Weight Loss For Foodies Podcast | Ditch The Diet And Lose Weight With Shari Broder

How many times a day, on average, do you think you make decisions about eating food and drinking beverages?  Years ago, a Cornell University researcher asked that question to 139 people. They estimated 15 times a day. But the researcher concluded that it was more like 226! I’m not sure how he figured that, but if we have 60,000 thoughts every day, surely a mere 226 could be decisions to eat or drink, or not.  The important question is how do you make those decisions?  Are they semi-conscious? Do you  find yourself stuffing food in your mouth and wondering how it gets there?  Do you habitually grab the barrel of pretzels and down a bunch of them while watching TV at night, not really thinking about what you’re doing, and barely tasting the food? Or do you first notice that you’re hungry and then think about what you really want to eat before going to get some food?  Awareness is the first step to changing your relationship with food and eating, and losing weight. Mindless eating is the opposite of that. Learni

Are you wondering why following all of those diet rules about what to eat, what not to eat, and how much to eat haven’t helped you lose weight and keep it off? Wouldn’t you love a simpler, more relaxed solution that actually does work? Today’s topic will sound familiar if you’re a regular listener, but it is so important that I thought I was overdue for revisiting it.  If you’ve been dieting, or just living in our diet-oriented culture, you’ve probably followed a lot of rules about what and how much to eat. And what not to eat.  The problem is that these rules have nothing to do with you or your body’s needs. It’s all so stressful, and it’s not even working.  The solution is simple, but not necessarily easy at first, although it does get easy.  And that is to start listening to your body’s hunger signals and eat in tune with them. That means knowing when you’re truly physically hungry. The reason most people gain weight is because they eat for all kinds of other reasons.  Some people are not even sure what ph

Do you think it’s unfair that you keep gaining weight even though  you think you don't eat more than your slimmer friends?  When I was about 50 pounds heavier, that’s what I thought.  But I was wrong, and you may be, too.  When I was in weight-gaining mode, I didn’t realize it, but I overate often.  That’s why my weight kept going up. That’s why most people’s weight goes up. Overeating. I know this might not be what you want to hear, but there’s a good chance that if you weigh more than is healthy or comfortable for you, you’re probably eating more than you realize. And you’re eating more than your body needs to be at your healthy weight.  You see, 96% of people who gain unwanted weight do so because they overeat. Yup, no big secret there, except that so many of us don’t realize how often we overeat or how much. While some people may gain weight for other health reasons,  for most of us, we’re just eating too much.  Plain and simple.  Tune in to learn the two ways people overeat, the most common excuses for o

How often does that voice in your head tell you you’re going to fail before you even start?  Then when you prove yourself right, your inner mean girl tells you how much you suck, and why are you even trying to lose weight when you simply can’t do it? Here’s the problem with that negative thinking that you can’t do what you need to do to reach your goals. Instead of getting the results you want, you make failure a self-fulfilling prophecy.  When you think or believe you can’t do something, you can’t. You make that your reality.  When you believe you can, you do!   Seriously, what you think and believe is so important. It’s key.  Weight loss, and success at pretty much everything, is all about how you think.  So is failure.  You see, what you focus on grows.  As I’ve heard Tara Brach say many times on her wonderful podcast, good experiences slide off us like Teflon and bad ones stick like Velcro.  So if you remember only the times you over-ate or binged, you’ll see yourself as someone who overeats or binges and

Do you focus on what’s wrong with your body, rather than what’s right with it?  Do you focus on what your body can’t do, rather than what it can and does do? Have you been critical of how your body looks throughout your life, even when you weren’t overweight? I’m revisiting one of the most popular Weight Loss for Foodies podcast episodes, updated and even better than before. It’s such an important topic because so many women are dissatisfied with their bodies. This is something so upsetting and disempowering, but certainly understandable, given how much value is placed on our appearance, and the messages we get from the media.  So many women  have trouble feeling at home with the body you have right now, yet the only way you can change it is to accept it, even love it, and take better care of it, and you won’t want to do that if you hate it.  Do you resist feeling at home with the body you have now?  Your body is truly amazing. It receives and processes millions of bits of sensory information every second, pr

