No Wellness Wankery

60: So you want to lose weight? Let's chat. (Part 1)

May 16, 2023 Lyndi Cohen
No Wellness Wankery
60: So you want to lose weight? Let's chat. (Part 1)
Show Notes Transcript

In this vulnerable chat, Lyndi breaks away from her maternity leave to update the podcast on her life. This is Lyndi's first-ever solo episode, and she opens up about the journey she's been on since welcoming her precious 10-week-old baby girl, Charlie.

While nourishing and nurturing Charlie, Lyndi finds herself in her new body, one she loves and respects, but sometimes isn’t making her feel as great as she could.  How can you lose weight while respecting your body and maintaining your healthy relationship with food? Let’s hear what’s on her mind.

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"This book has literally changed my life - 26 years of eating disorders, disordered eating, fitness challenges, diets, and psychologists. This book in 3 weeks has changed my life beyond measure! I can't believe this won't help anyone who reads it."

Looking for more support to feel in control around food? I'd love to support you in my Binge Free Academy

If you don't already - come follow me on the gram at @nude_nutritionist (no nude pics, sorry).

Want to share some feedback or have an idea for an episode, I'd LOVE to hear from you - hit me up at hello@lyndicohen.com

00:00:00:05 - 00:00:17:19

Okay. I would like to tell you your your weight is not the problem. It really isn't. I know you've been made to think your weight is a problem your entire life, but honestly, it's just been a red herring making you focus on diets that really suck and your weight is not. The problem is the title of my new book, and I would really like you to read it.

 

00:00:17:19 - 00:00:34:10

If you've ever been made to feel like you need to worry about your weight, if fixating on your weight is going to help you lose weight, which is nonsense. This is the book you need to read. We tackle body image. We help you with practical strategies to feel normal, relaxed and freedom around food, which are all fabulous things you also deserve.

 

00:00:34:10 - 00:00:58:06

Please go to my website Lyndi Cohen dot com and check out my new book. It's available from all great retailers. Please check it out. Oh, hey everyone, and welcome to today's episode. It's Lindy Cohen and it's just me today. No Jenna, no guest. In fact, I'm kind of coming out of maternity leave to report this podcast episode for you.

 

00:00:58:11 - 00:01:26:07

My sweet little girl, Charlie. She's almost ten weeks old. She's just sweet, Good, perfect little baby. I'm super happy and really been enjoying maternity leave, but something has been going through my mind recently. So noticing that feeling where my clothes, the ones that I wore before I got pregnant, which is obvious, and maternity clothes don't fit me. And I have done this thing now where I've actually go and purchase other clothes.

 

00:01:26:07 - 00:01:45:20

So I do have comfortable clothes that to fit me. And I do think that's a really important thing. If you ever feel uncomfortable in your body, I think that's a really smart thing to do. So you do feel comfortable. But I am on this pursuit at the moments where I at some point would like to fit into my old clothes again and I guess, you know, as you will say, feel a bit more like themselves.

 

00:01:46:07 - 00:02:09:25

And I think sometimes in this non dieting world, we kind of skirt around this topic of losing weight. This ultimately right now I am at this point where I will need to lose weight in order to get into those old clothes. And I just want to talk about some of the things that are going through my mind. Firstly, I am now at a point where I have not had an eating disorder for about Oh, how long has it been?

 

00:02:10:08 - 00:02:29:09

It's hard to say when I really fully recovered, but at least over ten years, maybe 15 years even. And so what I want to say is my relationship with food is in a really great space. You know, I, I don't stress about food. I feel obsessed with food. So it doesn't control me. I never binge eat. I feel comfortable in my body.

 

00:02:29:09 - 00:02:43:23

I like my body and I think this is a really important place to be. So a lot of people come to me and they go, Lyndi, I really want to lose weight, but I'm binge eating all the time. I feel a lot of control of food and fundamentally the first thing we need to do is we need to go.

 

00:02:44:10 - 00:03:04:21

I need to create a healthy relationship with my body. Because if you are trying to lose weight, but you're coming at it from the mindset of going, well, I just have to lose weight, I need to lose weight. And and you don't have that healthy relationship with food in your body, then really what it can do is it can really just aggravate all these obsessive thoughts.

