Lose Weight Permanently
You’ve spent excessive amounts of time, energy, and resources attempting to eat healthy and lose weight.
Needless to say, you’re spent. You’re ready to move on from that approach. I’m here to teach you how.
In this hour masterclass, you’ll learn what’s preventing you from creating the weight loss you want, along with what’s necessary to solve for healthy eating and weight loss for the very last time.
FREE MASTERCLASS
without tracking and planning
Jun 10
How To Enjoy Food More Without Overeating
Want to enjoy the foods you love without the guilt of overeating? The key is understanding that finding pleasure in the foods you love and overindulging are two separate concepts.
In this episode, I’m exploring how you can enjoy your meals without overindulging and sacrificing your weight goals.
You’ll learn:
→ Common misconceptions from diet culture about finding pleasure in food
→ How distinguishing between eating for taste and eating for emotional comfort can drastically change the way you eat
→ The key differences between an urgent and non-urgent relationship to foods you love
→ Practical steps to start enjoying your food more deliberately, without sacrificing your weight loss goals
Turns out, you don’t have to give up optimal enjoyment with your favorite foods to reach your ideal weight.
In fact, it’s necessary you master the skill of prioritizing food pleasure to do so.
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Podcasts | Stitcher | RSS
Here are some extra resources to go along with this episode:
- Weight Loss Without Tracking (podcast)
- People Pleasing Eating (podcast)
- Stop Overeating (free course)
- Own Your Eating Habits (coaching)
Episode Transcript
Hello, my friends. Welcome back to the podcast this week. So today I’m really excited to support you with the topic of how you can enjoy food more without overeating. And this to me is a really fun part about what I teach in my coaching practice. I am able to teach. women how to enjoy food more than they ever have in their lives without overeating so they can also lose weight.
And for those of you who are listening, if you’re new to me or if this concept feels a little inaccessible, I really want you to hear me out today because my goal for you, if you walk away with anything from today’s episode is just to get an eye on what’s possible with healthy eating. For many of us, when we approach the topic of healthy eating or weight loss, we think that we will have to push force, discipline, willpower ourselves to [00:01:00] the weight loss we want.
And my mission is for all of you to start picking apart that mentality. So you can see that creating weight loss can bring in more ease for you, more enjoyment, more satisfaction with food. And this concept today is a big part of that. So first off, I think I just want you to let this concept sink in before we get into the tactical piece.
I just want you to picture this reality where. You enjoy food even more without overeating, okay? So what this means is that when you cook a dinner or you go out to eat or you’re eating a snack in the middle of the day at work, what does it look like to enjoy that experience more without overeating the food?
in those moments. Really just think about that. And the most common misconceptions that I [00:02:00] hear about this, which makes total sense, right? Is that to enjoy food is to overeat. So a lot of us are thinking that those things are one in the same. And the reason why we misinterpret this is for a lot of us, we’re eating in a reactive way and in response to our Stress to our emotions.
So what that normally looks like when we’re struggling with this is we wake up in the morning and then we go throughout the day and we kind of just eat in response to our stress. We’re not really being intentional about it. And then by the end of the day, we’ll know we don’t feel satisfied with the food, and it doesn’t feel healthy.
Now. So to you, you might think that comfort eating is enjoyment with food, right? So when you get home from a long day at work and You order your favorite fast food from DoorDash and then you comfort eat it on the couch. You might think that that is what [00:03:00] enjoying food is. And what I want to help break down for you today is that that is not food enjoyment.
That is comforting yourself with food. And there is nothing inherently wrong with this. There is no moral police with eating, it is okay to find comfort in your meals, but I want to help you unpack that that is not how we will be defining food enjoyment in this episode today. So to enjoy food is not to overeat it.
In fact, when you’re overeating is oftentimes when you’re rushing through your meals, you’re focused on filling up with that food as quick as possible, and you’re not really even experiencing the foods you’re eating much at all so I know for me this was the case with a lot of my Favorite foods that I actually do find genuine pleasure in but I would just focus on getting more of those foods rather than
So for me, those would have been cheese, [00:04:00] chocolate, all the good stuff. So for you, just know that there’s going to be that difference. Now, to help simplify this, I want you to know that there are two reasons to eat a food you find pleasurable. So think about your favorite foods that you find the most yummy.
There are two reasons to eat those foods. The taste, Versus the emotional comfort. Okay. So let’s talk about the taste. The taste is the experience of that food when it enters your mouth. And I know this sounds quite silly, but it’s the textures, it’s the taste, it’s
That experience of having that one bite of that food at a time. And the pleasure meter with those foods can be filled. There is a point where you will feel like you’ve had enough of the experience of that food, even if it’s just one bite. [00:05:00] Now, pleasure with food, Where it’s all about the eating experience of each bite is not urgent.
It’s very present. It’s not focused on filling up with that food. It’s just focused on the sensations. Emotional comfort, on the other hand, with these foods, is a meter that cannot be filled indefinitely. It’s always focused on consuming more. It’s urgent. And this is when we will eat these foods to the point where we do not feel good in our body.
