233 – Intuitive Eating

Elizabeth: [00:00:00] What if the reason you can’t stop overeating has nothing to do with food. if you’ve spent your life swinging between diets and chaos, between green smoothies and secret snacks in the car, this episode is for you because intuitive eating sounds amazing in theory.

No rules. Eat what you want. Yes, please sign me up. But in practice, it feels like standing in the middle of the grocery store with no list, no plan, and no idea what you’re even hungry for. So in today’s episode, I am pulling back the curtain on why just listen to your body doesn’t work when you’ve spent decades ignoring it and what you can do instead.

That feels like freedom with support, not just more rules dressed up in new clothes. If you’ve ever thought, I want to trust [00:01:00] myself, but I don’t know how. Don’t skip this one because there’s a middle road and today I’m showing you what it looks like.

Welcome to the Total Health and Midlife Podcast, the podcast for women over 40 who want peace with food, ease in their habits, and a body that they don’t have to fight with.

Hey everyone. Welcome to the Total Health and Midlife podcast.

I am your host, Elizabeth Sherman, and I just wanna start out by saying thank you for tuning in today. I am pleased as punch that you are here, and I am really super excited for our episode today because I think it’s something that will really resonate. So let’s talk about food. Again, it’s something that keeps coming up on the podcast, but this time, not in the way that you’ve been taught to think about food.

If you’ve ever said, I just wanna stop dieting, but I have no idea how to eat without rules, you are [00:02:00] absolutely not alone. In fact, that thought is probably the most honest, vulnerable, and human thing that you could possibly say out loud because. Here’s the truth that no one talks about. Living with food rules is exhausting, but living without them, that can feel absolutely terrifying.

For so many of us, dieting gave us structure. It gave us control. It gave us something to follow when everything else, our bodies, our hunger, our emotions felt unpredictable, but eventually the rules stopped working. Or maybe they never did work in the first place, but now you’re here stuck in this weird in-between where eating, quote unquote whatever you want feels like absolute chaos.

And yet going back to restriction feels like punishment and something that you absolutely do not want to [00:03:00] do. You want that middle road, you just don’t know what that looks like yet. So. Why does that freedom feel so incredibly scary? And what’s the alternative that actually works in the short term? Let’s talk about that.

Here’s the thing about diets. They were never designed to set you free. They were designed to keep you coming back over and over and over again. The diet industry is a $70 billion machine that thrives on you, doubting yourself. It tells you that you are the problem, that your body cannot be trusted. That if you could just be more disciplined, more motivated, more self controlled, then you’d finally get it.

Together and after years, maybe even decades, of trying every single plan out there, every [00:04:00] program, every trick that promised to quote unquote fix you. It makes sense that you feel stuck because dieting doesn’t just teach you what to eat. It trains you to ignore your own body in favor of someone else’s rules.

Someone who doesn’t even know you. Are you hungry? Nope, it’s not time yet. Are you craving something? Ah, that’s too many points. Are you tired? Push through anyway? Are you satisfied? It doesn’t matter. Your plate’s not empty, and every time you try and fail to follow the rules, it confirms the story that you’ve been sold.

You are not strong enough. You don’t want it. Badly enough, you can’t be trusted with food. So what happens then? You swing from restriction to rebellion, from green smoothies to entire [00:05:00] bags of trail mix in the car from being good to saying, screw it. I’ll start over on Monday. Perfection, shame, repeat, .

And this all or nothing loop. It’s not about food. It’s about control and fear and the false belief that worth is equal to discipline. But here’s what the diet industry doesn’t want you to know. There is another way. It’s not a fantasy. It’s not a free for all, and it’s definitely not a Pinterest perfect version of wellness.

I’m talking about a real. Doable, imperfect, middle ground, one that doesn’t require you to swear off bread forever. One that doesn’t send you spiraling into a sleeve of Oreos the second you stop tracking your food, one that’s quieter than [00:06:00] dieting, gentler, and a hell of a lot more sustainable. Now, it’s not glamorous and it’s not trendy, but it works to bring you from one side to the other, and I call it the middle road because let’s be honest, if you’re here, it means that you already know that dieting doesn’t work.

