Hello, my friends. Welcome back to the podcast this week. As usual, I am so happy that you are here. I know it is mid-December, so we are in the midst of the holiday season and I know that is a hectic time for so many of us. So I’m so appreciative that you’re here spending time with me, maybe taking some time for yourself, and I wanna support you today. And the episode topic for today is quick fix, healthy eating. So I wanna talk all about the concept of quick fix solutions and we’re just going to give you some perspective on this today.
I always like to say I’m not in the business of telling you the right way and the wrong way for you to make food decisions and eat healthy. That is your business, but my job is to help you find your way. And so we’re going to talk about the concept of more quick fix methods of healthy eating compared to long-term methods.
But before we get into that, I have three brief announcements if you will, and they’re very brief. So first off, if you want to get the most from me, other than this podcast, I don’t talk about this a lot here, but you can go follow me on Instagram. I’m always posting on there and I love to connect with you all in this more personal way. The podcast is lovely. I love the community we have here, but sometimes it hits me that you can all just hear my voice and on Instagram I can talk to you all a little more kind of face-to-face on stories and on reels and whatever else I have available there.
So if you want to follow me, you can find me at @KatRentas on Instagram, and then also if you want to get regular updates from me and even more value, you can join my email list.
So you can go to KatRentas.com/subscribe and get on my list so you get access to even more value and even more updates. The last announcement I have is my one-on-one coaching program Own Your Eating Habits is open for enrollment for January. So 2023 spots are now available by application. So if you’ve been waiting to join on your eating habits and you wanna capitalize on that motivation of the new year, I always offer you to enroll now and apply.
Now, the motivation of the the new year is powerful for all of us. I always notice that women who join this program in the new year have this all inness when they join the program that is just so available at the beginning of a new year. So if you’ve been waiting to join and you want to make 2022 the last year you struggle with food and weight, I highly offer that you join us now.
So you can reserve your spot for January by going to KatRentas.com/coaching. Alright, so let’s get into today’s episode. And a question I get all of the time because it’s a really valid question, is quick fix methods can work for weight loss, right? Most of us have done it, we have lost the weight using quick fix methods, but we can acknowledge that that approach may not work long term, but if it works short term, then why not just do that for an upcoming event or when we feel like we need to lose the weight quickly?
And this is a really valid question and how I always answer it is it’s totally up to you. You can lose weight quickly and with a more quick fix method if you wish. But I want you to have all of the information ahead of time because I always want to make clear that there are no moral decisions when it comes to food or your body.
It always gets to be your choice. So whether you choose a short-term method or a long-term method, it doesn’t make you a better person, it doesn’t make you more morally sound, and it doesn’t mean you are good or you’re bad In choosing either method, I just want you to have all of the information so you can make an informed decision as to whether you want to engage with a quick fix solution for weight loss or whether you really want to commit to a more long-term approach.
And first off, we really want to acknowledge for all of us humans why we are so attracted to short-term solutions and quick fixes. And we’re not just talking about weight loss or healthy eating, we’re talking about every aspect of our lives and why we feel attracted to quick fixes are because we love dopamine hits. So we love that dopamine hit we get when we get instant gratification, right?
And as a society, we are used to getting more and more access and addicted to instant gratification. It is always available. All we have to do is turn on Netflix, scroll our phone, whatever it is, order on Amazon Prime. We have instant gratification available to us everywhere. And it really is fascinating how as a society we are so driven by our need and our want for those instant dopamine hits.
And I wanna be clear, it’s not because we’re immoral as humans or because we’re entitled or spoiled, we don’t have to judge ourselves for this. It’s because over time the humans have become less and less practiced at feeling our emotions. And I’ll say that again, why we are so attached to instant gratification is because as humans we have become less and less practiced at feeling our emotions.
Now here’s the thing, we don’t need to judge ourselves for this because all of us have some level of this where we feel attached to the quick fix dopamine hits.
But the hangup here is that we want to be able to be humans that can regulate ourselves emotionally because when we’re addicted to the quick fix dopamine hits and the instant gratifications, we’re going to become emotionally suppressed and we’re going to emotionally become backed up, or we’re not regulating our feelings or even having awareness of our feelings at all. And if you don’t have awareness of yourself emotionally, what will happen is it will show up in how you act, how you take action.
