after the gym one of my friends just got a coffee and a banana bread because it was Saturday

Lyndi
 0:13:56
 and that's what she felt like. But in my

Jenna
 0:13:39
 How are you eating that? And it's like when you are exercising, because you're like, it's Saturday morning, I want to endorphins, I want to hang out with my friends, I want to feel good. Now, how good, I got the day off, I want some banana bread for breakfast. It's a whole different way of thinking that you actually don't even think is possible.

Lyndi
 0:13:56
 Because dieters have two modes. I'm either going to the gym and I'm not having banana bread, or I'm having banana bread and I'm not going to the gym. Correct. And what she was demonstrating, which is a healthy relationship with food, is the fact that you can do both simultaneously. In fact, that's what balances.

Jenna
 0:14:09
 Yeah, and it really feels like you cannot. That whole thing is like, you don't need to diet, just everything in moderation. But that's not true with what they're actually preaching. It's like, no, you go to the gym and then you have your egg white omelette or whatever the thing you're doing. But it's like, yeah, you can enjoy everything.

Lyndi
 0:14:27
 That's the thing, but you have to stop dieting in order to get to that point. So you're now at a point where you have more energy, more headspace. How do you feel about your body? How has that shifted?

Jenna
 0:14:38
 So I feel like I definitely have more compassion for my body. I don't think of it as something I need to change all the time, but you're right, I don't think I love my body. I haven't had this eye-opening experience of now I think I'm a supermodel and I'm perfection. But I don't criticize it as much. I don't hate on it as much. Do you fear other people judge your body? No, probably not. But I'm much more... My eyes are much more open to other people judging other people's bodies. And Dwayne says that I've become a bit of a diet culture, anti-diet culture warrior because I'll say things and I'm like, you don't need to comment on that because then you're... And I'll say this to you, I'm like, you're saying that about that woman's body so now I'm thinking you're thinking that about me but you don't want to say that about me because you love me so I don't count.

Lyndi
 0:15:30
 But it's like all of these little things that we're so used to judging. You and I were talking about this idea that kind of once... There's a threshold that you pass when you're kind of on this intuitive eating journey where suddenly you can't unsee all the things that you once just accepted were normal, you see them everywhere, you realize how disordered everything is. Everything. And what's nice about that point, apart from the fact that a lot of things start to annoy you, everything's disordered, you can't go back. Your eyes have been opened and you're kind of like this is the way forward in a way. So you've reached that point now where you're like, yes.

Jenna
 0:16:05
 And I think another huge thing that has changed in my life is my relationship with alcohol because of my relationship with food has gotten so much better because I feel like when I was younger, I remember I'd have not much to do on Saturdays and I would just basically binge eat and secret all day. Then I would feel so bad about myself and feel so low then I would probably drink too much to try and numb that. Then I'd feel bad that I'd gotten drunk. All of these things, just a cyclical thing that kept going on. Because I was drinking, I was binge drinking to numb the pain that I felt of feeling overweight. I've just found it so interesting that as soon as I've gotten my relationship with food gotten

Lyndi
 0:16:52
 My relationship with food better and not binge eating and dropping all that then I just don't feel the need to drink as much alcohol So you have a much healthier relationship with alcohol where it's less because it sounded like before it was very diety You either like binge drinking and then you're like, yeah, I'm never drinking again. And now it's much more like that

Jenna
 0:17:10
 Yeah, I can drink whenever I want actually don't want as much correct It was all like going about like what's that? You see all these things come up on Instagram of the lowest calorie drinks and all this stuff. And then I was reading something that it's like if you have just alcohol with sugar-free soft drinks, then it's like basically it hits you so much faster because your body doesn't have to process the sugar. And then it's just- Especially if you haven't eaten. Correct. Then you get really messed up, which sadly I've been there. So I feel like that's been another side effect. What's a positive side effect? A side effect that I never even anticipated.

Lyndi
 0:17:42
 Let's talk about your health because without a doubt it sounds to me like you are much more consistent when it comes to exercise now than you ever were in the past. You're not going through these periods of exercising all the time and then not exercising at all. It sounds like, how do you think, apart from sleeping better and all these kind of beautiful benefits,

Jenna
 0:18:00
 how do you say your health is at now? No, I feel like my health is at a really good place. I think that I'm able to be around food a lot better and then that's impacting my health because then I'm not like eating so much that I'm like not going to the toilet or doing all these things that I was currently doing. Like my skin is clearer because I'm eating more vegetables and doing all these things in a really loving way because they're now just a part of my everyday diet.