Do you gain weight over the holidays every year?  Do you eat your favorite holiday foods like it’s the last opportunity of your life?  We’re now entering the holiday season. Whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Festivus or whatever, you’re likely to celebrate with a wide array of delicious food.  Maybe the holidays are the only time of year that you make some of these foods.   Do you tend to overeat during the holidays and gain weight, then make a resolution for the New Year to go on a diet?  For most of my life, I routinely over-ate and gained weight over the holidays. Despite my resolution to lose the weight after New Year’s Day, I rarely lost any. My weight kept going up. I bet that approach hasn’t worked for you, either. And it won’t work this year. But there's a better way! Nowadays, I enjoy the holiday foods I love without overeating or gaining weight. There’s a much better way to enjoy the foods of the holidays so you don’t feel like a stuffed turkey.  Stay tuned to learn 6 guidelines fo

How old were you when you went on your first diet?  How did your upbringing influence your ideas about food, eating and how your body “should” look?  In today’s episode, I talk with podcast listener Brooke Streufert.  Brooke spent most of her life hopping from one diet to the next, until she started listening to the Weight Loss for Foodies podcast two years ago.  Her story is an inspiring one of someone who was didn’t fit our culture’s idea of how our bodies are supposed to look from a young age, and how she struggled with dieting until she finally decided to never diet again. She found the Weight Loss for Foodies podcast through a google search, started listening, and “never could’ve imagined what that choice would do for my life.” Tune in to hear Brooke’s journey, and how her decision to ditch dieting and start listening to her body changed her entire relationship with food and eating, and did what she never thought was possible: she, along with her husband,  lost weight without dieting, and gained a whole

One of the reasons why so many people weigh more than they’d like, and keep gaining weight, is because they use food to meet needs that it can’t meet.  You’re lonely and want connection, so you eat. You’re fearful, so you eat. You feel misunderstood, so you eat.  But what’s wrong with those examples?  Food can’t meet any of those needs. It can’t be your friend or lover, although Heaven knows some of us have tried. It can’t quell your fears.  It doesn’t have the ability to understand you.  All food can do is give your body fuel and make your hunger for that kind of nourishment go away.  Sure, eating will take your mind off your real needs for a few minutes, but then you’ve eaten a bunch of food your body may store as fat, and still will be left with those underlying needs. That’s why in this episode we discuss the fundamental categories of human needs, and why your happiness and well-being depends upon meeting them for real, instead of trying to meet them with food. Tune in to learn how to get in touch with yo

Do you find yourself constantly thinking about food?  Are you stuck on a weight loss plateau?  When you set certain reasonable limits on your eating, does it feel like restriction? I recently received these questions from listeners, and am excited to answer them on this week’s episode. If you believe you think about food too often, we’ll explore the reasons you may be doing that and come up with solutions for you.  Is there a way to set reasonable limits on what you eat without feeling like it’s a diet? And what are some strategies for getting past a weight loss plateau?  Stay tuned and hear the answer to these questions!  Head on over to my website, Shari Broder.com, and grab some free resources that will help you!

Are you afraid of being hungry, even though there is no shortage of food in your life? Do you get anxious if you feel hunger pangs?  Do you eat when you aren’t hungry because you’re afraid to feel hunger?  Hunger is a natural feeling. You’re supposed to feel hungry.  Just like how your brilliant body tells you when you have to urinate, it tells you when you need food for energy. When you feel hunger, that’s your body saying, “I need food now.”  Unfortunately, most people pay no attention to their hunger and fullness signals. They eat for all kinds of reasons that have nothing to do with hunger. And that’s why the majority of the population struggles with their weight.  The thing is that when you listen to your body’s signals and eat only when you’re hungry and stop when you’re lightly full, you eat precisely the amount of food that your body needs for you to be your healthy, comfortable weight.  You can get back in touch with those signals and learn to eat in that natural way you ate when you were a  young ch

