Believe prioritizing healthy eating will take away from other things that are important to you?
Maybe that’s taking care of the kids, investing time in your relationship, or moving upwards in your career.
If you believe this, you will find yourself dismissing the work required to change your eating habits permanently.
You’ll tell yourself you’ll wait for the circumstances to change to get the results with food you want.
For the kids to get older. For your marriage to feel smoother. For your job to feel less stressful.
This mindset is what keeps you stuck. Because more circumstances always seem to present themselves.
Healthy eating must be a priority to make permanent changes. You must be clear on why these changes are important to you.
In this episode, I’m sharing how you’ll know if you’re dismissing the work with healthy eating now.
We’ll talk about what’s keeping you stuck and the mindset shift that’s necessary to prioritize healthy eating without more time and effort.
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I am so happy to be here with you today. I have been under the weather to say the least I have been quite sick lately. So if you hear me have a few sniffles here and there, or you hear me cough, we’ll probably edit it out. But just in case, that is why. And it’s also really interesting because I don’t get sick that often. So whenever I do, I feel like some of you may relate to this. I almost am in denial about it.
It’s like, I’ll try and will it away a bit. Like we don’t have time for this right now. Let’s just not make this a thing. Let’s just keep going. And in this case, it was really interesting. My body just kept reacting of course, to my unwillingness, to rest and take a step back, which is always an indicator that I need to listen to my body and let it heal, which is exactly what it did once I allowed it to.
And I’m sure this is something that so many of you can relate to this unwillingness to put yourself and your health as a priority when you have everything else going on in your life. So you have your job, you have your kids, you have all of the other circumstances that need your attention. It can be really easy to dismiss your personal needs and your health, even when you’re sick, if you’re like me.
So I just want to mention that taking time to rest and allowing myself to heal was really uncomfortable. And it brought up some drama in my mind and that’s something I really coached myself on and worked through this past week. So if this is something that comes up for you, no, it’s so valid. This is something that comes up for my clients as well. It is important, and it is safe that we are prioritizing our health and our recovery because we can’t fill other’s cups from an empty cup.
Do you see what I’m saying? I feel like I always mess this analogy up, but we’re pouring ourselves into a lot of other people’s cups and we cannot pour from an empty cup. So the goal is for you to fill your cup up to the point where it’s naturally flowing into everyone else’s cup. All right. So I hope you’re picking up what I’m putting down here and this relates to what we’re going to talk about today. And I want to talk about dismissing a work.
So more specifically dismissing the work we talk about in this podcast, which is solving or your food struggles, ending emotional, eating, and overeating, creating control with food, right, eating healthy. I want to talk to you all about how easy it will be for you to dismiss this work in your life. Because most of you will have a human brain that is very susceptible to dismissing this type of work and putting it off.
And I had this sprain, I’m human. I sometimes still have this sprain and I just had this sprain when it came to me being sick, my brain wanted to dismiss taking care of myself and my health. So in a similar way, you’re going to have a brain that is capable of dismissing this work here and putting it off. And I had the same mindset with healthy eating and food as well. So I really know what’s necessary for you to get the results you want with food.
And this mindset will keep you stuck from those results you want. So what we’ll talk about here is very important. So I encourage you has always to listen with an open mind and consider how this may be showing up for you. While of course also being really compassionate with yourself as well. That is a non-negotiable. So as mentioned, dismissing this work will, of course not create the result.
And I want to walk you through why you may be dismissing this work now and how this normally presents for all of us is when we are interested in doing this work and we genuinely want the result of eating healthy and getting the results we want with our bodies, but then we’ll find ourselves having thoughts like this can wait or I’ll focus on this at a later time when things are less crazy in my life right now.
So we make this work less important in those moments, because we’re believing that there are other things or other circumstances in our lives that are more urgent and important now. All right? So things like the kids are back to school. You have a presentation coming up at work. You’re going through marriage counseling. I’m throwing out random things here, right? Perhaps you’re pudding, work relationships, family above this work and stay with me here.
I’m not saying these things are not more important, but in your mindset, your placing these things above the work here and believing that because of these things, that this work cannot be a priority. Because right now, in this moment for you, there are circumstances that are less ideal than other times in your life. And what I want to offer you is that this is nine times out of 10, not the case, because what you will find if we’re having total honesty with ourselves is that urgent circumstances or hectic circumstances will always be there.