 

00:03:04:21 - 00:03:27:29

It can make your eating disorder or your disordered eating or your funny relationship with food, whatever you want to call it, go a little bit more out of control and you can actually end up gaining weight as a result of it. So fundamentally, if you were still at a place where you feel like, Oh, I feel I feel a bit disordered around food, then pursuing weight loss for the sake of pursuing weight loss is certainly not something that I think you're ready for yet.

 

00:03:28:11 - 00:03:52:05

What you might find is that by working on your relationship with food in, you know, not obsessing over food, but not reducing your binge eating, you may naturally lose weight. Many people who start binge eating do naturally lose weight, but you're not going to stop binge eating by trying to lose weight. And that's very important to. So that's the first thing, is the number one thing that you need to do first when you are kind of on this journey is to create a healthy relationship of food.

 

00:03:52:12 - 00:04:14:27

I know in the non dieting world they'll talk about, well, we certainly shouldn't want to be pursuing weight loss for the sake of pursuing weight loss. And I do understand that and I do agree. And I, I feel like that's a bit of a challenge when we do pursue weight loss. But at the same time, I understand we also do live in a world that tells us that, you know, we would be happier and better if we lost weight.

 

00:04:15:07 - 00:04:33:19

And also sometimes we know that physically in our bodies we would feel better if we lost weight. I'm I'm kind of at that point now where I do like my body at all sizes, but I do feel like I feel better. So one thing that was happening for me is post birth is I had this thing called plantar plantar fasciitis.

 

00:04:34:00 - 00:04:56:05

And basically when I'd wake up in the morning, my legs would be so painful. I'd like shuffle to the bathroom. I thought, It's so hard to walk. I wasn't really quite a lot of pain. And then by the end of the evening, I'd be in a lot of pain too. And so one, it's hormonal. The two, it's can also be just having extra weight that, you know, I gained 12 kilograms from getting pregnant, which is, you know, totally fine and totally healthy.

 

00:04:56:05 - 00:05:16:13

Amazing. But my body is carrying extra weight. And that was kind of contributing to this feeling of discomfort in my body. And so for me, getting to a point where I am a little bit more closer to what I used to weigh does is going has already made my body feel a bit better. And so I want to talk about this idea of discomfort.

 

00:05:16:13 - 00:05:41:01

So in life I think the fundamental thing I've realized by the age of 33 is that you can't avoid discomfort. Discomfort is just a part of life. You just choose which type of discomfort you get. So there, the discomfort of me making plans to exercise, the discomfort of starting an exercise and feeling really weak and not being able to do it and and having to sit with that discomfort.

 

00:05:41:01 - 00:06:02:12

All for me, there's the discomfort of feeling sorry my legs when I wake up in the morning, you know, it's the same thing. You might feel like there's the discomfort of that first, you know, when you if you want to start exercising that new feeling of strain and not feeling so good at it, that is discomfort. But so is there's also discomfort in not taking action.

 

00:06:03:03 - 00:06:25:24

There is discomfort in in a way, in the effort. The goal is to cook a healthy meal. It is much more convenient to get something delivered or whatever it is. But there's also then the discomfort of how you might feel after eating something that didn't really provide your body with the nutrients you wanted or makes you feel sick because it was greasy or whatever it is.

 

00:06:25:24 - 00:06:47:25

So I guess in life, what I think what I've been thinking about recently is right now I'm up to this point where I'm I'm willing to choose the discomfort and exercise and eating healthily should never feel pain full. But I think there's this misconception that it should just be like totally easy and flowy. And I do think in order to change, we need to step outside our comfort zone a little bit.

 

00:06:48:08 - 00:07:09:14

And I think that's what I'm doing here, is I'm going, okay, well, I'm just I'm going to challenge myself a little bit and choose my discomfort. I'm doing absolutely everything that is protecting my body, and I think that is the fundamental difference. Previously, I would have pursued this and I would have just wrecked myself by trying to go for a run well before I was physically strong enough to do it.

