Our Beliefs About Carbohydrates: How They Freak Us Out & Make Us Fat

Our Beliefs About Carbohydrates: How They Freak Us Out & Make Us Fat – In Session with Marc David

Marc David
Welcome everybody. I’m Marc David, founder of the Institute for the Psychology of Eating. We’re in the Psychology of Eating Podcast. I’m with Jesse today. Welcome Jesse!

Jessica
Hi!

Marc David
So for those of you who are new to the podcast tuning in right now, Jesse and I have never met. We’re meeting for the first time in this moment, and we’re going to have a session together and see if we can do some good work. So Jesse, if you could wave your magic wand, if you could have whatever you wanted with food and body, what do you think that would be for you?

Jessica
Just peace, yeah.

Marc David
Just peace. So sounds like there’s some war going on then if you want peace.

Jessica
Yes, there is.

Marc David
What’s the struggle?

Jessica
Well, about four years ago, I decided to make a big change. I hit 207 pounds, and I started doing many different things to lose the weight. Within nine months, I lost 87 pounds and I hit my goal weight, which was 120 pounds. And I did it through probably pretty extreme measures, I guess. I started off just as a health thing, and then my sister told me about fasting and keto, and I looked into it, and so I started fasting. At first, it was just like 16 hours a day, I would fast. I would still eat three times a day and that was working. And when that stopped working, I just kept cutting it until there was a point where I was doing what they call rolling 48’s so I would literally go a whole day without eating, and I would only eat the next night for supper, and I would eat as much as I could in that meal. And it wasn’t good. I know it wasn’t good, but at the time, it was what was working, and I was convincing myself that it was a healthy thing to do, because fasting is healthy. I still believe fasting is healthy. I just don’t believe doing that is healthy. Your body still needs nutrition. I get that now. I’ve come a long way since that point.

Last summer, I decided, I’ve always just been trying to find different things that will work. So I’ve done intuitive eating. I’ve switched it up to just eating when I wanted what I wanted. And my fear is gaining all the weight back 100% that’s my fear.

Marc David
Sure. So is that where wanting the peace comes in? Wanting to not have the fear of weight gain come back.

Jessica
Yeah. So, every day I watch different things on YouTube, different things I could do/should do. My brain is always thinking about what I should eat. And you got so many people telling you different things. Since I did keto to lose most of weight, I have a carb fear, where I think eating carbs is going to make me gain weight, so I don’t eat carbs, except for on the weekend sometimes. And that’s totally the other problem. I guess. I have a pretty stressful life. I run a home daycare, so I have six little ones that I take care of every day. I love it! I went to school for it and at 31 I went back to college for ECE. My husband is going through multiple brain surgeries right now. He had a seizure last March, and it was just me and him home, so it was probably the scariest moment of my life. His neck surgery is next Tuesday, so sometimes I find myself on Fridays and Saturdays trying to relax by having a couple drinks, and when I have a couple of drinks, then I don’t care, and I eat a whole bunch of food after the drinks. And then like most people, I’m back on it on Monday. And I’ve just been watching your podcast, and it’s been helping me a lot, but it made me realize, why am I striving to be so healthy all week and then throwing it all away on the weekends? But I think I’ve gained a little bit of control with it. I’m allowing myself to have a couple of drinks, and maybe that’s what I need to relax in that moment? I don’t know. I’m definitely at war with myself, though.

Marc David
So Jesse, how old are you now?

Jessica
I’m 34.

Marc David
I’m sorry you’re going through a lot. Does your husband have a brain tumor?

Jessica
He’s got what’s called an AVM. He was born with it. It’s just a cluster of veins inside his brain that aren’t supposed to be there. So they’re doing multiple surgeries to fill it like they would an aneurysm. They also found an aneurysm, and they filled that already while they were looking for this AVM after a seizure. So there’s three arteries going to it, and they filled one, so they have to fill two more.

Marc David
Wow, that’s a tough one. I’ve been through brain cancer with my dad and multiple surgeries, so I have at least a sense of what that’s like. It’s pretty nerve wracking, for sure, and you know, that’s the kind of thing, I think it would make anybody want to eat and drink on the weekends. That is a lot on your plate, but we’ll get back to that in a moment. So when did you first notice to yourself and say, I want to lose weight? How old were you?