And in the context of this podcast, it’s going to show up in how you eat, how you overeat, how you unconsciously eat. For those of you who feel like that you’re not really clear on why you eat the way you eat, and it all just feels a bit unconscious, we’ve all been there. It’s because you are not having awareness of yourself emotionally.
And this does not mean anything is wrong with you at all. As humans in modern day society, we are not taught to prioritize identifying, accessing and regulating our emotions. It’s not something we’re taught. And so that is what I just want to offer you here for your perspective is why we are attached to quick fix methods and we’re attached to instant gratification is because we want those quick dopamine hits to constantly feel better because as time goes on, we develop a less and less tolerance to our emotions.
And this is something that we want to be really mindful of because as humans, we don’t want to rely on the dopamine hits from instant gratification to get us by because it’s going to feel really emotionally suppressed and we’re not going to be able to create the results we want with food and with body. So with this perspective, what we can see here is that when you are really attached to quick fix methods, you’re actually not urgently attached to quick weight loss, right?
Although that’s how it presents on the surface, that’s actually not what you are attached to emotionally. You want to feel better emotionally. So you want the dopamine hit of changing the circumstances of your body in order to not feel your humanness. So it’s the same thing as if we feel that urgency to scroll on social media. I’ve had this too. Or if we feel that urgency to just cuddle up and watch a show on Netflix when we get home from work, we’re not wrong for these things, but we want to know why we’re doing them.
It’s not about us loving the Netflix, it’s not about us being attached to social media. We just want those quick dopamine hits to dissociate from ourselves emotionally based on how we’re feeling. So just picture that and I offer, just take a moment to think about your day-to-day life because we all do this.
Think about how you show up throughout your day and at what points do you feel compelled to dissociate from your body emotionally. And that’s when you feel the most urgency to engage with the dopamine hits. And you can consider what are your dopamine hits. So if you are listening, one of your dopamine hits may be comfort foods or overeating, or it even may be scrolling social media. It could be binge watching your favorite show on Netflix. But just to create this level of awareness with ourselves that why we’re doing this isn’t because we’re attached to the thing.
It’s because we’re attached to getting a dopamine hit and escaping our emotions in that moment. So this is a manner of being that we all have. And because of this manner of being and it becomes how we operate, what will happen is that we have a brain that is trained to think that how we feel better is with quick results in instant gratification.
The quick dopamine hits, right? We don’t see that short-term solutions bring short-term happiness. So think about binge watching Netflix or scrolling social media or overeating and unconsciously eating your favorite comfort foods. Those are not things you likely want to be doing or things that fulfill you long-term, although there’s nothing wrong with these things. But these aren’t things that your deliberate self wants to be doing. It brings you short-term comfort.
But because we have engaged with the world in this way for so long, your brain always wants to seek comfort. So it’s going to compel you to move towards solutions that will give you access to short-term comfort. See what I mean? And so we want to be able to separate short-term comfort from long-term fulfillment that actually creates the results we want. And it’s important to understand that losing weight will create short-term comfort for you.
So you can think about if you woke up tomorrow at your goal weight and that was the result you had, you would have the dopamine hit of having that body and having that number on the scale. But it is short-lived because dopamine hits don’t last. Our dopamine levels will go down and you will have to be with whatever human experience you are using weight loss to compensate for, you will have to be with whatever experience you are using social media or overeating or Netflix to escape.
And we want to stop choosing our methods based on ourselves wanting to escape ourselves emotionally. This is why the results you want don’t last. If you lose weight from wanting to feel better emotionally because you have an intolerance to your own humanness, then you’re gonna lose the weight and you don’t stop being a human and you will have not learned to tolerate your humanness and lose weight.
See what I’m saying here? The solution is to learn how to have a fulfilled lifelong experience of eating and having a body that inevitably allows you to lose weight. Because weight loss isn’t what creates long-term fulfillment, right? That creates the dopamine hint. It’s important to know that short-term solutions bring short-term comfort. And what we’re looking for is long-term fulfillment, right? And so when we’re referring to long-term fulfillment, the weight loss isn’t actually what creates that.
