Hello, my dear friends. How are you doing this week? Welcome back to the healthy eating for busy women podcast. I am your host, kat, and i’m thrilled that we are here together today.I am very looking forward to today’s topic because this is something that, it might as usual in these episodes, it might call you out a little bit with love, but when you can really understand the concept of today’s episode, it is going to clear so much up for you.It’s gonna provide so much relief and it is just going to add so much to your life if you really put into practice what i’m gonna talk about today. So make sure you are in a place where you can listen and really internalize what i’m going to walk through today. And let’s just get right into it.And the concept of today is going to be fulfillment and in food, right? And this is something that comes up very often in my membership with my women as they’re creating […0.7s] transformation. And, something i am very big on personally as i am such a foodie and this is something that was such a non negotiable for me when i was really […0.5s] experimenting and figuring out how to make this work for myself, how i could reach my ideal weight and have the body i wanted and the health i wanted. And, i really could eat well and still have fun with food. And i tell y’all, every so often i am that person at a restaurant who is just the most indulgent with food at the table. And this is very […0.6s] deliberate on my part. It doesn’t mean i’m emotionally eating or overeating. It means i really go deep with the eating experience, which might sound a little strange if this is your first time with me, welcome, haha. But i, enjoy my eating experiences very deeply. And so […0.5s] i want you to know this so you can hear what i’m about to say today through the correct […0.5s] lens because a lot of the time what happens is […0.5s] you will have […0.6s] this perspective […0.5s] of a weight loss goal or a healthy eating goal of what will i have to give up to accomplish this with food? What am i gonna have to, no longer enjoy? What am i gonna have to feel deprived with? And a lot of you really struggle because you have experiences with food that bring you joy, right? Whether it’s the holidays and outing with your friends, eating with the family doesn’t matter.And where a struggle can come in is a lot of you love to have these moments with friends yourself and you think that you cannot have these moments when you decide to make this change.And when i talk about eating healthy naturally, right? It’s getting you out of this all or nothing relationship with food. So chances are if you are struggling to eat healthy consistently to a point where you can have the results you want, you are participating in an all or nothing relationship to food. And this is not your fault.This is something that is very easy to fall into. And what can happen with an all or nothing relationship with food is you will feel like food is something that you need to fulfill you in your life, or you view it as something that you have to give up all together in terms of the fun with it, right?So let’s just even sit there for a moment, notice that where food either feels like a reward that you have to center yourselves around almost to feel fulfilled in your life, or you view it almost like a punishment when you tell yourselves you can’t have a certain experience.Do you know what i mean? It’s really this all or nothing where we feel dependent on the fulfillment with it, or we feel like we’re being punished for not having that fulfillment. Does that make sense?And i want you guys to notice how this perspective of reward and punishment with food, it’s so childlike, right? And, you already know if you’re a listener of my podcast, this is not to infantilize us or, disrespect ourselves, right, or patronize ourselves.It is a childlike manner of thinking that we will all have because our survival brain is childlike by nature. It just wants to avoid pain, be comfortable. That is its functionality.So this area of our brain that sees food in this reward, or punishment mentality […0.6s] is the way a child would see this. And i think about, when a child first taste ice cream, right?And […0.5s] in that moment, let’s consider ice cream is their whole world. So for me, this was like mac and cheese and chocolate when i was a kid. I don’t know what it was for you, but just think back, right, that food that it is so good and the dopamine is so high that it becomes your center when you are young.And then as the child, what they might say cause they don’t understand is i just wanna have this everyday. I love ice cream. I love it, it loves me. Like i love it so much.And as the parents, we wanna educate them in this moment, right? And a lot of us just didn’t get this education. What we would wanna do is educate them and say, ice cream is to be loved, it is really fun, but only in moments where it makes sense right? In a way that doesn’t take away from your health and your well being. But a child doesn’t have this context because they’re not supposed to.And what a child has is the lens of all or nothing where they’re allowed to have the ice cream and fill up with it from that place of gotta have it or they’re being punished for not having it, right?Cause […0.6s] the child in that