Do you eat because you're bored?  The kind of bored where you have lots to do but don’t want to do it?  Or that kind of boredom that feels like something is missing in your life? I recently asked my fantastic Facebook group, Ditch the Diet Tribe, which emotions caused them to want to eat when they weren’t hungry.   Two out of three responses were BOREDOM. Although psychologists and philosophers have come up with all kinds of causes for boredom, I’m concerned here with boredom that has you running to the  kitchen for something “interesting” -- FOOD! There are three main types of boredom that cause people to eat: When you feel like you have nothing to do  When you have something you must do but don’t want to do it right now When you feel like something is missing in your life. This response summed up the second type well:  Sometimes when I am working on something that I don't really want to be doing......usually because I am overwhelmed and don't know where to start......I find myself in the pantry or fridge.

Do you think you really want to lose weight, but when it comes to actually doing what it takes to get results, it's hard to stay on track?  The reason why most people who are unsuccessful with weight loss don’t reach their goals isn’t because they can’t do it.  It isn’t because you don’t have self-control or willpower.  What you may lack is commitment.  Commitment is a key ingredient necessary for reaching your goals, whether your goal is to lose weight or anything else.  If you’re not fully committed to your goal, you won’t make it a priority. You’ll be more likely to make excuses for not doing what you know you need to do.  You won’t give it all the effort required to succeed. You’ll give up before you really give it your all.  Most people think they’re committed because they desire the outcome. You want to lose weight. You want to be thinner. You want to fit into that dope dress you wore a few years ago that’s gathering dust in your closet.  That’s not commitment. That’s desire. There’s a big difference. 

When you embark on an effort to lose weight, do you start thinking about how much weight you should be losing each week, and how long it will take you to reach your goals? When I was a dieter, I used to do that. I’d plan out how quickly the weight should come off. If I lose X number of pounds a week, by Y date, I will weigh Z. How exciting and motivating! NOT. It never happened like that. Not once. In fact, that approach is a sure route to becoming discouraged and quitting. It’s a diet culture mindset. The diet industry tries to hook you into trying the latest fad by promising fast weight loss.   But they don’t tell you that only a tiny percentage of dieters lose weight. And they don’t tell you what happens to the ones that do a year later. Or two years. That’s because almost every one of them will gain the weight back. When you start a new effort to lose weight, part of the reason you don’t succeed is because you have an idea of how that will turn out. How fast you SHOULD lose weight. But that is a fantasy.

I think about emotions a lot. Not just because I teach people how to kick the emotional eating habit so they can fix what’s causing them to overeat. I think about them for other reasons, too.  One is because I’m an emotional person. I wasn’t taught to suppress my feelings, and I don’t have trouble expressing them. I have trouble NOT expressing them.  Another is because my husband was taught by his parents to suppress his emotions, and learned how detrimental that approach was on many levels. In other words, emotions play a large role in both my work and home life.  So when I was listening to Glennon Doyle talk about emotions in her We Can Do Hard Things podcast episode 24, it got me thinking about how to get the point across to my listeners and students just how super important it is to stop eating to avoid your feelings, not just because it is the doorway to weight loss and a life of enjoying food without struggling with your weight, but because if you want to live a fully human life, it’s necessary to  unde

Do you wonder what you “should” weigh? Where did that “should” come from anyway? Who or what determines whether someone is a healthy weight, overweight or obese? Is BMI legit? How do you know when you’re at a healthy weight for you?  All bodies are different. Every body has its own naturally healthy weight range. I can’t tell you what that is, but I can give you an idea about how to figure yours out. Do you already have an idea what you think your weight  “should” be? Where did that idea come from?  In this episode, I discuss:  Whether Body Mass Index is a legitimate measure of a healthy weight; What factors play into determining your weight; What set point is and whether you can alter it;  How dieting negatively affects your ability to change your weight; and How you can determine what is a healthy weight for you.  If you enjoy this episode, please feel free to rate and review the podcast on whatever app you’re listening on, and share with a friend!