It’s learning to have a fulfilling and enjoyable lifelong experience of healthy eating and having a body. So when you do this, it inevitably leads to the weight loss results you want, but you know that the purpose of doing that work isn’t because you need the weight loss to make you happier. So it’s the version of yourself that you become in creating the inevitable weight loss. It’s not the end result in the weight loss that creates fulfillment.
That’s what creates short-term instant gratification. Make sense? Alright, so that’s some perspective I wanted to offer you first, and then just for your awareness. Once again, you can make whatever decision you wish with food and body, but I want you to really understand the long-term side effects of resorting to quick fix methods with food and weight loss. So these are the things I want you to know. The first side effect I want you to keep in mind is when you engage with quick fix methods, you end up providing further evidence to your mind that long-term results with food and body aren’t possible for you, and that’s likely the place you’re in.
Now if you are listening to this podcast or you’re struggling with food or you have failed to lose the weight long term, all of us have been here, right? So many of us have struggled with this, but it’s important to understand that if you keep engaging with the quick fixes, you’re not helping yourself grow out of this mindset that you’re not capable, you end up further providing evidence to yourself that the long-term results you want aren’t possible for you.
And we don’t wanna dig ourselves deeper into that belief system. So what that means is when you do decide that you want to change your eating habits permanently and lose the weight permanently, you’re going to have more unlearning and healing to do. That’s going to need to happen internally. And my clients, when they come to me, for example, they come to me knowing that they want these results to be long-term and permanent, and they want to have the skills to become someone who naturally eats healthy without having to use a quick fix.
They want to become that person, right? So you can picture if that is a result you want, we don’t want to create more internal work for you to do when that time comes and you make that decision because the relationship to the changes you want to make matters. And if you come into wanting to create long-term changes believing that they’re not possible for you, then that’s going to matter and that’s going to be emotionally work you have to do before the long-term changes are available to you, right?
So we don’t wanna provide further evidence to your brain that long-term results are not possible because they are. But your beliefs about that really do matter. Okay? So the second long-term side effects of resorting to quick fix methods is that restrictive short-term methods with food and weight loss means higher stress on your body. So this is physiologically what I want you to understand about this, because these are things when I was struggling with dieting, no one talked about, I had no idea, and I ended up creating a lot of stress on my body when it came to losing weight.
When you restrict and you micromanage food in this heightened way, you further put your body into a stress state with food. And what happens is it will increase your cravings, you will retain weight, and you’ll have a host of other symptoms that actually will work against your long-term goals.
So I work with a lot of women who come to me telling me that they’ve been really, really trying to lose weight and the scale isn’t budging right? And they think that there’s something wrong with them, that they don’t have enough willpower or that their body is working against them. And neither one of these things are true. They do not need more willpower and their body isn’t working against them. What’s happening is that they’re restricting so much and creating a stress response with food and with weight loss.
So their body is going into lockdown mode. It’s going into survival mode. And what does the body do in survival mode? Primi, right? It increases your cravings because it wants to get access to food for you to survive. It retains weight because it wants to store energy in case there’s a famine that’s going to occur.
And listen, I know this sounds a little crazy because we’re far out of the primitive times of being human beings, but our brains and our bodies still work in relatively the same way. And so when you stress your body to the weight loss you want by using quick fix methods, your body will respond in a stress state manner. And that is something we want to avoid because to make the long-term changes you want to make, you can’t work against your body.
You have to work with it. And so we don’t want to set you up for weight retention and higher cravings. We want you to learn how to work with your body long-term, okay? So that’s very, very important. The third long-term side effect I want you to consider is that when you fall off track with the quick fix method and it stops being sustainable, you are actually going to increase your attachment and your desire for the quick fix.
So this is a recurring emotional cycle. It’s kind of like a toxic relationship, I think, right? The more we try and fail with the short term methods and the quick fix methods, the more we want them to work because it increases our attachment and our desire. You will want the quick fixes to more desperately work the more you fail them. And we want you to leave this toxic relationship with food and your body.