Lyndi
 0:18:29
 So many people will say to me, I can't do intuitive eating because I need to lose weight for my health. And I'll say to you, if you really care about your health, you would do intuitive eating because the alternative is weight loss diets and all they do is mess with your health and mess with your weight. So if you truly are saying you care about your health, intuitive eating is where it's at.

Jenna
 0:18:49
 And just the stress that you put your body under constantly thinking you need to change, constantly thinking I have eight weeks until blah blah's wedding and I'm not good enough and all of that constant stress is terrible for your health.

Lyndi
 0:19:05
 Can we talk about the secret eating and the binge eating and how that's shifted? We were talking about this idea of when I was learning how to stop binge eating, for me personally, I had to go to a point where I didn't keep things in the house. I talk about this in my Keep It Real program, there's certain strategies for you. Different people need different strategies, but for me it was like not keeping the foods in the house and now I'm to the point where I can keep anything in the house because I know it's always available to me. Where are you at that and what was that journey like for you?

Jenna
 0:19:32
 When I first moved in out of home and I moved in with my friends, so then they were kind of around a bit more. I think when you live at home, you kind of like, your parents are there but you kind of live separate lives in the house. It's not like you're hanging out all day. Whereas when I moved in with my best friend and then she moved out, my other really good friend moved in, then people were around a lot more and then that kind of helped a lot. But then as then Duane was around all the time, it was that period of I was not good on my own. So even though the foods were still there, I wasn't alone, so it helped me a little bit

Lyndi
 0:20:09
 to start to implement the changes that I was doing. Was it that you knew you could eat those foods in front of them?

Jenna
 0:20:16
 Yes. So then it felt like you couldn't eat in front of your family? Yes. So it's things like we would go and get takeaway and we could all eat it together, or we'd get ice cream and we could eat it together. So it's things like, I think eating things around my family, there was a lot of like judgment around that. And I don't even, I know they didn't mean to be doing that, but it was a very judgmental experience, the whole thing. So it's like being away from that. And then just knowing that I can eat these foods whenever I want to and truly, truly believing that because it's so easy just to say it and you don't actually really accept it. But then the grounds that I've made really blow my mind. Just like I made muffins the other day and I've eaten one of them.

Lyndi
 0:21:09
 It's amazing.

Jenna
 0:21:10
 It's honestly amazing because I'm just like, oh yeah, they're really nice. I'll have them when I'm hungry and then that's a nice snack. I can have a muffin.

4
 0:21:16
 Yeah.

Lyndi
 0:21:17
 And it's to someone who's well and truly in diet land still, can you imagine baking and then only having one and being like, oh, it's fine.

Jenna
 0:21:24
 No, it's insane to me. Even things like, when I like passed my imaginary muffin test, I was like, gee, maybe I could make like yum little bliss balls or something and I could actually just like, this is a tasty little thing and then not eat heaps of them because all of those things I could never do. I could never have nuts in the house without eating them. I even remember when I was really young, my brother had a container of nuts on his desk and I'd never had yum salted nuts because they're not good for you. You can't have salt, apparently. I remember them being on his desk being like, I want another nut, I want more nuts, I want more nuts. Like even from that age, and now I'm like, I have a jar of nuts in the cupboard, and when I want some, I get a bowl, and I pour a nice amount that I want, not a healthy handful.

Lyndi
 0:22:18
 A satisfying amount.

Jenna
 0:22:20
 Yeah, a satisfying amount, and I eat them, and I'm like, that was yum.

6
 0:22:23
 I'm done.

5
 0:22:24
 And I'm done.