moment probably doesn’t wanna hear, you can’t have it all the time. They might have a little bit of a tantrum.My brain does too, sometimes. So notice this, because what the mature middle ground that a child isn’t gonna understand is that having pleasure with food […0.6s] is perfectly healthy. And, having pleasure with ice cream when the time calls for it is perfectly healthy in this example, but needing that food to feel fulfilled where we’ve gotta have a certain amount to feel, okay, […0.6s] isn’t, and what we would know about that child in that scenario is they feel like in that moment that they need that dopamine and that fulfillment from that ice cream in order to feel, okay. Does this make sense?So again, we’re not infantilizing ourselves. It just helps us understand how the brain […0.5s] functions.And here’s the thing, […0.6s] and i want you guys to hear me. We do not need whatever food it is, to feel fulfilled in our lives. So we do not need fulfillment in food. This was never how it was supposed to be. However, […0.6s] we […0.5s] want to enjoy eating experiences, we want to incorporate time with foods that we find pleasurable. But the key to remember here that we’ve got to get you is that we don’t need those foods. And if you feel like you need those foods right now, welcome. Nothing is wrong. That just means that there’s some stress regulation work and some healing that we’ve got to do, which is what i teach. So if that’s something that you’re noticing, highly recommend my membership.Get inside link is in the description. We’ll take care of you. Now we […0.6s] want to have pleasure with food, but we don’t wanna feel attached to them in this desperate way.And this is to offer where it serves our perspective together here that eating was never meant to be an area of fulfillment. Eating wasn’t meant to be a hobby that we used to fill […0.5s] emotional gaps in our spirit, in our persona.That is where stuff gets complicated and where it feels […0.5s] like it’s harder to create the results we want because we start to feel dependent.And this is gonna sound really cheesy, but just hear me out, cause this is a question i used to ask my clients all the time. And every now and then it does come up in our space because it’s […0.5s] really introspective and allows you to see where you’re at.I want you to ask yourself, what are you really hungry for when you notice you’re attached to getting more of a certain food.Okay, so for example, let’s think back to this analogy with this little child, right, where they feel like they need to have more ice cream cause they love it so much and they wanna have more.What is that child really hungry for? Cause this child has not learned how to regulate emotions and incorporate actual fulfilment in their lives. So maybe that child is actually hungry for safety, or they’re actually hungry for connection or fun.But if we bring it back to adulthood, what i want you to consider […0.5s] is what are you really hungry for, and what desires in life is food replacing right now emotionally for you. So what gaps are you experiencing that you are using food to fill?And first off, sometimes when we hear this question, it’s like, dang cat. Way to call me out. I get it. But what i want you to know is this behavior is the most natural thing in the world.Our brain loves to use the comfort from food to solve emotional problems because it’s entirely primitive. And it doesn’t mean something’s gone wrong. We just want to learn how to work with this part of our brain to have the results we want.So if you’re noticing that you are using food and fulfillment in food to fill other gaps, […0.5s] no shame. But we’ve gotta establish what’s happening here. Because when you think about what gaps you are using food to fill, here’s the most common ones i see. Maybe you’re using food to fill the gap of connection, […0.5s] right?Creativity, […0.6s] success, accomplishment, novelty, […0.6s] intimacy, friendship, fun, peace, play, joy, […0.6s] love.Do you see what i’m getting out here? Do you see what i’m saying when i talk about deeper emotional areas of fulfillment, and food or anything else that’s externally comforting is not going to fulfill us, right?When we think about fulfillment, it has to do with our personality, our preferences, our interests, our spirit for those of you, who that aligns with you, […0.5s] right? Food or anything external is just a temporary solve.That doesn’t really get to the root. And here’s why this is great news. I promise this is great news is when you are honest with the gaps in fulfillment that you’re not filling in a healthy way, your life has the opportunity to get so much richer right now.So for example, right for me, a lot of these things came up, but one really big one for me was, friendship. There was a time when it was friendship, right? And i, […0.5s] really almost prided myself and being very independent, and, i just do my own thing.And i have friends, but not really a circle of friends or community around me that i felt close to. And i really noticed this in terms of me filling up with food […0.6s] to feel fulfilled.And when i really took a step back and evaluated, i really wanted more friendships. I wanted more connection and community. And i let myself be so honest about that, and all it took was