Jessica
I was 30.

Marc David
So up until 30, you were just, I weigh what I weigh and whatever!

Jessica
To a certain extent, that’s another point. So when I was 15, I started working out, I started drinking lots of water and being conscious that I wanted to have a fitter body, and some super bad stuff happened to me. I was held hostage in my own house by an uncle I cared about, so I threw everything away. I got into some really bad stuff. I moved out of my home, and didn’t care about anything. Then at 19 I met my husband, who I’m with now, and everything changed. Around 21 I decided to get back into it. I started going to the gym. I started eating healthy. I had a miscarriage again, threw everything out the window. Didn’t really care that much, not everything at that point, but I didn’t care about my body anymore. And at 23 I had my first daughter, and I gained 70 pounds with her. I hit 190 pounds with her, and then at 26 I had my next daughter, and I hit 200 with her. And my whole world just became about them. I didn’t really think about myself very much. I’m a person who likes to do research, and I like to jump into things. So it was for them, I read books. I just said, let’s make their lives good and I wanted to be a good mom. And I put myself on the back burner. At 29 I quit smoking cigarettes, and then at 30 I graduated high school, which I had never done because of everything that had happened. I went back to college at 31 for a two year program and graduated with a 4.0. Then I opened my own daycare in my own home so that I could support my husband who can no longer work due to everything that’s going on with him. So…

Marc David
You know, honestly I’m really moved by your story, Jesse. You’re a resilient human being, a very resilient woman, and I’m hearing the story of a person who has undergone a lot of challenges and hardships, and you seem to always find yourself, and you seem to always find a way through. And you seem to always, at some point, decide to do your best to take the high road. And you know, part of it is is also learning, ongoingly, how to be in a body. You know, being in a body is not so easy, like, what do you feed it? How do you take care of it? And you could do everything great. Your husband didn’t do anything wrong. He’s born with a condition and you have to deal with this. That’s part of being in a body for some people. So I’m hearing that you’re learning how to be in your body and at the same time, you’re learning how to be in your life in a way that works for you. So I just want to say that because I don’t hear that there’s something wrong with you. I don’t hear that you have a problem. What I hear is that you’re just trying to find a way for you to be healthy. Feel good about your body. You just want to feel good about your body. I like how I look. This feels good, and I feel relatively healthy, and I’m taking care of myself. And additionally, I don’t want to worry about gaining weight, because then I’m thinking every day and freaking out about my body. So I hear you learning how to do all that.

Jessica
Yeah, if I feel like I’m not giving like, I give time to my children every night, we watch TV together and we cuddle, and there’s sometimes I’m just not present. I’m just always listening to a podcast. I’m doing dishes, I’m listening to something on YouTube. I’m just always wanting to learn more about that, and I just feel like it’s consuming my life. I feel like I’m going to look back in 10 years, 20 years and feel like I missed out on what was actually happening. You know?

Marc David
You know, part of it is, I think you’ve learned how to survive by being a learner. You’ve learned how to survive by finding answers on your own and by taking matters into your own hands. And that’s really a brilliant strategy to help yourself survive, and now you want to thrive a bit more, and you’re trying to thrive in a situation where you’re working in an intense job, taking care of a lot of little ones. You got your own little ones, and you are supporting your husband and everything that he’s going through. So I’m just saying, that’s a lot.

Let me ask you this. Jesse, how do you feel these days when you look in the mirror and you’re looking at your body. What do you tell yourself?

Jessica
So when I have clothes on, I like the way I look. I’m not a very big fan of the way I look without. My husband doesn’t see me without clothes on. I don’t let him. When we do make love. I wear stuff so that I can’t see my stomach, because of the weight I gained because of the kids, and I realized that it’ll never be gone no matter what I do. It’s just part of me. I have to come to terms with that. I know that. I’ve thought of surgeries to alter that stuff, but I don’t have the money for it, so I want to be okay with it. I don’t weigh myself. I haven’t weighed myself in two years because I work out three to five days a week, and I know that I’m heavier than I would like to see on the scale. So I don’t weigh myself, but I do measure myself every day. I measure my waist every day, which is kind of silly, because if it’s not what I want it to, I just suck it in a little and then it’s what I want it to be. So it’s just a mind thing. I don’t know why I do it. I guess my fear is just gaining weight.

