20. Trusting Your Body

Hey guys, it’s Hayley Sohn, Nutritionist and Weight Loss Expert and today we are talking about trusting your body…. I had this scenario happen to me recently and it made gave me the idea to do this podcast. This is such an important topic, so I am going to share this story with you and tell you want you need to do. Modern society/modern dieting and weight loss advice has created so much distrust between us and our bodies. We fear hunger, we feel like we need to micromanage our metabolism we don’t trust that we can be in control of our food intake and think it should be someone elses responsibility, we count calories instead of listening to our bodies signals, we have 30 different diets telling us 30 different “right ways” to eat and we get confused instead of just paying attention to what feels good for us and what doesn’t I actually had someone tell me “National Geographic said Breakfast should be my biggest meal, so I eat it even though i’m not hungry” One of my clients who had tried a lot of diets said she not only felt confused but like trying to figure out what to eat was overstimulating, overwhelming- can I have a banana? One diet said it was good and one said it was bad All of the advice, the media, other peoples opinions all take us away from our bodies natural ability to weigh what we are meant to, confuse us and get us to a place where we are completely disconnected from our bodies, from our hunger signals, from the foods that feel good for us- screw what diet said bananas were good and what diet said bananas were bad, if bananas make you feel sick don’t eat bananas I used to make these really healthy smoothies for myself that were full of fruits and vegetables. I thought i was doing so good for my body, at the same time i was getting really sick every night. My stomach was bloated out and i was literally sick every night. I completely ignored it….for years! Because its “healthy” by some standard i just kept on doing it instead of asking if something i was eating was making me abnormally uncomfortable every night. Turns out, it was the smoothies and when i stopped not only did my digestive symptoms go away, I lost weight, i had more energy. Ok this is the story that gave me the idea to do this podcast Im pregnant and made a rule that i was going to honor my body no matter what Because there is so much pressure/old wives tales out there about how much we should or shouldnt gain, eating for two, all the things I also noticed as soon as i found out i was pregnant my brain jumped to “you’re going to gain weight anywa you may as well eat everything” and that was not at all the experience i wanted. I don’t want to feel weighed down and overfull the entire time because my brain is going nuts So i honored my body, my hunger, my satiety, no matter what everyone else said. I’ll mention, my belly is on the small side and me and my husband get a lot of comments about it. I have largely ignored it, but my husband was taking some of it on to mean the baby wasn’t growing like it should be In your third trimester the protein intake recommendation is 80-100g per day. Which for me is more food that i can get down while honoring my hunger and satiety. I tried, but it meant i was eating more than felt good for me. I decided that my body knew, that if i wasn’t getting enough protein it would tell me with hunger signals, which i discussed with my husband Until we had meeting with our doula and she said you really need to be getting that much, no exceptions. My husband was kind of freaked out combined with the fact that my belly is small and guess what- I took it on! I started eating even though i was not hungry just for the sake of the protein. Soon after, we had an ultrasound and they told us the baby was the perfect size and right on track size, weight and development wise. I realized, why would i stop trusting my body because people outside of me had opinions about what I should be doing Many of my clients lose 1-5lbs their first week with me because the first week we work together we are focussed on exactly this- learning to trust our bodies again When you trust your body, you also don’t need someone else to tell you what to eat. Its why my program includes virtually no diet advice and my clients still lose weight. You don’t need a someone elses idea about what you should be eating, you need to utilize your bodies natural signals to help you decide! So this first week, we really focus on tapping back into our bodies and feeling what hunger feels like, feeling what foods actually feel good for us, feeling what satiety feels like. And this is a game changer Most of my clients tell me they forgot what hunger feels like, they have never once thought about how they want to feel in their bodies at the end of meal as way to help them lose weight But this is where you find freedom with food, where you find effortless weight loss, where you get to feel good in your body, where you get to have a treat and have it not result in weight gain Ok so this is your takeaway Think about what it would be like to listen to no one elses advice but your bodies: What foods do you like? What foods give you energy? What foods take your energy away? How often do you get hungry in a day? How much food does it take for you to feel comfortably satiated vs stuffed? How often are you eating because someone else said or your brain is simply in a habit of eating or throwing a fit for the treat? How can you listen to your body today and take it’s weight loss advice instead of someone elses? If you love what you hear here join the wait list to work with me at: bit.ly/callwaitlist