Something will always come up. And with this mindset where you’re believing, there are circumstances that are above or more important than this work. You’re always going to blame the circumstances as to why you’re not getting the results from this work that you want. And you will dismiss this work as less important.
This is exactly how it will work for so many of us. And in these moments, it presents as the most logical decision as the most ethical decision, right? Like right now, the most important thing is being the best employee, being the best mother, being the best partner, right? So it has a noble cause when we have reasons like this for not prioritizing the healthy eating work, but to move forward and create the results with food and body that you want.
It just requires us to shift this perspective and mindset around this. So the first thing I want to offer you here is I want you to consider all of the reasons why healthy eating and removing your food struggles is not the most important change you can make in your life right now, why it is not the most important thing. And you can even list all of these reasons.
I encourage you to do this, get it on paper. I want you to see where your mind’s at with it and just come up with all of the evidence you have right now in your mind for why this is not a priority now or why it’s not even the most important change you can make in your life now. So for most of us, this will look like thoughts that blame the circumstances a bit in our lives. So notice when you look at these reasons, you’re going to notice how you watch yourself saying you don’t have the time.
You don’t have the energy. You don’t have the resources or the mental bandwidth, whatever it is. Notice all of these reasons why you think this can’t be a priority and then watch how our brains will blame the circumstances in our lives for why we aren’t prioritizing healthy eating or the changes with our body we want to make.
And we all do this once again, the compassion piece is really important here. I think it’s easy with this work to feel a bit called out, or maybe even have a bit of shame. And this is not a problem. This is just the way the human brain works. It loves to blame our actions and our results in life, on our circumstances. So I just want you to notice your brain doing this with this work and just expect it.
It’s just a human brain. And the good news about all of this is that changing the way you eat doesn’t require you to change all of these circumstances. It doesn’t require more of your time. It doesn’t require more of your energy. You don’t have to change any of your current circumstances to get this result with food. You want to have control with food.
What does require more of these things is when you attempt to restrict force and willpower, your way to healthy, eating through things like diet protocols, or strict weight loss regimens.
This is why you feel stuck right now, because you’re believing that you’re going to have to go to battle with healthy eating and your body, because that’s what you’ve tried in the past to make these changes. And it feels terrible. Similar to a battle. I can imagine emotionally, you will feel spent, right? It’s going to feel exhausting. It’s going to feel terrible because eventually we lose this battle with food and our body when we take the restrictive approach.
So this is what your brain is going to emotionally prepare for. When I tell you, yeah, you can make these changes with food. Here’s how it’s done. And this is normal, especially considering where we’ve been when we’ve attempted to make these changes. But this is where your brain creates the false belief that the changes with food that you want aren’t possible right now because of your current circumstances, because you have circumstances in your life that require your attention.
You always will. So when you believe healthy, eating is going to take more from you energy-wise and emotionally you’ll always dismiss it as not important because you think it being important means you have to make other things in your life. Less important. Think about it, right? This is not true. You do not have to make other things in your life.
Less important for this work here to be important. This is only true when you’re following a restrictive draining micromanagy and willpower approach with food set, a couple of words there that are not really words, but you get what I’m saying here. This is why you have the mindset you do, and your dismissing the work as not important because you’re having a relationship to this work that it’s going to require so much more from you than is actually necessary.
Learning to eat healthy. Simply requires you to have control with food.
So this is the skill that you need to create. That is what I teach control with food. Doesn’t come from doing more. It does not come from hustle. It does not come from over-planning. It actually comes from doing less. When you do more to control food, it’s because you don’t believe you have it, right? You’re doing more to compensate for your lack of belief in yourself, which means you will continue to not have it.
Because if you don’t believe you have it, you will act as such, right? You will. Self-sabotage emotionally. This will feel really terrible for you. When you’re able to create self trust and believe you have control. You’re able to eat healthy by doing less, because you know, you have control with food. That’s becoming someone who knows. They have this control with food, no matter the circumstances in their lives, this is possible for you to do this foundational work.
You can’t dismiss this work. You can’t dismiss solving for your food struggles and you can’t make it unimportant. It makes complete sense why you may be doing the smell for all of us, but it’s just based on a false belief that changing your eating habits is going to require all of you in a way that will take away from all of the things in your life that matter to you.