Last summer, when I just put a hold on all diets, and I just lived my life. I did gain weight. I know I gained weight, but it might have been what I needed, because I don’t think 120 pounds was a good weight for me, because I started bingeing. I started eating spoonfuls of peanut butter and ice cream and the most calorie dense things, and my body was just screaming at me to eat, because I had not eaten for multiple times, and I’ve tried to learn to listen to my body more. Just yesterday, I was in a mood, went for a walk, and I was still in a mood. And usually a walk can help me, but I’ve went all week no carbs this week, so I assume my body was screaming for carbs, because I worked out five days this week. So last night, I had toast and peanut butter, and I did feel better, and I do feel better this morning as well, mentally. So I have been really trying to listen to my body too. It’s just been really hard.

Marc David
Yeah! It’s hard to listen to our body when we have a lot of talk in our head, from everything you’ve read, everything you’ve seen online, everything you see on YouTube, all the different things that all the different experts are saying. And people, all the experts, can get pretty tough and rigid about what you should and shouldn’t do, and so we end up having all these conflicting rules. Well, I want to listen to my body, but this person says, basically, most people are saying, listen to me about how you should be with your body. And I want to encourage you in this conversation that we’re in that ultimately you listening to your body is where the action is.

I think, personally, I’ve been in the nutrition field in some way since my early teens. Since back in the 1960s I was reading about nutrition, even though there wasn’t much to read back then. So I’ve always been fanatic about it. And where I’ve come to, after so many decades just being a nutrition fanatic and just loving learning about it, trying different things, is that at the end of the day, the best nutritionist in the world is you. Especially when you’re able to like you’ve been doing. You learn, you gather information. But consider thinking about every expert that you listen to, every book you read, every magazine article, every video that you watch. Those people are your hired advisors. You’re like the queen bee, and all these people are here to serve you, and they’re here to give you information, and you get to choose what you’re going to listen to and what you’re going to try, or what you’re going to consider or what you’re going to experiment with. Because the reality is, every human being is completely different, there is so not one perfect way to eat, so you will have the perfect body in the perfect way for the rest of your life. No questions asked. Because you change, the body changes, your life changes. All of a sudden you have emotional intensity happening, and you’re craving food. You want to have some carbs, but you’re not supposed to have carbs. And the most important rules or guidelines are the ones that you create for you so it truly works for you. And I think the goal is ultimately trusting your body, which is also trusting life. Because the truth is, we don’t know what’s going to happen. You know, in any given moment, in any given day. Am I going to be okay? Is my partner going to be okay? Are my kids going to be okay? Yeah, I’m trusting life that I’m going to be okay. I kind of know in the back of my mind I’m going to die someday. And that’s the end result of every nutritional system anyways, you know. It’s all going to eventually lead to death. So the trick is, how do you live your best life in the meantime, in this part of your life since you’re born and before you die, you’re an eater. And okay, so how do I best be in relationship with food and best be in relationship with my body so it really works for me?

Let me ask you a question. How old are your girls?

Jessica
8 and 11.

Marc David
8 and 11. How do you think they think about your body?

Jessica
I’ve heard them say, Mommy, skinny. So skinny. I don’t know, I’ve heard them say that, but they hear things from me and that’s another thing I don’t want to pass on to them. I don’t want them worrying about themselves either like that. I’ve already heard a comment here and there about them saying that they’re skinny, or, you know, like, I definitely don’t want to pass it over to them.