You’ve lived through that. You’ve lost the weight, you’ve gained it back, you’ve sworn off sugar, then hidden it in your pantry with a sleeve of cookies, you’ve told yourself never again, only to find yourself Googling whole 30 the next morning.

But if you’re not dieting, what are you doing? That’s the question that stops women in their tracks because no one ever taught us what’s in between. We’re sold two options. Either follow the plan and be good or throw away all of the rules and hope you don’t end up eating brownies for breakfast for the rest of your life.[00:07:00]

And let me say this. I’ve had so many clients tell me exactly that, Elizabeth, if I didn’t have any rules, if brownies were the same as broccoli, if nothing was off limits, I would just eat brownies all day long. But here’s the thing, you actually wouldn’t. Sure. Maybe on that first day brownies would be delicious and go fast because you haven’t allowed yourself to eat them forever.

But by day three, you are probably gonna crave broccoli, or at the very least, a nap and a bottle of water because when your body is allowed to speak and you know how to listen to it, it will tell you what it needs. This is the part where I introduce what I call a capsule wardrobe type of eating. So stick with me here.

So if you’ve ever done a closet clean out or fantasized about doing [00:08:00] one, you’ve probably heard of a capsule wardrobe.

It is a small, curated collection of clothes that fit flatter, and mix and match effortlessly. No more clutter, no more nothing to wear. Just go to pieces that make getting dressed simple, stylish, and that fit you. My framework for eating works similarly. Instead of swinging between eat everything and eat nothing.

I help my clients build their own capsule foods that make them feel good physically, that keep their energy steady, that don’t trigger guilt or drama. And yes, include things like brownies. It’s not rigid, it’s not chaotic. It’s yours. The bumpers are there, but only until you don’t need them anymore. One of my favorite metaphors for this stage is bowling with those child bumpers.

Remember [00:09:00] that you’re still aiming for the pins. You’re still learning how to roll the ball straight, but instead of falling into the gutter every other, throw the bumpers, give you a little grace, a margin for error, some space to learn. And that’s what this middle road feels like. And the crazy part is. It actually works better than dieting.

So let me tell you a quick story. Back when I was learning how to eat this way, one of my coaches told me something that sounded ridiculous. She said, when I go out to eat with my partner or my brother, if they order fries, I take three. Not because I want them, but because I don’t want them just because it reminds me that I can.

Now, at the time, I didn’t really get it. I thought, who eats three french fries and who eats three french fries when they’re not hungry for them or want them? Like, what is the point? [00:10:00] But when I tried it, I began to understand it wasn’t about the french fries, it was about the proof, the evidence that I could eat something delicious, something that I craved, something that I would’ve eaten all of it without spiraling.

That I didn’t have to avoid fries forever to feel healthy, and I didn’t have to eat the whole basket to prove I could have pleasure. That moment planted the seed that maybe I could trust myself. Maybe there was a way to eat where I didn’t need a spreadsheet or shame to get through the day. That’s the exact experience that I want for you, because one of the biggest reasons I believe that 97% of people who lose weight, who get to their goal weight and then regain [00:11:00] it is this.

They never learned how to eat with the foods that they love. They only knew how to eat without them, and so the second they let those foods back in chocolate chips. Bread, wine, pizza, burgers, fries. They have no idea what’s too much or just enough. There’s no internal compass. It’s just panic, rebellion and guilt.

The middle road isn’t about removing pleasure. It’s about learning how to include it without letting it run the show. That takes practice, it takes awareness, and most of all, it takes support. You don’t need another set of rules. You don’t need to go back to food tracking or to eat [00:12:00] grilled chicken out of Tupperware or making deals with yourself about being good today so that you can have dessert tomorrow.

You need a structure that supports your health. And your humanity, because the truth is when women have permission to eat, they start listening. And when they start listening, they start noticing which foods give them energy, which ones make them feel sluggish, which ones they actually like, and which ones they’ve just been eating out of habit.

And suddenly food isn’t this big dramatic problem anymore. It’s just food. You don’t need to go from restriction to chaos. You just need a new kind of support. And here’s the part that no one tells us. You already know how to listen to your body. You may not [00:13:00] feel like you do, especially when it comes to food, but I promise that skill is already there.