Lyndi
 0:22:25
 Yeah, and I think a lot of us we do this thing where we start snacking and we're like okay well I'll have this and then I'm done. Whereas it sounds like what you're doing is you're like I'll eat this and you know at the back of the mind if you wanted to go back and have more you would be allowed to. And that's such a fundamental difference as opposed to what most of us do which is like I'm going to have a little snack and then that's it. And then you go for another handful and you're like okay well that's absolutely it and then it becomes a piece of toast. Okay, well now I'm done. And a whole lot of that thinking is perpetuated by this idea that you're portion restricting inadvertently and you don't realize you're doing this. This is the thing we talk about in Keep It Real, how not to accidentally be doing those things that are keeping you stuck and preventing you from being able to eat intuitively.

Jenna
 0:23:05
 Correct, and I also think it's a big thing, kind of what we were talking about in a previous episode about looking at your cycle and seeing where you're at, because there's some days where you genuinely want more food and you have to just allow yourself to eat more and not attach, now I feel bad about eating more.

Lyndi
 0:23:22
 So you're a lot more aware of your thinking?

Jenna
 0:23:24
 Yes. It's like sometimes I'm like, geez, I'm actually really hungry. So like I am going to have a few more snacks because I'm hungry.

Lyndi
 0:23:31
 So it sounds like you don't do the binges and the secret eating because you don't feel like you need to. You have the foods that you want to keep in your house. Nothing feels off limits or forbidden to you. You mostly eat when you feel hungry and stop when you're feeling full. Food is now not something that controls your life. You have so much more head space. You feel healthier. You're engaging with exercise because you enjoy it. You're more consistent with it because you enjoy it. There are so many benefits that you wouldn't have realized, but the biggest barrier to people going on intuitive eating is the fear of, how do you balance that desire to lose weight? Because you're scrolling your Instagram feed and you see someone who's like, oh, I wish I looked like that. How do you avoid the temptation to just go bugger it? Even though I've made all these changes, I just want to lose weight quickly and just quickly just lose the weight.

Jenna
 0:24:19
 I think I still definitely have those thoughts. Like I scroll my Instagram feed, I'm like, oh, they look really thin, I'd like to lose weight, but I think I've truly accepted and I know that dieting doesn't work. And it took you many years of being like, no, it doesn't work though. So that's not the path to get there. So there's no point going on a new diet because it's not going to get me there.

4
 0:24:39
 Yes.

Lyndi
 0:24:40
 Have you fallen off the intuitive eating bandwagon where you've kind of dieted and then you're like, oh no, this doesn't work and you've come back to intuitive eating? No. Oh no, okay, cool. It took me multiple. I kept going back to dieting for many years, I'd say, before I actually got to the point of intuitive eating. Key to your success, I'd say, is the fact that you do have full permission around food. You are integrating the foods that were previously binge foods into your life as normal so that they always have permission. You're not weighing yourself. That is so important because as you are holding onto this desire to lose weight, as long as you keep weighing yourself, you think you're helping, you think it's going to help you lose weight.

Jenna
 0:25:17
 It doesn't. It doesn't. And I think another huge thing I did, which I know it could be our second title of this episode and of this whole podcast, is I bought new pants.

Lyndi
 0:25:26
 Buy new pants.

Jenna
 0:25:27
 Buy new pants. So I went and I'm like, geez, my jeans are a bit tight, but I'm like, then I reflected, I'm like, I bought these jeans like five years ago. They don't fit me anymore. So what? We've had a global pandemic, things have changed. I don't need to put my worth on fitting into these jeans. So I went out one day and I just bought like three new pairs of jeans because I wear jeans like every day. And now I feel good in them.

Lyndi
 0:25:48
 Do you feel happier since doing intuitive eating?

Jenna
 0:25:50
 I feel so much happier. How do I become, I feel like I'm like preachy to other people. I'm like, you don't, you see so many people like, oh, I'm going to start my diet on Monday. And I'm like, I want to be like, you don't need to do that.

Lyndi
 0:26:02
 Life is good when you stop doing that. Isn't it a mind-blowing idea that you had said, if you had said to dieting and disorder, you've been like, you're going to do this thing, you're not going to lose weight, but you are going to, your life is going to be supremely better. You are going to be so much happier. You're going to be so much healthier.

Jenna
 0:26:21
 And you wouldn't believe it because in that place, you think I can't be happy unless I

Lyndi
 0:26:25
 lose weight.

Jenna
 0:26:26
 Yes, that's exactly it. And you'd be like, well, that's not true.