Marc David
Yeah well, you know, this is yet another great inspiration to put into the mix. You know, I always like to say that children are great observers ,they’re not the best interpreters, but they’re good observers. So they observe you. They watch your behavior, they hear what you say, they notice what you do. They hear the little things. And so they’re going to observe that, and then they’re going to make their own conclusions. I was thinking a really interesting way, and I’ve done this with clients and students over the years, a really interesting way, if you have kids, especially if you have somewhat young kids, to experiment with making peace with your body, is spend more time exposing your body around your young ones. Be in your underwear, be in the nude with them. Put on fun music, play and dance, and teach them how to be in their body in a free way, and notice how it might be a little bit easier to kind of love and accept your body in the presence of young people, in the presence of innocent children, then it might be in front of your husband, you know. Because there’s a little more of a fear of, am I going to be disapproved of? Am I going to be judged? And kids are a little more fresh in terms of, they’re open.

Jessica
Yeah, I do get changed in front of them. I don’t hide myself in front of them, because I was always, even as a child, I was always taught to hide myself. I’ve never seen my mom naked. Like, it’s not a thing, and I just me and my girls are really, really close, and sometimes, yeah, I get changed in front of them, for sure, already. So I do see how I don’t feel judged by them and they never make comments or anything on my body at all.

Marc David
So I’m going to suggest that you know a good bit about nutrition, and you know a good bit about food and diet. You know a good bit about weight loss, and you probably have an idea about what works for you and what doesn’t. So putting aside this thing called fear of gaining weight, which I get it, let’s consider that a legitimate fear. I put all this energy into losing this weight, I don’t want to gain it back. So I think part of letting go of the fear is letting go of some of the beliefs that we have about what would cause us to gain weight. So letting go of some of the fear of gaining weight is helped by letting go of some of the beliefs we have about, well, this would cause me to gain weight. So one of the beliefs that’s floating around that you sort of mentioned was carbohydrates, you know, so you’ve been able to lose weight on a very low carb or a no carb diet. So think of no carb or extremely low carb as a tool. In fact, we could think of it as a very specific almost like a therapeutic tool. You use a tool under very specific circumstances. Here’s when you need a drill, here’s when you need a jackhammer, here’s when you need a screwdriver, very specific conditions when you use that tool. So, yeah, a very low or a no carb diet can be a useful tool, a useful nutritional tool to lose weight. What I want to suggest is it is not a useful, sustainable diet that a human being can follow day in and day out. How do I know this? Because everybody tells me, because you are not the first human being who’s gone on a low carb diet or no carb diet, you lose a bunch of weight, and at some point you are craving carbs. And at some point you eat the carbs and then when you eat the carbs, you don’t like yourself. And then if you eat enough carbs, and you’ve rebounded enough, yeah, you’ll start to see yourself maybe gaining weight. So the no carb, low carb thing, great tool to lose a lot of weight for a lot of people, not all. Not a good, sustainable diet. So part of what you’re looking at, of what to do, I think, is you’re learning, how do I sustain myself on a day to day basis?

How do I maintain this body? So a couple of guidelines. Number one, there’s no guarantees. You and I can do everything perfect. And our kids turn out this way, and our health turns out that way, and my weight this and my body that. So we do the best we can. I like the idea of you incorporating carbs into your diet, because this way you’re not going to crave them like crazy and like, oh my god, I shouldn’t eat this, but I’m craving them, but I should eat it, but I shouldn’t eat it. That’s the war, or that’s one of the ways that we war with ourselves. We have a rule, don’t eat this. And there’s a part of us that’s just screaming to break that rule. So then it’s a war. You’re trying to use your willpower to not break the rule, and then you break the rule, you eat the carbs, and then what do you do? You don’t like yourself, and you go into fear that I’m going to gain the weight back now because I broke this sacred rule.

So what I want to suggest is you’re finding a way where your body can maintain itself. And you said something interesting. You said when you hit 120 at some point you gain some weight, and maybe 120 wasn’t so good for you. The body has a wisdom to it. It just does. The body knows when to heal. The body knows how to heal. We don’t know what we’re doing. You have a cut, you have a broken bone, you don’t heal it. The body does all this work. We just kind of hang out and just hope for the best, and the best often happens. So the body has a certain wisdom, and the body talks to you, and I like how you listen to it, so part of the way to slowly let go the fear of weight gain, which is letting go of the war, is to listen more to your body, because ultimately, that’s what you can trust. Are you always going to get it right? No. Meaning you do your best to listen to your body. My body says I need a couple drinks. Maybe you do! If I was in your shoes. And I’m working hard during the week, doing daycare for young ones, and I’m going through what I’m going through in my personal life with my partner. I’m raising my own kids. I’m responsible for the finances. You bet when the weekend comes, I want a little bit of partying and a little bit of relaxation. And sometimes what most easily does that for us might be alcohol, or it might be a little bit more fun food. So what I want to say is, there could be a way for you to do that where it’s not like you’re going crazy and you’re binge drinking, but if you have a couple of drinks and say to yourself, This is me, Jesse, just relaxing because it’s not easy for me to relax right now. And give that to yourself and then sit back and trust and watch. Let me just stop for a moment. What’s going through your mind? How’s this all landing for you?