You know when you need to pee, you know when you’re tired, you know when your mouth is dry and it’s time for water. You don’t need an app or a coach or a rule book to tell you those things. So why do we believe that hunger and satisfaction are different? It’s not that your body isn’t speaking to you, it’s that you’ve been trained over and over and over again, not to trust what it’s saying, that hunger is dangerous, that cravings are suspicious, that pleasure is something that you have to earn.

But when you start to tune back in, you realize your body has always been sending you the messages. You just haven’t been taught to read them. One of my clients had been [00:14:00] struggling with bloating, fatigue, and digestive issues. For years, she thought it was just part of getting older. But when we started working together and she began paying closer attention, not obsessively, but just curiously, she realized something.

Gluten made her feel awful. All of this time. She had no idea that she was gluten intolerant because she had never paused long enough to notice the pattern. That’s what intuitive eating really is. It’s not. Eat whatever you want, whenever you want it. It’s not rebellion, it’s not indulgence, it’s discernment.

It’s learning how your body talks to you and then honoring that wisdom. Sometimes that looks like eating the cookie because you want it and it satisfies you. Sometimes that looks like saying no to the wine because you know [00:15:00] that you won’t sleep well tomorrow and it’s gonna be a really full day. Yeah.

Not because someone told you to, but because you’ve connected the dots yourself and that kind of authority, it’s yours. No scale, no program, no meal plan can give it to you. So if that’s true, what does change actually look like? Learning to trust yourself with food isn’t just a mindset shift, it’s a skillset.

And if it feels hard, that’s not because there’s something wrong with you. It’s because you are undoing decades of being told that you’re not allowed to trust your own body. If you’ve spent most of your life following other people’s rules, meal plans, points, systems, calorie trackers, it makes total sense that eating without those rules would [00:16:00] feel like.

Standing at the edge of a cliff because diets don’t just change how you eat. They change how you think. They train your brain to only notice what went wrong, how you didn’t follow the diet. So even when you are doing things differently, when you leave a few bites behind when you skip the cookie because you’re actually satisfied, when you realize that you’re snacking out of stress instead of hunger, you probably don’t give yourself credit.

That’s because of something called the reticular activating system or RAS. It is the filter in your brain that helps you notice things that feel important or relevant, and right now your RAS is set to scan for proof or evidence that you’re still failing.

The more you practice, [00:17:00] the more that filter can shift. You start to see the quiet winds, you begin to notice your patterns, and most importantly, you start building evidence that you are already doing this, even if it’s just in small ways. That’s how change happens, not overnight. Not perfectly, but gradually, consistently, and with curiosity instead of judgment.

It’s not about willpower, it’s not about being good. It’s about learning to trust your own signals again, and then practicing that trust over again until it sticks. So, no, this isn’t easy, but. It is learnable and I’ve helped thousands of women do exactly that.

And if what I’ve shared today is resonating, if you’re nodding along and thinking, yes, this is [00:18:00] me, but I still don’t know where to start, I want to offer you a small, gentle next step. Download my free guide. It’s 82 reasons you overeat. That have nothing to do with food. You can find it in the show notes or at elizabethsherman.com/82-reasons.

This isn’t a meal plan. It’s not a list of bad habits to fix. It’s simply a tool. That can help you start to notice what’s actually going on when you find yourself eating past fullness, when you’re reaching for snacks at night, or you’re spiraling in guilt after a bad day. Because overeating isn’t about food, it’s about stress, it’s about resentment.

It’s about the pressure to keep it all together, and this guide will help you connect the dots and maybe even start giving yourself a little grace in the process. There’s nothing wrong with you. You are not [00:19:00] broken. You’ve just never been taught another way. That’s all I have for you today. Have an amazing week everyone, and I will talk to you next week.

Bye-bye.

Now before you go, if today’s episode hit a little too close for home, or if you’ve ever wondered why did I eat that, I have something for you. It’s called The 82 Reasons You Overeat that have nothing to do with food Now, it’s not a guilt trip, and it’s definitely not another diet plan. It’s a free guide that will help you to finally understand why you keep eating, even though you swore you wouldn’t.

Here’s a secret. It’s not about willpower, it’s about everything else. You can grab your copy right now@elizabethsherman.com slash 82 reasons. Seriously, go download it. You’ll feel seen, and it might just be the start of something different.