 

00:07:09:14 - 00:07:29:28

I would have done an exercise and be in like one week. So what's the point in doing it? Currently? I'm not letting my poor body image or like moments where I see cellulite and extra rolls. I'm not letting that stop me from doing what I'm doing because I like my body. I'm doing it irrespective. And I think that is a really important thing tonight.

 

00:07:31:12 - 00:07:49:02

I also feel like when it comes to food, I think the fundamental thing you need to be able to have reached is the understanding that any time I want to eat this food, any food that you want, I'm allowed to eat it and to truly believe it. And to know it. So I think growing up for me, I always felt like I didn't really have that choice.

 

00:07:49:02 - 00:08:09:08

Like I really needed to be a good girl to please everyone else. I really shouldn't be eating this food. I should be eating healthily and all of these shoulds. I think they can be quite a barrier to eating healthily. Whereas where I'm at at the moment is this belief of I know any time I want chocolate mousse, I want to have ice cream, I want to have her chips.

 

00:08:09:14 - 00:08:27:24

That is a choice. I can choose to have those foods, but I'm choosing not to because I don't think it's what's going to make me feel good once again. There's that degree of, I guess, slight discomfort. But at the same time, I just know that that is always an option. No one is forcing me to change how I'm eating at the moment.

 

00:08:27:24 - 00:08:51:06

I am simply deciding to change how I'm eating. And I think without that choice of knowing that everything is always available to you, I think it can be quite challenging. I think sometimes you can end up feeling quite stuck being in the exact same body or feeling the temptation to go on an extreme diet because you're not able to implement these small little habits that do require some discomfort.

 

00:08:51:06 - 00:09:12:23

So like there is discomfort in thinking about what meals we're going to cook and cooking up the healthy meals and the effort that is required. But I'm choosing that discomfort as opposed to the discomfort of, you know, feeling, feeling weak and feeling in my body. So I know this is maybe a bit of a strange conversation from what you're used to having.

 

00:09:12:23 - 00:09:38:03

For me, I don't often talked very directly about weight loss, but I do feel like perhaps it's a way that we can have a healthy conversation where we're considering how weight loss and desire to lose weight. And it plays into our very sense of how we feel and our wellbeing. And if you can do it in a way that feels like we're adding in healthy habits, we're not slaying our body, we're not we're not compromising our wellbeing in order to lose weight.

 

00:09:38:03 - 00:09:53:18

I think that is something that is a conversation we can have. I don't know how you feel about this episode. I'm keen to hear how you feel about it. Please don't come off to me with pitchforks. I hope it's helpful. That's really why I'm sharing with you and not gatekeeping what's going through my mind. I hope I don't regret sharing this stuff.

 

00:09:54:13 - 00:10:21:16

Anyway, this is a bit more of a vulnerable transcript podcast with me. Thank you for listening. I hope to see you again soon. Bye. Hey everyone. And before we get started in the podcast episode, I just want to tell you a little bit about how I might be able to help you if you want to get a healthy relationship with food because oh my goodness, there's a whole lot of stuff that's working against us all the time.

 

00:10:21:16 - 00:10:38:20

Hello, diet culture. So if you ever wanted a little bit more personalized support, check out my program. Keep it real. Especially if you're struggling with binge eating. If you feel like every Monday, you start from scratch. If you feel like you know what you should be eating, but you just can't stick to it. If you feel like you want to eat healthier.

 

00:10:38:20 - 00:11:06:05

But honestly, it just feels like you're out of control through your face planting into the fragile the pantry. I can help you binge either. I really do. I do get it. So check out Keep It real. Use the code podcast to get 20% off. If you if you get it via the the website. And also I also got my app called Back to Basics Back to Basics is an app to help you be healthy without dieting and help you work on your body image gives you a whole bunch of hundreds of recipes that are super quick and easy to make.

 

00:11:06:14 - 00:11:24:03

So you can just be healthy without having to get obsessed with that at all, without it taking over your life, because that's the way it should be. Plus, you get mindset support for me inside the app. You also get a whole bunch of workouts that you can do at home. You can still just do your normal workouts, but check out back to basics.

 

00:11:24:03 - 00:11:32:14

You can get it for free for seven days. Check out back to basics on my website. Use the Code Again podcast to get 20% off and I'd love to see in there.