Jessica
Great. I’ve gotten halfway there with listening to you tell other people these kinds of things, but it’s great to hear you just talk to me about it personally. And that’s why I was so excited for this conversation, because I knew that it was going to be geared straight to me. I noticed that on the weekend sometimes I’ll have one too many and I’ll be a little bit more tipsy than I want to be, and I think realizing that and allowing myself, giving myself the freedom to know that it’s okay that I have a couple of drinks, that I won’t have that extra drink, because I don’t like that feeling. Yeah, I feel really good about the conversation. I think that I’m going to make progress hopefully in the next little while.

Marc David
You know, it’s finding your sweet spot. I want to say to you that there’s no foods that should necessarily be on your this is an absolute “I can’t have this list” unless you have an extreme allergy to something, or unless something is such a trigger food for you, it doesn’t necessarily need to be on your no fly list. And, yeah, okay, so you drink on the weekend. And I, whoops, I noticed I had a little bit too much that doesn’t work for me. Great. That’s information for you. You didn’t do anything wrong. You’re just you’re just trying to be you. You’re just trying to figure out a way to relax. And sometimes we can overdo it. We can overdo with food. We could overdo it with alcohol, with drugs, with exercise, with anything. And then we come back to center and go, Okay, that was too much for me. What do I do next time? Next time I have one drink, I have two drinks. Here’s how I do it. And you find your sweet spot so you’re letting go of the war, and instead you’re in dialogue. You’re in conversation with yourself, where the conversation is honouring, the conversation is respectful, the conversation is a learning and growing one. Meaning, I’m learning how to manage my emotions. I’m learning how to navigate difficulty in my life. Because here’s the thing, we love to turn to food, because we’re human beings and we love food. And food is everything. Everything loves food. Every creature loves food. Every animal loves food. Insects love food. Mosquitoes love to bite me. I don’t understand it, but everything loves to eat something, and you and I are no exception. So you’re learning how to navigate that beautiful love and that need in a way that works for you.

So how would it sound to you? I’d love to suggest…I like how you don’t weigh yourself! But my little caution light comes on when you measure yourself every day. And the reason why my caution light comes on is because you’re letting the little tape measure tell you how you should feel that day. And the reality is, you know, some days you’re going to retain a little bit more water than others. Some days you’ll be a little bit more bloated than others. So it’s going to vary. Even if you didn’t eat any food for four days, you would still vary a little bit. But there’s a certain freedom that starts to happen when we let go of the numbers. The scale is all about the numbers. The measuring tape, it’s about a number, and it’s us saying, I will allow a number to tell me how I feel. And the truth is, you’re a person, you’re not a number. And the truth is, you feel how you feel, and you can take back some of your power. You can take back a lot of power that we give away to numbers, and just be you. Just be Jesse. So instead of putting the tape measure around yourself, say to yourself, how do I feel today? Like, how do I actually feel today? And that’s how you feel. And if you’re not feeling so great, then okay, what could you do to feel a little better? What are the little things you do to take care of yourself? What are the little self care kind of tactics you can do. How does it land for you when I suggest letting go of measuring yourself?

Jessica
Good, it sounds like freedom. I’ve had little glimpses of what that feels like in the last couple of weeks, where a day will be a good day, where I just allow myself, and usually when I have those days where I’m just like, Okay, you can have whatever you want. I usually don’t even want anything that’s bad for me. I have that sense of freedom. So I know what that could feel like I just then the next day, it’ll be a day that consumes me with just wanting to be perfect, I guess.