for me to say, oh, […0.6s] so now that i’m honest about this, i’m gonna go do something about it. And that’s exactly what i did.You guys, i just went out and i started building a community. I was open to new relationships, and that solved so much emotionally at filled back gap now. It doesn’t mean that we are fixable as humans, but this is such a good way […0.6s] to improve your life very quickly.Because there are things that food and us having all this fulfillment and attachment to food, it will be guiding us away from the areas of fulfillment that really matter. So some scenarios where this can come up, and these are just random examples.So this is when […0.6s] we […0.6s] eat foods for the pleasure of them and not to fill up with them because of a deeper emotional area of, so this is why when we eat foods for the pleasure of them and to not fill up with them because of a deeper emotional need, we can eat less.So i’m gonna say that again. This is why when you just eat foods for the pleasure and the experience, and you’re not eating them because of that deeper area […0.7s] of fulfillment, that emotional need, […0.5s] you will eat less. Okay, you will eat more if you need food to fulfill you, because you can never get enough of it.And this just shows that food was not meant to fulfill us or fill us up in this way emotionally. That comes from somewhere else, that comes from something deeper.And when you are in this place where you are fulfilling areas of your life without food, you will stop being so concerned with how much of food you get to have. So if a client comes to me which we all start here, right? And they’re like, but how much will i have to give up?When you are in a place where you are feeling fulfilled separately from food because we’re actually prioritizing those areas, this isn’t even a question you’re gonna have. You’re not even gonna feel like you need more of that food in order to be okay.This shows that there is attachment there in a dependency, right? And […0.6s] you will not fear not being able to have the foods anymore. Your brain is not gonna negotiate with you and think that you have to get more of it. And you won’t feel like you have to make sure you get in those treats because you’re filling up in ways that actually make you […0.5s] feel full.So this is a deeper concept, but what i really want you to understand today is that all of the ways in which you struggle to eat healthy and lose weight long term doesn’t have to do with you just needing to get it together, finding a new plan or just […0.5s] tracking correctly. And all of these external type a things outside of you.I know you’re really good at those things, but that’s not why inconsistency. Is happening.What’s happening is there is a deeper relationship that you are having to food right now that we need to adjust, because that is not the relationship and attachment that’s gonna get you where you wanna go.We’ve gotta do deeper healing work, and this doesn’t mean it’s complicated or scary. It just means the direction and the focus is different.Alright, so i always say this for y’all who join my membership. You are gonna understand the concept simply. You’re gonna see results quickly, and it’s gonna feel relatively easy to include into your life, no matter how quote unquote busy you are. It’s just gonna be a different focus, and that’s what needs to happen.[…0.6s] So this is what i wanna offer you today. I really want you to start noticing the areas of your life that are food centered fulfillment.So where it really is about the food. It’s not really even about you […0.6s] cooking dinner with your family, right? Or eating your aunt or grandmother’s recipe over the holidays because it feels special. It actually is about you being attached to the food in that moment.And this is okay, but i want you to notice very sneakily from your brain where it’s actually about filling up with the sweets and not the connection with the people. So maybe it’s going out to a celebration with your friend and socializing, noticing that it’s more about […0.5s] the food or the drinks and not the connection with your friend, right?Even if it’s lounging after on the couch after the kids have gone to bed, notice how it’s more about filling up with the food than fully relaxing or maybe finding a new show that you would really enjoy and that captivates you. Do you see what i mean?It’s very sneaky. And if this feels like, oh my gosh, cat, but i’m so attached.I feel like i can never get over this, my love, that is totally normal. And i know it can feel overwhelming seeing this, but just because this is an emotional problem and something that you may not have solved yet, doesn’t mean it’s complicated. It can be solved very simply and effectively.So once again, y’all, i cannot say it enough. If you are not in own your eating habits yet, get your booty in there. It will change your life. It will change your eating habits, and you’ll be supported every step of the way by myself.And the other women […0.6s] from around the world participating in the same work that you will be participating in. So if you’re interested, go to cat run to stock.Com forward slash membership, get inside today, start today. I love you all so much. I hope you got value from today’s episode, and i will talk to you soon.