Lyndi
 0:26:29
 So you say stagnant and stuck, feeling unhealthy, unhappy, and feeling like the wrong weight, instead of taking all the benefits that you could get in the short term.

Jenna
 0:26:38
 I feel like it was remarkable how, not that it was a quick change, like this is like a year and a half, but I'd been dieting for 28 years, and not getting anywhere. So to have the progress that I've had in a year and a half is truly remarkable.

Lyndi
 0:26:59
 Did you find the slow progress hard? Because this is not a quick fix.

Jenna
 0:27:04
 No, it's not a quick fix.

Lyndi
 0:27:05
 It takes a long time to rewire your brain and change your thinking.

Jenna
 0:27:08
 The hardest part that I found was just getting used to eating the foods and not feeling bad about them.

Lyndi
 0:27:13
 Yes, and I think the fact that you saw a psychologist as simultaneous to doing intuitive eating, that you had me as your go-to non-diet dietitian, someone I could guide you to help you along

Jenna
 0:27:23
 the way. Yes, you can't do it by yourself.

Lyndi
 0:27:25
 You can't, because I think there are so many traps with intuitive eating where you accidentally fall into diet land. You would think you're doing the right thing. You're eating when you're hungry, but you still have 100 gazillion food rules that are peppering your brain, making it very hard. So I think having the right support, getting a dietitian, and this is what you can do with my Back to Basics app. This is kind of why I designed this. I can add to help you eat intuitively without getting stuck in the diet trap. So please check it out. If you go to the website, backtobasics.com, and use the code POGAS, you can get 20% off Back to Basics and try it free for seven days. Give it a whirl because we need to know what we're doing in intuitive eating so we get to the place where you are.

Jenna
 0:28:05
 It is really good. I highly recommend your app. I love cooking from it.

Lyndi
 0:28:09
 Thank you. What would you say to someone who is on the fence, who is like, oh, I think I should try intuitive eating, but I'm worried I won't lose weight. What would you say to someone who you wanted to encourage to intuitive eat?

Jenna
 0:28:21
 I would think I would say, if dieting worked, wouldn't you be at the weight you want to be at now? If you know what to do and you know how dieting works, wouldn't it have worked by now? And then it makes you think, well, yeah. And if every single person is on a diet-

3
 0:28:41
 And everyone's failing.

Lyndi
 0:28:42
 And everyone's failing and no one's getting anywhere. I think there has to come a point where you stop blaming yourself and thinking you're the problem and you start to realize actually the one common denominator here are these diets and all the rules that they give us. I remember thinking to myself, if dieting led me to this point where I'm clinically obese, hate myself, hate my body, hate my life, what if I just did the exact opposite? And that's what intuitive eating is. It's the exact opposite, which is why you need someone to help you do it because if you just go with your gut, you're going to end up in diet land. So you do the exact opposite. And for me, it was after four years, I transformed. I was saying to you as well in this break, I was saying it gets better and better and better. Diets, they're quick to get started, and they get harder to maintain over time. Intuitive eating is the opposite. It's hard to get started, but it gets better and better the longer you do it. Jenna, thank you for sharing your story of intuitive eating with us. Guys, thank you for listening to this podcast. I really hope you found it useful. Please reach out to me on Instagram at nude underscore nutritionist. You can also reach out to Jenna. Jenna, what's your Instagram handle in case people want to find you?

Jenna
 0:29:50
 At Jenna DePeet.

Lyndi
 0:29:51
 Go check out Jenna, see what she's about. She lives a really great life and she's out there living her life now, not keeping things, you know, not living small anymore. I just love that for you. Thank you. Thanks guys. Do you feel like you know what you should be eating but like you feel completely out of control with food? You're either eating perfectly or you're face planting into the fridge? Well if you've got binge eating or you're struggling with emotional eating I can help. Check out my program Keep It Real. I've got lots I can teach you and hey you don't have to be a binge eater for the rest of your life. You can get 20% off Keep It Real when you use the code PODCAST when you check out via the website. And because I don't want this to be just another failed attempt for you, I'm offering a 30-day money back guarantee because you know what? You've just got to give these things a go, no risk. You've just got to give these things a go, no risk. Give it a try.