Marc David
So part of letting go of numbers is also letting go of that perfection, you know, okay, I’m at this weight. I don’t want to gain a single pound. So how do I not gain a pound? How do I not gain an inch? And when we let numbers rule us like that, we’re going to be at war. It’s just definitionally, we will be at war. And the reality is, you’re a human being, you’re a woman, and your body changes, and in the course of your life, just think of how many times your body has changed. So the body changes, and we have a preference. I want my body to be like this. That’s a preference. This is what my preference is. And you have every right to have your preference. Here’s what I want my body to look like. When we start to make that preference a demand. Body, you have to look like this, because if you don’t, I’m screwed. If you don’t, I don’t love you, which means I don’t love me, which means life sucks, which means I’m at war, which means I’m going to be freaking out about food and diet and exercise and you name it. So part of it is learning. And this is not your problem. You didn’t invent this problem. You inherited it from the world. The problem called here’s exactly what you need to weigh in. Here’s exactly what you need to look like. We pick that up. Your girls are going to pick up things that you never talk about. You never tell them. They’re going to get it from TV, from the internet, from school, from friends. So it’s kind of impossible to be a human being and be alive and not be subject to certain kinds of perfectionism around the body. So even though you and I didn’t invent that, even though we’ve inherited that, it’s still our responsibility. Think of it like a virus. Think of it like a viral belief it doesn’t belong in my system. It’s not healthy for me because it creates the war that you’re tired of.

Jessica
I think on some level I’ve been at war my entire life with this kind of thing, because my dad is very vocal about certain things. There’s been a good chunk of my life where I haven’t even talked to him, because he’s made comments about my weight as a 12 year old and to this day, he’ll like. I love my dad, don’t get me wrong! But I’ll go there on Christmas and, oh, it looks like you lost even more weight. Like it’s always a comment on the way I look in some way. Even I remember walking down the street and a bigger lady would walk by and he’d make a comment on her, like it’s kind of been thrown at me my entire life about how looks matter. So even my husband will tell me when I was bigger, it’s just more of you to love. Like, he never, ever says anything negative. He’s always very faithful, even when it comes to looking at other girls, he’s great! But it took me a long time to trust even him, just because of the way I grew up.

Marc David
Well, good for you for really scoring and having a man who loves you for you. And you know your dad is also a victim of a lot of conditioning, because it’s virtually impossible to grow up in this world and not be subject to weight hate.

And the challenge is, you’ve experienced weight hate coming from outside you. Coming from the world, coming from your own parent. And we readily adopt weight hate. For some reason, it just lands in our system. And what ends up happening is, even though the weight hate originally came from outside of us. We take it and we run with it. So oddly, it’s not your dad anymore who’s doing the bulk of the weight hating. It’s the voice in your head that’s looking in the mirror and going, this is not good. This is not acceptable. It’s the voice in your head going this number is too much. I’m gaining weight. Bad, no, good. So we’re looking, you’re looking to start to decommission this voice that’s in your head. Now, part of it is, is, you know, watching the kind of media you consume, watching the kind of conversations that you’re in with people, setting boundaries with people who make comments that don’t work for you, but most importantly, in your own mind, just noticing the part of you that has become the weight bully.

Jessica
Yeah, I like that. I never looked at it that way, that it’s just me being the bully now.

Marc David
It is. We don’t even realize it, you know, we don’t realize it because it’s very subtle the way we take over, and it’s what the mind does. The mind gets conditioned by the world. We take the offense that’s put on us, and we end up owning it. And we end up believing it. We end up making it our own religion, and it’s a bad religion. The religion called this body is not okay as it is. It’s just It doesn’t yield any benefit. So I see you being in a time in your life where you’re letting go of that conditioning, of that brainwashing, of that noise that’s in your head. In order to let it go, you have to notice it. Oh, here’s me being a bully and telling myself that I’m no good. Might as well be my dad telling me that. Might as well be somebody else telling me that, to my face.