And it’s not true when you’re doing this work in a way that is longterm and in a way that serves you. So with all of that, I’m hoping this makes sense. I want you to consider why is this work? Removing your food struggles, the most important change you can make in your life right now. So we’re not saying other things are affected by this.
We’re not saying all of the other things that matter to you go on a back burner.
That’s not necessary. Let’s just say those things will be taken care of. Regardless. You will still show up for your kids. You will still work on your relationships and you will still give what is necessary at work. None of those things will be negatively impacted. So if we know that separately from all of that, why is this the most important work you can do for yourself now? So similar to before I recommend just listing those reasons.
And if you need to pause this episode for five minutes, set a timer and allow yourself to intentionally go here in your mind because your brain isn’t going to want to, I know our brains what’s going to happen is there’s going to be many people listening to this episode. That’s like, yeah, that makes sense. Doing that would be very useful. I can see why that is. And then we never do it and take ourselves to this place in our mind because where our brain wants to live is blaming our circumstances for why we’re not doing this work.
So then we never have to take action on it and we keep ourselves stuck. So that list I offered you to create earlier in the episode of why this is not a priority that will have come very easily to you. If I were to write that list in my past, I could write a book seriously. It would be so easy. This list I’m telling you to right now of why this is the most important thing you’re going to have to dig because the brain does not want to go here intentionally.
That is not problem. And that shows us where our growth is. So knowing that and knowing how we operate as humans, if you sat down with these reasons, think about what would be different. If you stopped struggling with food for the rest of your life, really take this question in and consider it.
As in, you would never struggle with eating healthy again. You would never come home from work and feel like you’re overcome by stress and emotional eating patterns. You would never regret coming home from a vacation, having enjoyed the meals you ate, you would never have to give up foods. You will loved to get the results with your body that you want. You would be able to enjoy food deeply without losing control with it, or you’d even be an example to your children, future children, or loved ones.
What it can look like to have a healthy relationship with food for most of you, the impact is going to be the fact that this is just no longer a problem in your life. It no longer takes up brain space. What would you do with all of that available brain space? Once you have salt for this part of your life, for your food struggles, you know, what’s interesting.
You would then have more brain space to put towards all of the other circumstances that you care about in your life. The same circumstances, your believing are keeping you stuck from the changes with food that you want to make, because they’re just more important than making these changes. So what I’m really saying is that solving for your food struggles directly and positively contributes to your ability to show up to everything else in your life.
Now, I’m sitting here telling you this from certainty, having taken so many clients to this result, but I want you to consider for you very personally, how could this be true for you? What would be the impact of this work on your life? Even just control with food, having everything you eat, feel like a conscious decision. What would that make possible?
So be willing to spend time there and dig there intentionally with your brain, because this will really serve you in of the mindset that’s necessary to get this results.
You do not have to dismiss this work. You can make it the most important without it taking away from everything else in your life, without you feeling miserable and burnt out with it. It’s actually not one or the other. It’s not doing this work or succeeding and showing up for everything else that matters to you. It’s solving for your food struggles for life and everything else gets better.
As a result. I truly believe to my very core that solving for your food struggles permanently, especially as women in the way we talk about here is some of the most underrated work we can do with ourselves. Most people will only see solving this problem, solving for your food struggles as eating different foods, having a different number on the scale.
That’s it. That’s how I used to see it in the past. It was a bit surface level, right?
Because I hadn’t created that impact and transformation in my life. Yet the result you can expect is so much more than that when we stop dismissing this work. And that’s what I want you to see the possibility of now, if you’re willing to go deeper, what else would change in your life? If you solved for your food struggles and had control with food to actually prioritize this work and create this result that you are 100% capable of creating.
Now, you will need to see the impact of this work as deeper. So the more time you spend exploring the deeper changes you can make with this work, the more impactful it will be for you. It is everything. All right? So I hope this was valuable to you. If you spend time with the questions I offered you in today’s episode, I would love to hear what came up for you.
You can find me on Instagram at @KatRentas. That’s where I always love to connect with you and hear how it’s going. All right. I hope you have a fantastic rest of your week and I’ll talk to you next week.
Hey there! I'm Kat Rentas. I’m a certified life and health coach for women who believes that eating healthy should feel simple and sustainable. I teach hundreds of high-performing women to change their eating habits without the overwhelm. Want to change your eating habits in a way that is aligned with your needs, preferences, and goals? You’re in the right place. You can read my full story here.