Think of this like an intervention that I’m offering you as your best friend in the world, and we want you to begin having an emotionally sustainable experience of food and of weight loss. Think about this like up-leveling to a more mature and stable relationship. It may not feel as quote unquote exciting or tumultuous, but you end up feeling stable in the process of healthy eating and weight loss, which this is why you need to have that experience because you are going to be an eater and have a body for the rest of your life that does not stop my friend.
So you need to consider the manner in which you’re eating healthy and the manner in which you’re looking to lose weight or maintain weight. If it’s from this back and forth emotional state where it’s working and then it’s not working, it’s feeling like a toxic relationship, it’s not going to be sustainable. So when we think about food and weight loss being sustainable, it’s not just the actions you take, it’s emotionally the experience of taking those actions that needs to be stable for you.
So this is something I really, really want you to consider. The next thing I want you to consider as a side effect of quick fixes is when you engage with these quick fixes, you move further and further away from accepting your body in all states of being. So when you think about using a quick fix to lose weight quickly so you can show up to an event.
So something I hear all the time is I have my daughter’s wedding coming up, or I have my own event coming up, or I’m speaking at a conference and I just need to lose weight really quickly. First off, I wanna honor this because I think we all have been there and we wanna have so much understanding and compassion and validation for when this comes up, but I really wanna offer you how taking action on weight loss in this way does not serve you long term. Because what you would be teaching yourself if you engaged with that is that you are not worthy in your current body to show up as you are right now.
So your current body is not worthy to show up to your daughter’s wedding, to show up to an event, to show up to a conference, to show up to a photo shoot, right?
You do solidify this belief system that your body is not worthy or accepting as it is. And listen, I know we are all just attached to the weight loss in the beginning. We all just think that if we lose the weight, it’ll solve our problems. But I promise you, my friend, if you have such a lack of tolerance for your body now and showing up to your life with the body you have now, that will not change When you lose the weight it will for a bit because you’re gonna have that dopamine, right?
But it will not sustain. And so this is what I want you to consider. We don’t want you to lose weight quickly so you can feel worthy to show up to your life. I want you to think about it. It’s like trying to make progress with a 100 pound ball in chain attached to you at all times.
If you are trying to lose weight to feel worthy, it means you’re trying to lose weight from a total lack of worthiness, from a total not enoughness that you’re experiencing for yourself. And what will happen is you will subtly punish yourself to the changes you want to make because you are creating the changes from a lack of love you have for yourself. And I talk about this a lot, but a really big practice in my coaching program is you really do develop the capacity to have acceptance and understanding and care for yourself, and then that’s what makes the weight loss inevitable, right?
Because you’re doing it in a way that doesn’t feel so terrible. So you are able to do whatever you please in terms of food, in terms of weight loss. But I really do wanna offer you that perspective that if you feel tempted to force the weight loss really quickly, just think about where that puts your mindset in terms of believing you are worthy to show up to your life with the body that you have.
Alright, a last quick point I want to make. If all of these points have resonated so far, I really wanna offer that you can almost guarantee that you will end up in a worse place both mentally and with your body than when you started. If you engage with a quick fix, simply put, the long-term costs will outweigh the short-term benefits, right? You end up creating more space between you and the long-term results you truly want, which is to eat healthy and lose weight permanently.
And my goal, my mission for all of you, is to make these long-term results that you want as accessible to you as possible. I want you to put as little boundaries as you can between you and the results that are available to you. And engaging with quick fix methods can create more and more barriers between you and what you want.
A really big part of my practice, as I’ve mentioned, is reminding you that you are the one who gets to make the decisions with food and your body. I cannot express this enough. This is a huge pillar to becoming a naturally healthy eater. You have to have the belief, I am the one who makes the decisions. I am the one who decides there is no right way to eat healthy and lose weight, my friends, but it is my hope that episodes like these can help inform you of what to expect so you can begin to create your own version of healthy eating for yourself.
I think back to when I really struggle to eat healthy and lose weight for so long, and I remember just really wanting someone to give me the perspective of what to consider when deciding how I wanted to eat healthy. And it’s things like this that I really just want you to know so you can make the most informed decision for yourself. All right, thank you so much for hanging with me today. It is always a pleasure. I hope that this episode was helpful to you and once again, hang in there during this holiday season, and I am excited to check back in with you next week.
All right? Right. I’ll talk to you next week.