Do you know why people gain weight?  Overeating. Yep. There’s no escaping that fact! What I mean by the word "overeating" is when you give your body more food than it needs to support your natural, healthy weight.  There are two ways you can overeat: 1. Keep eating until you're overly full or stuffed, or 2. Start eating when you aren't hungry.  Both are overeating because either way, you’re giving your body food that it doesn’t need and will store as fat. Overeating every now and then isn’t a big deal. Everybody does it occasionally.  But if you are someone who feels like you can’t stop overeating, and you do it regularly, whether it’s a few times a week, every day or every time you eat, then it’s very likely that you’ve gained more weight than is healthy or comfortable for you.  Why do you do it? I’m willing to guess that there’s a lot more to it than that you love food.   You can love food and not overeat it. I know because I love food and used to overeat it, but don’t anymore, and I bet you can think of at

You’re not imagining it.  Stress makes people want to eat.  If you’re an emotional eater, when you’re stressed out, you’re more likely to feel the urge to eat. That’s because when your body feels stress, it produces certain stress hormones which cause you to crave comfort foods.  Sometimes, stress might kill your appetite because the stress hormone adrenaline puts you in a state of fight or flight.  When stress is chronic, however, the opposite happens.   Too much stress upsets your hormonal balance, making it harder to lose weight and easier to gain it.  This is made even worse by the overconsumption of simple carbohydrates, which are sugary snacks like candy bars and soda. They also can cause a hormone imbalance.  Basically, being consistently stressed out for a long period of time causes your body to produce an assortment of hormones that make it more likely that your body will store fat instead of using it for energy, and cause you to want to eat more.  Stress also seems to affect your food preferences, m

You know the feeling. You feel a strong urge to eat, but you aren’t hungry. It’s undermining your weight loss efforts, but you find it so hard to not give in whenever it arises!  Maybe you just ate lunch an hour ago and you’re working on a tough project. Or maybe the kids and the pets are driving you nuts and you either can’t get anything done or even just take that break that you desperately need. Or you’re stressed out because you have to pay bills today.  What makes you feel like you want to eat when you aren’t hungry? How often do you choose to eat for a reason that has nothing whatsoever to do with whether your body is physically hungry?  Why do you feel the need to eat at those times? Perhaps by now you’ve realized that this feeling is an emotional and not a physical need. After all, you’re not hungry, so your body doesn’t need food to nourish it. Food is easy and readily available. It tastes good and brings you instant pleasure to escape from whatever is going on in your life that is making you want to

Do you obsess about what you should and shouldn’t eat?  Are you always looking for the next miracle diet that promises results but doesn’t deliver? Do you feel guilty enjoying the foods you love?  It pains me to hear so many women talk about being afraid to allow themselves to enjoy food, hearing them obsess about it, and waste so much of their precious energy worrying about what to eat.  I hear them talk about what they should and shouldn’t eat. How they were “bad” because they ate some fried food or dessert or pancakes. Or how they can’t keep chocolate in the house because they’d eat the whole package in one sitting.   I bite my tongue when people say they’re starting a new diet on Monday to justify eating foods they love today because they have chosen a fad diet that won’t allow them to eat even the healthy foods they enjoy because they have carbs.  It pains me to hear this because I know that despite suffering through this diet, it’s highly unlikely they’ll lose much weight, even more unlikely that they’l

Are you waiting until you lose weight to put on a swimsuit?  Go to your high school reunion?  Attend parties or weddings?  Go hiking?  Or do anything else you really want to do? Why are you holding back?  You’re missing out on the fun! You only get this one precious life, so what’s the point of not living fully just because your body doesn’t look the way you think it should?  Are you not going to certain places and doing things you enjoy because you’re worried about other people judging your body? Judging how you look? Thinking you’re too fat?  It’s time you started caring less about how you think you look to others, and more about how you feel towards yourself. And one way to start cultivating good feelings about yourself is to stop holding back because you’re afraid about how others might judge you.  Listen to this week’s episode to learn  why that approach to life  actually prevents you from losing weight, and how to make enjoying life the ultimate goal.