What would happen if I said that to my daughters right now? Oh, it looks like you’re gaining a little bit of weight. That’s not good. You wouldn’t say that to them. If you wouldn’t say it to them, don’t say it to you. That’s such a great guideline to follow. If you wouldn’t say it to them, it’s not worth saying it to you. So this is you just continuing to be a growing person, like you’re learning and growing and you’re getting better at being you, and you’re learning how to not be at war by seeing the places where you’re the one aiming the missiles and shooting them. And the reason why you’re the one aiming the missiles and shooting them is because that’s just how you’ve been taught by the world. That’s just what you’ve been taught from a young age, and now you’re unwinding that. So part of is trusting the body and saying, okay, the body, this body, is going to do what it does. And I’m going to listen to my body, I need more carbs, and I find that when I eat in a certain way, I eat enough protein, I eat enough fat, I feel good. I feel good about myself! Maybe I have more energy. Maybe I’m feeling good about my body.

As soon as your diet starts to feel too extreme, the moment you find yourself fighting yourself, that’s a good moment to press the pause button and say, Okay. Am I trying to uphold a guideline, a food guideline that really doesn’t work for me in this moment? Because there’s going to be times when you just might need to to just have the dessert and have the sugar and it’s okay, I promise you, it’s not going to kill you. It’s not going to make your husband leave you. It’s not going to make your girls not love you anymore. You know, the people that love you love you. They’re not going anywhere.

Jessica
No, I just have to love myself, I guess then.

Marc David
Yeah, for some weird reason that’s not easy for us human beings, you know, and it’s honestly, why it’s so great that we can find ourselves surrounded by people who do love us. It makes self love a little easier when you have people loving on you. So that’s yet another little trick is when you’re not feeling enough self love, notice the love outside you. Notice what’s coming from your partner. Notice that, oh, I’m loved. The people that love me, don’t judge my body, the people that love me aren’t telling me we won’t love you until you lose more weight, or we won’t love you if you gain weight, they’re not saying that to you, only you.

Jessica
Yeah, and I think I gained a lot of the weight because I wasn’t listening to my body either. You know, when my body was saying, that’s enough food, I was just like, No, I want more. I don’t know.

Marc David
I like to say that whenever we eat, there’s a particular person in us who’s doing the eating. So if you’re following your weight loss diet really methodically, chances are that’s your inner nutritionist, that’s your inner dietitian, that’s your inner weight loss guru, you know, maybe it’s just the woman in you or the young queen in you who’s just like, I’m doing this right. And you know something, diets are not easy to follow and at some point, the little kid in us starts to scream and says, you know, Mommy, I just want to eat whatever I want to eat. Stop. Stop limiting me. Like, let’s have some fun here. Like, what’s the problem? Let’s eat! Let’s have some sugar. And oftentimes, that voice will end up taking over because it feels so deprived. So the trick is to be in dialogue with that voice. Just think, whenever you’re feeling war, it means it’s time to be in negotiation. It’s time to be in dialogue. It’s time to talk to yourself, and it’s time to notice, what are you wanting. And sometimes it’s the little girl in you that’s just wanting some fun and wanting to not have all these rules. It’s too much. It’s too intense. And unless you relax the rules sometimes, the kid in us, or the rebel in us, will break those rules, and oftentimes break them with a vengeance, and then we feel guilty and like, why am I doing that? Well, it’s real simple why we’re doing that, it’s because something’s not working for our body, something’s not working for us, and there’s a part of us that’s screaming for something different, and eventually that part just takes over and runs the show.

It’s like all of a sudden letting your two little girls do all the mothering and all the parenting. No, that’s not going to work. You can have your food rules and guidelines in your house with your girls, and you can, every once in a while, have a little splurge with them, and then you go back to your guidelines. So I think same for you.

Jessica
Yes, I deserve it.

Marc David
Well, Jesse, I think this has been a good conversation. I hope you feel like you’ve got some things that you can use and work with to help you get where you want to go and let go of the war.

Jessica
I do 100%. I really enjoyed this conversation, and thank you very much for having me.

Marc David
Jesse, thanks for being so real and so honest and letting us in on your world. And I’m sure this is going to be really helpful for a lot of people. So thank you so much.

Jessica
Thank you!