Okay, so taste or pleasure is neutral, and it’s a meter that can be filled with even just one bite where we really experience the foods, and emotional comfort is urgent, and it cannot be indefinitely filled because we will always want to fill up with more. So, how we enjoy food is important.
Even more without overeating it is we shift the focus with the yummy foods from urgent emotional [00:06:00] comfort to neutral pleasure, okay? And this is what my clients learn to master, where how We make this shift as we learn how to create emotional regulation, release, and comfort Separately from food. So right now if you find you’re doing a lot of comfort eating This doesn’t mean you’re addicted to food.
It is not personal It is actually by design if you are not regulating your stress or emotions Because the most readily available source of comfort for any human is is food. It is something we need to survive. It is something that is extremely primal to crave. And when you find yourself emotionally eating, this is just your body providing stress regulation when you are not filling that need.
Right? So what we want to help you do is to regulate stress and to fill that need separately from the food you’re eating. So you do not have a reactive [00:07:00] relationship to food. That is the first thing that needs to happen. Now, if you’ve listened to this podcast or you have entered my programs, you’ll know that there is.
other learning associated with this. But in general, when you think about fulfilling your emotional needs separately from food, it comes down to just being aware. When we think about being emotionally aware, that just means you have moments where you genuinely check in and see how you’re doing. You see emotionally what you’re feeling.
Rather than assuming you’re addicted to foods or that you really just love these pleasurable foods that you’re craving. This can even mean when you finish a work day and in that moment you really just crave those sweet or savory foods from your favorite fast food chain. Instead of assuming that you really, really just want the foods and going with that train of thought, lean back and ask yourself, okay, what is actually present for me emotionally in my body?
What is feeling really, really urgent [00:08:00] right now that I want to fill with food? And this is a practice y’all, but I just want you to consider it can do so much to even separate emotional urgency you experience in your body from the from the food decisions you want to make and knowing that those can be separate.
So just know that how to enjoy food without overeating. We first want to begin lowering the urgency you have towards pleasurable foods. And that comes from emotional awareness and just checking in on that. As a practice in your life that is going to help you lower this urgency with the foods you find yummy and it will lower the cravings.
Now once we have done that, this is how this works. You’ve lowered your cravings. You’ve lowered your emotional urgency with food. Now you can have that capacity to see pleasure as food. neutral. So now if you have lower cravings, you have separated [00:09:00] emotional stress from eating decisions, then we think about the foods we find yummy, we no longer have a dependency on them, and now we can just ask ourselves, why eat this at all?
And the answer to that will be what experience you want to have with the food. So this is where, after all of the emotional regulation and those skills in my process, clients learn how to just enjoy food. neutrally. So this is when they can order a dessert at a restaurant and they don’t need the dessert and they’re not dependent off of it, but they just want to experience the different tastes.
So for some women, what that means is they go and they have a few bites of that dessert, let’s say as an example, but they’re really, really focused on slowing down and experiencing the tastes, the textures, of that dessert or whatever food it is. Now, really so much of this [00:10:00] comes down to slowing down during your meals.
You cannot enjoy food more without being present with the experience of the foods you’re eating. So many of us in our culture are not doing this. We really prize hustle in our society. We are not taught to check in on our human needs, and this doesn’t have to take a lot of time or effort. It can just mean that when you’re eating your food, slow down and prioritize actually experiencing the tastes and the textures of what you’re eating.
What this is going to help you do is it’s going to train your nervous system to regulate your stress while you’re eating. It’s going to digest what you’re eating better, and it’s going to allow you to fill that pleasure meter day to day with your eating experiences. And that can help lower your urgency with food as well.
Making it a practice to enjoy food more from neutral pleasure is one of the [00:11:00] most tactically effective things you can do with your weight loss, and so many of us have not prioritized this skill because we equate enjoying food with overindulging, and that is just not the case. It is actually the opposite.
When you learn how to regulate your stress, lower the urgency with food, and you do this work, then you have the opportunity to experience enjoyment and pleasure with food in a more controlled and neutral way. Now, the results my clients end up creating with this is so fun to watch because they’re losing weight and they’re creating the result, but they’re enjoying food more than they ever have before and it’s really, really fun to watch them blow their own minds And so I want you to just consider what that would look like for you.
What would it look like for you if you started separating the concepts of urgent emotional comfort with food from Slow, neutral [00:12:00] pleasure with food. What will your own version of healthy eating and having your weight loss goal look like where you enjoy food more than you ever have before without overeating it?
That is the result you can expect when you solve for your weight loss goal. naturally healthy eating and you lose weight for the last time. If you want to take this work to the next level, be sure to head on over to catrentis. com forward slash coaching, and you can learn more about entering one of my programs or the resources we have there.
Otherwise, I hope this was helpful for you guys today, just to give you a new perspective on What this area of your life can look like if you do that foundational work. All right, my friends. I hope you have a really great rest of your week and I’ll talk to you next week.
Ready to take this work to the deepest level?
own your
EATING HABITS
The Program
The exclusive coaching program for high-achieving women who want to eat naturally healthy – without restriction, effort, or willpower – so they can better focus on the things in life that matter to them most.
Kat Rentas, Healthy Eating Coach
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.
